NOISE

THIS HISSING IN THE SUMMER

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

Summer
as the city
slips into slumber,
after last night’s thunder,
as skin slides from winter’s
shawls and shackles and pitches
itself proudly in parks where not even
dogs bark, where shadows have sunk
into sweaty
soil as feverish
fingers smooth skin
with soothing oil. Summer
in the city and temperatures
are oozing over bodies, all tease
and no breeze to appease. Summer
in the city and the music mellows as fellows
fold frowns
into bottom drawers
with winter wishes and curate
concerns toward sunset kisses. Summer
in the city and she unfurls her curls like foliage
finding form over greedy grass, and he goes green
with envy and furrows his frenzy as the fountain flows
with full force, unabashedly, and he grows as greedy as the grass
while her
curves caress
his consciousness
and he wilts in watchful
wantonness while I wait for kisses
caught on Spanish lips that creep along
the current of sweeping storms and sensual
shifts, we are ships crossing under starlight, snakes
slivering over sheets, I am not his, he is not mine, he is not
hers and still not mine, we cast concern into the ripples that sink in ocean
beds
too deep
to remember and
too cold for concern,
ripples that are arousing now
beneath these fountains now flowing,
in the park, in the sunlight, in the summer,
in the city. Summer in the city and babies are sleeping
in buggies buried under bushes while nannies’ doze and daddies
delight in their sweet blooming rose. Summer shines on the city and
streets slip
from worries
and rushes to brushes
with light and lazy, humming
hazy harmonies like he once strummed
upon my strings a serenade sweet enough
to sweep us to older days, other days, days of revolution
and voices that shone as bright as this burning sun, and on
to simpler days of lemonade and laughter. Remember laughter,
back before the pitter patter of drought and disaster? We are just people
passing
through parks,
looking for stars
in between the sunlight,
looking for fleeting kisses,
treats that are never free, saints
and snakes all hissing across lawns
in summer. Summer in the city but somewhere
out there, beyond the sleeping stars and the deep blue sky,
someone is probably crying and another, senselessly, about to die.

   

All words and paintings by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a re post from a series of mine inspired by the artistry of Joni Mitchell

 

CATS AND DRAGONS AND BROLLIES

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

And so lives sound,
a chorus of sound, a glorious cacophony, a clatter,
a sound of ladies looking, laughing, touting, shouting
a shuffle of feet, tiny feet, tiny ladies, on a tiny street, on the ladies street
with brollies, bright brollies, tartan brollies, cheap brollies, silly brollies,
bending brollies, brollies broken by the sound of the rain falling down,
of the ladies laughing, of the buyers buying, of the colours clashing,
brollies battered by the weather, polyester being pelted, pounded,
brollies held by ladies, as they barter, as they battle for the better buy,
the ladies at the ladies market, in Hong Kong, on a Sunday
and I’m jet lagged and bargained out
and that bitch saw me coming
and is laughing at me going,
holding all my money
in her hands, not mine!
And so lives sound,
raindrops on tartans
and high pitched voices,
squeezing, screeching
and giggling, always giggling
and golden cats nodding,
nodding at golden dreams
as tiny feet plod in puddles,
ladies feet in little puddles
that are free, the only things
that are free on Sundays
in the rain, at the market,
the ladies market and I bought too much Kitty,
too much kitsch, too much crap but it’s market day
and I’m jet lagged and the little ladies are scary
and my head is weary, big feet in little puddles,
foreign puddles, in China, in far away China, big trouble in little China
although it’s not so little but filled with big chips and cracks
and nodding cats grinning in glaring gold,
do you need shades? They have shades
on a tiny street with towering blocks chipped and cracked
and looming overhead, in the clouds, drowning in the dragon’s breath
but there are lights and movement,
a chorus of lights, a cacophony of movement
and the lights are bright and the buildings broken
but the movement is magical.
A dragon starts dancing in the distance
with men underneath, a polyester dragon,
a pink polyester dragon with many legs
moving, marching, mens legs on the ladies street,
on the ladies market, winding through the ladies faces
and shouting and bartering and rubbish,
in my bags there is rubbish, seriously overly priced rubbish
but I’m smiling at the faces of the ladies and the dragons and the legs
and dodging the brollies, the bobbing bright brollies, all racing with the dragons,
on Sunday, at the market, and the dragon is marching onwards, ever onwards
and the cats are forever nodding or bowing or laughing on the dark side of the day,
on this ladies day, on this Sunday, at this market, while the foreign rain is falling.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken at the Ladies Market in Hong Kong.

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/cats-and-dragons-and-brollies

CRABBY

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

4am and

Sleep is stolen

By the screeches

Of the brown booted

Bleached haired brigade

Hovering and whoring

Around the belches

Of beer-can-boys

Who’ll take them

And fill them

With the full force

Of all the nothingness

Their noise once covered

While I plead and pray

For the sweet return

Of soulful sleep

To sooth me

Before light dawns

And makeup smudged

Madams pull mini over muff

Along the shameful slide home

To clamber through closets

Uncovering the creams

And kill the crabs.

Hope it keeps them awake all day!

Footnote: I usually try to aim for Poetic and Polite but at 4am, everyone has their limits, but I guess I should give a big thank you to the customers of the bar across the street who prefer to stay outside and put it all on display, both visually and verbally, who inspired this poetic wander down into the gutter.

Nothing of Noise

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

I awoke last night-

Still drowsy from dreaming-

To be enveloped instantly

By a surreal silence

As the darkness

Carried the weight of your absence

To the depths

Of its sulking shadows.

I sat there,

Alone and shaking-

Upright in the bed-

Blanketed

In an all too restrictive covering

Of icy cold, concrete-like blackness-

Unable to breath,

Too fearful to move-

For so long had I been with you

That without you

Was so much more

Than my being could possibly

Comprehend.

It was palpable

Your loss-

And I was un-comforted

By this dead air

That lingered

In the wake of your exodus.

The constant company

Of your companionship

Had been so normal,

So ordinary,

Such a daily acceptance

Of my waking life,

That to be deprived

Of all imaginable sound

Felt, last night,

In that newly prisoned room,

Like flesh ripped from bone,

Sight removed from eye,

Sense depleted from skin-

How powerfully your presence

Had domination over me

And how foolish I was

In my failure to notice.

I awoke last night

Distracted by a dis-ease

That slithered itself around me

Like a soiled serpent

As I fought my way

Through random reasons

Why you’d decided to dis-passionately desert me.

Fled fast- had you

After what you’d decided was our last act?

Had enough,

Had your fill,

Composed your composition upon me

And now

No more was I someone to muse over,

No more to play upon,

Practice upon,

Empress your tune upon.

Silence.

Was this more commonplace

Than I dared

Imagine

Or understand?

Had there been others before,

Others left behind,

Before me,

By you,

Left alone and abandoned

In the vicious vacuum

Of emptiness

That your departure creates?

I awoke last night-

But you being so far removed would have never known-

And all I could muster

Were tiny inaudible breaths

As my skin prickled over

In goose flesh

To amplify the remaining senses

While the hair rose high on the back of my neck.

For a moment,

I thought I detected your return

And darted from bed to window

To welcome you joyously-

Honestly and hole-heartedly

Yet it was all but hope

Highlighted by memory

Without a single footing in reality.

But I stood there,

In silence-

Standing still,-

Watching,

Wishing,

Waiting,

Willing you, silently

To show your head,

Sound the alarm,

An alarm, any alarm.

Re-claim your position at the top of the senses.

Re-claim me as your valued courter, customer, lover,

And above all-

Listener.

Leave me not like this;

Cast astray to only taste, touch and see.

Blast me once more into the wailing world,

Scream me into subservient submission.

Build for me an orchestra at the foot of my bed

To fill my sleepless days and wakeful nights

With stirring strings and operatic arias;

Cascading compilations of chaotic cacophonies.

Leave me not like this-

Not now

After so long-

After such a union was made-

Since eyes were first opened

And ears

First heard.

Name me not silently defeated,

Challenged,

Muted.

Blast me

Once more

With the full force

Of your symphonic soundings

And see how my ears shall tremble upon the tone.

Abandon me not to this stilted silence

Where nothing pains my ears more than this nothingness.

I awoke last night,

Still drowsy from dreaming-

Dreaming of you-

The only place where you still roar me to life.

I awoke last night

To what I have now truly learned is silence

And screamed in my head

For a nanosecond

Of noise.

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