Identity

THE BREAKING OF THE BLUE

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

Tall is the man
willing to rise before the break of day
beneath the blanket blackness
and tip toe into the still untempered tide
blindly, current cast as yet unclear,
and trust in time
to lean in with light.

We can be cold creatures
staking our claim
with breath of blue
into our ever-shortening shores
but quickly warmed and welcomed
when we see beyond the shallow
and dig beneath the depths.

We are not owls
who serve the night
but oceans
brought to life
with the breaking of the blue.

 

This photograph is of St Clair beach, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand and was taken by Nigel and used by his wife Liz for her blog exposing all that is colourful and beautiful Exploring Colour. Recently Liz asked me to give the photograph some thought with regards to a poem and this poem above is what I penned while on route to San Francisco last week. The original link to Liz’s blog post is;

https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2019/02/05/still-standing/

Nigel’s Landscape Architecture blog is;

https://growplan.wordpress.com/

A PANICKED PULL

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 Comments

—

Beat. Break. Beat. Break.

—

Is there a monitor of these movements

                that shift beneath the skin? A rummaging

within the ribs. I hear a broken bird

                beating against the bars of its cage,

broken.

–

All organs and organisms need oxygen and optimism.

—

Panic. Breathe. Panic. Breathe.

—

I shift within skin whose movements

                I cannot monitor. I have mounded

matters into metal I cannot master. Alchemist

                is not altruist. I can be an organ

of oxygen

–

but cannot count on optimism.

–

Breathe and so fill my lungs, air entering,

                blood flowing through arteries, the rising

and falling, the beating and beating

                and for every beat; a break, for each breath of air;

a drowning.

–

A bird was not born to fly under water.

—

Beat. Break. Beat. Break.

—

Medical is not the same as mental but mental

is now being measured out by medicinal.

—

Run. Rest. Run. Rest.

—

Running from the nest, the rest, the rest of me,

                    the mess that has been left in place

of all the rest that has left.

–

What has been left?

–

I stop in the park and watch the rest, watch a bird

                break from perch, bold and brave, unfold

against the force, feathers in flight, feathers in fight,

                winded in the chest. Pushed back. Pushing forward.

Pushed back.

—

Beat. Back. Beat. Back.

—

I cannot handle heights, I have felt too much

                the fall, my feathers are for fancy now.

I am done with flying. I am digging, deep

                within the ground, deep within the body.

–

I will pull out every root

till I pluck the panic

and catch a breath again that I can breathe.

—

Pull. Panic. Pull. Harder.

—

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

ATTENTION

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

I
glisten
to distract,
like a snowflake;
the sparkle before the melt.
Particles of fleeting perfection
floating through the hands of time,
falling through all these imperfections.
If only my clutch were tighter, truer, if only
I knew more of my own truth, too many skins
already slipped through, too much prediction put on that perception
of perfection that can never be preserved. A snowflake
cannot be caught intact. We cannot catch a cloud.
We cannot always clear the way for the truth.
Perfection: a twist of our perception,
a precious perspective
from a single point
never again
to be
seen.
What if it’s never seen at all?
Glistening
like a snowflake,
falling.
A snowflake
can be a melting tear
or a tiny miracle on track
to disappear.
Truth;
an elusive illusion,
a deathly desire tenuously tied
to what we present and how you perceive.
To what we fear and what we are willing to show.

I glisten,
to distraction attention
from all that doesn’t sparkle.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BROKEN BUT NOT BITTER

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

I beat back the blues
by licking fingers
on this honeyed language
we spread over the dawn
of each dark day.
We can be drunk on symphonies
of sentences
that slip shadows into sleep,
I whisper of rain
and you twist another truth
through its tendrils
to tell of something drier,
warmer, more lasting
than a droplet of despair
dissolving in the air.
We can be drunk on the words
we sip slowly in the storms,
we take torrent thoughts
of thunderous terror
and turn them
into diaphanous diamonds;
everything is an experiment,
a reaction,
a chemical coming to terms
with its contemporary,
a dictionary is a sentence
awaiting a structure,
the moon is a callous clump of coal
until your eyes spark it
with suggestions of significance.
So much can be broken
and the rest appear so bitter
but I come willingly
to lick the dark chocolate
of these words
and see what structures we can build
together between all this
broken bitterness.

 

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

BLINDING LIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Blanket light,

blinding

in the back seat,

not all light is light,

the sun can burn through its beauty,

the mind can tear through its thoughts

as wheels will themselves

across these bridges,

feet too far from the ground

to feel its gravity,

we build our own graves

along these roadside reveries.

Blanket light,

burning

in the back seat,

leather licks skin,

we cannot wash away the dust,

we cannot break away

from that grey light

burning bright behind the sunlight,

we are desert bound or ocean open;

we either dry up or seek salvation

in the comfort the current creates.

Blanket light,

a burning blindness breaking

through the open window

on this back-seat taxi-taker.

Destination is not always the desire

when running from reason.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

GLUTTONY HAS GOT THE GOAT

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
and this train cannot proceed
along its track,
interlopers interrupt on intercoms;
there are packages of suspicion
on the trail up ahead
and a goat in a lot
dancing round the cars.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
as a woman tells tales
in the seat behind me
to a girl with fingers
fixed on her insta-fame,
on Instagram,
while a goat
with shameful notoriety
throws shapes in the parking lot.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot
and a plane descending
like a sub into the sea
while a package has been placed
in positions of pedestrians
and a woman complains
to her daughter about her day
and her daughter captures it all
on Snapchat to ensure it exists
as a goat in a parking lot
continues to dance.

There is a goat
dancing in a parking lot
and this train has lost the thread
of its tracks
and in a synagogue
on the sabbath
in a state out of states,
someone opened fire
while the goat in the lot
continued dancing.

There is a goat
dancing in the parking lot,
trying to distract us
from the collisions
he can’t cover.

Winter is already here.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE THAW

/ deuxiemepeau / 12 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 drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

 

DARK LIGHT, PART 2; THE FALL

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

I whisper into wakefulness,
the body stirs before the brain,
the blood before belief,
I curl into colder corners of the covers
to encourage skin to come round
as sound slips in just before the sight,
light pours into eyelids slowly opening,
toes slip out to inspect the season
but the soul knows the truth;
I bear every season in a single day,
a snowstorm in the stench of summer,
in moments overlapping;
burning flesh on ice cold streets
(Paris can perish you
behind its postcard perfection),
springs of hopeful holds
that fall to less likely,
there is an unbreakable blossom
in this heart that covers
the precious particles
like once perfect snowflakes
that have since been shattered,
strings that have been strung;
strung out, strung up,
turned to taunt,
I recall the harmony
but am a stranger to the words
we wound into songs,
stretched into surrenders.
Your calls now drown us both
from the far end of another ocean
I thought to be tempered with tepid time,
phone floods forage
where even distance cannot dissipate
the despair that settles
on the floor beside me,
a shallow pool of strangulation
after the hang-up that always feels
somehow lighter at your end.
So much falls away,
so much falls to the ground;
shattered shards no longer capturing
its distant promise.
I watch the snowflakes
catch the wind carefully,
glisten for a moment
before it’s beauty losses breath
on the trodden tracks
of these treadmills
that take us to nowhere
and back again
as the bluebird sings her song
and the moon, even in the bright sky,
still retains its shadow,
ever watchful, ever wondering
when we too will find our time
in this fall, to fall.

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available at Soundcloud: 

DARK LIGHT, PART 1: FAR FROM

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

And slow falls the heaven’s breath,
drawing on those days of dawns;
dewy with that blanket white crispness
below the song of the bluebird
(do you see; beauty can be blue
even when the bird isn’t black)
soft thrills trembling through the forest
as fine folds of frosty fur
find its form in frozen
between branches blithely bending,
l picture violins, their strings
being strung in a honed harmony
to hush the moon
now bitter to be beckoned
back beyond the blue,
(always the blue, always the time falling
on showers of snowflakes
that find their form
in their fluttering flight).
For a moment,
far from the fury,
the morning sighs itself awake,
(I see a baby draw its breath
and consider the corner of a smile
before it crumbles to a cry)
roots stretch and buds break
through the soil
the slow snow is intent on freezing,
for a moment, all is possible
but the snowflakes
that found the light beyond the night
turn to cracked crystals
of inconsistency
as they tip the truth
of who we are in the dark light
of these dull days.
They were golden tears
for but a moment,
spun into perfection,
swirling southward,
before they found us, falling
over an earth too far
from heaven.

All words and collage by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

 

 

THE SWEPT AND THE SWEEPERS

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

Fragility falling
through fine flecks
of fair filigree,
perfect patterns
of individuality
speckled on
imperfect individuals.
Snowflakes melt
on steaming skin
thin on time,
too thick to break through,
you cannot always
sink below the surface
of an iceberg,
we cannot break through
all that lays beneath,
all the lies
below the surface,
it gets hotter
the closer you come
to the cold truth,
only in space
can a spec appear spotless.

Fragility falling
through the folds
of a snowstorm,
we are the swept
and the sweepers,
we must be swift,
icicles can injure,
perfection can pierce.
I can be broken,
I can be better,
I can be broken
but it takes time to rebuild.

I can be a snow-swept
filigree falling
through the perfection of time
and time, with all its perfection,
with its constant movement and minutes,
is as fragile as that snowflake.

 

All words and drawings by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud: