three poems
by DAH
IF GRAVITY PULLED UPWARDS
What if all motion in the world stopped
at the same time? The calm would be like
a new god with a book of tricks
––fear would be the first to die
In this dream, the machines
across earth had broken down
and from around the world
one person could hear
another person laughing: even
insects could be heard crawling.
From the cities industries
odor gave way to a pure
sobering existence. All electricity died.
In this dream I heard: what we need
is a futuristic child, not a deity
but a child
a child with a new language:
I lift your hot dress and your cold body
is an infant star yet to leave its nebula
In this dream I heard: what we need
is touch, sensual touch,
the kind of touch between people
What if writing left a trail of smells
instead of words, and
the sound of wind told stories?
SMOKEY BREATH
I said: love, and the bedlinen
tightened and the pain was
like a shadow hit by light and
your body constricted, as if
a dirty kiss touched your lips
We became crossroads void
of directions, but the bourbon
we chugged made it feel like
flirtation yet, our nakedness
seemed strange to us
Against the night, that unholy
coldness sleep between us,
and a bluesy tenor sax
blowing in from Grant Street
laid its smoky breath on my skin
At three-am there was laughter
outside: i got up, went to the street
to see if i could laugh too, but this
misfortune, of you in there and me
out here, messed with my head
I wrote a song about getting you back,
but i wrote it off-key so it
couldn’t be sung properly, not a word of it,
and its meaning vanished
like a conversation out of earshot.
THE OBSTACLE
Black roses are her interest.
The darker, the more
passionate she becomes.
That night, she wore a gown made
from black rose petals. And curious
eyes focused
in the direction of her eyes.
But no one noticed that she was
coughing up
maybe blood, maybe death
maybe old lovers.
And, still, they wanted to kiss
her mouth––and her tongue
was a venomous treasure
––she plays on your fear.
Many lovers often dream of her
sensational body
as if it were a marvel
hypnotic, perfumed, and spiked
with thorny lips, in the night
and the daytime.
She doubts the existence of love.
Love, she says, is the cruel master
of destruction.
Love, she says, is a Poet’s fantasy,
achieved only by words
in a love poem.
Always the oblique lover,
she is the obstacle
that keeps one from true love:
she is a bedroom’s broken window
where cold passes through.
She is the chill under your skin.
Photo of DAH
BIO: DAH is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Of The WEB nominee. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also spends time in Los Angeles, Montreal and Berlin––being there in 1989, when The Wall came down. One of his most spellbinding moments was meeting the writer William Burroughs, in San Francisco in 1981. DAH is the author of twelve published poetry collections from eight different small presses. He is working on poetry book number thirteen. Instagram: @dahlusion.