DAH - POEMS

DAH’s ninth poetry collection is SPHERICAL (Argotist Press), and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Spain, Poland, Philippines, Singapore, Africa, Australia, Japan and India. He is a multiple Pushcart nominee, Best Of The Net nominee, and the founding editor for the poetry critique group, The Lounge. DAH lives in Berkeley, California where he is working on the manuscript for his tenth poetry collection, and his poems have recently appeared in Poetry Now!, Straylight Magazine, Otoliths, The Cape Rock, Acumen Journal, Sandy River Review, Indian River Review, Junto Magazine, Mad Swirl Magazine, New Mexico Review, Setu Journal, Fishbowl Press, and Tokyo Poetry Journal.

​If Gravity Pulled Upward

What if all motion in the world
stopped at the same time. The calm
would be like a new god with a book
of tricks: fear would be the first to die

In this dream, the machines across
earth had broken down and 
from around the world 
one person could hear  
another person laughing:

even the insects could be heard 
crawling or flying. In the cities,
industry’s odor gave way to a pure  
sobering existence. All electricity died. 

In this dream I heard: what we need
is a new vocabulary, and a futuristic 
child, not a deity but, a child with
a new language:

I lift up your hot dress and your cold body
is an infant star yet to leave its nebula

In this dream I heard: what we 
need is touch, sensual touch, the 
kind of touch between people

What if writing left a trail of smells
instead of words, and 
the scent of wind told stories? 



​

Far Beyond, Years Later

I saw the seasons in you 
there in the tracks of moon
this is how I remember:

from girl
   to woman
            
                     lover 

Like a journey of layers
the seasons weaved baskets 
where blind love tossed words 
  
I felt all that I could feel
your impassive eyes  
the dark bird, your heart 

Far beyond, years later 
this emptiness, a hole 
set in place 

appearing then disappearing 
like a watermark 
stamped on memory 

Like Clothes On A Dying Body
​

I’m not content, but I’m more content
than I’ve ever been: for what spins will
topple, for what topples loses its focus. 
In a nest of thoughts, like a drunken folk
song, the mind’s never-ending questions
about the external things that drive men
mad. One must speak up to sort out the
ruptured nervous system: anger, love, joy 
hate. Silence! In the mystique of mental ill 
-ness, or in the realm of pure chaos, new
meanings rise, like the intelligence of dark
dreams, or the impulsiveness of lies: only
the madman is content: reality moves on
not caring how others feel, and if I outlive
you, like clothes on a dying body, if death
is the way to contentment, and honey turns
to stone, and glances are like fast windmills
then the carnage becomes the greasy fat of
men: it’s not without anguish that our trivial
lives will not escape the troubling purpose for 
being created. If only to live without tightened
throats, or something less cruel: it’s true, we mi
-ght as well be the threadbare pavement stomp
-ed on by the heavy thugs.  

Invention Of A New Meaning

Humans are in the wrong place
We don’t belong here
this is not our home. We must
disengage from gravity.
We’ve been tricked into believing
otherwise.
We don’t belong here: disengage. 
We are in the wrong place.
Recharge your imagination: let go. 
The truth has been lying to us
take comfort in knowing this.
If we stay here
we’ll lose our sense of logic.
The truth has lied. 
We don’t belong here. This is
not our home. 
We need a new truth: use your
imagination. 
We need to silence language  
––use your imagination: 
the truth is lying.    
  

Isabella
​

A small hand of rain opens 
kicking up the dust that hangs
like fables from books 

The sun, a broken candlemaker
tucked into the horizon
A breeze taunts the cracked leaves 

Between us it was tribal 
the conjuring of eyes 
the tinder, kindling, flames 

and your body, an ebony vase 
turning in my hands  
til the surface blushed

and my fingers, like flares 
and you, Isabella, fruit of youth,
your glowing tongue, a flute 
blew fire in my mouth

and my body of thin snow
melted under your darkness  


​