Love

Candy Floss

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I am falling
All around you,
Not sure
Who is more senior
Or sensible.
I thought you needed
To be cradled
In arms
But found it to be
I who was held-
Your fingers running through my hair,
Your breath against my neck,
Your body wrapped around me
And somehow
I am comforted
In this touch-
Too unsure of what it is,
Too young to hold on to.

Yet how could it ever be different;
You are only now learning
What I have known so long,
You are only just tasting
What I have already named.
You are the bountiful
Blossoming
Of youth in all its
Glorious ignorance-
You are all that I once
Put to rest
And yet,
It surprises me, aches me,
At how frequently
I try to shout you more aware,
But I listened not then
Just as you should not now!

I am falling
Foolishly
All around you,
Texting tirelessly
While thoughtlessly
Disregarding the time that divides us
And ignoring how difficult it will be
In time
To separate us.
Perhaps you are
My delightful distraction
In this time of transformation;
My folly
Of frivolous foolishness
Amid
All that is so seemingly
Balanced and structured.
The chaos to calm
My compulsion
To control it all.

You are the whimsical
Carefree laughter,
The kiss of sunshine in the morning-
Deliciously silly and sweet,
The candy floss at the fairground-
Spun purely of sugar and air,
Too tempting not to taste,
Too insubstantial to last for long.

candyfloss

Haunted Heart

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

What particular particle

Of the self

Left itself behind

In your absence?

What form of matter

Is this

That moves

When all else in the night

Sleeps soundly?

Because here I am,

Stirred so,

My body jerked alert,

My eyes wide open

And my senses

Shouting to me

That you’ve just left the room.

And yet,

I know deep within

The deception

That resides in this thinking,

I know this feeling

Lacking in fact,

I know this belief

To be hallow of truth.

It is not

And cannot be,

In any reasonable way,

Your scent I can smell

Still sitting in this now chilly air.

It is not,

And likewise should not be,

The soft shuffle of your shoes

I can hear crossing the hall.

Tell me now,

In all seriousness-

With my conscious mind in control,

How I could believe it to be

The touch of your hand

That brushed me from slumber

Or the gentle kiss of your lips

On my neck, so soft,

That teased me out of a dream?

Why is it that now,

So much more than before,

You are the resonance of every

Waking thought,

As if all else

Were but secondary servings

Of something less substantial.

I am failing

In these nocturnal

Awakenings

To understand

How your absence

Speaks more about you

Than your presence,

All memories

Now more concrete fact

Than what was formerly a reality.

How does this present

Present you

More to me now

Than in the past?

I held your hands,

In those final moments,

Before you found your freedom

As the darkness

Released you finally

While everything else lost itself-

For what seemed like forever-

To silence

And a darkness of another sort

Fell upon my life

In your passing

And floundered to find its exit

Within me,

For so long after.

You see,

My dilemma,

My dearly departed-

I thought you gone,

I thought us done,

I thought our forever, over.

And yet,

Here I am-

Sitting up alone

Where once we lay together-

Blind to the sight of you

But convinced

Deep down,

In the depths of my soul,

That you feel me,

Hear me

And see me.

I know, with every ache of this solitary existence,

That you have left this earth for good,

But I cannot explain,

In any humanly perceivable way,

How much I feel you haunting my heart.

photo-33

A Thousand Sweet Dreams

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

I will love you for a thousand years and a thousand years more
if only you’d ask and I would, you know, lock that love away
so it can’t be touched, tarnished or tampered with. I will hide it
so deep within my heart that every beat will be stronger for it.
I will love you for a thousand years though a thousand others
may come and go, to distract me, delight me, even deceive me
but you will remain, as always, the single force that lies within,
that assures me in the darkness you have been a guiding light,
that reminds me in happiness you made me smile. I will love you
for a thousand years as if we’d spent a thousand nights together,
as if I’d been kissed by your lips a million times, as if I’d dreamt
in your arms a hundred dreams, as if we’d always laid together
and I’d woken up to your gaze every morning since time began.
I’ll love you like this, I promise, for a thousand years and more
and will ignore what we really are, what we have always been
and will forever be. I will love you, truly, for a thousand years.
I will love you for a thousand years, behind shadows, in private,
you’ll be my sweetest secret, the hand never held, or lips kissed,
or arms ever wrapped in. I will love you for a thousand years
in that dream always dreamt, forever a dream, never to waken,
never to end. We were not meant for the harsh light of reality.
We were but briefly met, barely known and yet never forgotten.
We have become the stuff that dreams are made of, candy floss
and unicorns, fairytales and forever afters. We could never be
day-to-day, common place, product of routine, we’re the dream
of the dreamers, without beginning or end. We are the sweet
existence of slumber, you and I, sweet is the dream we share.

photo-27

All words and graphics by Damien B. Donnelly

From Myth to Man in 37 Years

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

When I was a boy I dreamt of you daily,

When I was 20 I thought I knew you,

As I fall toward 40 I’m not sure we’ve ever met,

But I’ve loved you, you know, since childhood;

Since I saw what it meant to hold someone’s hand

And understood what that touch could bring.

I’ve spoken to you, daily, not sure if you ever heard,

But I’ve told you, over and over,

The plans I’ve made for us in my head,

All alone, though sometimes I spoke to you silently

As I lay in the wrong arms, in the wrong bed,

Having fallen upon a path that wasn’t mine.

I’ve married you, again and again,

In fairy tales and formal attire,

In far off castles and on sun kissed shores.

I’ve made love to you, moved in with you,

Moved the world for you and yet,

Although we’ve never met, you’ve changed a lot

Over time, with each day, along each year,

Through the ages that I’ve dreamt you in.

You are no more the God I once dreamt you to be

With chiseled jaw and perfect pose.

No, you are now to me, at last,

more man than myth; more meaningful than mystical,

More substance than surface.

I too am now man, having grown older and wiser

And learned to distinguish all that is necessary

From all that is but noise.

When I was a boy I dreamt of you daily,

One bounteous bodily being of beauty,

But now, all is different, I have seen the world

Beyond dreams, and have felt life pulsing through my waking hands.

Now, with eyes open, I see part of you in many and none of you in some

but I’m thinking that I’ll never find all of you in one.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Italian Thoughts

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

You washed over me today-

Darkest hair, hazel of eyes

And that lower luscious lip-

As I retraced those steps

From a lifetime ago

And found myself

Lost again-

Like all those years ago-

When I’d first fallen

Upon this Sea of a City,

Back when your heart

Had begun to feel

More like mine

Than mine itself.

I’d walked that narrow walled city

That day

As gallant green waters

Glistened along side me

And I listened out for the ghosts

Of past parties

In Taffeta skirts-

Giggling

And with masked faces-

Smiling

Before I stopped,

And by this very bridge,

I called you

And told you

I’d fallen

And thought nothing of those rushing waters

Beneath me-

Their movement,

Their depth,

Their current-

How far they can take you

From the shore.

I thought us to be as inseparable

As Gondola from Gondolier

And yet we sank

As surely as the City will itself

One day,

Some day

When time itself has forgotten all about

The lovers who laughed

And loved

And kissed

And promised-

Just like us

Before the waves washed us over

And around

And in between,

Before our hands let go

And you slipped away to dance through other lands,

In other hands,

That Time and Space that time has almost forgotten

And yet,

Do you know-

There are times

When my lower lip trembles

With the memory

Of your kiss

And the weight

Of your heart

When I wore it?

—

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

Thank you, Nana

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

We carried you,

Like a child, that day

As Spring shone around us

And the flowers took bloom

And I wondered if April

Had ever seen so soft a day?

We carried you,

Like a child, that day

And traced each and every journey

We’d made with you along the way,

On busses and trains and airplanes

To foreign towns and holy lands-

Your presence more beloved than the coins you always gave.

We carried you,

Like a child, that day

And remembered

Every knee you had bandaged,

Every tear you had dried

And every belly you had filled

With your apple pies and custard bakes

Fresh brown breads and coffee cakes.

We carried you,

Like a child, that day

As red roses fell

As fluidly as the waters over Niagara

While a breeze brushed our cheeks with a kiss.

We carried you,

Like a child, that day

Your body as weightless

As it was lifeless

While we covered you over with the red petaled ground-

But now we carry you in our hearts forever more.

Mistake me not;

This is no goodbye,

This is just a simple way of saying thank you.

photo-7

A SCENT OF THE PAST

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

I caught your scent
on the breeze today
as a stranger passed me
on a foreign street,
in a foreign land
and I fell,
a decade in the passing,
till there you were;
beside me, behind me,
inside me,
piercing my memory
with Parisian pleasures,
show-tunes and sunflowers
on this foreign street,
in this foreign land
that had never known
the wealth
or weight
of our love.
I caught your scent
on the breeze today
and was reminded
of all I won’t let go.

 

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly