Dan
participates in poetry readings throughout Northern California,and has
shared his poetry
with Dead Snakes as well as the Aleola Journal of Poetry, Avocet,
Ardent Poetry Journal, Poetry Pacific and the California Quarterly to
name a few. He's still chasing the Muse.
Alter of Lies
You
offered me an alter of lies
cardinal red
piled to the ceiling
Art Nouveau glam
and seductive
I thought I knew the all of you
and looking back
the part I did not know
is the part
that you keep from yourself
until your love ends
as you have done
with others
Your sin fills the air
like smoke draining from fire
void of
leash
and collar
seeping from the seams
as if under pressure
just at the stitching where thread anchors cloth
where light and dark are defined
I get it
happy endings have no endings
we make them up
in every relationship
the same way we invented religion
when we buried our dead
with polished turquoise
and amber
in our earliest graves
as our
haunting needs assurance
if only for an eternity
that we are not alone
and that existence really matters
The Last Dark Kite
The last kite
absent tether
soared.
Bleeding all of its colors
into the beginning of night.
All those miracles of man and faith
suspended and superficial.
In the beginning
our days built their colors
effortlessly
the white of the sun through curtainless windows
the early evening shadows growing slowly
fat with sleep.
The colors grew.
Our faith sustained us.
Time moved it's easy
hand over us
no demands
no pain.
Then one day
the unthinkable happened.
It was our turn.
Our baby now a man
caught somewhere between worlds
partitioned only by separate addresses of pain.
Colorless pain absent even white and black.
Faith sustained
now suspended.
For every glimpse or
sign of progress
the colors did not return.
I remembered driving at the Mendocino Headlands
with that perfect royal blue whale kite tied to the
Buick's hood ornament.
As we drove
sun in your
golden hair
the kite soared.
It soared effortlessly
searching the sky
fingering
turning pages; hope, potential, humanity,
brilliance, light, grace, optimism, success, love and joy.
Tonight though
with the colors now dark and pageless, all is lost.
The ocean waves still pound the surf
at the Mendocino Headlands.
Hearts beat
minds still count days
fewer in numbers
one dark color at a time.
Everything appears the same
except the licorice sky
absent a kite.
In Motion
The last drop of morning
dew so final.
Spring rivers climb straight up
into the heavy sky
only to return in valley floods.
Clouds part
the dark green leaf
that snares the first moist drop
as night arrives
reflecting a most exquisite
star filled
tiny universe
in motion
if just for a moment.
Our brief temporal world
one
in which we all pass through
already complete
as we contemplate
our next thought.
We struggle to try and make sense
of it all.
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