Poetry by David P. Kozinski

       Jim Choate CC




Fear – Dos & Don’ts

It’s not the step down the last back tread
into the long walk across blizzard coated land,
field after undifferentiated field,
indifferent miles of broken yellow line 
and telephone wires above the road, 
of pasture, stream and steppe all blinding white
                                         and 
it’s not sitting in the bullet-proof dock 
in a celestial courtroom where bewigged justices
with seraph wings and gargoyle grimaces
pore over my book of days, bore in 
on every pedestrian sin, screwing into place
countenances of dismay for what they term my soul.
                                         No,
these are worth fearing the way 
horror film flesh-eaters are feared,
like riddling faeries who snatch children, 
or inflatable hobgoblins and wisecracking trolls
                                          and so
not at all, but still worth a ticket 
for the involuntary kick,
the plummet of the rollercoaster, 
the funhouse chainsaw maniac, his mascara running. 

Need I worry what the world will do without me? –
the bed making and shower scouring of its humdrum household. 
Need I hover over the latent rage of those not quite smarter 
than the average bear (and bears are pretty smart)
with their clown-ugly megaphones 
and every kind of rifle ever made?  
                                          I can’t.
It’s the prolonged bedsore stay,
unable to speak or hold a pen without drooling on it;
it’s the pain wracked ribcage and too much or too little 
medication; the faces of those who feel compelled
to watch all night. It’s what comes before
my foot scrapes that last step. 





You’ll Know It When It Hits

She showed me her twin knives 
named Love and Hurt
standing point-down in the grain 
of the mantel – birch white 
and smelling of cypress,
swollen with humidity.
They were fraternal, those two, 
and stood opposed 
and side by flat, wide side,
they formed a parallel.

These had been days of warm rain 
and nights drowsy by flaming-log light, 
but now under the sun’s eye
the peace had been edged out.
Heat hit full in the face 
and there was nothing to do
but wade through it 
like the overflow of a muddy river,
up past its banks, spreading every drop
in one weekend’s bender.

If the thought of wilderness makes your face 
crack open, think of those twins and how far 
from our nature we have fenced ourselves. 
She didn’t ask me to walk her out 
in the dewy morning like in a song 
and I didn’t volunteer. Instead we twist  
beyond the dunes where the only creatures 
are ageless and look like helmets,
armies rising from the underworld
to find a land scraped clean. 

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David P. Kozinski’s books include I Hear It the Way I Want It to Be (a finalist for the Hillary Gravendyke Prize) and Tripping Over Memorial Day (both Kelsay Books). He is Poet in Residence at Rockwood Museum in Wilmington, DE, has received a Delaware Division of the Arts fellowship, and was Expressive Path’s Mentor of the Year. Kozinski is Art Editor of Schuylkill Valley Journal. He won the Dogfish Head Poetry Prize in 2009.