Everything is about numbers;
numbers to hold,
numbers to call,
numbers to count you back to when you last came,
to where you came from,
to the miles you’ve moved
since then, the things you lost,
the weight you gained, waiting.
Everything is about numbers;
race,
pace,
the breath you chase,
the peace once possible,
the place you never knew you were meant to be in
in relation to where you ended up,
in its place.
Everything is about numbers,
2 metres apart,
4 doors to the left
of where you thought you were going,
3 corridors in mourning grey, daisies on the floor,
1st floor,
cubicle number 5,
patient number 196629.
I was 18
the last time I was here.
I was 4 days in the 1st ward where 2 men died
on my 1st night.
They moved me
to another ward, later
when they figured out I wasn’t to be number 3.
I stayed 5 more days.
I’d been courting glandular fever-
the kissing disease, the doctor said with a giggle
and the nurse smiled, all 20 years of her wanting.
It had been 2 months
since I’d told someone I liked boys
instead of breasts.
6 months after lying in bed with the kissing fever
I was kissed for the 1st time
on the 8th of august.
I was 23 days away from 19.
Sometimes you catch the disease first,
sometimes it’s all in your head although
the comfort of kisses can’t be calculated on charts
like the outcome of an ECG
that happened at 13.46pm.
memory
There are limits to what we can hold on to
We pick things, pull things,
up from under, roots, weeds,
things we dropped, things to distract,
flowers to fill the spaces since vacated.
We pick things, pull things.
We keep things, store things,
in boxes, under beds, in sheds,
under sheets; your stool of support
where you watched us, running; out, off, gone.
We keep things, store things
things we didn’t know, then
how much we’d miss, later,
things we can’t pull up, now
no matter how deep we dig.
For my Nana Frances who died 13 years years ago on March 30th but is still very much with us, and her stool too.
THE HAIR ON THE BACK OF HIS NECK
You had long black hair, a horse’s mane
that I held as we rocked through early years
and a red furry coat I never stopped to question
while we rode across uncertain terrines that echoed
his silence and her longing to not give up anything again.
Even then, even at play, I knew their mask of a marriage ran
short of imagination. I cut your hair later, amid the tension
but before the divorce, when I would have cut any cord
at the time if it meant getting out, getting away, me
and a red rocking horse with a mutilated mane,
wishing, later, that things we cut could find
a way to grow back,
better.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
THE TABLOID TELLS OF THOUGHTS FROM TEMPLE HILL
I read in the paper this morning
that we were hugged.
That sometimes a nun cried
when fledgling flew from her fold-
a sister of scripture sobbing for a son
she would never call her own.
We were just play toys
far from the playground-
touches temporary
while waiting to be wanted.
I read in that paper this morning
that sometimes someone sang to us-
before we knew what a song was
or what sadness meant
or how tears come not only in sorrow,
new born babies already waiting
on new names in the odd arms
of a caped collection of sacred ladies
singing us songs of selection.
All words by Damien B Donnelly
FORGET ME NOT
There are sink holes in the back garden
where I stash the stems of subconscious
longing along with feathers plucked
from the stale fights over ownerships
of books and bonds. When early morning
climbs drowned dream with blinding light
there’s an impulse to uncover boulder
used to bury hole and reach in to touch
all I threw out. Sometimes shadows shift
in said garden and the conscious is alerted
in time for consideration to be abated.
At other times, the arm always feels
blighted when it comes back up, empty
and unchanged but for the tiny pleas
the squashed stems have ripped
and rooted into fooled flesh- last shoots
from forget-me-nots I’ve tried to untie.
All words and photographs y Damien B Donnelly
WHEN WE COME TO PRESS THIS TIME UPON THE PAGE
Come friends to gather at end of cycle
Spring is done and summer will have new song,
Time will tell of when it all went viral
Of distance that reigned and hold that was wrong.
Come friends to pressure pen upon the page
Thoughtless is time if man won’t leave his mark-
Sing of the stars we’ve lost upon this stage
Yonder moon’s slow to rise so night lies dark.
Come friends as we stand with light between us
Our fighters are saviours in this war’s ward,
Hold a lamp, a candle, come make a fuss
This hope’s not hungry for soldier or sword.
Come friends, let us sing, apart, united
Night is long but dawn will not be blighted.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
WHEN IT WAS THE TIME FOR GROWING OUT
We took the train, one day,
a Sunday that a photograph
suggests was set in summer,
I remember how the wind
wound whimsically round
the wilderness of our youth
as we watched waves crash
currents upon crushed cliff
as we came closer to watch
those tides slip out further,
pulling from us the laughter
we’d not learned to control
and carrying it on to places
we didn’t know to imagine,
each of us an island uncharted
yet to pin our point on a map.
Three cousins, coming closer
to the shore of those decisions
and a mother, watching us
laughing, learning, growing,
swimming and moving. Out.
All words and some of the photographs by Damien B Donnelly
AFDRUKKEN
I found you in Amsterdam, weet je nog?
Natuurlijk!
Somewhere on the Overtoom, in the summer
of my slow 30’s when home was a broad barge
on a narrow gracht. Lijnsbaansgracht it was.
Weet je nog? Natuurlijk!
I wonder how deep the things we’ve held
are carved into our core- like all those letters
you once housed that formed words, that gave way
to structured sentences that someone then pressed
and printed and someone else, sitting far away,
read and wondered
or does it all fall away, natuurlijk
when we ourselves slip from the canal that held
a barge, that housed a home where a letter press
rested against the port wall and I wondered
what it once held.
Weet je? Natuurlijk niet!
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
BLOOMING SHADES
Everything is cyclical like sunlight and seasons
and hair styles and hemlines. Everything is cyclical.
I found you at the first turn- a pencil line on a blank canvas
by an academic of fine fashion with a fringe of falling violets,
it was the back side of the Botanics, at the later side of winter,
all grey, even then, back in my untasted youth, even there,
surrounded by all that should have been blooming green
but I just saw the shadow between the black and the white,
the empty bench in between the bark, not the blossom sitting
a frame away, left side, across the bridge, more to the main path.
Roads, wood and diverges and me-
always looking for another way out.
Everything is cyclical like creation and country and going out
and then coming home again and again. Everything is cyclical.
I found you recently, again, on a green day, later, when my hair
was greyer but my soul a sway more centred towards the violet.
I stole a piece of you, this time, on film but when I looked back,
after coming home, I noticed how I’d caught you in that shade,
that former shade found in between the black and the white.
Everything is cyclical like births and blossoms and sometimes
belonging and sometimes colour when it’s blooming grey.
All words, drawing and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
SOUTH CIRCULAR ROAD, DUBLIN 1995
I slipped recently onto an old road
that had circled back onto my diverted path
to find myself at first flat, basement floor,
25 years grown between us like the weeds
in the forgotten garden where I looked to see
if the cobbles still recalled my sole
before remembering how, on winter nights
that seemed bluer than black,
in hallowed hallway, I’d sit by the payphone,
juggling coins in jars of naivety and watch the lights
from the traffic flood the darkness like a fanfare
through the curved window above the door
and dream of how it would feel to slip, finally,
from streets that simply circled.
I slipped recently onto an old road,
happy to discover that even diverted paths
know how to accept circles as something to grow
to love, like certain weeds that complement
the cobbles where I found a part of my soul, sitting.
Waiting for me to call back.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
Damien B. Donnelly 