DAH

 

DAH

 

If One Can Imagine

 

She started a fire in her hands

not a flame but a forest

even more, an entire city

burned in her eyes

like a spellcaster’s obsession

 

It’s not the noise but the dark

beginning under her skin

the footsteps from her pulse

vapors of lust

the flames matching her hair

 

A worthy loss will mark this day

the dust and flavors

will come to pass

leaving her red curls

with the appearance of claws

 

To approach her, to kiss her

is like a snap from a whip

a clean view of death

which is the beginning of love

if one can imagine

 

Such senseless acts of passion

awakened by an odd gesture

by touching the wet dagger

of her tongue that stabs

her lovers to death

 

It’s not the metamorphous of teeth

into ice, nor ice into crystal

it’s the way her body bends

into a paperclip

attaching to all of her lovers at once

 

 

Labyrinth

 

How our bodies became earth

we woke

a root bound us to mother

 

Contractions

pushing through a tunnel

not tumbling but sliding

 

through a blurry labyrinth

We knew

how to find the light:

 

pitched into cold air

from gravity’s undertow

we had falling from a cloud

 

 

Night, River

 

Between forest and meadow

a glassy serpent

swift and direct

 

runs its steady rhythm

beneath gravity’s current

from mountain to ocean

 

In depths of stillness

there are certain ways

the river swallows itself

 

in creamy mud, in passages

under autumn’s

decayed leaves and

 

pools trap stars till sky

goes blind, floating

dead fish, water spiders

 

In the valley, moonless

light, narrow and hard

conjures an owl

 

the owl arouses a fox

I’m breathing pungent night

-air, sage, pine

 

and this humid breeze

presses its warm palm

to my skin

 

With a mosquito uprising

brown bats are hand puppets

playing a tight matrix

 

and a puma’s pressing hunger

breaks into cries, its mouth

a crackling fire

 

 

The Book

 

I have the book I’ve never written

closed, muted and blind

it cannot hear me

it cannot see me

and when I dream

the pages rise

and the words pop up

 

I carry the book I haven’t written

inked in red, bruised in blue

but who cares

I’ve read the book I haven’t written

it’s old and tired and

full of woes

it’s in the book I haven’t written

 

and from the book I’ve read:

 

Everybody’s got their sad ways

and I’ve got mine

You can’t tell me about dying

cause I am dead inside

 

I want to be that young again,

to crave, to have, to sin again

oh, to be that young again

never old like this again

I want to hold my youth again

to not decay like this again

 

I have the book I haven’t written

it closed inside, muted and blind

you’ve got yours and I’ve got mine

 

 

This Heart Descending

 

That weak light in her eyes

forming into darkness

is the greatest of tragedies.

 

She is there, breath of twilight

beautifully creepy,

like a peacock’s scream,

 

to be remembered, to be

more than a moment

before death, before weeping.

 

I want nothing else, she says, nothing

but to embrace

the cold, to open the earth, to feel

 

the edge of life near its end, to feel

this heart descending

into roots and grave.

 

From her gown, a button is missing

and there’s a sewn-up hole

and strands of red hair on the floor.

 

From time to time she stands in front

of the fireplace

listening to the flames, like souls

 

tucked away in earth, set ablaze

and startled.

It’s not a god-awful way to end up, she says.

 

DAH

 

DAH’s ninth poetry collection is SPHERICAL (Argotist Press, 2019) and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Canada, Spain, Poland, Philippines, Singapore, Australia, Africa, Japan and India. He is a multiple Pushcart nominee, Best Of The Net nominee, and the lead editor for the poetry critique group, The Lounge. DAH lives in Berkeley, California where he is working on the manuscript for his tenth poetry book while simultaneously working on his first collection of short fiction.