tracks

KEPT IN RECESSES OR THROWN TO DUST

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

Old wheels still turn through new miles.
We are more than we look- muscle
is not only what it takes to transform.
We skirt old roads now well educated
on my departure, it’s not just the seasons
that circle back on themselves. I’ve left
parts of me in every other recess in order
to recognize the parts I portrayed, later on,
when the route returns me to worn road.
I peddle at times without predetermination,
you cannot lose the track if you haven’t
traced its outline, beforehand. The road too
is more than just a route as we roar along
its rigor despite its restriction. I was never
happier than when taking the dirt track-
scattering over-weighted thoughts
of who I was upon the disrupted dust.

Old wheels still turn through new miles.

  

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

TRACKS AND CHANGES

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

They’ve built a running track beneath the low hum
of this humdrum small town with its two pubs,
skinny batch and round tower. Men lift weights
with uncovered arms that’ve been internally attacked
by giant sized popcorn. I lift smaller weights
in the privacy of the shadows in the back garden
but have still yet to distinguish the difference
between mass and muscle. Every day they build
more roads, ring roads, roundabouts around us
as if concrete tongues were unfolding from metal
monsters driven by manmade megalomaniacs
while we take shorts walks around slowly widening
circles, digging out those older lanes that twist and turn
around rural trees instead of the line of an urban plan.
Everything keeps changing- bodies, muscles, roads,
routes, plans, personalities. Nature is the only constant-
still rooted in who she always was. I was not born
to be so confident. Even my name is not the name
I began with and even earlier someone gave me
another name before giving me away. But I’ve stopped
running and covering things over, being naked now
is so much more revealing than when I was born,
the scars on this skin tie together the threads
of my tale, even these skinny arms have been seduced
recently by so much more sunshine than ever before,
digging through the dirt to get closer to those roots
turning through the earth. The view is once again
familiar when looked at close up, in detail,
even if all the cars race you away from what matters-
the vines of veins trying to climb out of these ditched
trenches. They have a running track here in this town
and when I follow its route I realise how enlightening
it can be to make steady circles around all that you
had not yet considered about yourself instead of
hasty tours around the edges of this cold old world. 

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BOOKENDS; STILL ME ON THE METRO

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

It was this morning and yesterday, all at once,
a smell, a scent on the metro, in my nostrils,
a decent into memory, a reverie playing, replaying
while the Counting Crows played Round Here.

We sang our own song, once, but time, like the metro,
took us into different directions, with obligations
steered to other distractions; men and marriage,
movements and meanders, an Irish song we had sung,
you once sung, while I listened and then I left
for a while, while you stayed on, stayed on track.

But I came back and you were still there, still here,
Round Here, as the Crows sang, are still singing,
those Counting Crows; their words still ringing
in my ears, today, on the metro, with that scent
that opened a tunnel in time between yesterday
when we were young and today; wiser and wider.

All this motion, this morning, as my mind rushed
and passengers crushed onto carriages commuting,
lines crossing, junctions joining as I went to work
remembering who we were, I wore waistcoats even then
and you a brown coat that caressed your concerns.

I went to work, this morning, while traveling onwards,
along the same rails, in the same direction as before
but different too, some things old and some things new,
still me on the metro, still me and still, there’s you.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Mary (the one on the brown coat) and I met at the Irish College my first time around in Paris and then I left for London while she stayed round here till I returned and we sang again, together, poetry this time, while finding our place.

I DREAM

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

Dreaming,

 

seeing time

as something silky

you can slip though,

 

rearranging reality,

 

the hours revolving

around minutes

around molecules

neither past nor present;

 

the future still waiting

to be moulded,

 

dreaming

of tempering time;

 

of breaking it

 

of bending it;

 

redrawing curt corners

into kinder curves,

rerouting long roads

into achievable lengths.

 

I bend time

beyond this bed

of twisted sheets,

 

these withered webs,

 

tired and torn,

 

and mend

in my mind, slumbering,

that which was cracked

 

before the mirror

catches its reflection

of disruption,

of distraction,

of rejection.

 

And I wonder

in all this bending,

in all this mending,

 

how much the mind

will remember

 

and how capable am I,

in waking,

 

to let time forget?

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE LIGHT THAT SHIFTS THE SHADOW

/ deuxiemepeau / 9 Comments

Day 6: National Poetry Writing Month #NaPoWriMo

Trains used to slip
through these tracks
where runners now train,
old locomotives now relocated
like the light that displaces
the shadow,
but the lines
still linger,
less steam now,
more sweat
and sometimes
that light
that shifts
the shadow,
trains used to slip
through these tracks
that the city now tickles,
threatens with timeshares
to tear up what time still shares
in the corners where that shadow
leans into the light, on the lines where life
once rattled and raced,
before the new towers
knocked the old homes,
before the runners
and the walkways
and the boarders
and the builders
and the cranes
now shifting
into sight,
rising, in the distance,
just a step
beyond
that
light.

All Words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken at la Petite Ceinture, an old paris railway line in the 15eme

BITTER BRIDGES

/ deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

 

Clouds cross the skies
and trains cross countries
while we cross each other
only at jagged junctions
and obstinate intersections,
cluttered with catastrophes
or below bitter bridges
that bridge no boundaries,
basked only in blackness
always shadow, never light,
always almost, never right
here, right now, right moment,

while clouds still cross skies
and trains still trail onwards,
distance never denied to those
on the right track.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken from a moving train somewhere outside of Lisbon, Portugal.

 

 

SNAKES AND SHEEP

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

We slither and snake
in united unison 
past the signals
and the stations
and the beggar
with his chanson,
trying to get
his chance on,
clambering to get
his way on,
chancing his way
on into pockets
of passengers
loosing patience.

We slither and snake
our manoeuvres 
along the carriages
of commuters 
preoccupied by i-tunes
on iPhones and
hand held computers
and fold away scouters
while a girl eyes a guy
in a muscle bound shirt
as another guy notices
the mini of her skirt
and dreams of dessert,
dreams of slithering,
sensual and slow,
along her carriage,
to drive his train
into her station
like he were Spartacus,
the Thracian,
now riding high
on the train’s vibration.

We slither and snake
through the darkness 
on tracks laid and loyal
unlike our own tracks
seasoned to spoil,
we light upon
platforms packed
with people panicking 
fretting about fitting,
fitting on, fitting in,
into trains and tracks 
and skirts and holes,
cyber lives
make us whole.

We slither and snake
and stand closer, 
strangers coming closer
to scents and smells
and stenches 
that choke us,
breaths breathing
on the backs
of tensed up necks
of strangers
struggling,
slithering and snaking 
on tracks that take us
back and forth
to and fro,
to work, to home,
to him, to her,
to passing parties
and improbable
possibilities.

We slither and snake 
as strangers we make
but we follow
the same track,
blind to the future
and who stands
behind our back.

We slither and snake 
and sheep,
baa baa
baa baa…

All Words by Damien B. Donnelly