DREAM

The wind is calling 
your name (I can only sing
one truth into your ears)

I wear myself out,
gratefully,
running on the sand
of my desire for you

Sun
Shaman
Culprit
King

A gigantic dream,
like the wind
An immense thought
dangerous and rare

((of the heart, the passion 
of youth, fleeting and faraway,
a sweet taste on the tongue
for example))

In a dream I watch
the snow, quiet
I watch snow from my window
in the house of truth
in the kingdom of solitude
where lovers are living
forsaken and forgiving

There's no poem that doesn't atone,
this is not an apology.

There comes that night, 
when you are caught 
off guard in your absinth swoon
when the moon whispers to you 
"Follow your shadow"
And so the night goes, 
the one you love is left 
holding your rose
and the morning moves on 
into afternoon when the sun 
lifts its head
makes its arc over your bed; 
then the night slips into your room
once again, and you dream.

There are the voices 
singing down the corridor, 
they know no boundaries
and all attempts 
to win your peace have failed. 
You lift the window up, 
let in traffic sounds instead, 
they roll like salvos 
through your head, and you suppose 
that even if you were alone
you'd crave what you condemn.

You can't connect with angels, 
you stare blankly at the prayers
that lift like bandages off the pages.
You take three deep breaths,
and you blithely lift your head, 
and you stare at the stars 
that aren't really there, 
and you wonder about theology 
and astronomy, and hermeneutics 
and agronomy, prurience, penitence,
Beauty and Truth. 

You laugh at the notion 
of an equation for infinity, 
and giggle at the gargoyles overhead. 
You stumble, you trip, 
you grip the street lamp 
in your dearth of dopamine dread.

Tonight, fear is everywhere, 
faith is everywhere, 
hymns and harmonies, 
Hallelujahs fill every town square. 

You spend your time wishing 
that faith could negate the madness.

((The wind is calling your name, 
in a dream I watch the snow
fragile beyond you can measure for us 
lovers of language and  pleasure. 
I wear myself out fast as I can, 
running on the sand 
of my desire for you))

Let us not forget the snow, 
exquisite in its fragility, 
evidence of the infinite, 
beyond our measure.
 
Tomorrow, breakfast with eggs, 
toast, coffee, the morning Gazette.

There are certain harmonies 
which remind us of those imperceptible
flickers, the slight hints of eternity 
that we glimpse but cannot decipher.
Ignorance, perhaps, 
the limitations we are born with.
And the punishment for sin, 
we adjust to it.

You have nothing to offer the heavens, 
hungry for some crumb of proof
that you have not entered an unholy 
alliance with some infernal brute,
so you offer up your eyes to the skies 
which seduce with their celestial blue.

But you believe, you believe, you believe, 
you tell yourself you do.
And once a year, in a rush this fact comes 
snowing down on you.


Copyright © 2009 Vanessa Daou




SNOW

Hey, let's go
Let's play
In the snow
I'll make an angel
On my way
To hell

Don't berate me
I'm ok with my fate
YOU ARE HERE
So the sign says
A cosmic
Mistake

Living
Dying
Tumbling out of grace
With a smile on your face

Dreaming
Of flying
You're running the race
Round in circles in place

Drowning in sorrow
Take the stone off
To float 
Tomorrow

Hey, let's go
Let's play
In the snow
I'll make an angel
On my way


Copyright © 2009 Vanessa Daou




LOVE AMONG THE SHADOWED THINGS

Love among the shadowed things,
bits of broken glass, a flag
strewn from a window. 
Cracks in the bricks, 
Cracker Jack rings, 
girls with braids and ribbons
hips sway like their mothers
boys with electric surges 
burdened by their fathers' urges

Love among the littered lives
where only the lovers survive
naked in the snow
amid the trenches that we dig 

With my pen, my poison, my weapon
I go into the night. Vaporous glows,
carrion crows, a plastic rose;
the great hovering of everything.
Tense, ready, with my glass shoes 
strapped on tight
wobbling on the cobblestones
from a half forgotten time
down a street I can't identify.

There's the howling of wolves
bedraggled in the moonlight
I feel the pull 
of some oscillating force
I can detect but cannot verify.

A woman down the alleyway
tugs her spandex dress.
A man dressed in black
rolls his cigarette,
offers her a light,
she says "yes",
the rest, she regrets
the rest, she forgets.

((So let's re-write this nightmare.
Into her bones walks the fear
With nowhere to go, it stays there))

When Alice read, "DRINK ME", 
she drank
took the words too literally and shrank.

History tells the story of bells
when, after the ringing, as in a dream,
we comprehend without understanding.

Fear of everything, fear of nothing
fear of losing this illusion.

Come along and walk among us
the polyglots, the octoroons, the misfits,
the ones whose shoes never seem to fit.

We who feel the pulse of time
We who thumb our chancy rides
On highways with no lines.
We who are lost on islands
We who walk in deserts.
We who are dug sticks in the mud
We scratch out our existences on walls,
On bridges, on napkins.
We who seek the truth between our thighs
And leave our canvases unprimed.

((As the memory shimmers the days roll on
Like trains, like clouds, like sirens...))

Take this pen as your weapon.
Write it down and take revenge
against the dying of the Rose.

Lightly, ever so frightly
dark-in-the-nightly
I tip toe like a terrified doe
from my dream and into your
eyes, my light, my sun, 
my moon, my summer swelter in june,
my harpsichord, my unicorn,  
my sword, my sheath, 
my desecrated dove,
bring me to my knees.

Love among the shadowed things
bits of broken glass, a flag
strewn from a window.


Copyright © 2009 Vanessa Daou




INTO THE NIGHT 

Welcome into the night
Step into the night
Late into the night


"Look Into the Night"
I'm deep into the night
Pushing the boat out into the night
Into the starry night
Into the wild night
Buzz: Late Into the Night
Beast: into the night
Headlong into the Night
He drives off into the night
Release into the night
Google "into the night"
IMPORTANT NEWS into the night
Firefighters battling wildfires into the night
Hungarian poetess into the night
At work well into the night
Quietly into the night
Violently into the night 

Now it's dark into the night 
Kyoto Negotiators Work into the night
Smoking into the night
Venice, "into the night"
Montmartre and into the night
Your name into the night
A new star lifting into the night
Slip softly into the night
Journeys into the night
Far into the night
Talk of War into the night
And on into the night...
Naked into the night
Hurrying into the night
Change takes flight into the night

The Monarch flies into the night 
We had fun late into the night
Run into the night
As the afternoon rolled into the night
Back into the night
Lost into the night
Way into the night 
Swallowed into the night
Walk into the night
Deep into the night
Reaching into the night
With you into the night,
Let's go into the night
Into the night of blue
Into the night moon dreams
Staring into the night
Reading into the night
Turning pages into the night
Stories late into the night
So off I go into the night
Into the night a desecrated Dove
Into the night of Lust and Love.


Copyright © 2009 Vanessa Daou