Flight

GOING EAST

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

I have crossed oceans
without feeling the weight
washed beneath their waves…

I have cut through clouds
without knowing the worries
they whisper to the stars…

I have flown
from darkening dreams
towards tomorrow’s daylight
and yet

the light is already fading
on front of me

before my past
has even slept

before my future

somewhere far behind me

has even been conceived…

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost for a week looking at clouds

WHILE YOU WERE DREAMING

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

   

And as you dove through distant dreams
just beside me, you left to my centre,
I woke to the night sky splitting above me,
the stars were burning, bleeding through
the darkness as the heavens opened,
their gates no longer golden as the
rooks took flight, soaring into my fright
here in this cold night as you tossed
through thoughts and I watched mine
beating, beaten with feathers on fire,
the disparate darkness drawing delight
in my downfall, in my blindness, and you
turned in sweeping motions, your back
to me as I should have done, as I could not
and I wondered where you had wandered
as I was culled into consciousness, frozen
by the flames and shivering, were you
moving through memories we made
or making room for more to come
in other beds, in other arms, and then
befell the bodies, bound, in chains locked,
in flames crying, cursing, trying to pull
apart bonds that should have broken,
and you turned again and your arm
came over my chest and the vision
was smashed in contact, reverie
retreating but the burning continued…

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

From the poetry series A Month with Yeats

Photograph taken at La Lune exhibition at Grand Palais, Paris 

 

 

IF ONLY

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

We are land birds,
bound birds,
we have made homes
in twisted trees
growing hallow,
growing hard.
We are land birds,
ground birds,
we have been deluded
by illusions
growing careless,
growing cold.
We are land birds,
drowned birds,
in a dying desert
growing doubtful,
going dry.

If only
we had been sea birds,
crowned birds
in a current caressing,
wings wild
at the will of the waves,
weightless instead of weighty,
free falling
on a bed of floating foam,
flexible instead of friable.

If only…

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

From the series A Month With Yeats

Photographs from Barbie exhibition at Musee des Arts Decoratifs, 2016, Paris

A WHITE WING RISING

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

  

A starlit day,
on a distant shore,
as if summer had sent it
swarming like a snowflake;
silken wings to summon the sunset,
a white moth to raise a sweet soul
departing.
And there,
as a star was added,
the bright moon was kissed
in berry blush as the sun settled
beneath the lake where the lost trout
turned through tresses of silver dancing
and he smiled at his love, since lost,
now glimmering
in eternity.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is from the series A Month with Yeats

 

BACK TO THE BANKS OF THE GRAND

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

Water catches light
Like I once reached out
To catch a wave
Along this same stretch of water,
This same cosy current of canal
That has slowed, now,
Like my footsteps,
Like my stokes;
Coming back on the bend,
Finding favour
In the freshness
Of all that was once familiar,
Letting go of the longing
To swap steady stream
For seductive sea,
Finding comfort, now,
In the light
I’ve already swam in.
Settling back now,
Sitting down,
Watching the waters
Carefully caress that light.

 

All words and photograph by Damien B Donnelly

Photo taken earlier this week along the banks of the Grand Canal, Dublin, opposite the Grafton Academy of Fashion Design where I studied and dreamed of the future over 24 years ago.

RED INK

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

I love and lose in circles, scratching
at skin tipped in ink, trying to find
the truth beneath the colours
I’ve let others colour in, hiding
the paler flesh I held from view,
we always need to hold on to something.

I am not comfortable over quiet dinners;
too much stilled air coursing
through the courses as I question
the seconds ticking by, in silence;
will you find me failure and flee?
But I’ll always be the first to fly
since that first flight I had no hand in.

I stir the stilled air with performances;
shy boy in the spotlight singing songs
he can’t quite find the notes for
or find the right to call his own.

I love and lie in circles that spiral
back on themselves, that cast further
reflections, not quite clear, on the boy
now faced as man in the mirror,
that flood more ink into that fading flesh.
‘Chromolume No. 9, Georges?’ she asked,
once, in a play, how many more?

Variations grow stale, thought becomes
tension, creation becomes controlled,
breath becomes bearer, bleaker. My chest
beats too quickly to let in fresh air,
fresh flesh, compressed, repressed.

I cannot lie in these circles,
these spirals that seem to linger,
longer, no longer. I am looking
to find a new shape; turning back,
returning, recalling that first mark,
to measure how far from it I ran,
to see what was left behind,
to lay it to rest and find the rest,
the rest of me beneath the red ink
tipped into this fragile flesh.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

18th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

IMPRESSIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

Gentle breath
All as yet an impression
Morning yawns with uncertainty

Thoughts flicker on skin
Hairs rise to signal the day
My body stirs to the stillness

Feathers flap
Cracks are caught in the concrete
Roads are not the only route

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES, NO. 14, NAPOWRIMO

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I hear you crying

from the runway,

as you tried to run away,

I was already off 

a fold on the wings of flying

while you sat there, waiting

and crying,

wishing colour was

no more than a past 

you could turn from.

I hear you crying 

above these clouds 

I am trying to reach 

the other side of,

moving west from east

as you fall south of north,

shivering in a skin 

you cannot slip from,

in a city with a grip 

to quickly crippling,

but geography is not 

morphology, we are bound

to the bones we are born of,

we cannot kill our kin 

to be kinder or simply 

slip from our skin to be whiter.

I hear you crying 

but I was already off

flying, we are the creators 

of our own clouds 

and can only conquer them 

with a calm courage and not 

just a quick comfort

that comes a calling 

in the cold corner

of our own confusion.

I heard you crying 

and wonder 

if I will remember you 

when you have taken to flying?

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

GOING EAST

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

I have crossed oceans
without feeling the weight
washed beneath their waves…

I have cut through clouds
without knowing the worries
they whisper to the stars…

I have flown

from darkening dreams
towards tomorrow’s daylight

and yet
the light’s already fading
on front of me

before my past
has even slept

before my future

somewhere far behind me

has even been conceived…

 

All words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

FEATHERS IN FLIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

We are but fickle fellows,
like feathers that blow
at the beckoning of the breeze
and know not where we land.
We are the folly of fluttering fancies;
a collection of coincidental connections
that we cannot create, keep or control.
I found you once in a far flung field
and fought to find the freedom
to forge in you forever but wicked winds
wound my weakness in greater gales
and I lost my grounding in that garden,
never mine, never thine, never ours,
the petals perishing on prized plateaus
where passion never played to pleasure.
We are fellows of fluttering feathers,
too feeble to fight the forces
that blow us briefly onto bodies bare
and bring us back from that beauty
for fear we might one day
find the force to forge our own flight.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly