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HEARTH

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The old walls have been walled in
by warmer ones
but their youth has nothing on the cracks
and secrets the originals would disclose
if you could still sit around that old fire
and watch the smoke rise up to the high ceilings
since brought down to a more manageable level
and yet I have seen that hidden height-
looking down from the upper attic-
and I know there are whispers trapped
in those forgotten few feet
just like the heat that must still linger
behind the fake wall and down below the soot
now gathered over the old hearth
where you all once gathered to hear the tales
of how life was tilled and turned and that shrill excitement
when someone first turned on a light,
indoors, in a wide-walled room with high ceilings
that kept the heat away from the feet,
a little room where once there was only darkness
just like the light that was turned on, out there,
in that Space where this world spins
while we know nothing of the whispers
that were once words,
echoing out from other planets that too evolved.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BEFORE THE STILLNESS

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I sit, in stilled space,
trusting time and these proses
to act as forgivers
to all I cannot forget. I sit here,
in this stilled space,
taking trips that tease time with twists
and turns. I move not
in straight lines but articulate thought
through the acts
these tracks have taken, the un-regrettable
mistakes that brought me here
where I sit, in stillness,
in a space, not always my place,
a space grown damp since first stone
was first set
into place by hands I never knew, hands
ground down now
to nothing more than bone,
just like my bones
that will one day come to know the dampness
of all that has surrendered
its forgiveness to all that was not forgotten,
when the final lines
have been laid and I forgive time itself
for the finality of its stillness.

I sit and come to trust.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

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.

HEMEROSCOPIUM

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I
build
sentences
in the mind
that had no
existence before,
a platform to ponder
in a place that doesn’t
exist, in truth, until it’s been told.
I move through this hemeroscopium
like an architect building a house
into a home, unearthing light
to contrast the shadow
my thoughts have
been confined in,
a helix that
spirals out
from within,
that will return
and move on, return
and move on, up towards
that light turning transparent,
sentence into substantial structure,
considerations becoming concrete
clarities that form walls, fold out
into roofs that consider creation
compulsory, stories rising from
basements, tales spinning
off, casting reflections
upon the windows
of this place,
this mind
that watches
the sun rise and set,
time twist and turn, again
and again, the circles, always
the spiralling circles, even in a straight
sentence, even in a slotted surface.
I build spaces to house beds and
beams and bright lights to lie
before this tower of truth
and watch the visions rise
and fall, like the sun, like
the laughter, like life,
like tales, like
sentences
that never stop
while always changing,
an ancient arch now foundation
to modern moment, a true temple
of contemplation in this space holding
space, light and space, shadow and
space, sentence and space, space
between the sofa, space
between the
syntax.

 

All words and drawing by Damien B. Donnelly

Hemeroscopium is the place where the sun sets. An allusion to a place that exists only in our mind, in our senses, that is ever-changing and mutable, but is nonetheless real.

This is a repost for a week considering Creation

THE SUM OF WHO WE ARE

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

And we are all a sum of circles spinning,
spiralling, circling something, orbiting our own atmosphere,
seduced by our own stratosphere, (oh, how we smell)
chasing our own tails; can circles have tails or is it just dogs?

Although Plato portrayed us as circles split apart; restlessly
looking for the rest of ourselves, worrying the best half
is the other half that was snipped away.

So are we circles or just the unfinished sum of a circle?
Are we accounting or just counting our own charisma?
Fragmented fractures trying to add positives with only negatives,
semi-circles circling the greater circle of life, some all-seeing,
some all-knowing, some too wrapped in the self to see the shadow
and oh, how the shadows can settle over the oh-so-indulgent.

And she calls and she cries and she sees nothing and no one
as needy as she caresses her own concerns and she combs
long shining strands of sustained soliloquies over the silence, shivering.

And he sleeps and he cries and he needs all and everyone to see
how suffering stifles his strength to see beyond the self, and he breathes
his burdens over brothers he believes are blind to his behaviour.

Oh the poor ones, oh the pity; pretty girl, pity boy, how they want you
to see them as a star, bold and bright, to see how hard it is to be them,
to stay so bold and…

make way for the music; see the swines strumming the sinew as the crows
cut through callous cords and the vultures make violent overtures
on the violins and cut to crashing crescendo!

If only fortune could free them from the self-satisfying shackles
they slip over themselves. Shackles too shiny to ever enslave.

And she calls and he cries and they see themselves as singularly central
to the circle and not just a number in a sum of an incomplete equation.  

  

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost of a poem from my Joni Mitchell Series for this week’s stars and moon theme

FROM AFAR

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

In Space
is the silence so sacred
that stillness is a solace
to the spinning?

Are star lights
like dainty daisies that illuminate the night?

Is the earth
but a beacon of beauty
when viewed from afar,
so far that you cannot hear
Man and his kind
screaming?

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of Stars and Moon

 

 

BALLOON

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Balloon,
the balloon,
see the balloon…

see thoughts float
through space,
meander through the mind,
wild thoughts, drifting thoughts,
black thoughts, orange thoughts,
thoughts arriving unannounced,
uninvited, unaware of the current climate,
thoughts that rise like balloons
on silent streets
on sleepy Sundays
in the suburbs
to shock and surprise

(though if no one ever sees it
was it ever really there?)

Thoughts float
through time,
suggestions, signs
from unconscious minds,
disruptive thoughts, distracting thoughts
(I held his hand in a taxi while thinking of another)
Time ticks through thoughts
as we scurry through strange streets
grasping the wrong hands
throughout this diversion,
this constant drawing in of air,
drawing in on inspiration
wherever necessary
wherever noticed

(see the balloon!)

Thoughts float
like balloons,
like bodies,
never knowing
if it’s a considered curve
or just a current we’re caught in

(if it cannot be captured
can it ever be caressed?)

Thoughts float
like balloons
though the air

(oxidising, fuelling, thinking)

Thoughts float
fragile and free

some never to be caught,
some never to be caressed.

Thoughts float
and then fade,

balloons blow
and then burst.

Capture me, it, them, all, everything

before I/we/it all fade

before I/we/it all burst.

Balloon,
the balloon,
see the balloon.

See,
see the being,
see the beginning,
see the beginning of something bright

even on silent streets
in the sleepy suburbs
on Sundays

where simple things can shine…

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a repost

 

BEAUTY IN SPACES

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There is a beauty within this space,
a creation considered
to compliment the concrete,
you can leave if you like
by the stairs or you can rest
for a while on the seat.

There is a soul within these veins,
a creation connected
to more than just the carcass,
you can leave if you like
by letting go or you can stay
for a time in the hold.

There are footprints upon this floor,
tracks that tingle
where others have thread,
weather will wither them
and winds will wear them
but they remain submerged, ingrained.

There are memories within this soul,
impressions that have permeated
and beats that have broken,
they are indivisible from flesh,
they are inseparable from spirit,

they are beauty within the space
of each and every person.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This is a re post of one of my older poems

ABSENCE

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

absence

I wake up
to the stillness,
to the stillness of the silence,
to the stillness of the silence beneath the shadows, 
to the stillness of the silence beneath the shadows in your absence,
still so present within all this emptiness

and then I realise
how much more room there is to breath.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

Photograph taken in the Amsterdamse Bois, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.