KNUCKLE KNOTTED LIBERTY

26/05/2020 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

A navy jumper, twice monthly washed, a blue shirt and striped tie
with a red thread. Grey trousers growing tighter though not getting
any longer. I was 12

in patient leather shoes with points to piece the playground’s pricks,
all sweaty under pit and after-school spit and fearless, only, in the face
of other fools, the types

the teachers all cheered for, for their football field finesses
(everyone wants to fit in) and cursed, later, for lack of flare in their classes
(grade goals were not the same

as game goals). Those were the days of ruby red walls and stained floors
I’d stripped one summer, looking for a more tangible form in the simple wood
buried under a carpet

of complicated patterns- knuckle knotted boards that twisted in place
like my feet, knowing that liberty did not live in things beaten into place.
Those days when education

insisted, with its uniform and a ruler to measure the distance of the hair
from the collar, that similarity was the best way to integrate- 30 not-so-neat
navy jumpers, pulled,

stretched and torn at the cuff for the thumb to slip through, 30 ties tied
in tight knots around necks licked by the sweat of the sport instead
of the inspiration

of individuality. Those days when I turned the cumbersome carpet over
in a red bedroom, trying to carve out a single sliver of liberty, fraternity
and equality

that I mistakenly believed should have been cardinal to the classroom.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly. School day photograph

DON’T COME TO TAME THE CAT

09/05/202003/05/2020 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

Red sun burns below a blue moon
and the tiger rips through trees
to escape the cat. Sometimes
small things need to be as sharp
as an icicle even when the sun
comes to burn red beneath blue
moons while she sings of those
crazy cries of Havana’s love.
She sang of Paris once while
somewhere else and California
while in Greece. She was blue too,
like that moon, while in green
and again with those icicles
and no baby for birthday clothes-
letting go’s a bitch, like moving on,
even if you’re just a fearless pussy
cat and the tiger is too scared
to fuck with you. Earlier, luxuriant
leant in, hissing all over her
manicured lawns of blue pools
and strangling centrepieces.
Always the blue below that burning
sun and those picture-perfect settings
as if to foretell of all that will follow.
Red sun burns below a blue moon
and pussy purrs alone while the tiger
takes cover beneath the shade of
the green cactus tree with phallic
spikes that look like limp icicles.

All words and drawings by Damien B Donnelly. Some thoughts inspired by the music and lyrics of Joni Mitchell

THE THAW

21/12/201918/12/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

Blue is the breath,
blue is the earth, morning, early,
the sky a clean canvas of white and the earth; blue,

a bed of frozen blues born from dawn’s breath,

a blanket of freshly fallen slow snow,
trembling along the hairs of the land, caught
in the calm before the crunch, before the footprints
mould into mud all that is now a myriad of mystery.

There is beauty in blue,
there can be beauty in being broken,
in time being frozen, in the breath baying.

I twist and tremble between these sheets
still fresh upon these old shadows, still crisp
over this drying skin. I twist and tremble through this season
to be unsure, falling into blue, into time, time is frozen

along with all that is born in this bed,
a blanket of fallen findings; some things
I thought to be more, some things
I hoped to mean less,

like loss; less loss,
less time, less breath, more blue,
the mystery is already moulding into mud.

Blue is the breath and slow,
soft as the early morning snow
so slow, awaiting nothing more than
the affirmation of an approaching melt.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE RISE AND FALL OF FORM

23/04/201724/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

Day 23 National Poetry Writing Month #NaPoWriMo

Decades by four
and one year more
have tempered time
to twisting root
beneath this ever
changing shore.

Lands by four
and to one returned
as curious caught
upon my boot
my bags now tipped
with lessons learned.

Summer fires
have blazed this land
flames that fired
forbidden fruit
that etched their mark
upon this sand.

Kisses that sank
beneath the grains
while others I thought
to be absolute
now wait for time
to shift their stains.

The sun has often
turned to storm
hearts were hot
then tears dilute
as I break and fall
and rise through form.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

OH COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY

24/01/2016 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Oh country, my country,

once born in your troubled times
and raised by the banks where your Liffey lies,
I followed the paths of generations moved on
to see what they’d built, to see where they’d gone,
but returned to a home now seriously lacking
a nation of consumers complaining and attacking.
Where are your parishioners, the pride of your isle,
your Emerald’s glory once renowned for its smile?

Oh country, dear country,

now bigger than ever in girth if not majesty,
in greed if not glory, in makeup if not unity.
What has become of those simple smiles,
captured in bar songs of other times?
Is summer gone, have the flowers died
did Danny not return to his father’s side?
A nation once raised on songs and stories,
of people poor but proud of their glories.
Are you better beings in designer labels,
Gucci in hand and louboutin’s under tables?
Maleficent muttons playing innocent lambs
slaughtering histories with blood stained palms.

Oh country, once my country,

there’s no truth to your hunger or depth to your drunkenness,
no moral in your manners or reason for your forgetfulness.
Who’ll be your heroes in the years still to come,
who’ll hear your cries and who’ll beat your drum?
Collins was martyred and there’s no more de Valera
the last of your greats were the end of an era,
now it’s fools fickle to the latest fashion fads
tarted-up teenagers and under aged dads.

Oh country, fallen country,

once a force of marching freedom
while looking to other lands for asylum,
now turned and twisted into narrow opinions
while others seek help and die in their millions.
How has racism risen so loud
in a place once paraded as peaceful and proud,
where its people filled ships that sailed on the seas
in the hope that other lands would hear their pleas,
can you rise again from your Holy Ground
adding names to the list of your heroes renowned?

Oh country, lost country,

where Mary’s cries still ring out to the sea
for Michael who told her nothing matter’s when you’re free,
have you washed down too much of your own importance
and forgotten the fight for your own independence?
Can it be that the tiger, in departing, took your best;
your heart and your soul and just spat out the rest.

Oh country, what country,

how can I find my way back to before
when all I once loved has slipped from your shore?