Life

A SONG ABOUT THE SPIRALS

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

The circles spiral.
Goodbye is not a definitive swan song.
Time cannot be buried in a single spot.

Early evening
and the sun no longer sets in this kitchen
that watches the seasons turn without comment.
The sills have new shadows we have not yet named.

This morning broke over fallen feathers
and for a second I caught the silence your song once filled
You lay where the grass had barely grown green,
below a tree where we’d placed a bird box
in a garden where a bunny used to come to play at night.

When the sun
shone the brightest
I took your dignity and covered it with a gentle blanket of earth
and placed the bud of a rose by the breast of your stilled chest
in the hope that circles do spiral,
that a root can find a home on a wing that once found flight.

Sometimes faith needs to be released before it can be returned.

Later, after naming those shadows before the sun set
and another spiral closed and then commenced afresh,
I watered that spot in the freshly turned earth
as another bird found its place to perch
on that bird box where you once sang your song.

  

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

BEFORE THE STILLNESS

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I sit, in stilled space,
trusting time and these proses
to act as forgivers
to all I cannot forget. I sit here,
in this stilled space,
taking trips that tease time with twists
and turns. I move not
in straight lines but articulate thought
through the acts
these tracks have taken, the un-regrettable
mistakes that brought me here
where I sit, in stillness,
in a space, not always my place,
a space grown damp since first stone
was first set
into place by hands I never knew, hands
ground down now
to nothing more than bone,
just like my bones
that will one day come to know the dampness
of all that has surrendered
its forgiveness to all that was not forgotten,
when the final lines
have been laid and I forgive time itself
for the finality of its stillness.

I sit and come to trust.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BOOK OF MEMORIES

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

I lift a book and watch as dust particles catch air

(dust; tiny particles of waste matter lying on surfaces)

sentences stir, structure returns to life after slumber,
some things come back- having long been forgotten

(memory; the mental ability to retain and to recall
previous experiences)

I turn pages with consideration, parts pressed back
through time, corners folded over where you wanted
to hold onto a moment for longer, retaining words
that came easy but were lost too soon.

My fingers trace the line of narrow spine still holding
onto crinkled paper like crisped skin that once held us
in firm holds to spite time.

If time was held in paper, I’d take it, like the pages
in this book and fold back the parts too piercing
for the memory and duplicate days where we held
minutes as monumental, recalling them later, after,
when dust settles and weeds overgrow the delusion
that we should have been more.

(Delusion; a fixed false belief, resistant to reason)

I lift the book and watch as dust catches air-
particles of spirits that still matter, recalled from pages
that once held them captive before their chapter came
to its conclusion.

(Conclusion; the end or finish of an event or text).

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

HUMBLE AT THE HEART

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Humble at the heart of this landscape,
this dreamscape I’m training through,
I’m taken by its blossoming breast;
forests firing like volcanos that have shun their rest,
luscious leaves of lava sweep through cities
for man has no control over the mountain
just as nature has no defence against the molten flame
as fiery as the kimchi I’m trying to comprehend.

This one’s a little more digestible, you tell me
but I know you’re teasing as you toss with your own truth.

Beyond our feasting over meals
bigger than bellies but smaller than budgets,
skyscrapers shoot up over mammoth mountains,
a competition that man has no time to master
while in homes, humble, calmness is harboured
to the shore instead of clutter to sink beneath.

Humble resides in the heart of this Republic
once ravaged, often raped, now a melting pot of mystery;
many foreign feet of soldiers stamping
have dug their shadow into all that still somehow shines.

Museums have wings for Japan and China
and those Mongols who molested these mountains
still standing, still growing, still calling us to come
and climb and see the world from another side.

We come to the call of the mountains,
all sweaty chested and dosed in awe,
my heart is held at this height,
it trembles beneath this fragile flesh
and I hold on tighter to each grip of grandeur
and wonder how long my footprints will be cemented in this soil.

From here, high above the crow’s nest,
where Buddha rests with all that remains,
where fortresses have been forged and since forgotten,
these cities sweep away from who they were
and show themselves as who they are becoming.

We are not who we were
but what we have made
out of what has been,
in dusted days,
done to us. 

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This week’s theme was South Korea which I travelled through last year when everything was being questioned; my relationship, my former partner’s dysphoria, our own identity, my strength, literally and emotionally, my breath, the first introduction to a panic attack on top of a volcano at 5am while waiting for a sunrise that was not as exceptional as the attack which I thought at the time was a heart attack (yes, I can occasionally be dramatic; you should have seen me in the hospital entrance area when they were trying to tell me it might be very expensive to come in and be treated as a foreigner while I was telling them it might be worse if I died in the middle of their corridor) . All in all, the country, its peace and people and proximity to me at the time, left it a beautiful mark. It was the toughest time and the most precious. Buddhas, blossom, beauty and an understand of breath.

A SLIP AWAY FROM BLUE

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

Eyes a slip of grey from blue in a city not known as home,
on a mountainside to shelter a temple,
she is as welcome as the wind is warm,
she was there before us and we were caught before we knew it.

She carves life, carefully, like the Buddha etched into stone,
the chisel is the compliment to the rock and not the ruin,
an outer expression of inner contentment,
a monastic monk on a meditative mountain and I fall
between the stillness that rests behind each word.

Did her mouth smile
or just her eyes that shade of grey a brush away from blue
as she takes us to her temporary temple of wood and wonder
and shares with us a simple feast on a sweltering day
a treat along the trail, a rest upon the journey,
a moment to bear witness; not to be greater than the Buddha,
not to rise higher but to reflect on what we can become.

We climb over rock and broken earth,
diverge through dead ends that still deliver more light than loss,
we thirst and tire and then take in another treat; another temple, another tree,
a smile from the locals who look and laugh
and wonder why we came and what we will take back.

We travel on and place our tired feet into holds others once held to
as we witness wonders so many others may never see.
We have sat and shared joy like food, laughter like it was love
and coffee like it was an elixir to let us in on the light that lingers over life
and the eyes of the gentle light from Lithuania,
a slip of grey from a sea of blue
seeing the simple synchronicity in all that is true.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This week’s theme is South Korea and recalling the travels though it and the faces found along the way.

DIAMONDS IN THE SKY

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

We are all stars,
we twist and turn and twinkle,
we are the bright, burning light,
we blaze like the stars;
twinkle, twinkle,
we burn, we are burning
like the stars; burnt out
tick tock, 
hurtling across the sky,
hurting beneath the sky
where we cry.
We are all stars,
fast paced, fast moving,
we are scuttling, scooting, shooting stars,
shooting each other,
bullets and diamonds,
the diamonds in the sky,
the diamond of my eye,
the reflection, the defection,
the glare, the stare,
the star,
twinkle, tick, twinkle, tock.
We are all stars,
we are here now;
tick, but long gone
tomorrow; tock,
light years lost
in seconds.
We are blazing, brilliant,
bright on borrowed time.
We are nothing, nanoseconds.
We are empty.
We have burnt it all, already.
We are burning out now
before we’ve begun
but our souls
they shine eternal.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

A Repost for a week of Moon and Stars

Photographs taken this weekend during the Journee du Patrimoine (European Days of Heritage) at the Richelieu Library, more photographs coming on Wordless Wednesday

 

CLOUD’S ILLUSIONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Gardens grow,
trees get taller,
clouds gather.

I see you
in the movement,
in the air that rushes past time turning,
in the scent of sweetened summer
now swept into corners now shaded.

Clouds gather,
trees get taller,
gardens grow smaller.

Eden is an illusion lost.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost for a week looking at clouds