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Dah Dahlusion Poem
Between happiness and sadness
—silence; an angel prays:
I kiss the loneliness of old people,
their temples like handfuls of winter;
their hearts
are used baggage,
waiting;
memories speak to them,
they smile and
tell me stories from their youth
—sadness falls;
silence passes unspoken
—they remember the dead.
I kiss the loneliness from their temples
and sadness lifts from their mouths.
———————————————————————
From my first book: 'In Forbidden Language'
©dah / Stillpoint Books 2010
all rights reserved
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Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2014
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
To those who forgive me
I loathe you
for you are weak
No
your voices are not worthy
you spineless living
dead things
worthless as dumb dogs
If not incarcerated
I would do it again
would squeeze everything
out of you
land
pride
dignity
your life
No do not say you forgive me
you are not gods
You have no power to forgive
you are impotent
After I vanish
I will haunt you to your deaths
and there
I will be waiting
to squeeze the light from your soul
until nothing but darkness
-----------------------------------------------------
from my 6th book-length ms.
"Dictator" was first published in
'The Recusant ' (UK)
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2016
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
My hands are the hands
of a gardener,
fresh with soil, sunlight, and rain,
with the breath of flowers
and kisses of moisture.
I sprinkle seeds over the earth,
like a holy man sprinkles sacred water.
The soil: grateful for my blessing.
The birds: grateful for this small fare.
I chant incantations and listen
for the growth of roots,
for the rustling of sprouts,
pastel green and tender, spiritual
and uplifting.
I rain dance and praise the sky,
hold my hands to the air,
forming a small bowl
for the rain to fill,
to be the stimulus, the birthmother,
the liquid that makes
the garden whole.
I ask the sun for waves
of light, the breeze
for strength and circulation,
the fertilizer for sparkling minerals
that infuse the roots, stems, and fruit
with vitality.
On my knees I dig
with bare hands into the soil:
my hands, like intimate dancers,
lead the busy prolific weeds
to another existence, to their rebirth.
My hands are the hands
of a gardener,
fresh with soil, sunlight, and rain.
——————————————————————
From my fourth book: The Translator
'Transcendent Zero Press', 2015
Search Amazon: "the translator/dah"
This poem was first published in ‘Stone Voices Magazine’
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2014
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
Earth, builder of beauty;
her plumb line: a still point,
precious center, damp
minerals.
What I’m composing are
my words: a swathe of heat,
painted deserts, morning musk,
saguaro green.
Upon my lips, misted whispers:
a fog’s low roots, moist glaze,
dawn’s red vine, dappled light,
cypress, corn silk.
I shake my pen
and from its throat spills
night’s ink sac: salt,
stones, spicy stars.
I shake it more: it empties
the imagery; my feelings;
black sand, spears of pine,
a river’s idle yawn.
Earth pushes us from her womb
where an underground gurgle, like a god
blowing into a straw, creates star bubbles,
first breath, birth cry.
Like birds, we build nests, lay eggs,
feel earth buzz in our bones:
a jug of dreams, seasons, necessities.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
From my fourth book: 'The Translator'
Transcendent Zero Press, 2015
This poem was first published in 'Eunoia Review (China)'
Editor: Ian Chung
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Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2014
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
The spirituality of sound
of a gong
of a loon
the impossible grieving
of morning doves
the cracking of ice
the drone of urban streets
trucks rumbling
over wooden bridges
a cat’s purr
There’s a need to hold sound
to feel its pulsation
to see colors of sound
or to hear the sun mounting
the sky or
the bloodless and wicked
sound of lightning
Ah, the overflowing tapestry
of sounds
with their invisible force
or the unconscious sounds
of the dead
diffused and distant
or the meandering of echoes
the broadcast, the transmission
the longwinded sermons
the cry of a newborn
the utterance, the announcement
a city’s cacophony, the uproar
the dissonant chord
the rhetoric of schizophrenics
or Purple Passages of Deep Purple
psychedelic or progressive sounds
Om, a sound of guidance
the chant, the mantra, the moan
of orgasms, the gasp, the scream
the subtleness of whispers
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from my 6th book-length ms.
©dah / dahlusion 2015 all rights reserved
"Sound" was first published in 'Chicago Record Magazine'
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2016
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
In this valley of earth
the wind
comes with the same gift
the same solitary wind
that carries faith
without speaking
with the same sightless purity
that sees everything
as it is
that causes the same quiver of branches
that have pulled their skins
out of soil and rocks
The wind’s long horn blows
into this valley’s earthen jug
and applies its wisdom
as thin as
this silver hair that holds the heat
to my bones
this wisdom that assembles
and stirs above me watching
and me standing
below
in this valley as cold as heaven
where there has always been
and even now a river’s
unsaid oath
where birds drop feathers
where birds balance the wind
even in sleep
even when nothing moves
even when knowing that
each feather dropped
can fly
alone
each one
gifted with the wind’s wisdom
_____________________________
from my fourth book 'The Translator'
(Transcendent Zero Press, 2015)
"Solo Flight" was first published in 'Jellyfish Whispers'
Amazon books search: "the translator/dah"
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2016
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
Dawn, asleep at this hour
Chilled air is a gift
in the grip of summer
Landscape’s fresh silence
Moon, half blind
The traveling breeze
is a caravan
‘Come, naked and shivering,
says Lake,
dig through the mud for that
which is Truth, where the moon
inters her light, where bullfrogs
bark in circles’
The water
Lover, formless womb
ovulated by sunrise
I set the canoe in motion
Orange dragonflies, murmuring duckbills
fist-sized tadpoles, radiant finch
gesticulate above and beneath surface
Green reeds are light tendrils
Sky’s blue inks a mallard’s back
A raven’s croak is more alive
than most people
Mist drops while rising
The canoe glides
water laps, gasps
The poised presence of an osprey
circling
Everything silences, stills
except for the canoe
over the Lake’s belly
The sun, pinned to the tip
of a redwood
reflects like an eye in chrome
I lie back and float,
a water blossom’s thirst
----------------------------------------
From my sixth book-length ms.
©dah / dahlusion 2014 / 2015
all rights reserved
“The Lake” was first published in
‘Black Market Re-View' (U.K.)
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2016
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
There is a spy within me
tapped into suspicions
one eye zeroed in
round the clock
There is a ward
of smuggled wounds
convalescing in my notebooks
smudged so badly
that only I can decipher
their blood
I wake early
before family commotion starts
before the endless
mandible chatter
rips apart the silence
because my mind is groggy
standing before sunrise
because birds flutter
in such a manner
that my center loses grounding
My eyes are sky
pulled away from my brain
morning fog stuffs my head
I am an old basement
damp and dripping
Maybe a yard sale is in order
to rid myself these shabby feelings
these ragged doubts
--------------------------------------------------
from my 6th book-length manuscript
©dah / dahlusion 2016 all rights reserved
"Yard Sale" was first published in
'Chicago Record Magazine'
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2016
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
On the sidewalk standing in the rain
the old man is a wounded dove.
Longish white hair: wet feathers
grounded in a storm. The rain is heavy
and repeats itself, like buckets of water
thrown out of windows.
The old man stands there
holding a memory or a wish.
Under the streetlight
his wet hair glistens like tinfoil.
The downpour is a creature
that’s eating him up.
Darkness projects
from a deserted apartment building.
The ground floor windows and doors
are boarded, nailed shut.
It appears dead, like an old disease,
or stripped, like a despoiled tomb.
Its bricks cracked and crumbled,
wooden casings dry rotted and helpless.
Painted in bold red
across the boarded front entrance,
a graffiti-message: Girls Rule.
Looking back at the old man,
he stands the way a king stands alone
when doubting himself.
Dark crawls around him. The old man stares
at the building. He is motionless,
in memory. Rain gallops over him.
Inside the warmth of a café,
my steaming coffee. Outside, the streets
are laundered clean of everyone
except for the old man who stares
at the apartment building. Time has grown
over his face and body, has grown
over the broken down building.
Now the rain is as heavy as mucus
and with his tiny body
the old man shuffles away into the dark
and gradually disappears
like a casket being covered with earth.
_________________________________
from my sixth book-length manuscript
©dah / dahlusion 2014 / 2015
all rights reserved
"In Streetlight, His Wet Hair" was first published in
'Switch (the difference) Anthology'
from 'Kind Of A Hurricane Press'
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2016
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Dah Dahlusion Poem
The tan ropes are rattlesnakes
that tie and untie themselves,
clumps of spines untangled
from earth, loops and S’s
curling, like damaged ribs.
My body is a tight cage that
the snakes move away from.
My hands: closed canyons,
manzanita, sage leaves, moon-dew
marked by footprints.
I watch you pick one up, feeling
distress from its rattle cut into
my nerves. Heat from its mouth
hisses, like splintered glass. You
hand it to me,
it crawls through my fingers:
skinny road-lines on a map
charting the back fields that
lead to the foothills. Red dust
flames in the air. Dry rain falls.
A voice says: “It’s a conspiracy.
This is how they do it: They shed
their skin to be unrecognized
in the future. Their shed skins
are thoughts with blank memories.”
The voice continues: “Be cautious
of the young ones. They’ll charm you
with their bodily curves, then secretly
overthrow you, defame you, and
trouble your future.”
I stand here in the red foothills and
can see that the snakes have no empathy.
Like a shot, something burns my ears and
burns my hand: a hot pistol. Suddenly,
dawn sun-paints my bedroom.
I lie silently still listening to my mind’s
unfinished opinions. The insides of my thighs,
fiery, like a venomous bite, the sheets cast off,
like shed skin, and my thoughts flame and burn,
like morning’s dry mouth.
_______________________________________
This poem is from my fourth book 'The Translator'
from 'transcendent Zero Press' 2015
it was first published in the magazine, 'Orion headless'
Editor: Sara Fitzpatrick Comito
Amazon search: "the translator/dah"
Copyright © Dah Dahlusion | Year Posted 2014
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