Home » Poems » Best » Daniel Bailey » Best Daniel Bailey Poems

Best Poems Written by Daniel Bailey

Below are the all-time best Daniel Bailey poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

You Are a Rainbow POTD

A while ago I read
an article
about the people of the Marshall Islands,
about their language,
their history,
their fragile,
disappearing
home.
I learned about
a word they have,
so versatile,
so complex.
“Iakwe” means
hello,
goodbye,
I love you.
But the most important meaning
(to me at least):
You are a rainbow.
And,
like the rainbow people
in the Marshall Islands,
you are beautiful;
you are worth waiting for
and worth searching for
(so let no one tell you differently).
You have powers inside you
that maybe you can’t see yet
because your light
and your prism
haven’t met.
You have the power
to even brighten someone’s day.
So maybe you might not appear
until after the rain;
no big deal!
You are no less beautiful.
Iawke.
Hello.
Goodbye.
I love you.
You are a rainbow.

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

How Their Eyes Danced With Darkness

We had a desert mission
Just north of us in Zarghun Shahr
But little did we know that day
We wouldn’t get that far.
We did not doubt the intel
That led us up the road of dust;
an IED exploded,
in up armor we trust.
 
To check if there were wounded,
The hatch went down and out we went.
The medics tended to the wounds
And I my ammo spent.
I fired on them with fervor
Though til then I’d not shot
a single round in battle;
Sharp shooter I was not.
 
I focused on the basics:
steady, aim, breath, trigger squeeze;
Before my second shot was fired
I’d brought one to his knees.
A second man was running
but Cam was by my side.
Adept at all things gunning,
He shot, the second died.
 
How their eyes danced with darkness
and no more saw a beam of light,
Turning us into killers
Baptized in blood and fight.
How their eyes turned to rapture
When they died in the Stan
and darkly dancing, stung me,
those eyes of Taliban.
 
How their eyes danced with darkness,
the cursed strangers on that day;
for what they’d done, fate would demand
A heavy price to pay.
I lay there, panting heavily,
and Cam gave me high five.
Our training had not failed us,
and we were still alive.

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

Waking Up In a Stranger’s Flat

I open my eyes.
All around me,
everything is unfamiliar:
unfamiliar wallpaper,
unfamiliar white leather sofa,
unfamiliar country.
I moved here to teach,
and here I am learning
that I’m underprepared,
underqualified,
underdressed,
and hungover.
 
He wouldn’t let me leave last night,
you see.
As the party was dying,
I coloured his bathroom
with oversweet Georgian wine
and washed down chicken wings
that came back up.
He decided:
I could miss the last metro,
sleep on this atrocious sofa,
recover.
 
Of course,
now it’s 7am,
and I have to teach a class
of engineers,
bridge builders,
about ing phrasal verbs
in less than two hours.
And I have to do it
with a hangover and a smile.
 
I think to myself
as I struggle with front door locks and keys
before climbing out of a downstairs window,
what a strange story this will be.
And yet waking up here,
it could be a whole lot worse
than this beautiful Baku sunrise.

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

Aries

I ask myself
what I want,
as if the veteran
doesn’t long
to return 
to the battlefield

March me into the wilderness
of your body
suffocate me
with your hot breath
burn me with your heat
suppress me
with your arms of fire

run me ragged
make me climb the mountain
of your being

I long for the war
to want me back
for the fight
to burn for me
for once, 
for all

I want you to conquer me,
god of war

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

Untitled No 28

I don’t know how to swim,
but I can swim well
Ask me to teach you how to solve
a problem, and I am stumped
but tell me to move a mountain
and I will push it out of your way
I can do so much more
than I can explain
I feel so much more
than my words can express
and my body knows
my muscles know
every aching sinew knows
how to do so many things
ride bikes
shoot guns
arm wrestle
thumb wrestle
climb mountains
push, pull, squat, and stretch
but if you asked me how
I wouldn’t know how to tell you.
You would think having so many words
would make it easier!
but it makes it worse.
What if I can’t explain how I’m feeling
in English 
so I think what’s the Russian word for that?
only I know deep in my brain
I should be using the French word
which I also can’t remember,
but only because Spanish doesn’t have
the word for it, 
and I don’t speak German 
So imagine - 
everyone around me drowning,
me, for the first time, swimming,
but I can’t help anyone
because I don’t even know
a stroke.

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

If There Are Trees

If there are trees around you,
you are not alone
and never will be

If you and I were trees
I would lean toward you
and share my soil 
our leaves sipping sunlight 
growing together into the sky

If there are trees around you
you are never alone
but whether that is a blessing
or a curse
is entirely up to the forest

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

The Moth and the Butterfly

Before there were humans on earth below, 
There were angels above in the skies. 
There were mountains and trees and woods and streams, 
And moths and butterflies. 

But one day the angels in glory aloft 
Were upset and began to cry. 
It rained, but the butterflies simply scoffed 
At the angels above in the sky. 

The moths were more compassionate, 
And knew something had to be done 
To end the angels' crying fit, 
And so began, one by one 

To rise to the sky above the rain, 
And shed their colors bright. 
The angels observed, and it eased their pain, 
And the colors shone morning til night. 

The crying then stopped and the angels were glad 
As they watched what had happened below, 
For the moths, with a beautiful, selfless act 
Had made the world's first rainbow. 

That is the reason the moths are grey, 
While the butterflies still have their hues. 
The moths gave up most of their color that day,
But the butterflies refused.

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

A Human Hand

What about the human hand
Is hard for you to get?
It’s where all human art began,
That’s something you can bet.
In caves upon a smooth rock wall
With painted palms, we drew;
This human soul lives in us all,
And this all artists knew.
This artificial  they’ve made
Can never understand;
All the AI’s would I trade
For a well-drawn human hand.

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

Almost to the Stars

Long, long ago
in the dense 
warm
rainforest
where our ancestors
swung from treetops
in the canopy,

someone fell -
a slipped grip,
a jammed finger
or caught tail -
down, down
down

they must have caught hold
of a branch
or a vine,
or the hand
of another
of their species,
a friend in a time of need

because two hundred thousand
years later
and all seven billion
of us
have had that dream - 
falling, falling
only it is not a dream,
but an ancestral memory

and maybe our ancestors knew
that someday
in some other land
their descendants - 
Us!! - 
would build another forest,
one whose canopy reached
much higher 
than those trees,
almost to the stars

Details | Daniel Bailey Poem

I Am a Puzzle

I am a puzzle
made of pieces.
One for the girl who woke my heart,
one for the girl who broke it,
one for the man who shook it,
one for the man who took it
(when it wasn’t his to take),
one for the man
who put it together again and made it beat.
 
There’s a piece for the Hindu Kush,
and Logar and Wardak
Kandahar and Uruzgan
and one for the thunderstorms in Gardez.
 
One for every friend
whom I’ve outlived
which is to say
so, so, so many.
 
There’s even a piece
made of pieces,
links in the chain of friends
that led me from one to another,
all the crazy people I used to love.
 
There’s a piece for the friend
who hasn’t left my side;
a piece for my Wonder Twin,
one for each brother;
a piece for every mother who loved me
and every father who left me
and every teacher who built me.
 
I have pieces
for people and places,
ideas and things.
A piece for the nights
in drunken paradise,
a piece for eyelash icicles
in the north country cold,
a piece for the Adirondacks
and Boldt Castle
for the summer we played
before the playhouse came crashing down,
a piece for all the top secret hours
in vaults.
 
I have a piece for Alabama,
for Arizona,
for Snowflake and Avalanche,
for inside jokes
and viral videos.
You can borrow my top
and we’ll get some shoes.
 
I have pieces for the Greater Caucasus,
for my Bakuvian balcony
where I’d watch the sun rise
over the Caspian Sea.
I have pieces for Kyiv
and for Stockholm,
one for the Great Wall,
and so many pieces for Japan.
 
Pieces for Joshua Tree, Big Basin,
Dogwood, Crestline,
pieces for all those cross country road trips
east to west or west to east,
there and back again.
 
There are so many cat shaped pieces,
Stubentigers who have loved me,
for every cup of coffee that touched my soul,
pieces for every trail run,
every weight lifted,
every crushed thing – both goals, and hearts.
 
So you see
I am puzzling.
If I know who I am,
I have shown you.
If you have a piece
for the villain I was in your story,
just know
that I’m not misunderstood.
I simply
did not understand myself
back then.