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UNPACKED

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

I have emptied
All the boxes,
A lifetime
Of belongings,
A collection
Of customs,
Compromises,
Compulsions,
Convictions
Combined together
To become a whole,
A who,
A human,

I have emptied
All the boxes,
Found other shelves
To place the memories,
Other drawers
To store the scenes,
Other cupboards
To carry the clutter,
Other colours
To paint the walls
With shades
Of what is yet
To come.

I have emptied
All the boxes,
I am moved,
I have moved,
I will move again
When the moment
Meanders
Into the next
And the next
And the next

But for now
I am here,
I have emptied
All the boxes,
All of my belongings
And belong…

 

All Words and Photos by Damien B. Donnelly

CHEZ MOI

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I release you
From the obsession,
From the overly long
Ogles of observation,
Trepidation
And a grass,
Seemingly green,
Long since remembered.

You are no longer
That deep desire
In the distant darkness,
Distracting me,
Daring me
To deploy,
To defect,
To retour.

That significant
Substance
Shimmering
In the shadows,
Swaying slowly,
Seducing me,
Enticing me.

I release you
From the waking dream
And the nocturnal rêver,
The phantom waiting
For the return
And the temptation
Teasing me
With time.
The illusions
That eluded me
In waking light,
The visions
Deceiving me
In the shade of night.

You are no longer
The haunting hunger,
The taste of what once was,
What still could be,
That insatiable need
Never fully quenched,
Never truly tested.

You are now no longer obsession,
You are now just a place called home.

 

IRELAND, THE EMERALD AND I

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Reposting for #PoetryDayIRL

Remembering home from afar…

And so again I found myself,
Of a morning, that morning,
On a winding road, once more,
Meandering like a stream,
Before it opened up to unveil
A vast expanse of stillness
Where brook and lake entwined,
Rugged roads wandered into wilder woods
And the light, that sat
Upon mossy mountain,
Reflected the break of another
Boorishly boisterous day
In a landscape where Yeats,
Having left the Mauds of his world
To fight the battle without him,
Had climbed nightly
The Thoor Ballylee
To find rest and I revelled
In what it meant to be connected
To these often harsh,
Sometimes barren,
But seldom anything less
Than breathtaking lands.

Immense clouds hanging on the horizon,
Fertile lands out front,
Awash with the 40 shades
And a silence amid so much
Awe-inspiring nature
That the Emerald in her name
Seemed so justified.

And yet, as if forever ingrained and known
But for a moment forgotten,
From somewhere deep inside
Resurfaced the notion
That it was not these lands
That I missed but
The memory of laughter
That blew above these lands,
On the breeze that crossed
Fields of verdant greens,
That skirted over grass
Waiting to be grazed on
And found rest in trees
That longed for lovers to kiss beneath.

And then, as normal as the nodding of the cap
To the passing stranger along the roadside,
I was taken back to those lucidly liquid days
Shining from my youth
When the patriotic spirit
Of a nation,
So small but spirited,
More laughed with
Than laughed at,
Doused itself in shamrocks
And drowned itself merrily
In spirits of an altogether other nature,
A time when neighbours
Knew each other like family
And a new face in town
Was merely a friend
We did not yet know…

And there I stood, home again,
Spun on that same laughing breeze
Into the past and I saw before me
The Me of today reflected
In my childhood form of yesterday
With teddy in one hand
And Tayto’s in the other,
Smiling amid laughter I had heard
But was far too young to understand,
In a land that I’ve fled so far from,
Swept up and away
On other breezes,
And yet, however high I fly
Or however much I roam,
I never seem to feel too far
From that Fair Green Isle called home.

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All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

CINQUAIN IN FRANCE

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I see
In a vast bar
On the edge of my past
A boy so lost amid the crowd
And you,

There was,
In the mayhem,
A sense of happening,
A feeling of the familiar
In you,

Brown shirt
And dark blue jeans,
Gaze so deep to drown in
And a gentleness that caught me
Unaware,

In truth,
I had not seen
Or noticed you come in
But from the moment I saw you
I knew,

You were
The smile I sought,
The acceptance I craved,
The friendship I needed to find
At last,

I was
The curious
Little bird who’d found flight
And a place to perch in Paris
But then
In France
I was foreign,
A fool to fortitude
And invisible to all eyes
But yours,

I found
As time trickled
A fondness in that find,
A connection in the chaos
To last
Past boys
And men who came
To try us and test us
To see us laugh and to see us
Fall down.

I will
In these few lines
Try my best to thank you
For taking the time to see me
Back then,

The smile
That you offered
On that night, in that bar
Made a fearful foreign young boy
Feel home.

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MY MUSE

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Dance with me for a while you asked
And how could I refuse?
The belle of the ball at a soiree of cities
You are lady and goddess, the muse.

Deep in your heart I walked through you
To see you for what you are,
The product of passion and maker of magic
Like the light from a glorious star.

Home in your arms I was in you
And welcomed in from the cold,
You shone out your soul as you filled me with music
While your palaces shimmered with gold.

Comme La Petit Prince I came to you
Questioning life and romance,
Well I learned how to live ‘neath your city of light
And found real love in a solo dance.

In Père Lachaise I wept for you,
For the heroes you have lost,
The sparrow of Piaf, the spirit of Bernhardt
Seurat and Balzac and Proust.

Canvas of white, a child again
At play in the fields of you,
You opened the doors to your present and past
From the Palais Royal to the Pompidou.

You kept a watch both night and day
Lit a light for me to glide
From your cafes of jazz to your muscles of men
I inhaled every smoky dark side.

By Sacré-Cœur I looked on you
Till my eyes were pools of tears,
From La Tour Eiffel to your grand Musée du Louvre
I’d surrendered in you all my fears.

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Travelling

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

I am sitting in a cafe

In a city now called home,

I’ve travelled many roads to get here-

And most all of them alone.

 

There’s been multitudes of languages

And a million changing faces,

Solitudes of silences

And unforgettable embraces.

I am eternally the estranger

In a land of other locals,

Externally the optimist

As my now grey hair reduces.

I’ve found all the answers

To questions never wondered,

But have yet to find the answers

To the questions that I’ve pondered.

I am happy more than tearful,

Alone more so than lonely

And happy that my insanity

Has never toppled my stability.

I consume myself with worry,

Awake myself with doubt,

But take comfort when the laughter

Drowns all darkness out.

 

I am sitting in a cafe

In a city that’s now home,

But as every car passes by

I wonder where next I’ll roam…

photo-78

 

The Value of a Single Word

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I am in the air,

Above mountainous clouds

Of candy floss and cotton balls,

Flying between beds

That are not mine,

Sheets bound to frames

And pillows too puffed

To be personal.

I am the single sleeper-

Positioned

On the right edge of center,

Using just one set

Of towels

Of the two provided,

Opening single slippers

And leaving that other robe

Hanging unused

And yet,

For all it’s

Impersonal touches,

I sleep in these foreign buildings,

In foreign cites,

In foreign lands

I can barely plot on the map,

Akin to sleeping at home

And tonight

I question

The geographical pull

And sentimental value

In the word

We call home

When you live

In this world

All alone.

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Courant d’Air

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Lost somewhere in love’s language

Between bonjour and au revoir.

How is it I have strayed so far

From what was once so important?

I have travelled land and sea

But with each step

A part of you approaches from the past,

Present and possible future

To remind me of your existence,

To recall how much of you

Is rooted deep within me

And to confirm how much of me

I left behind in you in that time we had

And shared and made;

On your banks, along your cobbled streets,

Within your bars, on the lips of your men

Whom I kissed and your ladies who I danced with

And behind that grey door

And up along that wide wooden staircase

Which spiralled its way to my first home

Nestled in the oldest part of you.

It was here where Joni Mitchell

Rang out in my ears for the first time

Through the angelic tones of the blonde creature

Who lulled me from laughter to chaos

On that old templed street-

A stones throw from my first hotel,

The scene of my first French kiss,

Tucked away behind my favoured park,

Resting under the watchful ghost of Picasso

Where I would soon burn to a crisp

As summer’s sun found Irish skin to roast on.

How we laughed in that living room

With its viewless windows

Letting in only the bare minimum of light

As my musical Nymph rehearsed

Endless Irish dirges that would pay the rent

While the spritely hippy

That hid beneath her voluptuous body,

In green velveteen bell-bottoms

And tasseled honeyed hair,

Begged her to let loose, break free and fly like a bird.

I remember that morning as spring arrived

And I opened the windows to find warm air

Perched on our sills before I read her

My first French penned poem;

The Traveler Lost;

A young man drowns amid foreigners

Without words to express himself.

She laughed till her eyes brimmed with tears

And I, almost unable to finish,

Sobbed in a likewise comic and uncontrollable state,

Indulging in the unconsciously humorous overkill

Of the self-indulgent prose of a 22 year old child

Dancing about in grown up shoes.

And yet, in that very fact;

In the acceptance of our naivety and innocence,

We laughed our way, amid childish ignorance,

Through the best of times and dared each other not to care.

And yet now, so far from that very home,

How close its infamous memory

Ventures to mock me

For the distance I have let slip in between.

In all my dreams of traveling and exploring,

How was I to know that my feet would fall

So fast in love with that first touch

Upon your cobbled streets?

I am the sparrow, lost to its nest,

Forever flying in ascending circles

And catching your scent on every other breeze,

Unsure of why it calls me still,

But hopeful to one day be flown home on your courant d’air.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Remembrances along the roadside

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That day- do you remember?

In the car, me- racing away

And you- running,

Me- crying,

and you- waving.

Do you remember?

He was inside- watching, brewing, stewing.

Unable to say what it was that he wanted,

Unable to stop what he had from escaping.

We were outside- turned inside out,

Silenced to the limit,

The end had arrived; childhood given over to adult reality.

That day- do you remember?

Me, being driven away-

Leaving the only home I’d ever known.

Leaving the home he’d broken with silence-

That icy cold reserve; reserved for the undeserved-

Me, you, Mum and the multitude of others

Who tried in vain to hold out a hand;

To reach him, to touch him.

I hear his laughter,

Somewhere in the back of my mind,

Somewhere where that boy still resides

And remember that cutting smile,

That ice cold stare and those eyes that night

When they cut like a blade.

That day- do you remember?

You chased me all along and down the road

As Dympna drove and Mother cried in the seat behind.

You- with tears in your eyes

As the car tore me away from all I’d ever know.

I know that boy’s still inside, somewhere,

Painting his bedroom, playing in the attic,

Writing words to help him understand

And patiently praying that all parents were perfect.

—

All words by Damien B. Donnelly