BY: Daniel Edward Moore
My apologies to the greatest harm
for the boy in me closing his eyes
to a story line of mayhem & meth
in Dante’s circle of flames.
Forgiveness is nothing if not always
late to a party thrown by grief.
Cerebral assent brings no relief
when it all boils down to a lighter & pipe
singing murder ballads at dawn,
the sun consoling your retina with hope
that blinking means you’re alive.
Perhaps, something precious can stop
this bullet train to zero, like acres
of jaundiced sunflower smiles
lining the bone crushing tracks of life
with everything tender & decent
& I mean everything decent.
So pray if you will, that the shadow I see
is only with a stranger’s eyes setting behind
the blue of my own, a sky just for me.
Moore lives on Whidbey Island in Washington State. His poems can be found in Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, Western Humanities Review, and others.
His poems will appear in West Trade Review, Duende Literary Journal, The Inflectionist Review, Isthmus Review, Glass Mountain Magazine, Columbia College Literary Review, Yemassee Review, Cumberland River Review, The Meadow, Bluestem Magazine, and Conclave.
His book of poetry, Confessions of a Pentecostal Buddhist, and an anthology in which he’s featured, This New Breed: Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians Anthology, can be found on Amazon.
Visit Daniel at DanielEdwardMoore.com.