Heart

STILL BEATING

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

Resounding
Within

You beat
With the softest stroke ever felt
And I come back for more
Every time

Resounding
Within

You beat
And I fall further with every breath
I listen to your rhythm
And in it

I find

My rhyme

Resounding
Within

 

All words and drawing by Damien B. Donnelly

TO CARNIVORE OR NOT

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Sometimes

I imagine holding mine
in my hands, beating organ-
fleshy and fumbling and trembling
between my thumbs and fidgeting fingers

bringing it to my mouth-

my lips- their caress, my tongue- its tease.

Sometimes
I imagine holding mine
in my hands and bringing it in
close enough to bite.

If I ate it,
would it slip right back inside,
into place, perhaps a better place

than where it’s been before.

Sometimes
I imagine holding mine
in my hands, like you did
and wondering if I could bring myself
to tear it apart

with my teeth.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

HEAVY DUTY

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Heavy. Duty.
Responsibility is weighty.
Weighs on the burdens,
on the burdens that mount.
How the distance mounts over
the months. The years. The tears.
The fears. The identities.
The identities we partake in,
we personas we put on,
we pretend to, we play with,
the personalities
we scrub away to start again.
Once again. Heavy. Duty.
The responsibility of owning
the ownership,
of always ending up
on our own. Heavy.
Shedding parts of ourselves
like snake skin, too thin to shake.
Thin are layers we’re left with,
the leachers leach their lot
and leave us with little.
Little are the layers now.
Lighter. But Heavy.
The Duty.
Responsibility is heavy
in the hands of just one.
In hearts not always held.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

From an earlier series of poems entitled Between the Bone and the Broken

AT THE SETTING OF THE YELLOW LIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 18 Comments

 

I held your hand
in a taxi, once,
while thinking of another
as you whispered into my ear,
a sound I no longer remember,
a scent now a breath away from touchable.

I cannot hold everything anymore,
not everything nor everyone.

I recall the yellow light
yearning to hold its own innocence
stretching through the window
burning hands still holding onto a truth
that had turned away from white,
I remember the highway
that hurried us out of the city
as I wondered if I’d packed enough hope
for us both.

But I cannot hold everything, anymore,
no more. The elastic cannot be recalled,
the weight was too wearisome
for just one heart.
I hope now to hold clarity, to hold happy,
happy to be free. Happy me,
now lighter, brighter

reaching out for that plant pot
with its purple petal planted, long ago,
in a garden I am returning to.

A garden where I will sit
and watch the dance of the dandelions
till the yellow sun has descended,
where I will empty all the jam jars
of their collected lies
and draw the sound of the moon, at last.

   

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

Penultimate poem for National Poetry Writing Month

TRIMMING THOUGHTS LIKE PURPLE THORNS

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

 

I take
this thistle
like I take these words,
I trim the thorns at times for desire
to be softer, sweeter, so lines can be calmer,
cleaner. I seek out the heart of the whole, for now,
for here, for this moment, for the sentiment of this song
that comes for but a season. I seek not branch nor stem, but the life
that lingers where flavour is found, where thoughts flow freer upon the page,
no longer rooted under rock, no longer locked under fear. I pierce through firm flesh
like this pen plots it’s point into the page, holding out not for the green flesh pleading for a place in purple but for the truth buried beneath the skin we have learnt to thicken,

toughen.

I cut away
at words wasteful
and suck the substance
of the tale from the source

below the scale.

   

All words and photography By Damien B. Donnelly

28th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

Lunch today was homemade mayonnaise and steamed artichokes and so came the poem

FLUTTERING HOPE

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Silence surrounds

this sweet stillness,

icicles are falling;

tears streaming

new paths

down old windows

once home

to fading reflections

and the robin

and his red chested breast;

forever stained, forever beating,

flaps through the open field

in search of a hushed hope

in buds that will soon bloom,

in life that will soon turn

below the hardened earth

and muddied soil.

 

We have spilt blood,

been drunk on its bitterness

and still we parch for more.

 

Sweet is this silence;

these mornings breaking,

crisp and cold,

cutting through the layers

we are desperate to shed,

we too are seasonal;

we rise with a spring

and tumble through each fall,

we are hot headed

and cold hearted

when comfort constricts,

melting pain down windows

too frosty to show any solutions

until we are emptied

and in the silence,

in that slowly

sweetening stillness

we are renewed;

ready to cut new reflections

into the smooth surface

of that shatterable glass,

our faith fluttering

on wings of hope.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud

CURSED 

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Blackened hands hardened
over the heart exposed, expunged,
red roses rubbed into ruins,
‘We are no more
than the dust we leave
after death,’
a curse forgotten,
a force too rooted to be released.
Black heart burnt to broken,
banished to the ashes
of her aftermath and he cannot
cry, but he can crack,
like a mirror, now marked,
shaped into shards now,
splinters to spilt the skin,
grown thin, torn.
Blackened hands hardened
over the heavy heart,
bloodless, no longer
bound to the beat,
no longer whole.

‘Kiss her and curse her,’

and so the curse was cast
but they were young
and too busy kissing to take time
to listen to the whispers
of the witches of the wood.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

IN THE SHADE

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There was a heart
like a plant
in a garden
watered
tended
in a garden
like a plant
growing
a heart
beating
under sunlight
and sometimes shade
a gentle shade.

A heart
nurtured
in a garden
a quiet garden
with a fence
a pretty picket fence
around a house
around a home
and that garden
tending to the heart
planted
like a flower
beating
under sun
and sometimes shade
the gentle shade.
A heart
blooming
in the garden
like a flower
till someone picked it

pulled down the fence
and picked it

still growing
still beating

and then dropped it
on the sidewalk
in the shadows
when they saw
across the street
something different
something else
something new.

There was once a heart
growing in a garden
but cut
like a flower
and now
no water
no waiting
no nurturing
no tending
can bring it back to life.

A heart once
growing in a garden

now only a hole
that never seems to fill

untended in the shade…

 

All Words and Paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/in-the-shade

GRACE IN THE GARDEN

/ deuxiemepeau / 15 Comments

My mother hangs memories
on the wall of her garden
in the land where her grandparents toiled,
on a wall in the garden
are my mother’s memories
that not autumn, winter or summer can spoil.

There are tea pots and trinkets
and there are trophies and tack
and mirrors watching time brushing past,
and a blue bird, once my bird,
upon the side of my crib
proving somethings from childhood can last.

My mother has memories
now rooted in her garden
next to bushes and berries in bloom,
there are things that can tickle
and there are things that can touch
and things that were broken or just had no room.

My mother’s hanging hope
on the walls in her garden
to cradle the heart in when it’s cold,
in the heart there’s a garden
where we cradle the grace
that my mother plants just like it were gold.

 

Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly, the Grace and Garden by Mona Donnelly

Audio version available at Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/grace-in-the-garden