innocence

SUPREME

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I loved China Beach, as a boy and its opening
theme tune- Miss Ross belting out her light voice;
Reflections of the way life used to be, reflections of…

I was too young then to understand anything deeper
than the melody that rose in me while the meaning
sank,

of an age then that had barely left any marks
for time to reflect on later, after.

Youth is too light, like her voice was, to be consumed
by thoughts of things concerned with used to be.

They were lovers and friends and mores and lesses
playing other tunes by the shorefront firelight-
reflections in the flames. All heat and hazy.

But there was a war too, of course, for these medics
and the soldiers they were saving while I pondered
free love and long youth

but now, looking back on the way life used to be
a week ago, a month ago, I see how, even then,
a nurse could rise to be a hero.

And so she sings; Through the hallow of my tears I see a dream…

 

All words by Damien B Donnelly.

Photograph of China Beach TV Series cast pulled from the internet 

THE MOTION OF GOING SOUTH

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I’ve only been to Cork once,
to a funny place they called The Other Place
which I thought was like the Scottish play
with the name you’re never supposed to say.

In another place, beforehand, we’d sat
on beer kegs in a girl’s bar called Loafers
and I giggled at all the comfy shoes
in astonishment and thought that sitting
on a keg felt more like a punishment.

I’d only been to Cork once, when I was 20,
a year since I’d had my first kiss, with a boy,
behind a sofa, at a party.
You catch on quick, I heard him murmur
and so I dropped the tongue in further.

That drive down to Cork in the 90’s
felt like operation transportation-
5 sisters of Dorothy all crammed in the car
singing Liza and Barbara in proud
polychrome while inside I was thinking
this was certainly no place like home.

We slipped out of Loafers
and their shoes that had absorbed me
and headed to that no name place
that was actually called The Other Place.

A disco it was with lads against the wall
and I thought you’re man in the white socks-
I won’t be snogging him at all.

They opened up a back room, in Cork,
halfway through the Whitney medley
which caused a run for the big buns on sale-

fruity scones sausage rolls,
fondant fancies and fairy cakes,

in Cork, at the disco,
in The Other Place,

when all the gays still ate sugar
and some grandmother’s doily
was the only bit of fecking lace.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BOOKENDS; KISSED BY SOMEONE ELSE’S KING AT CHRISTMAS

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Lights danced on shivering trees dressed
in a blanket of snow while a tale was told

of a boy, born to be king, to never know choice.

I kissed Christmas in someone else’s shadow
and we whispered in the absence of his voice.

I dreamt of a crib where a kid had kept faith
for a while, as a child, while you watched me

sleeping, naked on a bed still fresh from his folds.

You wished for us longer than a festive fumbling
of flesh in the emptiness of his ephemeral flight

but our fate was like my faith; not as tightly nailed
to a cross as the kid who was crucified as a king.

I waked away from the tinsel toe and your touch

and left you

to smooth out the stains we screwed upon his folds.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This month is about looking back at Paris to acknowledge all that has slipped away, like the lips once kissed, the snowflakes since melted and the faith, since fallen. As a kid I wanted to believe in Santa for longer than my age allowed because I didn’t want to let the magic end, I grew up in the church and tried so hard to see the truth in what I was being taught that it took a long time to see how closely they were wrapped in lies. When I first came to Paris at 22, I had my first kiss on Christmas night. I was alone and living in a hotel and everyone I knew had gone back to Ireland and I wanted to find the magic again, even if it came in the form of three nights in the arms of a man who wasn’t mine, who was lonely because his boyfriend had gone off to see his family for the holidays.

Sometimes we try to find the magic wherever we can and do our best to ignore faith, fate, the fates or the folds we didn’t make. 

BOOKENDS; GOLDEN GREENS IN THE GARDEN OF GREEDY YOUTH

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In days now distant, we were one floor up, apartment dwellers
whose viewless windows revealed to us more than the darkness
that tried to appeal to us. Tambourine Therese tapped her tunes
of truths not yet tasted, tumble leaves freshly fallen from the trees
in the apple orchard of golden greens begging to be bitten into.

We were eager-eyed innocence yet to be broken by the blue;
scavengers, seeking the scent of salvation on the shiny streets,
saving up to buy beginnings to cut cords on. Mitchell as muse,
we were lyrics yet to be licked and covering Carey and cases
of whoever might come calling on the Casio in a little corner,
salivating for suggestions to rise in us seductions and thirsty
for tattoos to plot paths along our pale pinkness so as to track
our trajectory while singing in the ignorance of our sweet sorrow.

Sweet birds of youth busy building nests in confines of concrete,
too blind to the battery, we were born for the bloom but forging
a forever on a friendship that failed like the lie of a lead balloon.

In days distanced from all that was once dream, I’ve found form
as lonely painter on this canvas of winding words, a connoisseur
of cutting cords, often curt and callous, in the challenge to manage
the malice and learning to be fateful only to the fate that awaits
but caught at times, by the complicated cords that cannot be cut.

I hear you on the wind sometimes, tapping those tunes I thought
this body had forgotten with its skin no more so pink, so fresh.

The fruit fades but we find ourselves then reformed into fractures
of what once was, frail fragments unfinished, like filigree too fine
to unfold, like a dance as yet undone or a song we had still to sing
in this city I once returned to while moving on, slipping forward
through shadows passing, still building nests, still seeing better
in the darkness and touched, in that half-light, by the purity
of your sprite, once so fair, one so rare. We fell so fast
to finished and yet, as she sings of those songs like tattoos,
I’m reminded of that one flight up that can never be diminished.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This month is about looking back at all that cannot be forgotten.

We will always have Paris, it appears…

BOOKENDS; AMATEUR STATUS

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November rains in a park, trying to be an artist,
attempting to capture it all in quiet corners,
beyond earshot from anything daring,
sheltered in shadow instead of off in adventure,

thinking I’d found myself but it was safe, fake lies;
a pacifying of the ego, trying to paint a Pissarro
in a Paris park with colourless pencils, not suffering
for art but suffocating in the subject that surrounded me,

your multi-layered character was a daunting place to start
adding colour to this blank canvas, I was but amateur
attempting astounding, dabbling in shadow and shade;
more lifeless than lit, more stilled life than filled with life.

One million options beneath my feet waiting to be walked
and I picked the solitary seat, in the shade of a Saturday,
in a park, in Paris, a spot speckled with strokes of life
but my own form had yet to be found within the frame.

I was as lifeless as the simple scene I had sketched
but I hung you on my wall nonetheless, as a reminder
perhaps; fast movement was needed least winter winds
would wipe this foreigner as forgotten before begun.

   

Words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly. This is a month of looking back at my life with Paris in order to start moving on. I wrote this poem at 23. I was 22 when I first sat in le jardin du Luxembourg and tried to painted a canvas with colourless pencils.

FANTASTIC FLUTTERINGS

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On dull days
when the sun
absconds from sky,
when grey grinds
gloom into gutters
and mothers utter
‘stay inside’,
children’s minds
flutter to unfold
like umbrellas opening;
colours cascading
over concrete clutter
like candy to calm
a calamity.

In the midst
of the mundane
and the murky,
inspiration catches
on the canvas of creation
like wings willing
to cut through clouds
and gain the grace
of the sun.

Children’s minds,
so magnificent,
hold matter so magical
that ordinary moments
can become such
extraordinary miracles.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repot for a week of colourful imagination. 

THE CHILD INSIDE THE MAN

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Oh child, sweet child, sleeping so
beneath these big shoes and ties
knotted to a life of change and choice,
but we had to run, had to keep going,
didn’t we have grow up so quickly;
stand up, show up, give up, pay up.
Oh child, sleeping child, so sweet
beneath this bitter battle we must wade
through, the waves come not solely
on the current, not timely like the tides
but in the solitude, in the silence
we thought to be a comfort, I feel you
twist through the dreams you still dream,
that I have lost hold of, that I have let
slip from a grasp now older, less bolder.
But you, dear child, sweetly sleeping
as I make movements meant to be manly,
meaning to be mature, how I hear
your voice, amid the louder, broader,
vulgar tones beyond the preying
playgrounds of concrete corporations
and communal conformity, yours
so soft and gentle amid the riots
and the roars, yours so soothing
amid all that is smothering. I see you
too sometimes, in the mirror, briefly,
a spark of what was once a projection, now
but a reflection; wide eyed
and hearty of hope, I see you, laughing
at my troubles, calling me to come play,
to see the adventure in the danger,
to see the impermanence of these little
interruptions that come a calling.
Oh child, sweet child who painted
pictures to make the grey days
more grand, who penned poems
to let the pain find its place to perish
on the page instead of in the person.
Oh child, sleeping child of my youth,
how much I still have to learn from you.

   

All words by Damien B Donnelly. School photo aged possibly 5.

From the series A Month With Yeats

FANTASTIC FLUTTERINGS, COLOUR ON CURT CORNERS

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On dull days
when the sun
absconds from sky,
when grey grinds
gloom into gutters
and mothers utter
‘stay inside’,
children’s minds
flutter to unfold
like umbrellas opening;
colours cascading
over concrete clutter
like candy to calm
a calamity.

In the midst
of the mundane
and the murky,
inspiration catches
on the canvas of creation
like wings willing
to cut through clouds
and gain the grace
of the sun.

Children’s minds,
so magnificent,
hold matter so magical
that ordinary moments
can become such
extraordinary miracles.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly