NaPoWriMo: ENTITLEMENTS

01/04/201724/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

And so it begins, National (Global) Poetry Writing Month #NaPoWriMo

30 new poems over 30 days

Gird your loins! (Or Lines!)

Who’s joining in? Feel free to post your blog address in the comments section here to make sure everyone knows what you’re up to…

All pillars fall
over time,
all gods
grow down
out of grandeur,
grow pale
out of waste
(we cannot
always worship
that which is distant)
and gravitate
into grasp as age
and taste and circumstance
wrinkle the concrete columns
we set them once upon,
so high, too high
to truly touch at times
like trees too tall
in forests to far to reach,
too distant to be seen.

All pillars fall
over time,
all trees topple,
and their tales
revealed as circles
turned and twisted
in trunks we could not
wrap ourselves around
until we cut them down,
like bodies
bound by loves
and lusts
we could not reach
until we found a way in.

But you

You
will not
come down,
will not be grounded
(precious distance
demands still
songs of glory)
will not
wrap around
this flesh that feels
your fingers too far,
though still I breathe,
though not do I rot.
You;
not made
for me
but a moment
considered
too late,
too complicated,
but mystery,
but man
becoming myth,
no kisses but misses,

still missed.

I tended
too much
to the roots,
thoughts twisting
through a time
now past
(like your eyes to my sight)
now lost
(like your voice to my ears)
a time
never touched
(we never touched
but watched it
slip though fingers).
I let it tower
untended,
not over me
(how I wished),
but away from me
and found myself
firm footed
on strange soil
and you;
in the sky
of dreams
on a pillar
I built for you
never thinking
you’d one day
grow out,
out of reach,
our of hand,
out of hope,
out of hold
(all that I never held),
hand that I can’t
let go of
even if it’s now
too far from reach.

If you never had it
to begin with,
are you still
entitled
to miss it?

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/entitlements

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

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.