loss

PERMISSIBLE TO ASK?

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

I take the boat out on the water,
rowing out to come into the stillness
in this place where space is still displaced.
Chez moi, c’est quoi, c’est où ?
Il est permis de demander ?

Merci, I say, still, when I should just
stay still, like this water where I row out,
stretching limb, exhausted, after the search
that brought me back, to pacify.
Pacifier- je peux le toucher, presque…

but these movements, however measured,
deprive peace from pacify, remove the stillness
from all this space I am, still,
struggling to reach. Mais.

Priver, je ne veux pas, non, non plus.
Je ne regarderai pas mon nombril, pas comme avant.

Moi- I shed who I was, am, along with time
but not breath- I lost breath, once- tu te souviens,
tu étais là, non ? Oui ! Tu ne te souviens pas.

Regarde ce bateau-
hope is a delicate placement of desire upon wish,
of wood upon water.

Je suis le bois, ou non ? C’était toi avant,
Mais tu as été viré. Viré. Fired. Sacked. Sack.

Meanings can give way to so many misunderstandings,
like translations- so much gets lost in the turning,
in the movement, going out and coming in,
with each row

further out. On the water.

Sometimes thought is not what is needed but stillness
within a world that cannot stop.
Arrête. Stop

but that word is too final.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

IN THE PLACE OF WHAT ONCE STOOD

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Robin rummages in the rushes,
upon rock she roots out traces
of all that once was, tuts at all
that has changed and all that hasn’t.

Robin rummages in the rushes,
bright spark- but fast to flight.
She comes to call and comprehend
but never comes when she is called.

A fluttering of fine feathers
on front of old familiar fields
where the tracks have been pulled,
where all prints have been ploughed

but there are marks, still- fine folds
where the grass leans in, just so,
in suggestion of what once stood
in its way, of what once stood

in the field, beyond the rushes,
just a recall beyond the rock
where robin comes to rummage.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

ALWAYS THE LEAF

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

I remember you, growing older,
how your skin adapted- as if it had grown in the garden
on the branch of the rhododendron.

Shiny it was, with lines that time had tempered into it,
ever so carefully, like you tempered peace into our panic,
stillness into our hast, serenity into our cacophony.

The leaf, always that single leaf of our lives, never wanting
to be the blush of the flower, just the leaf- always under, in support.

New leaves, like weathered skin, sprout slowly from aging bark,
a soft beauty between the bramble and briar,
between being the wife, the mother and the grandmother.

Today, I tended the garden- mum’s garden now,
your garden once when we were but shoots and you- the whole tree,

and I remembered you

and the slow shuffle of slippered feet and those grand cardigans
that wrapped their comfort across the curve of your back,
that bowed like a branch to reach us all the better.

I recalled your skin that had grown a line for each of us,
a connection to catch hold of, to come back to, those kids we once were
with spotless skins life had yet to mark, always eager to explore

while knowing how to find our way back
and the one who would be waiting on her stool, by the widow,
in the kitchen, in the sunlight, pealing and baking, baking and pealing
to the tune of the radio and the whirl of the twin tub

waiting for one of us to find our way home.

I remember you, as you grew older, today and every other day.

 

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Today is my Grandmother’s 12th anniversary. She now grows in the garden of the hearts of her family.  

dublin3

THE THINGS WE LEARN, AFTERWARDS

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

In a fat box by the skinny bed
in a dusty room rarely regarded
covered clumsy with crushes
are the contents of a childhood-
lost letters of love- all penned
but never posted & cut-outs
of pin-ups next to wrist bands
friends twisted & time forgot.

In a lost room fallen to dust
hope was a cradle of comfort
in this box her father opened
when she failed to come back

from a war she never wanted.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Written as part of the Cobh Writers and Readers #PoetryPrompt featured on Twitter. Do drop by and join in the creative distraction. @CobhWR

THIS DESERT WHERE WE DROWNED THE DANCE

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This Desert where We Drowned the Dance

Guttural;
pertaining to a particular sound
at the back of the mouth, there,
in that spot not quite reachable,
still quite parched.

Water;
to sprinkle, to moisten. I do this
to quench a longing I can’t reach
though I cannot hold this liquid
just like I couldn’t retain the lips
that once kissed this neck, here
where throat was left parched.

Energetic;
processing or exhibiting energy
in abundance, like I had before
your truth got twisted, before
all your charming turned into
that drought which buried us
while you left me;
Guttural.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Written as part of the Cobh Writers and Readers #PoetryPrompt featured on Twitter. Do drop by and join in the creative distraction. @CobhWR

CATCHING THE RECALL

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They come and go,
playing tag with the tide,
swimming in to touch
but the ocean is an elastic

to recall.

We came here once,
a love of youth’s illusions,
dipping our skinnies
before I lost you on a breath

without recall.

It comes and goes;
that tide, his touch, this time,
so many currents
congregating under clouds

that can’t be caught.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

WHEN WHITE FALLS BLUE

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Snow falls and the darkness drowns in silence,
a hush from the heavens falling, so slowly,
even crystals cry. Are these the tears
of angels weeping who’ve watched us, falling,
like this slow snow, like their tears, trembling?

Snow falls and there’s a stillness and still
all this silence between us. Bruises covered
in this cold cotton candy coating of fragility,
every day more freezing, more frozen,
just not enough to numb. Snow falls
and all paths disappear, I thought our tracks
ran deeper, like this winter, like this weight,
like this waiting, behind the window, behind
this glass I can’t see through, beyond the storm
falling, slowly. Snow falls and the sorrow
slips in, cold where there used to be comfort.

What happens to my tears, who will watch them
with wonderment like I look out now at the snow,
slowly falling, and think of angels?

Wasn’t I once your angel?

Are you watching at some slow distance
as these snowflakes cover my confusion?

In time, this too shall melt and be no more than memory,
even snowflakes fall for but a season. Snow,
falling, slow. Already wishing it was spring.

Even white is blue in the falling light.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

THE THAW

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Blue is the breath,
blue is the earth, morning, early,
the sky a clean canvas of white and the earth; blue,

a bed of frozen blues born from dawn’s breath,

a blanket of freshly fallen slow snow,
trembling along the hairs of the land, caught
in the calm before the crunch, before the footprints
mould into mud all that is now a myriad of mystery.

There is beauty in blue,
there can be beauty in being broken,
in time being frozen, in the breath baying.

I twist and tremble between these sheets
still fresh upon these old shadows, still crisp
over this drying skin. I twist and tremble through this season
to be unsure, falling into blue, into time, time is frozen

along with all that is born in this bed,
a blanket of fallen findings; some things
I thought to be more, some things
I hoped to mean less,

like loss; less loss,
less time, less breath, more blue,
the mystery is already moulding into mud.

Blue is the breath and slow,
soft as the early morning snow
so slow, awaiting nothing more than
the affirmation of an approaching melt.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

 

BOOKENDS; EVOLUTION 12, SOME PEOPLE THAT WE USED TO BE

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

We sit now and sip cocktails, the waiter pulls out
your chair and hands me the menu after calling you
madame. I strain now to hear your voice; softer,
gentler, feminine finding freedom. I catch you
checking your lipstick in the mirror, pulling a curl
back into place above those blushed cheekbones
still a little swollen, a normal evening in August,
in Paris, sipping gins and rums and telling tales
before swapping tables over Korean cooking
that give us a brief taste of who we used to be.

We sit here, over cocktails; the man and the madame,
looking like a couple in the reflection of a tainted
mirror and I wonder can anyone tell, as you smooth
out your skirt, that you used to be my boyfriend.

    

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

 

This is my final full month living in Paris and it is about looking back to see who I was and giving a moment to recognise all that has evolved and some of the breath that has returned.

BOOKENDS; TO DARE TO REMEMBER

/ deuxiemepeau / 11 Comments

 

Do you remember Paris on occasions when spring sweeps in
with its breath of those lost days, in that other life, before
we knew London together or what it would be like to part?

Do you, do you remember Paris, my little room, our lithe love
and the plans we painted onto canvases of comfort at night,
in a single bed, in a corner, before I lost my way and we lost us?

Those lazy days of hazy light that fell to nights at a water castle,
the name-deceptive metro, where kisses took us on to the dawn.

Do you remember the first spring of our song, how it warmed
its way into a summer of sipping wine by the old, new bridge
before we’d slumber in the shade, in the park, below that bridge,
on the first site of the city, while the waters ran away with time.

Remember the rainstorm, that Sunday morning, birds near broken,
I find it funny how I missed any warning in their fluttering?

Do you remember catching colour amid the concrete of la Jatte,
in the shadow of Seurat, on a Sunday morning, still sleeping,
when we stopped to make connections between balance and breath.

You sang of the dots within the water and the sky, on that ordinary day,
in a summer of simple, on a stroll on a Sunday, along an isolated island,
in a city where everything ordinary was suddenly so extraordinary.

Do you remember that silly single bed in the corner; I always woke up
stuck to the wall. The sofa, the table and the sunflowers of plastic;

so not what you’d imagined at all.

Do you dare to venture to those times departed, when not a minute
suggested what time would design or all that we’d have to let go?

Remember Paris, remember you,
remember me,

remember us.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

We had met one night in Dublin, when I was still living in Paris, an Englishman putting on Les Miserables in my hometown while I was walking on the footsteps of Val Jean and the pretty ladies and the gang. We explored every inch of Paris and its musicality until I moved over to London and we learned how to get to know each other. We didn’t find forever but we will always have Paris.