TO THE WATER

06/03/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

I have taken to the water,
am running toward reckless
and dissolving the wreckage.

I have taken to the water
even on this land
of cracks and grumbles
(slippery under snow
or shadowed by a sun
we can’t outrun)
I still hear the water
rushing amid all that is restless
(am still bound to rest less and less)
as this will whispers within
to ‘follow the water’
in place of drowning
in a desert of dry doubt.
I have taken to the water,
corners caught on a current
clear in it’s translucency
as if to reveal the truth
beyond the abstrusity
of the boulders once blocking me.
I have taken to the water,
to it’s meanders of movement
(I move toward what is meant)
I turn and twist
and forget tastes once treasured,
I am flying fluid
(a flood of fluidity)
I cannot hold everything
(catch the kiss before it capsizes)
there are no pockets
in paradise
(babies are born naked;
only man dresses the dead
as if to ignore the death).
I have taken to the water,
reckless is running
right on front of what is left
of all that’s looking for rest
(while I swim toward the rest of me).
I am a small storm
in the steady stream,
I am the stream
storming into sturdy.
I am change.
I am unstoppable.
The truth lies
not in the bank,
but lays in the trust I place
on this translucent trickle
tracing my paths
upon the water.

I have taken to the water,
ripples running through reflection,
cutting the connection
of what once was,
I am catching on current-
all else will drift to dissolve.

All words and photography by Damien B Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/to-the-water

CAST OFF

01/03/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

–

Along the river bed,

long running with water

already washed through our hands,

–

long is not the hold we have to harbour,

–

long running with this water

no longer light at its level,

no longer smooth along its sands,

–

along this bend of river

I cast into the current, like a kiss

no longer catchable,

this weight no longer workable,

now on route to dissolvable.

–

From breath to bubble,

bobbing

bubbles,

from breath to bubble and then trouble,

then off they blow,

splashing as they sparkle

and splutter on to spent.

I cast you into this current,

where shamrock slips to sapphire,

to let the past depart,

not sad of heart, not hard,

just a shadow of blue

in a bend of the bank

at the edge of expire.

–

To slip from soul like a skin

now shredded from recognition,

a cast off of character no longer cast

in this current condition.

We knit until we are knotted,

we weave patterns;

loops locked under chains,

some stitches saved and others slipped,

connected to a comfort

until they struggle under strains,

–

a fragile filigree

we cannot always wear,

hands can only hold

what wants to be held,

we are not fortunate

for the future to foresee,

we can not always follow,

sometimes even sheep

must make their own route

before they are wound as wool

or substance to swallow,

–

even the river bed must turn, in time,

twist at others, we are no straight line

but a collection of corrections

cast on and cast off,

kick off

pay off

drop off.

–

We are more than characters

or thinly drawn caricatures,

I am more than this flesh you see,

you see; I can fester or I can be free.

–

I shed this skin of a former self,

here by the edge of this river running,

running onwards, searching for its shore,

searching for something more,

for its share of the truth,

I shed this skin to let the other

parts of me find their sea.

–

I cast into the river bed

this weight so the rest

can float and form and be.

All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly

Audio version available on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/cast-off

CONTROL

11/02/201811/02/2018 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

–

Control.

How to cut deep.

Tipping toes in the tepid

tides of therapy.

We are cunning creatures

in unconscious,

under cover,

cool to discover

the character

beneath the cadaver.

Control.

How to discover,

how to distance the self

from its disguise,

from the depths

we dive to deceive the day,

the way we weave

tepid tales through the tides

of our twisting truths,

ever evolving, ever revolving

in directions we cannot dictate,

covering over shades

we cannot eradicate,

those waves that ruminate,

that sweep through veins

already raging red

before the oxygen

burns the blue. Control.

How to find the true blood

in a body beaten into believing

the truth of what the consciousness

considers to be correct.

–

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

RED CARPET, day 24 of A Month with Yeats

25/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

I’m running behind on Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge but better a tad tardy than a no-show. Yesterday’s inspirational quote was: ‘We know their dream; enough to know they dreamed and are dead; ‘ —W.B. Yeats ‘

My poem is called RED CARPET

We dream

of what can be,

not of what was, we

are here because of what

came before, what we will be

is based on what we believe,

on what we have learned

to be true. There are

footprints already

in place,

already paved,

a path already plotted

by the brave, those hung

by their own hope, those trampled

by the trust they held in the truth. We

walk this road, lined with lives lived

and lost in the fight for fairness,

freedom, friendship, fidelity.

To dream is a given, to

live out our truth is

the right that

was won by

the red

carpet of heroic blood beneath our feet.

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

OVERTAKING

17/07/201716/03/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 8 Comments

Today is the 2nd year anniversary of part 2 of my life in Paris. I moved here on July 17th 2015. I first moved here form Dublin when I was 22. At that point I knew as little about anyone in this city or the city itself as I did about myself. Two years later London called and I packed a few bags and moved. When Amsterdam called 6 years after that, the bags had become boxes and the identity of who I was, a little clearer. I’d already learned that you can’t hold on to everything, regardless of how hard you try. And then, almost 10 years later, I returned to the city that first captured my imagination and carved so much of itself into the lines now more visible on my features that I could barely distinguish the lines of the city and the lines of the self. Needless to say, the bags were bigger this time and I don’t just mean the ones under my eyes. From 22 to a month away from 42, all now visible in the partially filled boxes around my feet. Somewhere within these collections, are hints at who I am on route to becoming, I guess…

Overtaking

Back to the boxes; finding things forgotten
in seams not yet sealed and finding no room
for other things since stuck with too much tape
that I cannot take any longer in this movement
along another midway, a mild change of track
through to midlife, making home at another station
amid the mayhem of the moment, making room
to make more moments that will momentarily
fill more boxes when another move meanders
my way. We are made of movements from major
to minor and back again; I am right, he has left,
she is nowhere and everywhere and not everyone
understands, they’ve turned back, I’ve carried on,
I can hold happy alongside these boxes; bruised
and battered but far from broken, I can hold it all,
I will hold all that has been left. Back to the boxes;
to the treasures I’ve taken to be true and the truths
that have lead me to the lies I’ve cast to the curbs
I have crawled over and then crossed off. I cannot
carefully wrap each and every delightfully deceptive
distraction that comes a calling, whether correctly
considered or coldly comfortless, I too was created
be cared for, I too need room to be made for me
without the waste of words, do I not deserve a space
to call my space within all space, within all this
fleeting space we are speeding through?

My next bed will spring from my liking as I plaster
my own skin with my own desires. I desire to be
distracted by dreams not too distant. I will not
be packed in a box like these belongings;
longing to be lifted to the light. I am too fond
of freedom to wait for life to find me. I am moving,
with boxes on my back and cartons crammed
into the cracks of my consciousness. I will not wait
for life to come to me; this is me, see me, overtaking it.

All words and pictures by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

PLEDGE ON THE PAGE

07/06/201724/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

I lay
loyalty
on the lines
that curl from curious
to consolidate as considered,
follies that find their form
someplace between
the pledge of pen
and integrity
of ink.