The Many Moods Of Barbwire by DAH

There’s avant-garde in every word / every
terminal illness, wilting, dying / in sleep:
a photograph fades white. Those empty
eyes filled with air / a measured dose of
doubt between hopes. Circling the drain
where the hole keeps pulling / filled with
possibilities: the oldest dark, a trail cutting
through / like geodes sliced for their dazz
-ling inner beauty.

Abducted is a story told as quickly as lies
/ suicide: a lonely cancer eating the living
to death. The avant-garde in birdsongs, in
one’s last breath / in the cursive of tongues
in the serpent’s pitched-fork, like any sad
evil holding to its conviction. All distances
/ if not reached / are myths. Holding your
breath is not suicide / even when the light-
shapes arrive.

There are hands searching, like weak bones
in mass graves / to find or to not find the
end of breaking down. Rumors are games
played / like the beginning and ending of
a long maze: is it the entrance or the exit /
pleasure or pain / a shortness of breath or
the start of life. The avant-garde: a womb,
like the many moods of barbwire / a refuge
for the straight who are bent.

DAH is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best Of The Net nominee, and the lead

editor for the poetry critique group, The Lounge. The author of nine books of

poetry, DAH lives in Berkeley, California, and has been teaching yoga to children

in public and private schools since 2005. He is working on his tenth poetry book,

which is due for release in September 2020, from Clare Songbirds Press.   

visit: www.dahlusion.wordpress.com