Squirrel scuttles across the sea of grass.
Stops to my right to consider someone else’s acorn.
Mouth twitches to mimic tail before I’m noticed.
Embarrassed by my presence he adopts a still stance
as if that might make him invisible.
Don’t worry, I whisper, I can relate.
Once I found lips too sweet to miss and kissed them.
There in the open. Knowing they were not mine.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
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.
Moonlight
melts
languidly
on liquid lakes
like suds on dishes
like snow on windows
like thicker skin over age-old scars.
Moonlight
floats
momentarily
on rippling reflections
like the tingle after kisses
like the scent after sex
like the pain after parting.
Moonlight
flirts on the water
to divine
whether the depth
is worth the dive.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
Repost for a week of Moons and Stars
Connie was caught by colour in the corner
of the castle where curtains collected
carnations. Connie was captured courting
curious on the canvas of a castle in a kingdom
condemned. Connie was caught by the kiss
of a courter in the courtyard where calla lilies
were cut. Connie missed the caution in the cut
of the calla while her courter crept away
with her coin. Connie’s forever captive on that canvas
in colour in that corner too curt with the kiss
of that courter now a cancer on her complexion
that no carnation covered curtain could ever conceal.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of colourful imagination. Photo taken at Musee Bourdelle, Paris
In absence
lips lean out
in longing,
clouds gathering,
a chill in the air,
the warmth slipping.
Memory is a playful thing,
you tease and turn
over and back to before.
We kissed,
I feel it intensely,
I see it clearly
in the mirror
still marked
from a night now over.
Cold showers
call out
from the falling rain,
seasons come and go.
Moments linger longer.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This is a repost for a week of looking at clouds
Beauty is breathtaking
where breath is less
and beauty is all.
Beauty is breathtaking
before it’s been taken from you,
then we are no longer bound to blind
and breath is less and less and less.
We breathe in beauty
in excess
as if it were endless,
as if we were never bound to be less and less and less.
We are chalk
marked for a rainstorm.
We breathe beauty with every breath,
with every kiss caught from lip’s press,
we press beauty into flesh,
flesh fresh on beauty that is fleeting.
Kiss him back,
Kiss her again
before it’s gone.
‘Kiss me,’ she whispers with eyes eager
and he kisses her eyes
and her lips grow eager
to feel the beauty that is breathless,
that draws in each breath, less and less and less.
We are not bound to be endless,
we are chalk
marked for the rain storming in the distance.
And so we press more and more and more
falling into the fragile fold
that holds beauty as it is falling,
for we are falling
into life,
into lust,
into love,
into loss,
into all that will fade
when the rainstorm has fallen,
for we all are fragile.
Capture beauty
before the breath grows less and less and…
All words and collage by Damien B Donnelly
This is a re post from my series based on the albums of Joni Mitchell
Sun sets and then rises and in between
we kiss, catch the kisses that come
upon the current, catch the kiss,
the continent is not always ours
to conquer. Tides come and tides
retreat, touch is temporary, flesh
is polished pink below the sensuous sky
but falls from fold like sands in the
glass that hoards the hours, like clouds
that can never be caged. Sun sets
and we blaze our orange blossoms
into passing nights, the night’s gale
calls of connections in the passing,
passion is precious until it too passes.
Sun rises and then falls, catch light;
catch the fire before it drowns
on the water, catch the colours to paint
the coming of the grey, to keep afloat
until the next kiss. Catch colour,
catch kisses before the sun sets,
let worry waste upon the wave,
tomorrow’s light will be blue enough.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
20th poem for National Poetry Writing Month
A curious crimson
caressed his cheek
as we crossed
the carriage,
no winding words,
no exchange of the
extraordinary,
only that crimson kiss of curiosity
that blushed upon cheek
and burnt into my hunger
long hostage to painfully pale
and drained out drought,
before pressing passengers
pushed me forward
and him
too far behind…
and soon to fall
out of mind.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
9th poem for National Poetry Month
–
This haunting,
this dance we are blushing,
this steam of soft smoke
to melt the broken from the heart,
this ferocious fever before the fall.
–
We are prisoners to this poison,
devouring desire before
its kissed with decay.
–
A ghost we cannot let go.
–
All words by Damien B. Donnelly with the aid of the magnetic poetry Oracle
–
Along the river bed,
long running with water
already washed through our hands,
–
long is not the hold we have to harbour,
–
long running with this water
no longer light at its level,
no longer smooth along its sands,
–
along this bend of river
I cast into the current, like a kiss
no longer catchable,
this weight no longer workable,
now on route to dissolvable.
–
From breath to bubble,
bobbing
bubbles,
from breath to bubble and then trouble,
then off they blow,
splashing as they sparkle
and splutter on to spent.
I cast you into this current,
where shamrock slips to sapphire,
to let the past depart,
not sad of heart, not hard,
just a shadow of blue
in a bend of the bank
at the edge of expire.
–
To slip from soul like a skin
now shredded from recognition,
a cast off of character no longer cast
in this current condition.
We knit until we are knotted,
we weave patterns;
loops locked under chains,
some stitches saved and others slipped,
connected to a comfort
until they struggle under strains,
–
a fragile filigree
we cannot always wear,
hands can only hold
what wants to be held,
we are not fortunate
for the future to foresee,
we can not always follow,
sometimes even sheep
must make their own route
before they are wound as wool
or substance to swallow,
–
even the river bed must turn, in time,
twist at others, we are no straight line
but a collection of corrections
cast on and cast off,
kick off
pay off
drop off.
–
We are more than characters
or thinly drawn caricatures,
I am more than this flesh you see,
you see; I can fester or I can be free.
–
I shed this skin of a former self,
here by the edge of this river running,
running onwards, searching for its shore,
searching for something more,
for its share of the truth,
I shed this skin to let the other
parts of me find their sea.
–
I cast into the river bed
this weight so the rest
can float and form and be.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
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