Poems by Dah

Dah

To Fill This Page

To fill this page
I must empty my doubt,
holding fast to the joy
of ambition.

A meditation: Creation is a revelation
expanding in silence.
What brought us to earth?
What binds us to the promise of language?

With words liberating this poem,
each phrase is an abundance of sounds.
I admire the power of verbs
and make a wish: to sail upon the silence of light.

Light streams into our veins
like cosmic opium
or like lovers who live
for being inside each other.

Sometimes I demand too much
from the universe
and speaking of this is like an iron trap
suffering from rust.
I write this down
so as not to fill my feelings
with emptiness. Soul:

my bliss, my enthusiast
— I must speak of this
to understand these burning lines.


I Promise To Imagine

I promise to imagine
and wish for sentences
chosen by love:

together we’ll undress
my words
and unfasten my attachments.

Emptiness: leave me alone
I will not surrender to blind faith.

Earth breathes fear
and most of humankind
is uncertain of commandments
in writing.

I shuffle my verbs, adverbs, contractions,
looking for instant gratification.

Disappointment:
serious laughter,
like splinters in my throat.

I want to beg earth for forgiveness and
I am embarrassed for not knowing how.

Human kindness needs encouragement,
still our destruction will not be postponed.

How do we explain
to our children’s children
about the darkness we are conjuring for them?


Twilight Is A Sudden Sadness

Who am I to know
the existence of heaven
lives in the pause between breaths
or the story of creation
is a searing scar in the side of Jesus?

I have collected my pleasures,
like monsoons collect the dead,
have collected memories,
the raw force of vitality,

the swift silk of a spider’s web,
the emptiness of being, all of this,
a country of vibrant emotions.

I have touched the sea with my hands,
bringing them together, feeling
the abrupt salt between my fingers,
torrid like the stinging whip of a lover:

Her tongue burns me alive
with its naked wine,
her eyes dig into the depths of mine.

Who am I to know that the Kingdom of God
lives in the stones, fire, water, mud,
or that twilight is a sudden sadness
like blood clots caused by thorns?

Still, my excitement is a tower of energy
a vigorous burst of sperm
or the moonlight’s mysteries fitting its key
into my soul where a secret stillness

wallows in swaggering bliss.
I have tasted the meat of the universe,
its heart, lungs, and liver, tasting it
with my gentleness, a gentleness like
soft lips, or a feather, or a lover’s whisper:
Her mouth burns me alive
with its raw juice, her heart feeds from mine.


Who am I to know that the Supreme Spirit
lives in the flies, the lice, the grub, or that
death’s bitter sorrow lives in the dust, the bones,
the ash, or in the agony of a broken heart?

 — once, Jesus summoned me. He undid
his wounds with the jagged blades of my
tears. I held him, embracing him, saying:

My brother, my brother, my peaceful brother …
who am I … to know …
who I am?


A Shawl Of Indigo Aura

The evening is a thick, black lid
closing over the sun.
Tonight, the sky is inlaid
with pink clouds

because the light has crawled
inside of them, falling asleep.
How is it
I understand light’s recital

yet have no words
to explain it?
A poem without words
a poet without voice.

Today I watched a child,
a young girl, my daughter,
step into a puddle of light.
She said: I have sailed here before.

Her breath is the weight of a sparrow.
Her eyes, like poetry itself.
She wears a shawl of indigo aura
and gives me armfuls of her enthusiastic love.

My seven-year-old daughter with a plum tree stick
in her hand saving earth worms from drowning

— winter storms have destroyed their homes
her enthusiastic love was saving them:

bellies down, she placed the exhausted worms
in the grass, quietly talking to them.
To the dead ones she whispered:
I love you and have a wonderful afterlife.

Of the darkness: together we whispered about
light falling asleep.


The Glazed Elixir Of A French Kiss

The spirited light, solar-like wind,
breath with its passion, the sun’s copious
erotic venom.

I speak of everything and all things
without caution: this noise inside my head,
layers of high pitched harmonics,

the compressed hours between
birth and death, the heart’s heat
ascending and descending,

the end always beginning and again
your Gothic eyes. I have been here
and there, a prodigal hawk

with the flavor of blood-kisses hovering
like steam or mist or a weapon stirring
the body’s carbonic magnetic motion.

Never the sky always the silence disclosing
the stillness in death’s fantasy — life and death,
love and loss, a fatalistic dream-reel

as if two mirrors facing each other reflecting
a vacant image. I remember a faint trail
of finger prints. My impatient pulse

raced into yours: deserted passions,
like roses, each one dies the same way
— our emotions mumbled

through love and into the glazed elixir
of a French kiss: In my arms you had fallen asleep
not knowing I had left.

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