truth

WHITE STARLIGHT

/ deuxiemepeau / 1 Comment

 

White starlight
light and lucent
springs from
ailing earth
in quite corners
of tended borders
so fine and fair,
fragility unfolding
precious petals
perhaps to soften
the edges
of darker days
that have set
shadows upon
so many sunsets

White starlight
cradles beauty,
a bold beacon
blooming amid
these burdens
that bind us
To broken branches,
she’s taking chances
ripe and rare
like subtle silk,
like flowing milk,
so bright and brave
to dare to bloom
amidst these months
of doom and gloom

White starlight
in broad daylight,
a wonder witnessed
among this world
of weeds
and tangled vines
that strangle
the timid
and the truth.

White starlight.
fear not fragility
for she is
born to fight.

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.

 

A TRILUNE; THREE MOONS

/ deuxiemepeau / 15 Comments

 

This poem is in response to Jane Dougherty’s Trilune challenge from http://www.janedougherty.wordpress.com. So check out her beautiful blog and join in…

A trilune is a poem of three stanzas of three lines of 3×3 syllables each (that’s 9 in case you were wondering), circling a central theme.  The rhyme is on the third line of each stanza so you get a pattern of abc dec fgc.

Here’s my attempt:

One man promised to catch her the moon
to pull it down from the sky at night
but she feared that the stars would then die.

One man told her he’d buy her the moon
that money was never a problem
but she found out that this was a lie.

The last man never spoke of the moon
but held her as if she were the stars
so to him she never said goodbye.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/three-moons-a-trilune

CRASH

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

Did you wipe your feet
upon my head
before you walked
over me?

Allow me to bend first, at least.

Was I so accustomed
to your disregard
that I could not
feel you

tearing through me,
leaning on me,
raiding me,
raping me?

Did you wipe your sweat
across my brow
to save yourself
time?

Let me fetch you a towel first, my lord.

Was I so unaware
of your self serving scent
that I put myself
forward

in offering,
in sacrifice,
to serve and satisfy?

Was I the fool
you perceived me to be
while you pillaged me
of dignity?

I saw a light
in the beginning
in the distance
and again
at the end

I thought it
to be salvation
but it turned out
to be your reflection
in the mirror

I was standing
behind you
but, as always,
you didn’t see me

you couldn’t see
beyond yourself
and that self-centredness
that took us over

like the sharp glare
from the car light
when it’s too late

and Crash…

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE PRICE OF A STAR

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And she sang of hope and harmony
in a borrowed frock on Tuesday nights
in a smokey bar below the Bowery
where the Irish downed their whiskey
while the Italians were always frisky

and they touched her, always, afterwards
her faithful followers fingering flesh
as if to caress the affection
she injected into lyrics, light and loving,
in the bar beyond the Bowery
where she came to entertain
the Irish and the Italians
who joined in the refrain

and they left her, always, afterwards
on Tuesday nights in the smokey light
with hope and harmony already fading
in that bar down below the Bowery
where the laughter never really
managed to linger for long after

and in the silence below the Bowery
as the stars all blew 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
that followed, always and forever 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

Photograph taken on the High Line in New York 

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/the-price-of-a-star

ON LIPS

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There are questions
never answered
and lips
never kissed

There are moments
never mastered
and truths
never told

There are trusts
never broken
and those lips
that still persist

There are dreams
never woken
and those ideals
now growing cold

There are tongues
never tangled
and hands
never held

There are deceits
never dangled
and lips
forever missed

There are bonds
never broken
and desires
never quelled

There are truths
never spoken
on those lips
that never kissed.

 

All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio recording available on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/on-lips

 

From Myth to Man on Valentines

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Reworking an old piece for Saint Valentine…

 

When I was a boy I dreamt of you daily, when I was 20 I thought I knew you,
as I fall into 40 I fear we’ve never met, but I’ve loved you, you know,
since childhood, since I saw what it meant to hold someone’s hand
and since I came to understand what that touch could bring.
I’ve spoken to you, daily, not sure if you ever heard,
but I’ve told you, over and over, all the plans 
I’ve made for us in my head, all alone,
sometimes I spoke to you silently
as I lay in the wrong arms,
in the wrong bed, fallen
on the wrong path.
I have married you,
again and again, in fairy tales
and formal attire, in far off castles
and sun kissed shores. I’ve made love to you,
moved in with you, moved the world for you and yet,
although we’ve never met, you’ve changed a lot over time,
with each day, along each year, through the ages that I’ve dreamt you in.
You are no more the God I once dreamt you to be with chiseled jaw and perfect pose.
No, you are now to me, at last, more man than myth; more meaningful than mystical, more substance than surface. I too am now man, having grown older and wiser and learned to distinguish
all that is necessary from all that is just noise. When I was but a boy I dreamt of you daily,
one bounteous bodily being of beauty, but now, all is different, I have seen the world
beyond dreams, and have felt all that life pulsing through my waking hands.
I have seen how dreams can deceive you, how gods can grieve you,
and so now, with eyes open, I see part of you in many
and none of you in some and I’ve accepted
that I’ll never find all of you in one.

 

Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

OH COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

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Oh country, my country,

once born in your troubled times
and raised by the banks where your Liffey lies,
I followed the paths of generations moved on
to see what they’d built, to see where they’d gone,
but returned to a home now seriously lacking
a nation of consumers complaining and attacking.
Where are your parishioners, the pride of your isle,
your Emerald’s glory once renowned for its smile?

Oh country, dear country,

now bigger than ever in girth if not majesty,
in greed if not glory, in makeup if not unity.
What has become of those simple smiles,
captured in bar songs of other times?
Is summer gone, have the flowers died
did Danny not return to his father’s side?
A nation once raised on songs and stories,
of people poor but proud of their glories.
Are you better beings in designer labels,
Gucci in hand and louboutin’s under tables?
Maleficent muttons playing innocent lambs
slaughtering histories with blood stained palms.

Oh country, once my country,

there’s no truth to your hunger or depth to your drunkenness,
no moral in your manners or reason for your forgetfulness.
Who’ll be your heroes in the years still to come,
who’ll hear your cries and who’ll beat your drum?
Collins was martyred and there’s no more de Valera
the last of your greats were the end of an era,
now it’s fools fickle to the latest fashion fads
tarted-up teenagers and under aged dads.

Oh country, fallen country,

once a force of marching freedom
while looking to other lands for asylum,
now turned and twisted into narrow opinions
while others seek help and die in their millions.
How has racism risen so loud
in a place once paraded as peaceful and proud,
where its people filled ships that sailed on the seas
in the hope that other lands would hear their pleas,
can you rise again from your Holy Ground
adding names to the list of your heroes renowned?

Oh country, lost country,

where Mary’s cries still ring out to the sea
for Michael who told her nothing matter’s when you’re free,
have you washed down too much of your own importance
and forgotten the fight for your own independence?
Can it be that the tiger, in departing, took your best;
your heart and your soul and just spat out the rest.

Oh country, what country,

how can I find my way back to before
when all I once loved has slipped from your shore?

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All Words and Photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Photograph taken at across the fields at sunset in Lusk, Co. Dublin , Ireland

THE STRUGGLE

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To be a poet of
The heart and mind
Is to step away
From all that is close
And to look back
From afar.
To struggle
With the truth
Of what we are told
And to search for
What we believe.
To fall on the road
And document the struggle
To stand again.
To be torn from
The heart of your dearest
By the changing hand
Of that very heart
And find a place again,
In your own, alone.

To breath again
And remind yourself
To do this daily,
To look into the dark
And, in blindness,
Search for the light.

To dream at night
While accepting
The reality
Of the coming dawn.

To open your eyes
To an unknown world
When you were safe
In the one you’d accepted.
To wander
The lonely road
That you must take,
Alone.
To cry,
To shed your pain,
To cleanse your body,
To clear out
So as to move on.
To sob
In the face of beauty
And smile
In the midst of horror
So as to live.

To travel
The mind’s horizons
And discover the bounties
Hidden in its depths
So as to release the poet
Inside lays within us all.

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