JOURNEYS, PART 17, THE BRIGHT RED ROSE

06/09/201816/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

Rough round that rose bordered hem we ran,
regardless of where her skirts did scurry,
no fretting to the fraying of her fringes,
never noticing how nimble had turned to not-so nifty
above that border of red roses, oh so pretty…

We carried you, like a child, that day,
winter now withered as the bark
made a place for the bloom and I wondered
if April had ever held so soft a day?

Rough round that rose bordered hem
we ran, regardless…

We carried you, like a child, that day,
the old village hushed as if all had now
been said, as if all had since been seen
and I wondered if that stillness amid all
the emotion was your soul on the breeze.

Rough round that rose bordered hem
we ran, remembering…

We carried you, like a child, that day,
our toes retracing your well worn
steps, our memory meandering
through the journeys you found for us
on busses and trains on lanes
to foreign towns and holy lands.

Rough round that rose bordered hem
we ran, reverberating…

We carried you, like a child, that day
and remembered every knee you bandaged,
every tear you had dried and every belly
you filled with your apple pies and custard bakes
those fresh brown breads and coffee cakes.

Rough round that rose bordered hem
we ran, repeating…

We carried you, like a child, that day
as red roses fell from our hearts like tears
as that breeze brushed our cheeks like a kiss.

Rough round that rose bordered hem
we ran, in reverence…

We carried you, like a child, that day,
your body as weightless as it was lifeless
as we covered you in the red petaled ground.

You carried us all, in your arms,
and now we carry you in our hearts
along our journeys forever more.

By that bed, in the village
that housed you and still holds you,
hemmed in forever by a border
of bright red roses, we sighed
by those borders now broken
by all we took for granted,

and felt the touch of the torn
comes at the fall of that one bright rose.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

JOURNEYS, PART 12; THE ALMOSTS

31/08/201816/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

—

Trust time to remember the dream

where the river was a rhapsody

we attempted to outrun,

never knowing

how much the melody

would meander.

We were minor steps

trying to make our motions major,

swept up in golden grains of thoughts

that slipped through our minds

like the waves along the shore.

—

Trust time to remember

the journeys we never fully dreamt.

—

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

JOURNEYS, PART 9; ONCE, UPON A SUMMER

28/08/201827/08/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

It was summer stock
and season of blondes;
darker tones bleached
to an inch of white,
at first so fair and fragile,
translucent tracks
tethered to nothing more than
temporary teases, interval acts
pitching and playing and parting
before the important performers
took their permanent positions.

I was high on a hiccup
of happiness that had long eluded me,
basking beneath the blinding spotlight,
a swing without a line on stale streets
whose stories I envied
as you slipped in between
the numbing neon distractors
and saw the blinkers that floundered me.

I was bound and breathless
before we’d even bent our bodies
into a bed that never quite fitted
the pair of us and yet still I stayed,
as you crept along the curb of the couch
not quite sure if you wanted to catch a star
or just court a curiosity.

We were players of unequal parts,
me too light on lines
and you too too busy
following those fragile white lines
that took you away from me
while I lay there next to you, waiting
to see if you might come back.

We lost each other
on another side street
after sunset, when the light
no longer blinded me
to those darker tones you tried to dye.

It had been my season of blondes;
buffed bodies that blurred lines
but your costume caught on reality
before the curtain made its final call.

We were separate journeys
caught up in the changing of the tracks,
too temporary to be truthful,
too tempting to not to taste.

Memory has not moulded us
into anything more meaningful
than a moment that was never really meant.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

A SHIFT TO THE SEASON

16/08/201815/08/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

Another oldie as we drift to the end of another season…

—

It happens, now and then,

That slight shift in the season,

A new light, a different dusk,

A gentle breeze that brushes you

Into remembering a moment in the memory,

A time, once far removed,

Now returned, repeated, relived

And there you are, once more,

Back in those arms, looking in those eyes

Or maybe just reading that book,

Wearing that Sweater,

Crossing that bridge.

Time moves and overlaps, all at once,

I am here today, living and yet

A part still of yesterday, re-feeling it now.

I move, change, evolve

Like the weather, as the seasons.

I am summer because Spring bloomed before.

Today it is fine because yesterday I loved.

And then suddenly it shifts again,

A newer light, a darker dusk,

A twist to the breeze and another memory

Melts into the moment and on I go,

As the seasons, changing constantly,

While rarely forgetting that tomorrow,

What we did today, happened yesterday.

—

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

TRIGGERS

23/07/201821/07/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

We still taste the scent
of semi lucid laughter
edging over apples
being skinned and sweated
on extra ordinary Saturdays
of sweeping and stews,

still taste the crisp coating
of confusion beneath smiles
barely swimming over tears
there was not enough threat to trace.

We still trace, still blindfolded,
those outlines of imagination
now fading on distant walls
when dreams were seductive serpents
sucking the deafening dullness
out of roast Sundays
seasoned with unsensational rain
falling like the granulated gravy
that drowned our plates
as we looked to escape
the smell of a fear we couldn’t
pull the trigger on.

—

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

STEALING SCENTS

21/07/201821/07/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

I steal scents from strangers,
skins skirting a sense of someone else
like flowers sent to the wrong address

and thoughts lean towards intense,

fragrances on the less familiar
that feel more personal
than these perfumed impostors
pilfering my past, more a fancy to my form
than a complete composition of theirs,

I can tell a dahlia from a daisy.

I slip through these scents
on these skins of strangers
through moments on metros moving
and slide suddenly
into arms once wrapped in
and sheets once strangled by,
the prick of every rose
that can one day rot,

(one must remember to change
the water in the vase!)

all memories of muscle and muddles
that have since slipped from this lined skin,
like veins vying on leaves that have caught
themselves onto the branches of other trees.

Stale tales on the scents of new strangers.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly