Identity

BEAUTY IN SPACES

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

There is a beauty within this space,
a creation considered
to compliment the concrete,
you can leave if you like
by the stairs or you can rest
for a while on the seat.

There is a soul within these veins,
a creation connected
to more than just the carcass,
you can leave if you like
by letting go or you can stay
for a time in the hold.

There are footprints upon this floor,
tracks that tingle
where others have thread,
weather will wither them
and winds will wear them
but they remain submerged, ingrained.

There are memories within this soul,
impressions that have permeated
and beats that have broken,
they are indivisible from flesh,
they are inseparable from spirit,

they are beauty within the space
of each and every person.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re post of one of my older poems

SHEDDING

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

When all the fuss has faded
like guilt that glides from gloss,
when I’ve pulled back the hair,
when I’ve crept from the clothes,
when my flesh is all that you see
and there is nothing left
to hide the parts of me
I never wanted to be,
Will you…? Will I…?
When my tears come like the floods
with no temperament to temper the tempest,
when there is no laughter to kneel neath,
when I bare no gift to beg you like me
and there is nothing left
of the roles I’ve roped myself into,
of the masks I’ve twisted my face around
to veil my own identity, Will you…? Will I…?
Will you be able to read
the life lived between the lines,
will you see the soul
that slipped within the shadow?

I wrote it down
but ink fades faster than these pains
that have patterned
themselves into permanent
beneath this skin
I’m now unseasonably
and unceremoniously shedding,
scars that parade now in the spotlight,
in the parts of the play
I have been permitted to perform.
But they are scattered
between the scenes,
broken into awkward acts.
When the curtain finally falls
and I cast off the costume, Will you…? Will I…?

Will you understand what it took to get here?
Will you look further than the festering flesh?

I am more than just skin on the bone.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

From an earlier poetry series entitled Between the Bone and the Broken

I AM…

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

Beau, tu sais?
Tu es beau,
c’est vrai.
Non, I say,
ca, c’est pas vrai.
Moi, je sais
d’autre chose,
mais beau?
Non, I say,
je ne suis pas beau.

Fragility I know,
mon ami s’appelle
fragilité,
pour lui
je porte a smile,
comme de vêtements,
like a shield,
mon sourire
est beau,
ca, tu peut dire,
ca, tu peut écrire,
but I am not my smile,
I am the boy behind
and sometimes it hurts,
tu sais? Ca fait mal.

Mais merci, comme même,
c’est beau ce que tu m’a dit,
ce que quelqu’un m’a dit,
c’est beau, mais non,
c’est pas moi; I am…
je suis autre chose.

 

Translation:

Beautiful, you know?
You are beautiful,
it’s true.
No, I say,
that, it’s not true.
Me, I know
something else,
but beautiful?
No, I say,
I am not beautiful.

Fragility I know,
my friend’s name is
fragility,
for him
I wear a smile,
like clothes,
like a shield,
my smile
is beautiful,
that, I can say,
that, I can write,
but I am not my smile,
I am the boy behind
and sometimes it hurts,
you know? It hurts.

Thank you, anyway,
It’s beautiful what you tell me,
that someone tells me,
it’s beautiful, but no,
it’s not me; I am…
I am something else.

 

All words and self portrait by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost of an older poem.

HEAVY DUTY

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

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

CONNECTIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

Water
Silent
Stillness
Reflection. Connection
Make the connection
Elements
Water Earth Air
I can be fire
The fire

I walk on water
I dream I walk on water
I see stillness
I dream I walk on the stillness of the water
I hear the silence
I am the silence dreaming of the stillness that walks on the water
I am the reflection
I am the silent reflection of the dream that once walked on the stillness of the water.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a old post, reposted.

TAXI DRIVER, I CAME TO THE CITY

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

A constant darkness,
the future unfolds like the road;
route unknown, the past ever present
but kissed goodbye;

my lips still taste of yesterday,
my hips the heat of your caress
that has since slipped from these sheets.

I was always bound to restless,
to rest less and less, I am creature creative;
a constant recreation concerned more with shadow than light,
more with what I don’t yet know
than where I have already ready been.

I am taxi traveller,
I will take you with me, naked
under the sweating sun, tender under starlight
but you are only fair;
you are the hitchhiker along my highway,
a distraction on route to destination.

We are not destiny,
no two are designed alike,
every soul a single sojourn.

I am city when you are desert,
I am sand when you are stone,
I will have dried up before you learn to open up.

I will meet you under moonlight,
by the gaslight already flickering
in the morning light, only the stars will see us
burning bright, for we are stars; rising in the darkness,
this constant darkness,

I will drink you and then discard you
when the dawn calls me back to destination
before you break me, I will set off before you slow me,
before you show me who you want me to be.

I am everything and nothing in your eyes, all lies,
we are only reflections, projections of hope and hurt,

I cannot be all you want
when we don’t really know who we are.

We are starlight, like I said, already burning out
before begun, drawn to distraction
and drawing on our own dust.

But I am constant, now, to the calling,
am free to flight and fall,

I will love you
Forever and yet leave you
before you’ve even considered it
a compliment to concern yourself with who I am
because all we have learned
is to look for ourselves in each other.

And yet I am other. Another.
No other, bound to no body and everybody,
at home in hotels that hold me for hire,
every stop another station in the formation,
every sheet another burn as we twist and turn
and then, in twisting, we turn,

we are roads constantly crossing,
trying to get to the other side
to see if the darkness is lighter, brighter,

but this darkness, this constant darkness
is not a dark abyss, this constant darkness
can only be conquered at the check-out.

A constant darkness,

we are all travellers on a road,
making moments, making magic, making mistakes
believing the future is forever,
but I am not concerned or consoled by forever,

I am here now, running reckless
along these roads, seeking sustenance, seeking solace,
and occasionally a comfort from the cold that comes a calling,
(I will give you what I have willing if you promise
not to take it unevenly) seeking satisfaction
in things temporary, leaving a part of me
in everything I touch,

hoping it’s enough,
hoping you will remember
the scent of my skin though we were too thin
to be true, too fragile to be anything more
than a fickle tickle,

trying to understand the sweet sorrow,
the ebb and flow, the hope and the hurt.

Goodbye can be a greeting as warm as hello.
Good boy, I am trying to be a good boy
burning through this constant darkness
and smiling as I soar and sizzle.

A constant darkness
so we can gaze at the stars in their glory.

 

All words and pictures by Damien B. Donnelly

Based on a poetry series inspired by the albums of Joni Mitchell

DUALITY for Poetry Day Ireland

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This years theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

Duality

And here is where we battle the truth;
east or west, the sun’s heat or the moon
that spies on our rest.
And here is where our paths divide;
the war to be won or the human
we are fighting to become.
And here the Indian draws the honour;
mild man stands in the boar’s breath
with integrity in hands.
And there in the east with helmet high;
fearless fighter bares the beast and blunders
into battle as bloody blighter.
Are we then of both moon and sun;
tied tightly to burning planet and that eye
watching nightly?
Can we be honest behind the armour;
can the blood we gorged be erased
by a single flood?
Can we be both brave and beast,
can we cry for the famine and still eat
at the feast?

Are we not confusions
caught between the confines,
are we not stars burning bright like the sun
but in the falling night?

Are we born to be beasts or born to brave the beast?

Let us be wild boars;

fearless in the face of our foe,
gregarious in our greed to grow.

   

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

BETTER BOTTLES for Poetry Day Ireland

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This years theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

Better Bottles

In the shadows
not yet departed
from former students
since departed,
confined in Parisian compartments
the Polish left to the Irish,
red vinegar wine
(as vulgar as the vultures
who drowned in its deluge)
caught itself in corners
still not drunk
by the blow-ins
still bleating
about the burnt beef
and sodden soil
as we made smoke chains
in our simple chambres
to choke a distance
between the homes we had left
and the hands that hadn’t
yet let us go. We may have been
from the same barrel born
but we, in truth, had desires
to be labelled in a better bottle.

  

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

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

GRAINS OF SAND BENEATH CERULEAN SKIES

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Faith
is fragile,
courage
is not always conclusive
until called,
we do not command the waves
nor comprehend the clouds.
I tell you this sand
will be swept into the sea by night fall,
this baying breath of cyan
neath the stretch of those cerulean skies.
This smooth, salt-licked land
was forged from fire
before you were born,
when vultures had feathers
instead of hands and knives,
when volcanos were all there was to fear.
Faith is fragile,
we cannot see what once was
or what will come to be.
We are not the fire nor the future,
we lie somewhere
below the caelum
searching for a shred of security
on a spot of shore
before the tides return
and we, in turn,
become a grain of sand
that some being will one day look upon
and try to see what is no longer there.
It is ours to be the basalt
or to be
something
better.

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All words and photographs (taken on Jeju Island, South Korea) by Damien B. Donnelly

27th Poem for National Poetry Writing Month

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