movement

BOOKENDS; EVEN IN A CITY THE CROWS CAN COME TO CLAW

/ deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

 

On a Monday, a muse filled‬ Monday,
a sky-blue clarity carries me ‬
like the water would never the river
from the sea back to the source. ‬

My footsteps are still steady,
still stepping up on the spiral,
but memory can be mischievous
and, on the turn, I twist
past that door, long since shut,
by the temple with its turret staircase
where saint Therese tittered on the timbers

and I wonder if the sunflowers
I once painted onto its lifeless walls,
before I uncovered Vincent’s darker visions,
are still visible beneath all the time
that has grown over it since I put them there

at 22?
This, I think of, here today,

at 44

while growing and ageing and twisting
and turning from the call of those crows
that try so hard to claw at creativity. ‬

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

This month is about looking back in order to move on. An Irish girl named Therese (who introduced me to the music and magic of Joni Mitchell via her Casio keyboard) and I first lived in a little apartment at 98 rue Vieille du Temple, in Paris, in 1998 where I painted sunflowers on walls that never saw any sunlight. It was my first home in Paris and we had no idea at the time that crows were anything more than something to contrast the cotton candy clouds.

HUMBLE AT THE HEART

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

Humble at the heart of this landscape,
this dreamscape I’m training through,
I’m taken by its blossoming breast;
forests firing like volcanos that have shun their rest,
luscious leaves of lava sweep through cities
for man has no control over the mountain
just as nature has no defence against the molten flame
as fiery as the kimchi I’m trying to comprehend.

This one’s a little more digestible, you tell me
but I know you’re teasing as you toss with your own truth.

Beyond our feasting over meals
bigger than bellies but smaller than budgets,
skyscrapers shoot up over mammoth mountains,
a competition that man has no time to master
while in homes, humble, calmness is harboured
to the shore instead of clutter to sink beneath.

Humble resides in the heart of this Republic
once ravaged, often raped, now a melting pot of mystery;
many foreign feet of soldiers stamping
have dug their shadow into all that still somehow shines.

Museums have wings for Japan and China
and those Mongols who molested these mountains
still standing, still growing, still calling us to come
and climb and see the world from another side.

We come to the call of the mountains,
all sweaty chested and dosed in awe,
my heart is held at this height,
it trembles beneath this fragile flesh
and I hold on tighter to each grip of grandeur
and wonder how long my footprints will be cemented in this soil.

From here, high above the crow’s nest,
where Buddha rests with all that remains,
where fortresses have been forged and since forgotten,
these cities sweep away from who they were
and show themselves as who they are becoming.

We are not who we were
but what we have made
out of what has been,
in dusted days,
done to us. 

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This week’s theme was South Korea which I travelled through last year when everything was being questioned; my relationship, my former partner’s dysphoria, our own identity, my strength, literally and emotionally, my breath, the first introduction to a panic attack on top of a volcano at 5am while waiting for a sunrise that was not as exceptional as the attack which I thought at the time was a heart attack (yes, I can occasionally be dramatic; you should have seen me in the hospital entrance area when they were trying to tell me it might be very expensive to come in and be treated as a foreigner while I was telling them it might be worse if I died in the middle of their corridor) . All in all, the country, its peace and people and proximity to me at the time, left it a beautiful mark. It was the toughest time and the most precious. Buddhas, blossom, beauty and an understand of breath.

IN THE SEOUL

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This city does not sleep,
the wind as wistful as thoughts I cannot gather,
here, on this sojourn to the south of Seoul.

Horns honk along highways
waking drivers out of daydreams the night can’t decipher
and we buckle up and giggle briefly in back seats
but I cannot distinguish those star-bound lanterns hung with hope
from the knotted sheets I know not how to untwist.

On the soft slopes,
where Buddha has been worshiped into rock,
helicopters chase the rising sun
while you chase the parts of yourself pills cannot pacify.

Dysphoria is the new mantra.

This body won’t sleep,
this mind has taken to meander along this midway
as trumpeters announce connecting trains
we are always breathless to keep up with,
where palaces accumulate space
in place of standard stains of garish gold,
here, on this eastern stretch of the journey,
here, where cars honk in foreign tongues, far from familiar.

All is not what it once seemed,
this mouth no longer makes sense
as I cut across these sweeping vistas of strange words
breathed with bows and ways so traditional they worry the West.

Here, where there is more space to breathe and my lungs ache to adapt.

In the North,
strange armies are Trumping connections
the other continents are too confused to comprehend.

But here,
south of the strangled ties and demented ducks,
sitting sweet beneath a wiser moon,
the streets are awash with twinkling stars
below a billowing blanket of nature’s blossom;
a covering of comfort which concrete can’t squash and man cannot master.

My body can’t sleep…

I’ve seen too much but still hope for more
while this city wakes up to who it truly wants to be.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly. This is a reworked poem for a week recalling last year’s breathless sojourn in South Korea. Photo taken outside the Dongaemun Design Plaza.

COLOURS IN THOUGHT

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Colours flap in the wind, colours catch
the feeling of freedom at daybreak
like thoughts taking flight in dreams
under blankets, mounding over molecules,
making matter meaningful. Dawn’s dew
delights in seeds now stirring under soil
just as stars shine significance on a mind,
on a pillow, at play. There is movement
beyond the trees and the run of the riverbed
if you can catch it. There is movement
in the dreamer beneath the blankets
and the shuttered eyes if you can wake it
to the colour, to the moment of possibility
in flight…

like colour on concrete,
like a bare bench in the waiting park,
like trees attending to shooting buds,
like a river of thought that cannot be abated.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of colourful imagination. Photo from Ile Saint Germain, Paris.

GOING EAST

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

I have crossed oceans
without feeling the weight
washed beneath their waves…

I have cut through clouds
without knowing the worries
they whisper to the stars…

I have flown
from darkening dreams
towards tomorrow’s daylight
and yet

the light is already fading
on front of me

before my past
has even slept

before my future

somewhere far behind me

has even been conceived…

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost for a week looking at clouds

BACK TO THE BANKS OF THE GRAND

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

Water catches light
Like I once reached out
To catch a wave
Along this same stretch of water,
This same cosy current of canal
That has slowed, now,
Like my footsteps,
Like my stokes;
Coming back on the bend,
Finding favour
In the freshness
Of all that was once familiar,
Letting go of the longing
To swap steady stream
For seductive sea,
Finding comfort, now,
In the light
I’ve already swam in.
Settling back now,
Sitting down,
Watching the waters
Carefully caress that light.

 

All words and photograph by Damien B Donnelly

Photo taken earlier this week along the banks of the Grand Canal, Dublin, opposite the Grafton Academy of Fashion Design where I studied and dreamed of the future over 24 years ago.

RUNNING BY THE RIVER OF THOUGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

I slipped off to the edge of the city,
this morning, where the stream found a stillness
and the air a crispness that kept confusion at a distance.

I stood beneath the bridge
that took the traffic and its tension far from me
and found the swimming swan rising higher in the stream,
the follow on from the floods that now seem so far
with these skies of blue, speaks of colour
in a park, on a Friday, in February,
where an artist once came to paint.

A park, in Paris, on an island,
by the Seine where the waters wash with colour
when you look beyond the shadows, a new rise
basking in the glory of what was once regarded
as great, by those who regarded the value of greatness.

Straight and tall, shiny structures shoot up,
like soldiers, by a stream ever in movement,
ever following the route, today’s design will be tomorrow’s sign
of an age the river has outrun.
I see trees towering tall in waters,
once rising, now falling, still strong, still weathering
the storm, still willing to be remembered, like an artist
captures beauty, captured beauty, in a park,
once, on a Sunday in a time since parted.

Nature is not in our control,
nature is willing to withstand all our wilfulness,
will not drown in these days of destruction,
will not worry, as we do, will not bend
but will let life flow around it,
in hope, in harmony.

In a park, on a Friday,
on an island, by the river,
in jogging shoes and sweatpants,
I ran through days already distanced
and tried to make connections between the road
winding onwards and the trees rising upwards, like the water,
rushing onwards like time, ever at play with its participants,
with all that it connects, with benches for the breathless
to recapture breaths and wheels
to help us follow the stream.

And in the windows,
I saw reflections of those towering trees,
never to be forgotten, blue of sky in the beauty of light,
light and harmony, colour and shade, captured in what is new,
a hint of what knows the bounty of age.

And on the river, by the park, on a Friday, in Paris,
I stopped and saw my reflection in the gentle waters
and in the waters saw colour, colour and light,
by a boat, in a park, in a city ever changing,
where an artist came to capture it all on a Sunday,
a simple Sunday, not a Friday but a Sunday, searching
for something between the shadow and light,
between all that will fade and all
the rest that cannot stay.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

 

COLOUR IS WAITING

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

 

And still we will come to lick the honey
from the purple petal and still we will come
to root out the weeds of worthlessness in gardens
where others eat up all that is beautiful. Time turns
and we, in turn, follow its path, suns set and the moon
shows us its song, hold hands and then release,
hold hope and then move on, we only own the moment.
Mothers may still hand over their hearts to other mothers
waiting to be wanted, fathers may rise to be fearless
or choke on the root of their own fear, those black-cloaked
women pouring water from windows onto withered plants,
who’ve buried their living bodies in a bitterness
for all that life has lynched from them, will continue
to cry as flames flicker out along the Seine,
like their memory, revealing structure still standing
but soul no longer settled. They will still pour
their buckets of tears down the aging walls of a city
that cannot see beyond its past. If we cannot catch colour
then we too will be cremated in the concrete. But black
is only shadow until it finds a reason to ignite in light,
bark is dry but the branch bares blossom. Eat the storms,
Mother said, remember? Boil the beds of bitter blackness
until the dream rips through the rain and translucent
turns them lighter, brighter. And still we will come
to that lake where language lingers, still we will sink
beneath its depths to slip ourselves from the reflections
we have once worn and now outgrown. Still we will sink
kisses onto our starved lips and still come back for more
after love catches hold of kisses cradled on other lips.
Catch the colour, catch the kisses, catch the life
racing by in taxis, on trains with crimson carriages
connecting moments waiting to be made magical.
The starry night can be a bright light waiting for us
to paint it. Behold how much there is to love, to let go of,
to learn from. Let us be the design and not just the destruction.
Eat the storms, she said, taste the refreshment in the bright
blue rain. Colour is waiting just beyond the clouds.

  EBA745D1-36E2-45EB-B84C-61914EAEAF30

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

30th and final poem for National Poetry Writing Month 2019

LIFE IN TECHNICOLOR

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

A caress of candy apple red
on a Hong Kong carriageway
of Persian blue busses
and yellowing white stripes,
a notably normal night
without a star in sight
where nothing really happened
except for a sweetening fold,
caught by a camera
and time passing
and that bus in blue going by,
the lives of two commuters
entwining their way through
their lanes of life in technicolor.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly