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Best Poems Written by Dawnell Harrison

Below are the all-time best Dawnell Harrison poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

The Vessel

My voice is a hollow vessel
where words spiral down 
into a whirling dust storm
and exit dirty and unwanted
as if riding on the hooks
of some God-forsaken 120 degree desert.

No specific value has ever been
assigned to the words
that stick in my throat
and always leave like
a mumbled mishmash-
a jar of miscellaneous buttons
with threads pieces 
hanging on in disbelief.

A lone vowel has gone off
like a disciplined child-
her pink mary jane's scruffing
the  barren sidewalk with utter disdain.
Consonants drift and drown
into a muddled pond
overgrown with hanging algae.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

Born

We were born to offer
each other our own plates 
of suffering wounds.
No poultice will do.

Crying is out. Marriage also out-
each with our own insecurities and stubbornness -
two mules going down the same narrow path.

Money weighs heavily like bricks
in your jean pockets 
so you must throw it in the air
and see where it lands.

Your home looks like Circus Vargas
equipped with a pretty girl spinning plates,
clowns making balloon animals,
and two acrobats teetering above
on a thin wire without a net.

I protest as loudly and as often
as wailing babies prevalent
in the bloody air of a local park
in Peoria, Arizona.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

My Oxygen

You lick the tendons of my oxygen-
sucking away my breath bit by bit,
heartbeat by heartbeat-
I am drained like a broken thermometer,
mercury spilling onto the floor
like a small pool of ink.

There is no remedy -
hope has sailed its sinking ship
and I sit around silently
like egg-shell white paint
drying on the living room walls.

Effacing myself was never a choice
so I drifted away from you
like a blue balloon flying away
from a child's distraught hand.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

Sleep

Sleep evades me
at this thieving hour of 2 a.m.-
my mind speed goes
like 100 wild horses 
with their long manes
breaking on the air.

My soul is unpedaling
like a pink peony
with its monumental head
falling down, down, down.

I am immune to pills 
at this pilfering time.
My eyes are fogged over
with a sort of clearish white veil.

My eyes teeter on the edge
of dreamland but 
my eyes wear electric lids
that zap me wake when
I feel as if I am falling.

I will count pigs
instead of sheep.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

One Long Ray

One long ray of sunlight
gleams down
on the back porch and
rests in the eyes
of gardenias.

The day is dying
piece by piece
until the light 
absorbs itself
behind the purple horizon.

The white hooded milk
of the moon is sneaking in
like dandelions
sprinkling the yard
mustard yellow.

Crickets are playing their
shrill violins - the symphony
glides on tender earlobes and
appears to never rest.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

One Long Ray

One long ray of sunlight
gleans down on the back porch
and rests in the eyes of gardenias.

The day is dying
piece by piece
until the light absorbs itself
behind the purple horizon.

The white hooded milk of the moon
is sneaking in like dandelions sprinkling
the yard mustard yellow.

Crickets are playing their shrill violins-
the symphony glides on tender earlobes
and appears to never rest.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

Stain

Today the clouds thicken like gravy-
ink blots stain the sky.

Silence after silence unloads
its ill will at my feet.
I am accustom to it
and it has settled.

The sky continues to ashen
as it swallows the pine trees
like a relentless Sandpoint, Idaho snowstorm
consuming all in its way.

The day spills its impressions 
like a half-full glass
which leaves me as empty 
as an astounding wail
from a 90-year-old woman's
crippled up body.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

Muddle

I muddle through the day
like an old tire being
dragged out of a muddy pond.

Words and days come and go -
an expression fumbles 
out of my mouth.
Just another day of tediousness 
and exaggerations.

I would ask you to come
with me but I know
you'd never go back
to Idaho -
days upon days of snow
buckling the power lines
and rooftops.

I muddle through...

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

Eaten

The mirrors and furniture are sheeted.
Love has eaten me up
like a fancy box of chocolates
now completely gone.

My phone is clean off the hook.
Voices carry emotion 
and always the opinions, opinions, opinions.
Nobody can worm their way in now.

Hell is not going to break
its way through to me.

I sit utterly quiet with my hand placed
on my stomach. 
This is how somebody will find me-
as calm as a glass vase
in the cupboard at midnight.

Details | Dawnell Harrison Poem

Empty

You pass by me like a faint cologne -
the scent barely grazing my senses.
I am as empty as a widow's soul.
Your ghostly caresses die like
a distant reflection.

You are an owl beating
your broken wings
into corner niches
that do not encumber my soul.
Feathers slowly drift to the ground like
Autumn leaves almost hovering
in mid-air.

You steal light from the white-hooded moon
as your vacuous demeanor dissolves
into nothingness in the thin air
of a peach-colored sky.