Apology
In the mornings when I look
Earth is overgrown
with exhaustion
with a sad insomnia
An ocean of plastic undulates
as if it were hungry
floating its synthetic island
grimy, oppressive
In the distance the horizon
looks ill, mountains are leaning
gathering weakness,
the seas long for new bodies
Before sunrise the dark sky
spreads out like a burial cloth
turning to black bones
I hope today is not my passing
After all, what have I learned,
what have I become?
What is left for the others
in the wake of my life?
When I’m ready, I’ll give my body
to Earth as an apology
in hope for
a purifying release
If only to float in a hush
above water, trees, land
until everyone is gone, until Earth
is alone without loneliness
-------------------------------------------
Cows Crows Mushrooms
The distressed moon gives off
the soiled illumination
of human trash. Its dust is over
–whelming.
Dirty moonlight depletes my eyes
like polar air
it freezes this dream:
in a field of cows and crows
long, skinny mushrooms
are magical gods
leading to this fable:
a confined messiah
with no magic left,
no sleight of hand,
no way out
If truth be told, eventually
everything splits apart
------------------------------------------------
Sand Dollars
The shore is overgrown with sand dollars
as if crawling
and pulling the sand apart
Sometimes they look at me
like they have faces
Should I love them?
Mostly I feel nothing
toward their pale color
even more, I feel everything
Lowest of all is when
I walk the beach
crushing them beneath my soles
and after the waves come
pulling them out to sea
the starfish will finish them
What remains are
hollow sandy shells
worthless and poor
and I feel nothing
but this wet earth
beneath my bare feet
Somehow it doesn’t matter
wet or dry
it doesn’t matter
and this is enough for me
either way
it is enough falling apart for now
-------------------------------------------------
Book Two: Epilogue
There may be ways to make
something from nothing
but I cannot
tell the difference
At Four AM this small hour
is not the passageway
it doesn’t pull me through
or deliver the spell
to compose the sound
of dawn conjuring itself
from the darkness
that deadens it
If light is the rising truth
then dark is
the kingdom of its ruler
the everlasting residue
If something comes from nothing
there may be hope
If something is nothing
dawn will fail to rise
and we can all huddle together
in our human anxiousness
waiting for the deliverance
of a new universe
-----------------------------------------------------
BIO
Dah’s sixth poetry collection is The Opening (CTU Publishing Group, 2018)
and his poems have been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada,
Singapore, Spain, Australia, Africa, Poland, Philippines and India. Dah lives in Berkeley,
California and is working on the manuscript for his ninth poetry book. He is a Pushcart
Prize nominee and the lead editor of The Lounge, poetry critique group. Dah's seventh
book is forthcoming in July 2018 from Transcendent Zero Press, with his eighth book
forthcoming in November 2018 from Stillpoint Books.
