Poetry by Daniel Edward Moore

​Stay


for the apneic embrace, the moment            
you get all hyped up, blue-lipped & brave
& witness the act of not leaving.              
 
Spare your eyes a sorrowful fall         
over my shoulder’s flannel cliff
& down your silky bra.
 
Make the unnatural natural.
Do what it takes to be still as a grave
committed to holding you down.
 
It’s the dirt we have on each other,
the red silhouettes of Georgia clay
ghosting themselves in the wind-chimes.
 
The body has done a fabulous thing
chaining our spirits to loss. What better
reason to squeeze and squirm, as if
 
there was someplace safe to go.
Those dangerous times were bone
breaking blues, a hairline gospel
 
from the fault line of heaven. Remain
on the coast, surfing breath with me.
Drowning is nothing but the last cocktail.



​
​The Past
 
 
Others were involved. It remains unclear how much they knew about their participation.
Only a few stood out. Mainly the taller ego driven by beautiful inches above the waist
and the ugly ones below. I remember playing charades. I remember passing out
at the point the future thought it was me. Someone said he cared enough to ask me for my number. Someone said he kissed a tiger making love to a hunter’s gun after the trigger
failed to do its one and only job. Unemployment was a consequence of no application
besides the one for a bouncer on call in hell. There was turmoil on the tundra. Jungle fever
was the only source of light we had for months. Amyl Nitrate took the place of father’s
Old Spice skin. Others became less involved. Blood pressure soared on the dance room floor
like climbers drunk on Everest. Snow became our weather choice for noses freezing in August. Columbian men wore suits of money bought with desperation. We were 20 going on 90 with
no steering wheel or brakes, plastic men on birthday cakes protecting the sugar from burning. Cavity’s lingered in holes created by the tooth fairy’s promise of cash. Others were no longer involved. What the mouth surrendered, the mind accepted, silence ate the calendar whole
like 31 days of cancer cells rolling the dice to win and lose and train the hand all over again to throw the world away.




​Play the Alarm


According to the minute          just before now
the one     where the wind    and the grocery cart
sang to me       through a cement wall      
thicker than the heart        of a homeless man         

you know the one   where you’re choking    the phone   
acting as if       you’re a bullet away     from being
a eulogy      nobody wrote     acting as if      only
three numbers matter    to you   and Osama Bin Laden    

whose gone    whose memory boils      the blood
in your hands       whose fear winds tight 
the cortisol clock     and you’re     one call away
from a red flashing light      arriving to tell you   

its a chain link gate      banging your brain     
on the dumpster’s     dark door   singing to you    
through a cement wall      a song    about the minute  
just after this    the one where you     play the alarm.

​

Bio: Daniel Edward Moore’s poems have been published in journals such as: The Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, New South, The American Journal of Poetry and others. His poems are currently at Mandala, Lullwater Review, december Magazine, Natural Bridge Literary Journal, Scalawag Magazine, Tule Review, Hot Metal Bridge, Fire Poetry Journal, West Texas literary Review and RAW Journal of Arts. 

His book “Confessions of a Pentecostal Buddhist” can be found on Amazon. He lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. Visit Daniel at danieledwardmoore.com/

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