LEARNING TO CLIMB WALLS

 

There can be earthquakes
in little towns,
far from tectonic plates,
on little streets, rarely shaken
where we sat, once,
on the wall of a garden
now obsolete,
the summer burning
through our cool-lessness
as we trembled beneath attractions
we didn’t have the words
to understand
while eyes watched from windows,
trying to translate
thoughts tossed
between their local boy
and a sandy-haired student of exchange.

And I wanted to exchange-
to uncover
all that was growing curious.

We sat on this wall, once,
in the kiss
of youth’s sunlight,
in the stifling days
of undulating adolescence
and the growing tension
beneath every question,
and that temptation-
and I wanted nothing more
than to touch that temptation
despite our twisted tongues
and those eyes
always watching, always wondering
what was unfolding between us-
two boys just beginning
to join the colours that made blue,
for a while, beneath the weight
and the worth
of all the nothingness
that never trembled
for longer than a month in the summer
when our legs
occasionally touched, like tectonic plates,
shifting positions beneath
all that was once solid,
sensations rubbing up against
all that we wanted
and what, I suppose we knew,
at the time, we could never really have.

There can be earthquakes, in little towns.

  

All words and photos by Damien B Donnelly

PLAYING GAMES

 

When I was a child,
was I thoughtless or taught less
or was there less to think about,
less to love?
Though life was never loveless.
When I was a child,
did I dream less because
I didn’t know any more?
When I was a child,
I lied without knowing
the truth of a lie.

As a man,
the closer I come to the truth,
the more I turn to the dream,
for now there’s less to love,
less to give,
for so much more
has been taken.

When I was a child,
I held trust like it were breath,
ever buoyant,
flirted with faith
as if it were a fountain
that could never fail.

As a man,
breath grows cautious
to capture
and faith has fallen to faithless,
has fallen to fate, to fear.

When I was a child
a puzzle held 10 simple pieces
and when combined
they formed a whole.

Now, as a man,
the pieces are countless
and this puzzle
is far from complete.
When I was a child,
I played like the sun
would never settle,
now playing is paused
as paws are poised
for the running,
running to catch the light
before it falls off a horizon line
they tell me is not a flat drop off,
but this is a truth
I must see for myself
so as to know it’s not a lie.

Time falls
into something, off something
and we are runners in races
whose finish-lines
we don’t want to face.

The truth
is not what we dreamed of
when we knew not
the value of that dream.

As a child,
finish was never a word
that took flight in dreams,
no bird flaps its wings
with desires to meet its end.

I see, in the mirror,
dimly, and sometimes clearly,
pieces that have parted
and the puzzle that remains
between child and man,
between innocence and all the light
that grew dimmer
after the loss,
and between the thinking,
the taking and the being taken.

And somewhere
between it all, I am there,
looking back at who I’ve become.

  

All words and photos by Damien B. Donnelly

TYPES OF DOLLS

 

They call them Russian dolls
but there was a shop that sold them
by the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam,
not far from those ruby lit windows
displaying Dutch dolls in de Wallen,
both of which provided excitement
for wet tourists under rain coats
in the soaked summer months
terrified of traffic and tram tracks
and serial cyclists ringing their bells
like they were shooting guns.

The Russian dolls within dolls
within dolls were higher in price
than those locals offerings
you couldn’t bring home with you
after the money was handed over.
I used to see them, in their windows,
in the mornings- reading the paper
with their crispy toast and mint teas
in G-strings and little else.

I find it funny how undressing
reveals even less of the person
than being fully clothed.
I wonder if those Russian dolls
hold more truths in their multiple layers-
building up into a whole
instead of stripping down for a price.

  

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

MY THREE FATES

 

I- The original

 

Water                            floods flesh

From carnal comes forth     creation

Washed in sin

and they watch. In judgement

Water releases               hold

Sign away the rights                to his name

 

II- The Second Coming

 

Tears flood                   drained desert

She will be  an ocean             once more

Blood             is not the only bond

Longing leans in                  with twice the light

while they watch. In judgement.

Her tears           taunt their dried lips.

 

III- The Journey

 

You are ocean endless   and I worry

about growing                tired.

Sides streets         hold songs.

Every cobble     a connection for collection

Born from one and raised                by another

Now the road    is the mother

Feet turn    on judgement.            I found the refuge

The final fate          is on the road.

 

All words by Damien B Donnelly

PAINTING PARADISE WITH SOMEONE ELSE’S COLOURS

 

We painted walls into the paradise we wanted
before I learned colour had its limits. Borders
had been beaten into our canvas long before
I touched the brush with borrowed thoughts.

We painted orange coloured stars and wild hopes
onto concrete walls and I trembled as she told me
the parrots, perfectly positioned in stuffed stillness,
pranced on their perches while I slipped to dream.

We’re taught what is truth, as children, not told
to truly think. He was tipped in black with no name,
a night sky forgotten by the moonlight and we-
impressionists, desireless to be outlined in darkness.

Children not the creators of fact but the little sheep
who come to submit to the not-so-subtle suggestions.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

LIMITATION OF ROSES

 

I had the biggest bedroom as a boy
but curiosity picked the box room
at the lighter end of the short corridor
for my summer’s sojourn.

I was always looking for other walls
that caught the shadows of other lives

being lived-

to touch the thought, at that time,
was tantamount to taking part.

The biggest room was back-side,
the garden view of rising roses
trying to escape the bordered beds
and their own threatening thorns,

but the box-room was front facing
for those teasing summer nights
where people passed and paused
and the paths were so portentous-

diversions to drive daydreams
further than those beds of roses
that never made it any further
than a dull brown glass vase
on the small sitting room table
where we rarely found time

to entertain.

 

 All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

 

CLASSIFIED UNDER NO NAME

Would I have kept you closer, longer, if you’d been a soft toy
that found my empty arms when the nights were endless instead
of your characteristically classy chaos the posters never chose
to optimize

or were we meant to be just chalk running into the deluge
of the rainstorm?

Should I have been less passionate and you more personable
or I more placid and you less proud?

We were stuffing, in the end, plucking feathers from our insides
out through skins that had neither thickened nor tendered enough
to survive those endless flooding nights together in that hold
we never named.

Un nom, c’est quoi, un nom- la tien, la mien, le nôtre ?

Un non est seulement une chose que tu donnes à quelque chose
quand tu le comprends.

   

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

FRESH PERSPECTIVES AT THE MIDWAY MARK

 

I pulled a seat
up along the far side
of the first hill
of this midway through life’s climb
and sat myself towards country,
having been stripped
for so long
like bare bark by too many cities.

Green blood poured
upwards from your soil
onto my skin
until there was nothing left
to separate either of us
again

but for those ditches
that we would climb over
and perhaps leave the parts of ourselves
too ridged
for these winding lanes,
and those gentler hills
that we’d allow time to consider
while we considered nothing more
than what we had-

air, earth and this seat
on the far side of life’s hill
growing over time
with honesty.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

ATTENTION

 

I glisten to distract,
like a snowflake;

the sparkle before the melt.

Particles of fleeting perfection
floating through the hands of time,
falling through all these imperfections.
If only my clutch were tighter, truer,
if only I knew more of my own truth,
too many skins already slipped through,
too much prediction put on that perception
of perfection that can never be preserved.

A snowflake
cannot be caught intact. We cannot catch a cloud.

We cannot always clear the way for the truth.
Perfection: a twist of our perception,
a precious perspective from a single point
never again to be seen. What if it’s never seen at all?

Glistening like a snowflake, falling.

A snowflake can be a melting tear
or a tiny miracle on track to disappear.
Truth; an elusive illusion, a deathly desire
tenuously tied to what I present to you
and to how you perceive me.

To what we fear and what we are willing to reveal.

I glisten,
to distract attention
from all about me that doesn’t sparkle.

 

All words and designs by Damien B. Donnelly

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

 

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.