From Myth to Man on Valentines

14/02/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Reworking an old piece for Saint Valentine…

When I was a boy I dreamt of you daily, when I was 20 I thought I knew you,
as I fall into 40 I fear we’ve never met, but I’ve loved you, you know,
since childhood, since I saw what it meant to hold someone’s hand
and since I came to understand what that touch could bring.
I’ve spoken to you, daily, not sure if you ever heard,
but I’ve told you, over and over, all the plans
I’ve made for us in my head, all alone,
sometimes I spoke to you silently
as I lay in the wrong arms,
in the wrong bed, fallen
on the wrong path.
I have married you,
again and again, in fairy tales
and formal attire, in far off castles
and sun kissed shores. I’ve made love to you,
moved in with you, moved the world for you and yet,
although we’ve never met, you’ve changed a lot over time,
with each day, along each year, through the ages that I’ve dreamt you in.
You are no more the God I once dreamt you to be with chiseled jaw and perfect pose.
No, you are now to me, at last, more man than myth; more meaningful than mystical, more substance than surface. I too am now man, having grown older and wiser and learned to distinguish
all that is necessary from all that is just noise. When I was but a boy I dreamt of you daily,
one bounteous bodily being of beauty, but now, all is different, I have seen the world
beyond dreams, and have felt all that life pulsing through my waking hands.
I have seen how dreams can deceive you, how gods can grieve you,
and so now, with eyes open, I see part of you in many
and none of you in some and I’ve accepted
that I’ll never find all of you in one.

Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

IN FLIGHT

18/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Movement
matters mainly
amid the currents of air
I caress
in flight
in dreaming
at night
I fall freely
on the breeze
I am taken,
turned, tuned
I am limitless
know no boundaries
I flit and flutter
at my own folly
forward falling,
I am light blazing
a burning star
burnt out,
barely visible
hardly begun
and yet unstoppable
I am man of the moon
I am the first step
I am freedom in flight
feathers rising in the night
all beneath a blanket of sleep.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE REALITY OF DREAMS

15/09/201525/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I can move mountains
At night,
In the darkness,
Within the costume of sleep

I can part the seas,
Call the currents,
Will the waves
Beneath the waves of a duvet

I can save the world,
Untie the menace
From the mission
With the hero of my dreams

I can find my voice
Bold and brave,
Protect and save
When I am sound asleep

In the light
I take steps,
Singularly significant,
To wake the dream to the day

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

SEEN IN THE SEA

13/06/201503/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I see you
Sweep across my feet
As I sink between
The sand and the shore,

I see you
Seep neath my skin
In a sensation so
Soothing and seductive,

I feel your
Currents caress me
Drawing me into depths
A darkness devoid of fear,

I feel your
Fluid fill my lungs
Flowing with the force
Of being found and being free,

I see you
Rise within me
Until I see myself
No longer, no more,

I see you
Until I open my eyes
And the dream is gone,
But what remains?

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE WOKEN DREAMER

30/11/201403/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I am the woken dreamer,
Lost from all faith
In the magic.
Finding an impossibility
In the longevity
Of ever after.

Is it really no more than
The stuff and nonsense
Of fairy tales
And children’s dreams,
Not fit at all
For real mens lives
And the in betweens?

I was willing once
To find favour
In the moment
But they have fallen,
So infrequent of late
That I fancy them now
To be the filling of folly,
Frivolous and fortune-less.

There were others once,
One time dreamers
Who once danced their dream
In to mine.

Did we lose each other,
Or was it all but a trick,
Have I spoken too soon,
Or have I woken too quick?

Haunted Heart

03/07/201304/11/2015 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

What particular particle

Of the self

Left itself behind

In your absence?

What form of matter

Is this

That moves

When all else in the night

Sleeps soundly?

Because here I am,

Stirred so,

My body jerked alert,

My eyes wide open

And my senses

Shouting to me

That you’ve just left the room.

And yet,

I know deep within

The deception

That resides in this thinking,

I know this feeling

Lacking in fact,

I know this belief

To be hallow of truth.

It is not

And cannot be,

In any reasonable way,

Your scent I can smell

Still sitting in this now chilly air.

It is not,

And likewise should not be,

The soft shuffle of your shoes

I can hear crossing the hall.

Tell me now,

In all seriousness-

With my conscious mind in control,

How I could believe it to be

The touch of your hand

That brushed me from slumber

Or the gentle kiss of your lips

On my neck, so soft,

That teased me out of a dream?

Why is it that now,

So much more than before,

You are the resonance of every

Waking thought,

As if all else

Were but secondary servings

Of something less substantial.

I am failing

In these nocturnal

Awakenings

To understand

How your absence

Speaks more about you

Than your presence,

All memories

Now more concrete fact

Than what was formerly a reality.

How does this present

Present you

More to me now

Than in the past?

I held your hands,

In those final moments,

Before you found your freedom

As the darkness

Released you finally

While everything else lost itself-

For what seemed like forever-

To silence

And a darkness of another sort

Fell upon my life

In your passing

And floundered to find its exit

Within me,

For so long after.

You see,

My dilemma,

My dearly departed-

I thought you gone,

I thought us done,

I thought our forever, over.

And yet,

Here I am-

Sitting up alone

Where once we lay together-

Blind to the sight of you

But convinced

Deep down,

In the depths of my soul,

That you feel me,

Hear me

And see me.

I know, with every ache of this solitary existence,

That you have left this earth for good,

But I cannot explain,

In any humanly perceivable way,

How much I feel you haunting my heart.

A Thousand Sweet Dreams

09/06/201310/12/2015 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

I will love you for a thousand years and a thousand years more
if only you’d ask and I would, you know, lock that love away
so it can’t be touched, tarnished or tampered with. I will hide it
so deep within my heart that every beat will be stronger for it.
I will love you for a thousand years though a thousand others
may come and go, to distract me, delight me, even deceive me
but you will remain, as always, the single force that lies within,
that assures me in the darkness you have been a guiding light,
that reminds me in happiness you made me smile. I will love you
for a thousand years as if we’d spent a thousand nights together,
as if I’d been kissed by your lips a million times, as if I’d dreamt
in your arms a hundred dreams, as if we’d always laid together
and I’d woken up to your gaze every morning since time began.
I’ll love you like this, I promise, for a thousand years and more
and will ignore what we really are, what we have always been
and will forever be. I will love you, truly, for a thousand years.
I will love you for a thousand years, behind shadows, in private,
you’ll be my sweetest secret, the hand never held, or lips kissed,
or arms ever wrapped in. I will love you for a thousand years
in that dream always dreamt, forever a dream, never to waken,
never to end. We were not meant for the harsh light of reality.
We were but briefly met, barely known and yet never forgotten.
We have become the stuff that dreams are made of, candy floss
and unicorns, fairytales and forever afters. We could never be
day-to-day, common place, product of routine, we’re the dream
of the dreamers, without beginning or end. We are the sweet
existence of slumber, you and I, sweet is the dream we share.