DAH - POEMS

Dah’s ninth poetry collection is SPHERICAL (Argotist Press, 2019) and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Italy, Singapore, Poland, Philippines, Australia, Africa, and India. He is a Pushcart nominee, Best Of The Net nominee, and the lead editor for the poetry critique group, The Lounge. Dah lives in California where he teaches yoga to children in public and private schools while working on the manuscript for his tenth poetry collection. His eighth book is Full Life In The Day Of A Poet, selected poems (Cyberwit Publishing, 2019).
Visit: http://www.dahlusion.wordpress.com  

​Complexity

​Your gaze, deadly
star-fire,
knives
love’s broken foot.  

I’m sitting watching you
twisting into a storm
then in a surge you run
down the rainy street.

All around me
North Beach
bustling
like a insect nest.   

As if swimming
a vertical river
I stand up and walk
in the down pour.  

How heavy everything
feels, how shaky.
A delivery truck
rumbles over the streets.

​A Scenic Summer’s Day

Listen to that man and woman
going at each other
with their disappointments,
bothered by the other’s presence.

A scenic summer’s day: 
open windows float
sheer white curtains, 
drifting in and out,
unmoved by the dusty sills.
There are young pears in a tree,
green and thirsty. 

Like diaphanous red paper
wings of a circling hawk

ignited by the sun
above the commotion 
from this man and woman
going at each other,
like two boxers
throwing dirty punches.

​Miner

As if emerging from a past of mules,
and treacherous history: lanky, bearded,
a serious felt hat, wide brim bent
like a broken wing.

The Miner strides down Main Street
to the General Store: cars, trucks,
motorcycles darting around him
like insects kicking up dust.

Stoic face, long features and
hidden eyes, skin weathered,
like wooden buckets, lengthy arms
swaying as if two bodies hanging,

his fingers, knobby balusters, hairy
and bear-like. In a flannel shirt,
dusty jeans and old boots,
the heat’s one-o-three degree uproar  

ignores him. The Miner’s bruised hand
reaches for the General Store’s brass
door handle, where he disappears

into a narrow slit at the edge of light
as if vanishing through a portal, where
his mule, packed and ready, waits for him.

​

​Spinning

​I spat on a web
just for the excitement
it caused the spider:   
a gothic villain
raced over the surface  

The spittle fell through
like white oil, and
the sticky lace was
oblivious to the hole
my curiosity made

Late into the day
the villain was spinning,
mending, restoring
the delicate fabric,  
despite its hunger

​Gray Rooms, Wet Cloth

​Hitting hard, a vile downpour smashes
bugs into earth, steel raindrops
pick at the ground. Darkness,
a frigid hand.
 
A sparrow opens an eye
then goes back to sleep.

Winter storms, a gray room’s,
wet cloth dangling
from sky to ground.

The wind is a restless herd.
    
In a puddle, like a hung body
an earthworm drowns, violently.