Say This In A Whisper

selected poems

Dah

Copyright © 2017 by Red Wolf Editions.

Cover artwork: Paul Gauguin, Blue Trees (1888)

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without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles

and reviews giving due credit to the author.

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for

Amy Tashjian

when you rose to leave your skirt

made the sound of a bird caught in my hands

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Contents

Oceans Of Rain 4 They Could Be Crows 5 Water 6 A Missing Story 7 Pictures Of You 8 How To Love A Lover 10 Summer, Ocean 11 Pulsar 12 Feathers 14 Underwater, Still Breathing 15 Another Picture Of You 16 Chair 18 Horsefly Pigeon Coffins 19 Storm Candle Thread 20 Sadder Than Anything 21 Fear Future Plans 22 Sunder 23 Detachment 24 Whippoorwill, Loon 26

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Muggy, Stifling 27 No One Will Believe This 28 Say This In A Whisper 30 Camera Obscura 31 Half-Buried By Change 32 Acknowledgements 33 About The Author 35

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Oceans Of Rain

A poet is one who wants to stop writing but cannot Don’t ask me what this means because there’s no answer to this foolishness

Sky is pissing down oceans of rain something out of this world still, I deny the existence of Heaven and Hell I don’t like it either and I can’t change

In youth, I had questions as important as life go unanswered by the unwilling voice of an ecclesiastic conjuring idols from scriptural crystal-gazing

Now, I’ve seasoned to this gray winter an old inmate waiting for light to reap darkness waiting for darkness to bear down

Sky is pissing heavier like wet dreams from the past and if a cute nun slipped a nipple in my mouth I might be coaxed into believing

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They Could Be Crows It’s when the voices start and divide against one another with outbursts of anger returning, like hunters dragging a dead boar pretending to be heroes the boar staining the dry earth red with its spirit leaking from its heart You ask: ‘How many voices will it take before I’m defeated before evil is The Enlightenment?’ It’s almost Autumn this early chill jingles like rappers beating words into clever rhymes Unraveled threads of rain loom in the distance voices muttering in despair I answer: ‘Maybe it’s crows in the trees, chattering, chattering I clap my hands the trees clear the voices flying off

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Water She believes she is born of water a deep voice full of current an extract of sand and salt A ripple of seagulls in the wind white deflections perfectly timed untouchable mist in her hands When you hold me, she says I feel a loon’s wild eternity a beating of thunderous wings driftwood pulled under by the strength of waves Hold me, she says, until I no longer wash to shore until our bodies become the depth I am here, I answer, just above you a radiant lotus a gentle ebb and flow

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A Missing Story Desert junkyard cars, roughed up. Gutted engines. Each rust spot, a missing story. Dust blows its dry breath. There are memories, like knotted threads, of things I refuse to call back. I reach for hope, an afterlife, a pain that feels alive. An on the move hawk, low flying, offering shadow, chooses whose life to siphon: reptile, rodent a flush of black birds. The wind is not enough to cool this blistering. Like a dead wire cut and dropped, I’m drowsy. The heat moves in. I daydream yellow eyes of predator. Fearless explosion of speed. A snake jerked into the sky. Partly wounded, grief is the sun’s razor-cuts across my skin. A staggering memory: you were the feathers plucked from my mouth.

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Pictures Of You Beneath this poem are stretch marks of imagination Some call them fantasies because metaphors can be misleading like watching sci-fi or sappy spiritual movies telling us we’re doing it wrong that the hollowness we ignore is a point of denial like blaming others for our emptiness for not speaking out the way that self-help book spoke about our trivial thoughts holding us prisoners in our procrastinations So we drink wine each night to reach that neon glow in the dark of a cloistered room glowing magenta as if pastel’d by a famous artist bringing us back to life but it’s just another distraction making us believe we’re alive like when The Cure sings Pictures Of You and our hearts fracture like romantics reading love prose until the glow fizzles out I wanted to write something positive something supportive

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but what fucking good would I be if I lied to you

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How To Love A Lover When at dawn a gauzy breeze opens your gown my fingers will circle your nipples their wide-eyed stiffness glowing breathtakingly brown as sunbeams draw your luster to my eyes and my fingers trail a stream of perspiration running to your belly above a forest of honey dripping like skies of sweltering mornings where a rose opens to the light of my mouth making you bloom

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Summer, Ocean When the quake thundered it was you beneath me breaking apart against the sweat of skin the raw sea flushed from your body the in and out tides It was you who broke like waves bringing me to the liquid to the scent to the leather hardness of my charge You, the matador drinking the bull’s blood Me, the bull goring you into ecstasy until we lay finished off our bodies trembling smelling of ocean summers

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Pulsar ‘We can only be as close as we can touch until the Eye stares, until the Eye finds us, again’ I look through the grille of bare trees through the mineshafts of shadows then you say: ‘The Eye finds its way when the sun sets its mouth to earth’ I am motionless like a broken shell You continue: ‘I believe that we are at the beginning and in this deadly universe we are nothing sacred nothing more than matter caught in a surge of light Then you whisper: ‘You can make me happy but it won’t change the way I feel’ I finish another night without tears or repentance without promises or sleep watching stars traveling south your black hair bobbing and bending like the weight of crows on thin branches

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your twin nipples glowing, expanding pulsing, like dark radiation, the morning-milk of kisses flooding my mouth

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Feathers We kissed before dark beneath sparse light along the forest-green river away from the fools The sky’s black south blended your skin and you naked as clouds broke in the middle of my touch Night birds flew and you such radiance in the moon’s pale spectrum willowy shadowy river musk and your feathers spreading became the weightless sound of our whispering

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Underwater, Still Breathing There’s an underground current beneath this empty room red drops hitting the oak floor a damp odor A stretch of breeze saturates the morphing darkness There’s something simple being whispered something vague, sadly beautiful We listen to a string of flies above our lovemaking Bodies of reeds arching with the current I lift you to my lips the way a wine glass lifts to a mouth’s deep warmth Your breathing rises A chilled rain breaks we float to the bottom wanting to outlive death underwater still breathing Your sex in my mouth keeps us alive When I resurface the empty room is myself A tipped over wine glass bleeds across the floor

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Another Picture Of You Eternity, the line between sea and sky, waves gripping the air a fog bank tortured by light To know that somewhere the wind blows for you as it does for me I must remember this A need to be happy trails a lack of discontent like hearts hammered to pulp My hope for us to be closer is imperfect an eternal lifetime of digging through photos of you The mistakes we’d made were nothing but shame itself habits of nervousness tarnished hours You were who you were already that first night frustrated, irritated, eternally angry Still, we danced to Romeo Void eyes locked in the din of a club, singing I might like you better if we slept together the blissful flavor of our kisses only because we couldn’t find the breath to say No

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Eternity is a strange fracture always breaking before one reaches the line the mood variations, another farewell

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Chair Sunlight swells into buildings rolls over my feet gets trapped under my soles At this moment there is nothing more to say When you rose to leave your skirt made the sound of a bird caught in my hands In the distance your silhouette dark, then gray, then birds landing on a statue make the sound of your skirt leaving Overhead, a low jet noise I say something but cannot hear myself and across the table your chair, the emptiness

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Horsefly Pigeon Coffins Late spring. Early morning. Horseflies in my dream, dissonant church bells, legless pigeons I wake to the light’s sharp blade a breeze stretches its wrap Dawn is brief like a banner slowly raised then abruptly dropped Rising from bed I slump, a prisoner waiting for a beating The chilled air, a sword stuck in my skin Through the blinds a snap of sun my eyes roll back I stand barefoot and become the sum of a legless pigeon a horsefly’s buzz dissonant bells I think of my dream how it called me closer to its core, a caravan of pine coffins lined the streets, the future’s template Suddenly, church bells, a fly dead on the sill, a mournful pigeon’s coo.

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Storm Candle Thread This lusty storm is uncomplicated cares for nothing but itself Black-hearted wind clustering in bare trees their skeletal wings rattling lights flicker

die flicker

die

In this dark house a white candle’s yellow star and my voice are tucked beneath silence Through the night the storm spasms vigorously I remain silent feeling fragile as thread

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Sadder Than Anything An umbrella moves through the rain and between each drop emptiness Far from the sun morning’s injured light trips over the rooftops into the wind’s mouth passes over my eyes I hear footsteps alone on the sidewalk alone in the rain only to stop and wait for a dream or a green light Time passes even darker From the sidelines a burly boom of far-off thunder Raindrops tangle in my hair raindrops sadder than anything Neruda has written

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Fear Future Plans Together we were hot infections spreading misery We thought you were pregnant A poet, a dancer, craving sex as if always in a dream We pulled each other’s hair thinking we never had enough There was no fear, no future The sun could’ve been out the moon could’ve been and the sheets, always wet There were no plans A poet, a dancer full of sex then we thought, pregnant? I didn’t mean to be restless Spring rain fell like skin from a river I couldn’t tell if you were crying which, made me heartless?

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Sunder

I cannot find myself in this dream white as December barren, trackless ghostly vapor

With preciseness I placed your address in my wallet my guide to seeing you again Cannot find that either In a flurry I ruminate there’s a bleak meadow where the wind drives the snow Something is missing Painfully, you walk across the opening your wet dark hair freezes then turns gray It was long ago your breasts were small as eggs Strange, how they grew wings then flew to another’s nest

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Detachment A spool of light: the fog opens like a sinkhole, lifts and heaves itself on a shelf of clear sky. Dissolves. What’s left are memories seared by the sun, olive skin, milk-blood, soft tendrils. I watched your radiant face bloom into a lover’s indulgence. Your eyes, a vine of dark grapes. I may be avoiding, or hiding from, how some memories mangle the heart: a mane of sable, river-musk, moonlight rubbed with fertile kisses. Our mouths were wolves intoxicated with prey. Have I mentioned that over time I’ve looked for you? My desire, as lonesome as old steel. Do you remember that you covered your mouth when I first wanted to kiss you? A perfect blush of star-fruit trembled between us and gathered momentum, like prisms gather light, nerves overheated, a mass of pulsations.

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So why does love blur till nothing is left? — the heart’s inlet, a wet sponge bloated with emptiness.

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Whippoorwill, Loon How everything comes how everything dreams: mortality knows the vultures, the marrow inside these words. I came to you, mouth open, gleaming. Your decisive eyes gathered my emotions. I remember the scheming inside your words, your hands loosening me. I heard promises. Pretty lies. What become of us? Part of me the flavor on your lips moisture, essence. When we touched, whippoorwill, loon.

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Muggy, Stifling August arrived with its flaming grill roasting berries in the bush’s hearth. Children, summer’s keepers of insects and bubbles. There’s a child somewhere an image of light Daydreams, watery pastels, enhancing the mind, flavor of orange sun, simmering lemon moon. Nothing resembles lovers more than birds taking the sky, clouds of bodies in moments of cyclones. Memory, limping fingers prodding desiccated lust. You opened your hands only to drop me.

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No One Will Believe This You hold thoughts of other worlds of the dead before they die eyes made for moonless nights To touch the simplest pulse of each one no clouds in late-night troposphere a fatherless kingdom You say: ‘I can see myself in your mind leaflets of happiness, unhappiness flecks of emotions’ I nod my head in agreement only to realize that I sleep too much my dreams, discolored You continue: ‘Sleep is the same as ever, the groggy survivors spent on morning dew, not even the lies are true when looking in scratched mirrors because they’re always the same, the disfigured ruins of a lifetime’ My mind is held together with a splint to stop it from cracking to stop it from forgetting Then you say: ‘A faraway sky is never farewell, never more than a floating river or sluggish swamps on rainy days’

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Then what is it that I can’t remember, what is this distance between you and I? Streaks of yellow light varnish my eyes

I reach for you like a swimmer reaching for air only for you to say: ‘There are never goodbyes within the bleak forecast of having to hear this in a dream: Can you see us dying away?’

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Say This In A Whisper Like an anxious bird I come again to those days, the pale winter’s billowing winds In this cold place, I ache for the mingling of our lips in this empty place the only place left Let me conjure you naked o beautiful demon to wet my thirst o trembling flame o rapture’s gift lover, stimulus you gave yourself to me our bodies, goblets filling, again, again spilling over a bloom, a fragrance, petals falling sweltering heat rising, swimming mouth to body luscious inlets O fragrant demon, paramour nothing is left but this aching current this drowning in my sighs

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Camera Obscura Caught in the doorway then sailing low across the room sunlight flashes its tracers I am looking at a photograph of you the one where your eyes absorb the world’s beauty How uneasy this moment this smoldering sadness Near the floor a moth sweeps the air I go back to the image to the second the camera clicked The closed shutter your absence

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Half-Buried By Change How quickly moving another season crosses the sun the months with their transformations I can name the motion of each season the stars boiling over or the moon’s muscles decomposing in morning’s light or a blazing dawn setting fire to trees the length of each flame dipping in the strips of ocean waves that skip across the shore to be swallowed by the sand and sealed, like a crypt The end of summer is an old animal molting, shedding, losing fur like a dog that no longer licks its balls its dry tongue thirsty I’m sucking juice from a plum while the first autumn leaf ripples with the breeze together they make crestfallen music that is sweeter than this fruit sadder than this verse The light is different now almost fragile

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Acknowledgements

My gratitude to the publications where these poems first appeared:

A New Ulster, Ireland “Oceans Of Rain”, “Fear Future Plans” New Mystics Magazine “Water” Streetcake Magazine “Pictures Of You” Junto Magazine “Feathers” Chicago Record Magazine “Underwater, Still Breathing” Red Wolf Journal “Chair”, “Say This In A Whisper”, “Pulsar”, “They Could Be Crows” The Canon’s Mouth, UK “Storm Candle Thread” Recusant, UK “Sadder Than Anything” Napalm and Novocain “Detachment” Metaphor Magazine, Philippines “Camera Obscura” Secrets and Dreams Anthology, Kind Of A Hurricane Press “Horseflies Pigeons Coffins” Spillwords Magazine, Poland “Half-Buried By Change”

NOTE: “Chair” was also published in Creative Talents Unleashed “Pictures Of You” was also published in Indiana Voice Review

I wish to express my gratitude to these members of the poetry critique group, ‘The Lounge’: Heather M. Browne, Stephen Edward Godfrey, Chad Repko,

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Munia Khan, Doug Sandvick, David Emmanuel, Sola Oyefara, Rich Unger, Michael Minassian, and Joshua Yaw Koranteng, whom in countless ways shaped many of these poems with their excellent suggestions and sincere writer’s camaraderie. Thank you.

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About The Author Dah’s fourth poetry collection is The Translator (Transcendent Zero Press, 2015) and his poetry has been published by editors from the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, China, Spain, Australia, Africa, Poland, Philippines and India. He lives in Berkeley, California and is working on the manuscript for his seventh poetry book. Harbinger Asylum Magazine nominated Dah’s poem “Some god” for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. He is the chief editor of ‘The Lounge’, a poetry critique group, and his sixth book is forthcoming in 2018, also from Transcendent Zero Press

email: dahlusion@yahoo.com

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