stars

ORIGINS

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

We
are
not
always
daughter to the day or son to the stars.
Some
times
space
shrinks
and we find ourselves light years away
from
the planets
that hold the answers to where we came from.
We
take
giant
steps
across
uncharted
terrains,
nerves attached to transmitters connected to nothing but a need to know.
Eminent
are these
swinging
spheres we
circumnavigate
in search of the solution to the question of how we came to draw our first breath.

 

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

TWO NORTHERN MAGNETS

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We scold,

even at frightening distances,
you burn, there, at the centre of
the sun
and I roar back across the stars at you,
from this comet that cannot commit,
at how you could run
so cold.
Our landings

were nothing less than lumpy-
you wanted to shine so I caught you that sun
and I wanted to amplify time
so you considered for me
the moon
but were already consumed
by your own blaze
and I caught this cursed comet in its place.
I think of you

as I finally defy time
on the tail end of this burning star.
We lacked the gravity needed
to bring a balance to
any orde
but we each held magnets
that repelled the other to the far ends
of space.
In the distance

I see something great
that might be your light
and smile back

before I spit

across the sky
and wonder if it’s enough
to put you out.
We scold still,

even at these great distances. 

   

All words and photographs by Damien. B. Donnelly

BRIGHT LIGHTS IN GARDEN PONDS

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

Stars dance at the bottom of the back garden
where the rain waits in shallow ponds
for the earth to lick it dry.

Reflections are dependent on position-

you cannot catch the moon lying on the ground
from the front window where the sun lingered
a little longer today than the tear stained back
where stars tickle the empty earth we’d since weeded
while the moonlight’s absorbed by the shallows
never deep enough to hold the right answers
to the questions the imagination is too distracted
to decipher.

Breakable is dependent too on position and how we transition-

will the earth lick the stars from callous pond,
here, in the back garden while I sit trance-like,
in this window of the empty sky,
turning this piece of plastic over in my hands
to pacify panic, counting the intakes and holding…
one, two, three, four and then out… releasing
for a second longer like the sun that lingered earlier,
in the front, while I was out digging holes
in the earth at the back,

trying to get closer to the cure-

plunging pressured palms down into that hellish heat
to dry this pond of trapped starlight, allowing them
to rise again instead of dying out here,
on this empty earth.

There are times I want to quit this place, these concerns,
this kitchen, this garden, this land, this planet,
this moonlight and feel what it’s like to burn
through eternity and not just lay here,
waiting to be licked.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

SHINY HAPPY PERSON

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

 

I do not play chess.
I grew bored of board games at an early age, as an only child
who lived in his head where fairies were magical and not mauled.
I guess I had enough make believe on my shoulder, already.
I was ultra-shy as a kid,
I guess I didn’t understand who I was and tried not to get tied up
in conversations that consisted of ruminations of who I wanted
to become. Identity was difficult to determine on a blank canvas
that already had sections sinking below the surface.
We had a cherry blossom tree
in the front garden that rained pink petals onto the lawns
in late spring, I remember standing under them in a white suit,
new holder of the holy spirit and wondering if it would make it
any easier and what is the weight of a knot.
I would slay dragons for you.
I remember saying that over and over, I’d heard it once, in a movie
when I was too young to know how many people I’d say it too
and how few would slay even a tame dog in return.
I know who I am, now
since those quiet days under the fall of the cherry when rainy days
meant silly games and the coming of the spirit didn’t have as much
effect on my soul as it did on my wallet.
I have tasted more, too-
beauty, bounty, boys, bitches, sunsets and saints, gods and clowns,
serpents that tasted sweet and a certain kind of cute
that gave venomous a new name. I too have found the bitter side
of who I can be, they’d put me on a pedestal at a young age
and left me there, perishing alone, at that height and since then my knees
have always trembled at the sight of stairs.
I’ve climbed right down since then
and managed to make my way out of the gutter while putting together
my own idea of what it takes to embrace the darkness while shining
like a fucking star.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

BOOKENDS; JUST BECAUSE YOU WERE ONCE SEEN AS A STAR DOES NOT MEAN YOU STILL ARE ONE

/ deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

 

I will always recall you in reflection rather than reality,
a ripple on the water rather than the roughness on the rue.

I saw you in smooth sheets of stillness stretched over ponds
that should have shivered but you wouldn’t change
and I couldn’t stay who I was forever, not even for you.

You were comprised of stilled cycles so often celebrated
but I wanted to catch a ride on something not so set in stone.

Indoors, away from the stilled ponds projecting your pride
onto palaces, you hung mirrors to admire your own reflection

but I returned from the other side of desire’s distraction
to uncover the truth of who we were beyond admiration.

You cannot reflect the stars forever, especially
when the gutters have come so close to the glass.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

This month is about looking back to see who I was before moving on to who I am becoming. An end, for now, to the Paris Cycle that started when I was 22 and will end at 44, though we had 18 years of separation in between.

BOOKENDS; TO BE CAST IN SOMETHING OTHER THAN CONCRETE

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

Would he cry now for the concrete
that has taken root in reality,
this was never what inspired his impression.

I shiver sometimes when I slip to the edge of this shore
where George saw more in suggestion
and Stephen gave names to the dots.

Balance and harmony are hopes, not foundations
but you wanted me to lay down in all you had built
before you even knew my name.

We are all artists; drawing, singing, writing,
directing, searching for our spotlight on the stage

or along the shore.

You wanted us to be a monument but I knew
the concrete would crush my concern for creation.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.

Georges Seurat painted on Sundays in 1884 on Ile de la Grande Jatte, an island on the edge of Paris. Before I left Paris in 1999, my boyfriend would come over from London on weekends where we would walk along this island looking for the light and balance Georges had painted in dots onto his canvas, while humming the tunes from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George.

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

THE PRICE OF A STAR

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

And she sang of hope and harmony
in a borrowed frock on Tuesday nights
in a smoky bar below the Bowery
where the Irish downed their whiskey
while the Italians were always frisky
and they touched her, always, after;
her faithful followers fingering flesh
as if to caress the affection she injected
into lyrics light and loving, in that bar
beyond the Bowery where she came to entertain
the Irish and Italians who always joined in the refrain.
Though they left her, always, after,
on Tuesday nights neath the smoky light
with hope and harmony already fading
in that bar below the Bowery where the laughter
never managed to linger for that long after
and in the silence below the Bowery
as the stars went out one by one
she felt betrayed by what they’d taken; by the hope
they had mistaken to be theirs for the taking,
and felt betrayed by herself; by her need to amuse,
to be the muse in the limelight but then alone
in the shadows, always and ever after,
by that bar below the Bowery where the light
was far too low to notice that her soul
had left her long ago.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost of a week of moon and stars 

STARDUST

/ deuxiemepeau / 4 Comments

 

Stardust…
the fallout
from the flames,
a nebulous of what
was once known by names,
now falling, through time and space,
trailing dust, a trail of gentle dust
in place of touch, in lieu of place,
in lieu of hold and how we hold;
tighter and stronger, longer, after,
trying to hold a star, a fading star,
burning out before us
when all that’s left
is dust,

our brightest moments
now molecules of light,
blazing through the silence
of the night, but oh what a night.

Look up,
those who linger longer,
who fall and fret
before the great out-yonder,
look to the light
and not the loneliness,
the night is falling
but the light
is still unfolding.

Look up
star dust is falling
from on high,
writing names
across the sky
just for us
star dust…

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

This is a repost for a week of Stars and Moons

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