loss

A WHITE WING RISING

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A starlit day,
on a distant shore,
as if summer had sent it
swarming like a snowflake;
silken wings to summon the sunset,
a white moth to raise a sweet soul
departing.
And there,
as a star was added,
the bright moon was kissed
in berry blush as the sun settled
beneath the lake where the lost trout
turned through tresses of silver dancing
and he smiled at his love, since lost,
now glimmering
in eternity.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is from the series A Month with Yeats

 

TURBULENT SACRIFICE

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Mama was an unmarried mother
at the end of the summer of 75
as Joni hissed of the snakes
in the gardens of complacency
where ignorance was still very much alive.

Mama was only a girl in the growing
and possibly no more than just 18
when she bent down and placed
a kiss on my cheek and whispered
goodbye to her own little green.

Mama is someone who I’ve never met
aside from the dream I once had
of her life in a kingdom that ruled
you could not mother a child unless
at first you were a legitimate wife.

Mama was an unmarried girl one winter
in the arms of a man barely stretched
from a boy, her trust in the throws
that left little to believe in and a pain
that pulled on the strings of goodbye.

Mama was once an unmarried mother
and bursting with thoughts her shape
couldn’t hide, but helpless and hopeless
were not part of her form and so she did
what she could when you can’t be the bride.

Mama was a childless woman
when winter that year came cold with its calling,

and the tears started breaking
and the leaves began falling

like the water that had broken,
like the hold that had not held,
like the hope that was drowned,
and the hand that was expelled…

too short, too quick, too hard,
too much to let go for good

and the snakes started hissing on the lawns.

Mamma was the unmarried mother
who gave me the greatest gift
that anyone could, of growing up
knowing that what she had done
was to give me up for a greater good.

     

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost form my Joni Mitchell series.

Last month I added my name to the National Adoption Contact Preference Register in Ireland. Maybe the story still has a tale to be told, time will tell…

Sometimes knowing where you came from gives you an idea of where to go. This coming December, after 23 years living abroad, I will move to Ireland to start a whole new adventure in my home country that now feels like an exciting new land waiting to be discovered. I am looking back, at the moment, but seeing in that vision, only where the future will take me. Thanks to you all for listening on along the way,

Love Dami xx

BITTER BRIDGES

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Clouds cross the skies and trains cross countries
while we cross each other only at jagged junctions
and obstinate intersections, cluttered with catastrophes
or below bitter bridges that bridge no boundaries,
basked only in blackness, always shadow, never light,
always almost, never right here, right now, right moment,
while clouds still cross skies and trains still trail onwards,
while distance is never denied to those on the right track.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re-post

THE LIGHT IS TOO LIGHT

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Light leaks like water
dripping from the faucet.

You called me baby
before you really knew me
and stopped calling at all,
afterwards
drip…
drip…
nothing.

Light lingers in quite corners
like memories that refuse to flicker,
not acknowledging that the night
has fallen.

We pour over each other
like liquid on a perched desert,
sucking sustenance from substance,
leaching life from any length,
dryer…
dryer…
death.

I dived deep down to the bottom
and found only a drought
drowning on the ocean floor.

Were you the desert or the drought?

Was I the ocean or merely drowning?

Bubble…
bubble…
nothing.

Light lifts the illusions
we sleep upon beneath the darkness,
when everything is possible
and no one ever parts.

I am not one part us,
I am not one part you,
I am not one or the other,
I am the I that was your baby.

Remember?

I was light, you said in the midst
of so much weight but you remained
light on love, regardless.

Light leaks like dripping water
from a faucet
drip…
drip…

onto the broken plates and half eaten hopes
that cannot be either washed or erased.

Light is too light to lift the stains
from the remains of what began
with the words

I want to drown in your eyes.

Light frequently floods
the flaccid lies we feed ourselves
just so we can get from day to night.

    

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a re-post

A FISH CAUGHT ON THE CURVE OF THE MOON

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Love
is a red
Russian rose
on the run,
a bouquet
to brush the blues
from their burdens.

Hope
is his hand
on her head
in the night,
taking flight
as that blue bird darkens.

But
her moon
was in Pisces
and she was said
to be expunged
by her sensitive soul

but
in his hands
he still held her,
his red
Russian rose
and so
he painted a song
to perpetuate her soul.

Her moon
was in Pisces
and his heart
in the bloom of her hand.

All words by Damien B Donnelly. Painting, Le Paysage Bleu, by Marc Chagall

GPO for Poetry Day Ireland

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It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This year’s theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

General Post Office

1
Beneath the pillars
of your past,
I posted letters
between your walls
and wondered
if they rubbed up against
the souls of your saviours,
if they met with memories
that were made and measured,
bruised and battered
between your bricks and mortar
before being buried in blood.

2
How many letters of love
lined in lust and longing
have perfumed your pillars,
working their way
through your worthy walls
and haunted halls
in search of hungry hearts
to hold them, to open them,
to hear them.

   

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

TOPPLING HIS TOWER for Poetry Day Ireland

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This years theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

Toppling his Tower

What can I lay by the feet of such beauty?
What can I offer my love on this land?
A garden of roses, omitting the thorns
with this golden ring I hold in my hand.

But a garden of roses, omitting the thorns
is barely enough to garland your grace,
so I’ll pave you a path in the finest fabric,
a velvet so sweet to mirror your face.

So I’ll pave you a path in the finest fabric,
a cloth of brocade to comfort your cares,
a daylight distraction to hold your attention
from rebels and riots that are not our affairs.

A daylight distraction to hold your attention
to paintings and poems that hang by our side
in a tower I’ll build you to keep out the cries
of a world lost to power and drunk on its pride.

In a tower I’ll build you to keep out the cries
and a lark then from the meadow I’ll borrow
so she’ll sing of the stars and the moon that is ours
as we’ll lay in arms and let love sooth the sorrow.

But restless was her soul on the call from outside,
her beauty diminished by the sounds of their cries
and one day he lost her where his paved path divided
and he cut down her roses with tears in his eyes.

I gave her the finest, the fairest and fancy,
I gave her the beating heart of this man,
but she was bound to the call of the lost and the lonely
which now I have become and therein I see her plan.

   

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

GOLDEN HAZE

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Slow comes the morning,
eyes still dazzled by the delicate stars
now off trailing dust across the universe
as if plotting tracks to tempt us
further than the stubborn stance
of our single spotlights
and I wonder how far you got
as I sit here, in the silence
of this slowly waking morning light
casting shadows on the single form
in this too big room with no door
large enough to climb through.
We considered setting sails
on cotton clouds once, long ago,
in a corner of this concrete jungle,
a single streetlamp casting courage
onto our concerns of cutting free
like a jazz break from the base,
of burning our own trails of glorious starlight
across the deafening daylight.
I am breath that still can bleed now,
here now, far from that corner we once
we painted dreams on, trying to force
the foot to slow the speed of this time burning
while you; already taken to the dust,
now a speckled starlight
cutting your own groove
into an orbit I cannot observe
while tossing remembrances
down from the night sky
that fall and flitter
above the dizzying distraction
of this golden haze of mourning light,
still coming on slow.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

17th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

TATTERED BROWN TROUSERS

/ deuxiemepeau / 13 Comments

 

Father ate all the flowers
in the back garden
because he couldn’t swallow
the promise of happiness
that bloomed within the home
he couldn’t find his root within.
Father left all the flowers
in the front garden,
too proud for others to see
him pulling from the soil
everything he needed help with
but had never been taught the words.
Father liked to laugh, first,
when others lost,
so no one could hear his own loss
tearing at him, like weeds twisting
behind the restraints he wore
like his inside out jumpers
and tattered brown trousers
he thought no one could see through.
Father ate all the flowers
in the shadows
of the back garden
and choked on a laugh
that no one understood.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

13th poem for National Poetry Writing Month

ORIGAMI

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

I found you once
like a raindrop on a window
that can only caress the extremities,
not the truth,
not the folds we fabricate
between our own fact and fiction.

I found you once and was folded
for a time

like origami…

fingers running lines along skin,
folded into form unknown,
pressed into position
with little resistance,
pleats to bridge the gaps
between the unfamiliar
and more favourable.

I was paper

being played with
for a while, like the rain
running down the window;
falling, forming, falling into fragility,
reforming, falling, leaving lines already fading,
folding into another, other…

for a time,
for a time to pass the time
between the fact and the fiction,

between the transparency
of the glass
and an inability to hold the rain.

All words and photographs and mini shirt and tie origami by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud