Believing he did & you will
I asked the ground how it felt
not being clean enough to hold the pierced balloons
of breathless beauty snagged on the teeth of time.
The sadness was pathologically red
seeping up from the latest wound
earth had just sustained. Standing there weeping
like a mountain creek I gloried in dissension,
on what joined me on the long drip down,
a suffering world swimming beside
the pure perverse bodies of names, the skeletal joy
of what was left to flower us into leaf & bark
carved by knives memories made to tame
the storms of sorrow. Perhaps that’s what
fuels your need for such a traumatic escape,
for Act 2 to make the good book burn
in the hands of unbelievers, dignifying all your sins
with a trillion tiny blisters.
Daniel Edward Moore lives in Washington on Whidbey Island with the poet Laura Coe Moore. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Spoon River Poetry Review, Columbia Journal, Cream City Review, Western Humanities Review, Weber Review, West Trade Review, Duende Literary Journal, The Meadow, Bluestem Magazine, Coachella Review, Faultline, Slipstream and The Manhattanville Review. His chapbook "Boys," is forthcoming from Duck Lake Books in February 2020. His first book, Waxing the Dents, was a finalist for the Brick Road Poetry Book Prize and will be released in April 2020. Visit him at danieledwardmoore.com.