loss

TO LEARN TO TRUST WITHOUT TURNING

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Time swims out on a tide I wish I could
capture forever on a canvas of comfort,
I drop my shirt and turn, like Orpheus,
and lose hold, sands slide over skin
and seaweed slivers snakelike
along this shore once so unsure;
rough rocks recall all the lava once
eliminated. I stand in all the stillness
that once roared, even as the tides
tempt my feet to come out further
into that bay of blue forever. The sea
is breath taking and days later
all breath seems lost and I wonder
what the wave took with it
and where is my Eurydice now?

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A poetic week recalling the currents of South Korea, 2018

COLOUR DANCES LIKE A FLAME OVER CONCRETE

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Colours catch fire over concrete, catch life, catch the laughter
that will not linger for as long as this concrete. Measure moments
not in length but in weight, weight, don’t wait to catch life;
it is cold to be concrete and watch the flames flicker out,
to be caressed but never considered consumable.

We tried to catch the fire that burnt through our time, tried to clamber up
and over the volcanoes tearing terrifying tracks into all that grounded us.
But there were cracks in our concrete, sparks of colour, yes, but specks
of weight too, too much weight, too little breath. Fire steals oxygen,
colour cannot cover over all the chaos, makeup is something we use
to cover a bruise, colours catch fire even when never considered consumable.

Catch the colours before the fire captures all in concrete.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This weeks ideas come from last year’s travels through South Korea.

I took this photo at the Changdeokgung Palace in Seoul.

 

WHEN THE EMPRESS IS REMOVED FROM THE EMPIRE

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There is art on walls, winding walls,
in rooms on show with light, luscious light,
and climate controls while she’s side-lined
to the shadows to weep for the darkness
that devours her skin, stuck like tar
and trapped in stone, once tempered
by an artist’s touch now off and absent,
now long grown cold, not being of stone
but breaking bone, while she weeps
beneath polished position on partitioned
pedestal and waits in the shadow of his name
long forgotten from rooms alight with art
on walls, the art of other men,
maybe more remembered

like lands, once considered, now grown
careless in their unions next to nations
who have not nurtured the need to be
noticed for notions long ago set in stone.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of considering all sides of creation

GONE, THE GARDEN

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Gone is the garden, we are paved now

in parts no longer potential to growth,
to goodness. And the crow caws
in the corner, flesh festering into feather.

Gone is the garden, we have paved paths

over all that was precious while thinking
thoughtless, if only we’d thought less
about what we wanted and more
about what was needed. And the crow
cowers in the corner, questioning
what has become of its celebrity.

Gone is the garden and we can never
go back; the lock now lost in lyrics
too light, in the songs surrendered
from all that was soul to just sold out.

Gone is the garden, gone to graze

over another galaxy not yet grown
greedy, we are now alien to all
the earth has asked for, strangers
to the simple sand that sweeps the shore,
and stranger still to the starlight
that shines through its last breath burning.

We are the crows, cawing over concrete,
in corners, claws cracking in our chaos

and confused as to where went the worth.

   

All words and drawings my Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost (from my Joni Mitchell series) for a week of considering creation 

CLOUD’S ILLUSIONS

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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 

COTTON CANDY

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Clouds come,
cover, congregate,
create contours
out of what was once
just colourless cotton candy
to catch us unaware
as we swim through
each other’s current,
currently without caution
and I wonder if we are
no more than clouds;
coming together,
creating colours
in between the shadows
before we fall too heavy,
too saturated, too needy
and comes the rain

pouring from the corners
of our eyes.

Clouds come, clouds go.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of looking at clouds

HOW MANY LETTERS DOES IT TAKE TO SPELL OUT ENOUGH?

/ deuxiemepeau / 13 Comments

 

And as they bit into the apple
they lost their right to the garden.

Hands are tipped now with guns,
now, instead of gold, instead
of gloves. Rage is the new ricochet
where once it was rock and roll;
bullets are the new Beatles.

Facebook has alerts, now, to say
you’re alive, now, after, after the breath
is stopped, after the blood is splattered.
It used to connect, now it just confirms.

Listen closely, for the loud sparks
are coming closer, closing in, sparks
like forest fires or that ripening fruit;
rage and temptation, heat and hunger.

We are the breath or the blood. We cannot
be both. Though we cannot exist without the other.

Leaders are born liars now, learning
earlier, leaning into lecherous, rights
are now redundant as the right rears
its rage over the left, ridiculous
are the rabble rousers, raising nothing
but their own cocks in their own hands,
tweeting about their own thickness.
Twitter was once 140, now it’s 280.
How much more space
do they need to spread their shit?

On Jeju, by a volcano, now sleeping,
now silent, some asked us, before
I lost breath and we lost the identity
of our Us, if barriers could be broken,
if divisions could be undone and I looked
back to the green covered mountain
and wondered how long it would take
before it became a monster once more?

Only then, only when the earth decides
to flatten all that we have taken,
only then, will the barriers be broken.

And as they bit into the apple they lost
their right to be governors of the garden.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Photograph taken on Jeju Island, at sunset, South Korea, July 2018. Before.

NORTH OF THE NOISE

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And so I come north
where the air cuts colder,
where daylight is a breath
that barely bays, night
a blanket bound to days.
I am not here to stay but
on a sway through ticking
time, to see what rests
where the light is less,
where day finds end before
being truly bent, where life
harks to harder as the day
hangs darker, dreams now are
the comings and goings,
the stuffing out of hours
before a bitter blanket of
blinkered blindness. Sad hearts
grow sadder, they say, grow
seasonal into sombre, into
the shadow of a city standing
still, waiting for the will. Days
fall short, are gone before
they can be caught, like hours,
like time, like the hand in that taxi
I once held, like all we cannot
hold, like all that ticks onwards,
all that moves off with the light
while I come here to the land
which time has left behind it.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

From the poetry series A Month With Yeats

SUNKEN SHIPS AT SEA

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And down fell the sun
and drowned within the sea
and rough raged the wreckage
as the sailors tried to flee.

And down fell the sun
as a storm claimed the skies
and water stole the rafters
and silence crushed the cries.

And down fell the sun
as the sirens swam to shore
and laid down the bodies
of the lives that were no more.

And down fell the sun
and a sorrow filled the air
as the sirens sang their song
combing cords through golden hair.

And down fell the sun
as their tears flowed like waves
and they kissed the fallen sailors
on the sand, now their graves.

And down fell the sun
as the sirens said goodbye
to the men mortal men who loved them;
the sea’s sad sirens who cannot die.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a poem from the A Month with Yeats Series

THROUGH THE SANDS

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And when they danced
she would hold him, her
perfume by his face, his
hands as her strength
as they waltzed through
their current as the tides
swept the shore, through
love and labour, to the first born,
still born, through the twins
who stopped the tears
and the girls who tied
the bows as the sands slipped
through time and the pace
became a quick step, through
the hands that held and those
hips that swayed through
the melody they were making
as they danced through
waves of washing houses
into homes, children into
strangers; rarely calling
and barely remembering
but on they danced as red
locks swept into silver strands,
as full head turned to bald head
on an older head as they turned
to the music now made
in the memory, till she left him,
finally, one morning in May,
as he rose to the sunlight but
she had lost to the moonlight
and so he built her an alter
of sea shells and sentiments
and now he turns, alone, across
the sands still slipping,
as the stars plot a path for him
to reach her in eternity.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

From the poetry series A Month with Yeats