Identity

CALLING

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Boys came calling after school,
sometime between six and eight,
before the summer- longer days
under the swell of frustration.

Boys came calling after school,
halting homework and hunting,
looking to come closer to a truth
but I held mine firm, in the door-
halfway, me half in, half confused
as to what they wanted, intrigued
as to who they thought I was.

Boys came calling after school,
before the summer- longer days,
stifling nights, sticky like glue-
like adhesive that never stuck
to the right surfaces as I beat
myself into a form I’d never fit.

I wanted to open the door,
to the boys who came calling,
to accept that some could be
sincere after so much shame
but I was afraid, at that time,

of who exactly might come out.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly

THE PRICE OF BEING WILD

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Sometimes morning breaks
before the hold has found the frost.

We wake dizzy-
flung into field where dawn’s breath
corners all that has been fearless
but will soon fall to fragile-

breath becomes touch becomes dew becomes done

running down the blade of grass regardless
of how much it will cut.

Sometimes morning breaks
and I am off already, running

through the long grass, twisting around all that lies uncertain

I feel the blades stab skin
that has just been cradled.

Buds of blood come to cloth
like colour cast into cotton fields,
in this early light of twists and truths
they look like roses but come close

and see how quickly they slip down the side of each blade.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly.

 

Photograph from the wonderful Liz Cowburn at https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/

THERE IS EGO IN EVERY STEP

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

The trail is not simply
sewn with a needle of the sun
threaded through the eye of the moon
even if I sometimes feel the pinch of that warm stitch
as I reach out to that small step claimed for man.
Thought is not always free from guilt-
we cannot get close to the sun without waring the scars,
the Id js designed to devour, the ego to condemn
before the conscious can even come close
to consider its part in this creation.
This skin does not melt under the burning sun
but it froze once, under a certain stare, as a child,
in the doorway between that blinkered ray of innocence
and the ice-cold stare of understanding.
We are all patchwork paths-
joined at seams and torn from others,
some scattered careless, despite all the patterns
etched into our pinched skins that freeze but do not melt
though I felt the heat
once, on the other side of the world
where the moon seemed so much closer to the sun,
but our egos never found a compatible way to align our sides
and feed the Id that itched so.
The trail is not simply
sewn with a needle of the sun
threaded through the eye of the moon.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SWAN NECK

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

Swans have long necks
though not as long as giraffes
but I wonder still if they can see further upstream
than the rest of us whose necks barely stem
a few inches above the clavicle.

The current is a nonstop exciting confusion,
waves of wisdom and what ifs-
what if I fall, what if these wings won’t fly,
what if he sticks around, what if he won’t let go,
what if I am more, alone, than I ever was
while trying to be understood
and what is wisdom, really,
if I cannot be prepared, in advance, to use it.

Swans have long necks and feet that never seem
to need a break from being held down.

I have a short neck
and am always on the lookout for that break.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

FRESH PERSPECTIVES AT THE MIDWAY MARK

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I pulled a seat
up along the far side
of the first hill
of this midway through life’s climb
and sat myself towards country,
having been stripped
for so long
like bare bark by too many cities.

Green blood poured
upwards from your soil
onto my skin
until there was nothing left
to separate either of us
again

but for those ditches
that we would climb over
and perhaps leave the parts of ourselves
too ridged
for these winding lanes,
and those gentler hills
that we’d allow time to consider
while we considered nothing more
than what we had-

air, earth and this seat
on the far side of life’s hill
growing over time
with honesty.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BLANK CANVASES

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Light can be ubiquitous, even in the darkness of youth
but it’s not always lucid- sometimes it twists shadows
into shapes that seem so much more sinister.

Innocence is a bright spark that can be knocked down
to stunted shadow by a thoughtless twist in the tale
or a pedestal pitched at an imperfect position.

Light is not always lucid when children are canvases-
blank boards where adults come to play at painting
a costly version of truth or dare upon fragile flesh.

I thought happiness was new paint on worn walls.

I thought he’d been derived from the devil.

I thought I was positively perfect.

Later, I discovered those last three lines where things
I’d been taught to think. Light can be ubiquitous
but in the darkness- teachings can trigger terrors.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BETWEEN THE SEAMS

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

We came for the cows-
sleek shiny skins to sew into seams and cents
but were caught in a contradistinctive cacophony-
silk sarees, careering through merging traffic
in colours more complex than considerations of the constellation,
on the backs of mopeds, motorbikes, motorcars, broken cars,
cars piled on top of cars, twisting and turning like my thoughts,
like shiny spun threads speeding through calescent carriageways
sweltering under the hustle of the crowd’s bustle,
horns and humans honking along the raw edges of overrun roadsides.
Curious eyes casting assumptions on the stiches I’d unpicked-
trying to see how they held it all together. Eyes smiling, seeing,
wondering on why I’d come and what I’d take away.

We’d come for the cows-
but slipped like silk over skin into the smooth symphony
of those streets where wild cows were prized idols
wandering freely through the masses, noting nothing
of our search for their hides that had slipped from being seductive
into being sacred, again. In the height of this mercurial madness,
a man, blind to all light, weaved his way through the carnival
like the weft goes through the warp, three sheep by his side
as if they’d always been with him- the silken worms to his weave
and I wondered, then, who was leading who;
the man, the sheep, this car or me.

Into every baste stitch, hand-made,
in Meluhha’s lining, was hidden a fine canvas
where letters spelling out the concept of freedom had been placed,
sealed beneath from the politics and the poverty, they’d sewn smiles
into each seam and it was I, in branded costume, who looked the fool-
traveling through, taking it in, thinking I was better off amid my laws
and rules and beds and baths and running water and walled in farms
that kept cows in containers too condensed to come close
to any considering of the constellation.

We came for the cows-
but discovered that this was no place
to search for that something sleekly-
for this was a city too silky for the stains of my synthetic skins.

 

 Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

ORIGINAL SONGS

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

Here now, flown back to nest since moved in absence,
these streets hold no shadows of my former shyness,
they do not call me by nickname, or your name.
I was never open enough then to be called by your name,
their name, his name, back then when there was no him
and barely a me.
Here now, back to where they began, before me-
their nests, their streets, their lanes, their stories
I’ve since borrowed, not knowing much of my own,
those told before me.
Funny now, to be here, in this nest, perched on this position,
you say it’s home and there’s truth in those words
but it’s like saying we’re family- this was never my home
and our blood is not the same.
We look out at the same land, the same tree, the same leaf
but we do not perceive the same stars at night
when the garden is gone and the universe asks
where did you come from?
We are what we believe. We come back to what we know
regardless of where we’ve been, of who we’ve become.
Of where we started. Adoption can be a cold word
to begin with.
I came from a broken shot off cupid’s bow where a single tear
flooded the moonlight as a siren screamed and one other,
lost to her first song, called out for another chance to hold
a snowflake in her hands. We were both born to sing
in seasons different to our own.
I came back on a wing’s turn to question the concept
of a nest, of where feather first found flight, I came back
older, taller, wiser, to look at youth from this odd angle
of middle age, to look at connection from the perspective
of having already left the nest, to sit, here now, in this garden
freshly trimmed down and cast this bird’s eye view
over where the roots were first planted
and who laid the first twig.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

VREEMD OF MISSCHIEN NIET (STRANGE OR MAYBE NOT)

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

She was called Éireann, even in Holland,
(misschien vreemd, ik weet het)
though she was greener than I ever was,
back then, with the mud of the land
still caked into her guards while I was off
and running, ever forward, adding guards
to my guards till I saw the earth was round
when home appeared again, on the horizon.
(Vreemd, of misschien niet).

Later, decked in a fur coat of fine snowflakes
that clung to your form while they melted
off mine, you appeared as blank canvas
before a river to skate away on, like she sang,
once, in a city that was not this one. Funny,
what sinks in and what drowns, even light
can fade into the wrong water, even water
can remain on solid structures as icicles.
Some things cling on while others slip away.
(Vreemd, of misschien niet).

Round that red bricked bridge we rode,
a decade of being Dutch, (how long?
Ik weet het- vreemd, toch?), thinking
I was only stranger and the road my home,
but those were the days when the wheels
spun in circles around canals that turned
back on themselves. Maybe that’s how
we learn to come home- spinning in circles,
on roundabouts or her carousel of seasons
that went round and round.

She was called Éireann, even in Holland.
Maybe the answers to all I was looking for
were already there in her name.
Misschien wel!

Maybe some things take a cycle to sink in.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SOME THINGS ARE NONSENSE AND FOR ALL ELSE THERE ARE DISTRACTIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

I was tall, when I was a small child,
but stopped later,
somewhere in between adolescence and giraffe.

A giraffe would be impossible to sit behind
at the cinema.

In the cinema, in Amsterdam, people talked
like it was a cafe with an incredibly large background TV
and didn’t seem to nonsense from the hungry mice
beneath the low lighting.

Light can often distract decisions on how to dress
in the murky fog of morning when the mirror won’t help explain
who you are.

I helped a passenger on a plane, once-
I placed their bag in the overhead compartment and felt abused
later when they claimed the total width of the arm rest
as if I was only too willing to be a servant
to their sovereignty.

A king in a castle is not always as fulfilled as a man, quiet,
in his shed or the kid reaching down to grab a hold of happiness
while growing up, somewhere in between adolescence

and the astonishment of a giraffe.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly