NUMBNESS

31/03/201626/03/2016 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

There is a silence
all around

a stillness in the storm

a second before the shot

I am struck by the numbness
the momentary nothingness
that invades this moment of motionless

that slips itself like a spectre
into the cold night air

between the sleep and the sheets

between the suffering and the acceptance

and I am upright
alert, awake

attuned to the sound of nothing

it is a subtle shift

as if a warning is awakening
as if something’s been stolen
a thread, a thought,
a part of my person

now forgotten

I am struck by the numbness

a shot in the dark of all this nothingness

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

CREATION IS FALLING

27/03/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

There are shadows falling
shifting suspicions into shapes
there are shadows falling
features fading into fears

There are shadows falling

There are dreams waking
as babies sleep under blankets
there are dreams waking
as stars diminish in darkening skies

There are dreams disappearing
within an impossible reality

There are shadows in dreams
there is no light in the darkness
there are shadows in dreams
there is no comfort in revenge

There are dreams
falling all around us
there is hope dying
in bombs and bullets and blood
there is a darkness
draining the daylight

There is no longer light
There is no longer comfort

There is only chaos
and creation is crying
and society is dying

Surely this is not the truth
Surely this is not the dream
Surely this is not life

my life
your life
the cost of life
the loss of life

There is a fear
wrapped around us
cloaking us
choking us
it flows through us
like a venom, vicious
making us victims
to our own vices
making us suspicious
of neighbouring races

It is drowning us
poisoning all possibility

There are shadows falling
dealing out devisions
shifting suspicions into shapes
and turning innocent into ashes

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

THE WATERS OF TED AND KARLA

10/03/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

Every summer for 5 years they made their way to the banks of the water. Even as a child he noticed the stillness under the breath of morning that bayed across the river as if the day and the pair of them had not yet been discovered. And it was true, in part, of them at least. Their youth, their innocence, their view on life was mysterious, like the mist above the water, imagining where it came from, what lay beyond it and where it would one day take them.

Somewhere in the last years, someone built the wooden deck, measured the timber, cut it, laid it, hammered every nail between the lines years had carved into what had once been a tree, attached the metal ladder that slipped down into the waters beneath but clung always to the wood as if too nervous to dive right in. But it was too late.

When he was 9, a year before the deck and the chopped wood and the metal rail that cast strange reflections into the sleeping waters, the stillness of one summer morning had been awakened by a silence more shattering than a scream, as if the world had stopped beating, as if the water had stopped moving, as if life itself had stopped. And it had.

Like every other day in august, they had met on the stoop of her front porch, he in his stripped trunks and brown leather sandals, she wore a blue bathing suit and tiny white pumps like ballerinas on stage. She had to be back early, her mother was making pancakes for breakfast. She promised to keep him one for the following day. She always promised and always came through, except when she promised they’d be friends forever.

They ran, as always, from the stoop, down the lane, past the trees and bushes and the bins and the beaten down cars, past the boats raised up out of the water to dry out.

Karla was 10. She had green eyes and liked sherbet dips and read the Beano instead of Mandy. She had freckles on her arms but not on her face. She had brown hair and her mother said she already looked like Ali MacGraw.

Ted was no Steve McQueen. He had dimples on his cheeks and black curly hair. At 9, his moustache was already the talk of the school which meant they finally stopped joking about his belly. Karla never mentioned his belly, like I said, she promised to bring him pancakes.

When they reached the river bank, they usually jumped in holding hands, breaking the surface, breaking the stillness, waking the silence. But that day Ted was still eating a bagel he’d pulled from the pantry on the way out the door so Karla ran and jumped and hit the water and it splashed and she went under and it settled and the stillness returned as he stood there watching and eating, and the silence mounted as he stood there waiting, and the fog stole the air as she failed to surface and he looked into the water, so still and silent, and he saw his reflection in the water looking back up at him and nothing beneath it but nothing and nothing.

She was gone and all that she was became the light that lit that day and all that she had been washed away in the water and all she had seen rose up to the surface and became a reflection that looked at the sky as it looked down from above but only the heavens saw her reflection in the water, only the heavens looked down as she faded, dissolved beneath the milky mists of morning.

Only the heavens and the boy named Ted with a bagel in his hand and tears in his eyes who once loved a girl who looked like Ali MacGraw.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

WILD FLOWERS

28/02/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

We were flowers in a garden,
we were wild flowers,
we were weeds for the wasps
to suckle on,
to suck us off
to suck us dry.
We were unclear
out of focus,
a wash of colour
in the distance,
already extinct
never distinct,
ever changing
ever wilting
ever wanting
something more
something more lasting
someone more substantial.
We were flowers in a garden
beauty being stung
too soon
too shallow
too light
never quite right.
We were wild flowers
dying before we’d been plucked.

All Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THEIR SPOT ON THE HILL, 100 WORD STORY

18/02/201616/03/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

The light was losing itself to shadow.
Only a suggestion remained of what had once been.
The seas and the seasons had taken the rest.

He struggled up the hill.
He stood again, after all the years, on their spot,
on the whips of life tenting up through the dead grasses as the ruins watched him.

She’d been 19 when he asked her to marry him there.
She’d worn her mother’s perfume and a smile.

He’d only been 17 but he’d found all he’d ever needed.

Goodbye, he cried into the shadow of the day as he released her ashes.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph of Dunure Castle along the South Ayrshire coastline in Scotland.

THE THINGS THAT LEAVE US COLD, PART 4

11/02/2016 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

If you missed Part 1/2/3, please click on the links below:

https://deuxiemepeau.wordpress.com/2016/02/08/the-things-that-leave-us-cold-part-1/

https://deuxiemepeau.wordpress.com/2016/02/09/the-things-that-leave-us-cold-part-2/

https://deuxiemepeau.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/the-things-that-leave-us-cold-part-3/

The Things That Leave Us Cold

Part 4 of 4(Audio version available to listen to; link at the end of page)

We’d been living together, the monsieur and the boy, for almost 3 months in our apartment when he first witnessed the illusion he’d created for himself of me being this mysterious, aloof, guarded kind of guy disappear beneath a laundrette and a lot of money. The phrase laundering money was never mentioned so literally before and I saw the shock of who I really was hit him, like the balloon falling back down to earth, like the mask had dropped and the man beneath stood revealed in his humble state. Somehow he’d formed this misconception that being a writer meant that I had this air of introverted, introspective, subdued magnificence, that my clumsiness was a charm indicative of my mind being elsewhere, dreaming up characters, scenarios, novels in the planning, when in truth I was just hiding out, settling into shadows, comfortable behind the door instead of walking through one and facing people and their complicated realities. Jesus, you know me, I was happiest sitting in my armchair, in my boxers with a book, although you quickly changed the boxers for fitted briefs, house pants and that ridiculous antique artist’s over-shirt which you thought bestowed me with a certain creative look while I thought it to be the perfect cover for a cadaver in a coffin. And yet I still wear it and the boy always laughs at me when I do as if I’m about to make a study of him for a portrait and I get suddenly defensive, can you believe it? I’m finally defending your choice, your taste, your shirt that I only grew to love grew when you were gone, as if that could somehow bring us closer together. He thinks I bought it for myself. Of course he does, because I told him I did. It was easier telling him that than telling him I wear it because you gave it to me and whenever I wear it I feel like a part of you is wrapped around me. I don’t sleep in it. He likes huggable sleeping positions and I don’t want him to touch you through the shirt. I know, I can hear myself saying it, admitting it to you, of course, not to him, never to him. We are monsieur and boy, sharing a little light on the edge of a life. One of us thinks this is real life while the other is just waiting it out. It’s not all the time, but I still see shadows and wonder, now and then, if they will become you, in time, in hope.

Anyway, back to the boy losing faith in my mystery. The washing machine broke. Saturday afternoon and you know how I like my routine, fresh bread from the bakery on the corner, newspaper, clean the house, do the laundry and head out while it spins to avoid the vibrations. So I went to the laundrette instead, Madame China was setting out her goods on front of her shop and laughed at me which was her way of saying hello. She’s still utterly incapable of speaking french so she just smiles and laughs, well, more like giggles but it still makes me uncomfortable. What do you say to a giggle?
Laundry loaded and left, I headed back to the apartment where the boy was waiting for a promised shopping spree for his birthday. I never have cash on me, these days no one does, its pin this, pin that but for some reason I’d taken out 500 euros the day before thinking it would be easier and fun to shop with cash. I was halfway into the bedroom when I realised, in the rush to grab the dirty clothes for the laundrette, I’d also grabbed my jeans. The jeans I’d worn the day before. The jeans I’d been wearing when I took out the money. The jeans which held my wallet. The jeans which were probably in the last stages of a rinse cycle, in the washing machine, in the laundrette, next to the laughing China woman. And in one single moment, everything changed.
He saw me that day, the real me, a mess of a man on top of a machine, looking more like I was trying to mount it than rid it of money, my money, now laundered money. He saw me and just laughed. I thought he would have panicked, turned and run but he just laughed. He laughed while I cried. The back at the apartment, our old home, his new one, he held me while I sobbed and then he listened while I spoke, broke down, broke it all out, told him everything. Can you believe it? I swear, if the machine hadn’t laundered all my money that day, that ordinary Saturday, I would have stayed, for the rest of my life in the shadows, waiting and wondering. Waiting for you, wondering if you’d ever come back.

But you never could, never would. It’s not possible. So, finally, I find myself here, standing on front of you. Finally back at the last place I left you. We were beautiful, sometimes a mess, sometimes a disaster, it’s true, but we were beautiful all the same. He knows me now. I let him in, can you believe it? I let him into the world I’d kept prisoner in the shadows and strangely, he, the boy, this creature has found a way to let the light in.
I’ll still think of you, I’ll still wear that shirt, sit in your chair, I gave him mine. But I might not think of you all the time.
Well, that’s it, that’s me. I hope you like the roses I brought you. They are white, they are in memory of the light that you once brought to me in a dimly lit bar. I gotta go now, Alex is waiting for me. It feels good to say that. To say that someone is waiting for me now. Alex, that’s his name. He now has a name.

“Au revoir,” he said as he turned and slowly made his way down the sweeping hill and out of the cemetery, feeling a weight lifted off him. Weight, wait, the waiting was over. Death would come for him one day too, just as it came for the others, even those we love and can’t let go of, but for the moment, death would be the one who had to wait because there was still more life to live.

All Words and Photographs of Paris by Damien B. Donnelly

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/the-things-that-leave-us-2

SWALLOWED BY THE STILLNESS

28/01/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Swallowed by the stillness,
all life now a reflection
of what was once movement,
of all that once beat against the current.

He walked along the wood,
slipped along the steps
and swam into the stillness
that settled on the silence
Of the morning not yet woken

and the trees beside the river
reached down into the water
as he slipped beneath reflections
letting go of all connections

out into the water
down below the surface

and all that he once was
became the light that broke the day
and all that he had feared
in the water washed away
and all he had seen
rose back up to the surface,
now a reflection on a surface
that looked into the sky
while the sky looked down from high
Into his reflection
in the water

and it watched as he dissolved
beneath the milky mists of morning
but in the wood he left his footprints,
on the steps he left his hold
and the water took his worries
and in its bed his feet found root
and in his flesh the fish found taste
as he let go of the morning,
as he let go of the waste.

Swallowed by the stillness,
all life now a reflection
of what was once movement,
of all that once was a beat against the current.

All words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

I am following in the footsteps of the wonderful https://jacquelinenashpoetry.wordpress.com and adding audio as an extra with Soundcloud…

THIS IS HOW IT ENDS!

22/01/201616/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

He wrote you a love song,
A sonnet full of substance
but it quivered
on a quaver,
percussion
piercing it,
smacking it
suddenly,
separating it
from any sense of
synchronicity,
drums
drowning it
in dissension,
ruining
all reminder
of resonance,
burying it brutally
in the blues,
bare and broken.

He wrote you a love song,
an oscillation of collaboration
that could’ve been,
it should’ve been
a summation
of supple notes
and fervent fingers
but it was
a fabrication,
a falsehood,
a flat note,
a rhythm raiding
the reason
and an opus
attesting to obliteration
without ovation.

He wrote you a love song
This is how it ends!

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

TO GIVE BUT NOT LET GO

19/01/201625/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

Give
give him
she gave him
she gave him life
but she couldn’t keep him.
Give
give him
she gave him
she gave him a name
but she couldn’t call him.
Give
give him
she gave him
she gave him something better
she gave him something brighter.
Give
give him
she gave him
she gave him that forever
she gave him that forever after.
Give
give him
give him up
she gave him life
and he gave her thanks.
Hold
hold him
she held him
she held him once
before they took him.
Him
her son
he; her boy
he; who was her baby
he; who was her sacrifice.
Give
give him
she gave him
she gave him up
but she never let him go.

All Words and sketches by Damien B. Donnelly

La réunion de la fin et le début/The meeting of the end and the beginning

31/12/201525/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

C’est la fin
mais c’est aussi un nouveau départ
il fait froid dehors
mais le soleil brille encore
nous avons perdu les choses
mais nous continuons
nous apprenons
et avec le temps
nous allons gagner,
c’est la fin
mais aussi
il y a encore
de belles choses à faire…

It is the end
but it is also a new start
it is cold outside
but the sun still shines
we have lost things
but we keep going
we learn
and with time
we will gain,
it is the end
but also
there are still
more beautiful things to do…