The Poetry Of.
Karen Corcoran......................................... Dabkowski............................................
Lonely Hearts
Everywhere
up and down the streets, this is how
lonely walks
the shuffling gait, the shoes not quite leaving
the pavement. Eyes
cast down. The streetlight
almost
an intrusion
in the glowing
butter of want.
The pockets
empty,
hearts full. There is a sound of a thing
scraping
against
the ground.
Eye
sockets
hollow
of their boarders. The eyes go
first.
There are
no
hands.
Touch
is
for
the others -
address
unknown. It is a boxed
walk: beggars
go round
the back, their sacks lift in the wind
and make
a dry
sound.
Nearly soft.
They stare at
the
moat.
The moon
is bloated
with hungar
and never croons. Their songs lost
in the
willows
where bunnies are dead for lack
of petting. The sun sets
briny
yellow,
never red.
It sours the sky.
Prayer For The Dead
Hound's
tooth, horn
and baying dog
in moonlight, fang lit
like a sliver of silver, rivering through
the dried leaf map of history, hunting
for ghosts.
The night light just enough
as seen
through
the fracture of limbs in a troubled sky,
the dead-rowed beds, this quiet interlude
before
another horn wakes
them, risen like sun
of a wondering
mourning, someday friends-
you who sleep
on hills,
in hole's
dirt keeping, yet will once more
walk
on legs, or waft on wings of joyous expectation
for we
believe, we walkers here
who talk to you
can see
the future.
Youth's Earnestness
In youth
a young man's lips split
against teeth
trying
to kiss
a girl
in the midst of
raucous passion, impatient to be eaten up by love
and as we age, we learn to kiss
in a
way
that tells the other person how their
day was, what's
heavy
on the
soul, how the bells
never stop
tolling on the hill, be
it from death, or rung in joyous
delirium,
there are bells, and there
were bells today
at the door, your careful
bending into the thing, your eyes
closed
for
a moment, drifting back
to the
black
haired, black-eyed boy
I knew, the friend who sees me through the blue
seasons, lips
pressed
to my own,
one breath, one
death
I fear
is all it will take
to claim
us both.
Simply White
Blanketing
everything, the snow
falls
like forgiveness
on a downcast
world.
The silence is
white
soft. The ears are kissed by cold
and the moments
slow.
I have
a home for snow
in this
golden heart, which is the
child's
that I was born with, the heart of no
