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Daniel W. Rasmus - Poetry Center " A poet must never make a statement simply because it sounds poetically exciting; he must also believe it to be true." - W. H. Auden

Daniel W. Rasmus

Daniel Rasmus


Last Updated: 3/14/2009

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Status: Married
Sign: Scorpio

City: SAMMAMISH
State: WASHINGTON
Country: US
Signup Date: 8/22/2006

Blog Archive
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Sunday, April 05, 2009 

Current mood:  understimulated
Category: Writing and Poetry

 

One love....

Was she just a dream that went south?....

Did I ask too much in too short a time?....

I have only one life to do what I should....

And I thought you were good for me.....

.. ..

Guitars unsettle souls....

stars vibrate through keyholes....

.. ..

You illuminated the words I could not find....

Your tears fell on my skin like pain....

.. ..

At the edge of hearing a harp....

Cries at the edge of hearing....

A harp cries....

.. ..

It all started with on kiss on the neck....

With a little laughter....

With a little bit of rain ....

                                                                        A saxophone wails like a lost dog....

Hiding in a tunnel....

.. ..

.. ..

I try to imagine a world without you....

I wander through my head....

for the complicated web that trapped me....

I couldn’t save us from time....

so I tuned you from my mind....

Hands slowly rub the edge of a bongo....

Tap lightly, increasing slightly....

Until the rain falls off a clay roof....

In torrents of pain....

Sand flows through an hour glass like dread....

I unravel this latest mistake ....

And count the curls of thread on the floor....

This was a war I never wanted....

Am I addicted to that door ....

A flute breathes uneasily ....

In the sleazy light of morning....

When campaigns forget their purpose....

And follow the flute breathing....

Uneasily in the fog....

.. ..

You are unusually hard to hold on to you know....

I won’t write another love song....

not for all the wrong reasons....

Not for any reason at all....

I won’t commit treason again....

I won’t cultivate love in the wrong season....

.. ..

A solo piano....

A ballad baked between dirty drums and....

Ironic orchestration....

.. ..

We have no chance in this....

So you say....

Why do I continue to resist....

’cause I don’t want to love you anymore....

But I still get confused by thoughts of you....

and I stand at the bar hoping your will rescue me....

If I only remembered what we were fighting for....

I would stop and promise not to hurt you anymore....

.. ..

An anonymous thumb slides up the G string....

And growls a deep and mournful growl....

.. ..

You were not a token for others to see....

I just wanted you to hold me....

I wanted to be gripped by the dream of you....

I wanted to be lost in your darkness....

In all the worlds we created....

I can’t forget you....

I watched as fear stole you from my bed....

And now my heartbeats seem overdue ....

How can I let you go....

How can I let you go....

.. ..

.. ..

A bitch’n base line....

Bosses the lyrics from a cliché....

boisterously battering the down beats....

.. ..

.. ..

I know I’ve lost you....

that you’re already gone....

Can you find a way back?....

Is there still a little memory of me in you?....

I wake up at night to thoughts of your smile....

It sure has been awhile....

Have too many summers passed....

For any innocence to last?....

Did you listen to your heart?....

Do you still cry from the trip that fell apart?....

Why didn’t you ever say goodbye?      ....

.. ..

Guide guitars....

Guide spirits....

Gone or going going....

Gone....

.. ..

.. ..

.. ..

I would have heard it if you said it....

such a simple word to say....

I still pray that I’ll hear....

Some day along the way....

That it will float to me on a southern wind....

And tell me where you have been....

.. ..

There is too much noise to make out any note....

A cacophony of character clad in brass and synth....

Guitar and....

Gun....

A loud bang from the timpani ....

Suddenly....

As if the trumpets didn’t deserve any more notes....

.. ..

I don’t know where I’m going....

And I certainly don’t know why....

But I still wonder why you didn’t say goodbye.....

.. ..

A violin weeps in the wings....

Wondering why the orchestra has not joined it....

.. ..

I will not surrender....

It seems I’m still in love with you....

Isn’t that touching if it’s true?....

I’m still blue, but I was one of the chosen few....

Who almost loved you.....

.. ..

Brushes....

Rake over a cymbal....

three times....

The brushes rake over a cymbal....

.. ..

.. ..

.. ..

I’m suddenly part of your past....

A part that didn’t last....

It certainly wasn’t from a lack of trying....

From any investment in apathy....

If you could have heard me crying....

You would know it wasn’t just about me.....

.. ..

A harpsichord....

Ancient and redolent....

Lays down a new dimension in daunting detail....

.. ..

These are the things I would rearrange:....

I would bring our lives more near....

I would make my love more dear....

I would find new ways to surprise you....

I would resolve every issue....

With a kiss, and I wouldn’t be the one to disengage....

.. ..

Improvisation it seems....

From a clarinet....

Clearly unleashed from its constraints....

.. ..

I wouldn’t disregard....

or discard....

I wish we had gone into overtime....

because you’re on my mind....

because you’ve made me lose mind....

A Chinese gong....

Goes gregarious....

.. ..

I am afraid because of you ....

I feel like I disobeyed....

That love’s a masquerade.....

Was your sweet smile always fake?....

Did you always intend heart break?....

.. ..

Heartbeats drum....

With fits and starts....

.. ..

I want to walk in the world ....

Beautiful girl....

Perhaps when I’m older....

I hold her again....

.. ..

Nothing like it....

Nothing like it....

A mournful saxophone....

Solo recursively reflecting....

On its owner’s soul....

.. ..

Do I suddenly see....

why this means so much to me?....

Do I see your shadows on my wall?....

You know, for a while I seemed a little unwell....

can you still tell?....

Can you please try and stay a little while?....

See, maybe you will see,....

if you can still think of me and....

how we used to be.....

.. ..

.. ..

Currently watching:
Stargate: Continuum
Release date: 2008-07-29
Thursday, August 28, 2008 

For the raging unknown

for the breakups and bereavement

for the staying disconnected from care

or those caring

as networks collapse silently

the tangled threads unweave and fail

their static even disconnected.

 

When my body boils

I want to reach out through the universe for comfort

but so many of my connections fail

the ones that still work are too cold to touch in this condition

and the ones that offer comfort

no longer register on my sensors.

Saturday, March 15, 2008 

Category: Writing and Poetry

 

You sit on the swing and drag your foot in the sand

Drag your foot in the sand

What was it this time?  your ask

What was it this time?

Fog crawls slowly up the sloping hills and

fills every memory with a cold caftan of gray

The park is empty, the lights of the distant bridge

bravely, barely hold on to their flickers

burly buildings blur into an inky backdrop

the swing stops moving

an inanimate object sweats cold dew on arms, eyelids, the tops of shoes

the night sky lies about the hour every time it is asked

it is a ritual now

something repeated by a priestess

diminished to a single question

Saturday, October 27, 2007 

Current mood:  contemplative

The annual return to my birth place

Not the gritty LA skyline covered with fog and smoke

Not the hospital converted to a church then abandoned

But that point in space

Where concentric circles merge past and present

That one place in Earth's orbit that aligns yearly

Relative to the sun

The sweep of arc that

Precipitates the great cascade of meteoritic memories

Halloween and man landing on the moon birthday cakes

McDonalds and pens and books and cologne

Star Trek ornaments and kisses

Near misses and perfect thoughts and what-the-hells-were-you-thinking

 

This spot

Relative to the sun but evidently irrelevant if you keep track

as everything has drifted so much

No longer in the same place relative to the galactic core

Or to the large and small Magellanic Clouds

Speeding away from the cosmic background radiation at a rate

That cannot be agreed upon despite best measurements

 

My birthday is relative to so many speeds and distances

It all depends on the measurement against the what

So I no longer know how old I am

If I think about it too hard.

Currently listening:
It’s Time
By Michael Bublé
Release date: 08 February, 2005
Saturday, October 20, 2007 

Current mood:  thoughtful
Category: Writing and Poetry

A conceit

a potent protection....
as you would....
the façade....
retooled to....
lock the universe....
behind dark sunglasses....
.. ..
                hurry....
                                without looking....

the cold is coming....

the promise you failed to retrieve....

lies a dried offer ....

in the late winter freeze ....

.. ..

it is cold tonight....

                but....

I hang your love on a rib for a leaner time....

Lay your kisses on the snow....

To preserve them for as long as I can....

                ....

the future holds sales for the prescient....

                reconciles events with prophecies ....

.. ..

run fingers along the stem....

anticipate the petals ....

falling one at a time        ....

.. ..

(the laws of gravity....

we are told....

exist by only the slimmest of margins)....

.. ..

watch hopeless lover’s mouths ....

gasp into Os, their heads ....

freeze ear down on white stones....

.. ..

if isolation remains a necessity....

avoid the routes that....

fail at winter’s end....

.. ..

or witness the agony of first thaws.....

.. ..

Currently listening:
LemonJelly.KY
By Lemon Jelly
Release date: 2001-04-10
Monday, August 06, 2007 

Current mood:  working
Category: Writing and Poetry

O the Prayers

Return my giggles and kisses with the gift receipt
kept just for just such a moments as this
replace the books that littered our lives and bind them like new
Braid your hair to hide the passion of strands pulled and broken
Sooth the bite where my vampire love attempted to suck you dry
Plug your tear ducts, mop your checks – spread the
concealer quickly with brush and blush so the boss suspects nothing

Revise conflicted revelations
Apocalyptic and complete
Until they tell the story you want told

Hear the tear in the universe suck all the matter
All that mattered
Through to some alternate state
Where

Promises refold into blank notes
Phone conversations static into background radiation
Fingertip lesions heal unwritten curses

O the prayers spent on healing the dead
O the prayers spent

Let the breath of bottled water run flat
Let the dog bark like I am a stranger
Let necks unremember tender kisses

Leach my veins
Sever my arteries and bleed me into the gutter
Until my body no longer has the strength to remember

 

(an unpublished fragment)

Currently listening:
Mirrorball
By Sarah McLachlan
Release date: 15 June, 1999
Saturday, June 30, 2007 
 

Shout the expletives in orange

They  are a caution

A warning of unilateral action

A removal of trust

Thrust out of space like an atom appearing from nowhere

Nowhere expected

Taken from some other bold statement

Woven out of left over fragments of space or time

Dangling bits of the universe left for the discovery

Of lovers too offended by the passage of time

To notice that the only thing holding them together

Is a color screamed out until they both bleed it so thoroughly

They no longer recognize the separation between them

Currently listening:
Two for the Show
By Kansas
Release date: 24 August, 1989
Tuesday, June 12, 2007 

Current mood:  working
Category: Writing and Poetry

Unframed

 

Your elastic nose pushes into space

fractured eyelashes

turn fragile

failing away from the focal point of

one fine eye melted along the fault line of

your face

filled with quantum emotions that

disfigure the fine lines I would

know even in the dark.

Thursday, May 24, 2007 

Current mood:  curious
Category: Writing and Poetry

No One Here To Bend The Light

                                                       

One sure thing will come of this death talk.

It will rain tomorrow

and there will be no rainbow.

I am the prism

and I will not be here to

bend the light.

I will be a bag of pipes

on the bathroom floor,

this clogging

finally run through.

No one will stop

to listen to the shower water or

hear the cat

scratch my screen-door.

Only hopeless flowerpots will notice

the lack of my rain,

soil pulling away from

their little mouths.

Not even the mailman will notice

the dust on yesterday's letters,

nor will my heart know.

It was the first to go

and did not notice the rest of me

catching up.

 

 

Published in Negative Capability, Spring 1983

Friday, April 27, 2007 

Current mood:  tired
Category: Writing and Poetry

 

Exquisite voices

Overt over the clutter of spring

Neighbors dance on the ceiling with steel shoes

Daffodils first

Then maples

Tulips just in time for resurrection

The chestnut finally and the dog wood

The slow thaw

Of love supreme

Love supreme

Love supreme

 

copyright Daniel W. Rasmus 2007

Currently listening:
A Love Supreme
By John Coltrane
Release date: 19 August, 2003