Dah- Three Poems

 "Queen"

 

The way the bees pull apart the Borage

pack their bags and fly off

I raise my head

and pluck the air with my lips

marvel at their weightlessness

at the way they stain the sky

when they swarm

 

Striking against the sun

their yellow appearance

is a child’s design that floats

from the bottom up

small stars of exquisite bitterness

a wood-fire of stingers

minute eyes of splintered black ice

 

They have invented the secret

the persuading of waterless pollen

into Royal Jelly

while the queen dominates

with her dangerous sex

the pure poison of ecstasy

spilling a violent sweetness

 

"Sardines Mesh and Scars"

 

The freeway shakes with severe

nervousness. Bullets of light

ricochet then strike, like livid eyes,

the sun drops its broiled fruit,

and the cars mesh with one another,

burning the air’s thin garment.

Each face in a window is a dream

that just begins, radiates and dissolves.

The spinning tires run from death,

impatient and burdened.

Dense smears from dark treads

are collected scars on the road’s body.

The metal wheels burn with the furry

of a great applause.

Somebody’s oil is leaking, like black guts

from a belly wound; clashing music

breaks out of open windows,

and everyone is compressed,

as if enormous cans of sardines

in line on a market shelf. 

 

"Lead and Salt"

 

So often I come close

then pull myself together

Still no concern for this wrecked world

all I can do is go back into myself

conjure a hole

and caste these feelings to the bottom

where the light is displaced

dries out

where the dust scatters

like a shy apparition

and leaves the world behind

 

darkness of days

darkness of nights

darkness of lives

darkness of deaths

the unseen void

the obvious severed air

 

There must be lead in my lungs

or a heavy sea that’s all salt

 

I could list more complaints more ailments

but what’s the use

cause my weakness is for life

but not for the wrecked world

yet this weakness draws me closer

closer to death 

 

 

 

Bio:

 

Dah’s poetry has appeared, most recently, in The Sandy River Review, Stone Voices Magazine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Orion headless, River & South Review, The Muse, and Miracle Magazine, and is forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Perfume River Review, Literature Today, Poetry Pacific, Zygote in my Coffee, Red Wolf Journal, Deep Tissue Magazine, Jellyfish Whispers, and Rose Red Review. The author of two collections of poetry from Stillpoint Books, his third collection is due for publication in 2014, also from Stillpoint. Dah lives in Berkeley, California where he is working on the manuscript for his fourth book.