Two Poems by Daniel Christensen

Ataru

I will not speak

He looks at me, from that dark house,
He gazes down from the window over the laundry room

A palpable silence lowers its smooth palm over the whole
And breathes
And swells

Holds the living moment in the hollow of its hand

I’m beyond the yard, beyond the chain link fence

Goose pimples rise upon the sibilant skins of
Midnight, sliding across the unmoored hours

Dawning dark and a deeper iteration, weighted unevenly,
Upon meridian scales, each bearing a path,
One climbs forward, one slides back

Beyond the old asphalt avenues, faded from rain
And sun, and hammered by a hundred thousand footfalls

The doors of the train slide closed with an atmosphere decapitating
Thunk,
Behind me,

There is no going back,
It lurches into motion

My vision is extinguished, struggles to orient and dissolves

I sense the diameter, radius, intuitively

The milieu is saturated with a cloying depth of
Night, and hush of its dreamers, its prisoners,
Whose breaths treble the air

And I am here, listening

He stays in that shadowed acropolis,
There is no exit, he never left

Seconds skitter, on their spindly legs, across
The primordial stirrings of dawn

Saying

Nothing

I could not affect an end to change
And all my struggles were in vain

..

Yesterday, whilst walking, I passed by a mother
And child, pushing her young teen daughter
In a wheelchair

Daughter had the glow of her youth, marred
By a mildly yellow tinge of illness, limbs somewhat
Malnourished, like a plant starved of sunlight

Mother's eyes were knotted hollows of grief
And exhaustion, she had the slow bearing
Of a stream over stones

The teen said hello in a bright voice, as if
Chance encounters were a rarity

In a moment I was swept with many intuitive
Impressions, and a wave of pain passed over me

I kept on
And they kept on

..

Sleep is a planet, chest rising, falling,
In smooth transit

Lungs beneath expand, contract, these biological
Bellows, reminiscent of turgid ocean swells,
The fatigued calm that follows a violent squall

Conscious and subliminal lock step in a revolving
Circuit

Dyings and birthings of cells maintain their existential
Equilibrium, seamlessly changing orbit,
About the nucleus

Everything unfolding beneath an undisturbed mirror of
Presence, occurring in silent, full intent

The night persists, but begins to raise its heavy
Curtain, the stage ropes are spooling from slack
To taut and dragging folds of cloth are stirring,
In minute ripples

Great dawn is approaching

They struggle to sift and separate, the old day
Relinquishing to the new
The new casting off the chrysalis of the old

They pass and fold over me, in cyclic iterations

Pass and fold and bequeath their centers of gravity

..

Everything of this world is beautifully broken and
Resilient, or it lies in ruin, that sighs with its moldering
Tragedy and slumped shoulders, and we see the beauty in its
Surrender, a fingers breadth before it rises, in new Incarnations

Even now, microorganisms sow the seeds of its triumphal
Architecture

Towers spear the atmosphere, ruins seem to slumber,
Both have their place in the paradigm of contiguous and
Continuous transformation

Each avatar holds the foetus that cried its form

And I die and die and am born

There is great value yet, to that which roars between the jagged teeth of its rust
And sings its arthritic joints, throughout pillories of bone, these seated, sacral
Chambers and stalactite tunnels, held between their knuckles

And the anxious newborn is held aloft, to bask, moored,
In the reaching sun, everyday it comes and sits beside its friends

And I come and sit and listen and speak
And waters speak and listen

And the pain is a companion when songs have deserted
Us and hours, misaligned, cannot seem to weave a merrier
Gather

And when no one is there, I still hold a bonfire in my bosom

Still dance about a stone, that could serve as a tomb, or equally well
To stand upon and, with a friend seated on my shoulders, make a totem
With the moon

There are no finer cords than those of fingers entwined

We find out how we fit together

..

And he is there, in the dark house, that veteran of war
And shriveled trenches of drug abused veins
Standing out like tattoos in his arms,
And I am here, in his stead

And all I fought to hold back fomented into every
Colossal incarnation, clad in spear and scale

Every fierce avatar he manifested, from that blue
Black abyssal, to guard the wound

And I am here, erected upon the still rattled bones of
Rape and shame of survival

Every wind called to ignition, by the fatal abortion
Of what might have been, had he remained
Unsullied

He breathed into this engrossing rage of compassion,
A rising sun
Ataru!

He crafted me from shards, to stretch my spine and blot
The stars

Bleeding brilliance from my fumarole halo

So, hold fast, carrion bird, as I wedge my triangled shoulder
Into this obtuse fracture, widen the breach, until the world
Breaks against its own dull vacuum and vomits it’s naked
Soul

Shudder vibrates its magnetic coils against this unassailable
Graven wail

I am foal, emerging, upon spindly legs, struggling to
Rise

And until then, from this day unto that,
I will not speak

I will stand, sentinel enigma, center stage, holding
A nominal orbit

Saying
Nothing

..

Rising light warms its hands against the windows,
Begins to saw between the blinds, drives its hot lances
At angles, to anchor into the surfaces of the room,
Driving shadows into sullen corners

They begin to rouse all around me, the sleepers,
Each, an autonomously revolving spiral galaxy
And simultaneous intrinsic organ of the cosmos

Each bear this immediate dichotomy with an innate alacrity

Complete their daily ablutions, congress amidst their immediate
Circles, accomplish tasks that maintain their systemic and societal
Homeostasis, and the furtherance of intention, to craft fruition,
Ex nihilo

Black birds clear the evening’s detritus, white birds laugh at the
Limned shores

The new sun pours poems across horizons in a meteoric rising

A house cat purrs its electric contentment into a lap’s warm
Pool

The crescent moon’s hawk nose and heroic chin
Pinch the sky into a healthy blush

Cars and trucks whuff fumes, between the narrow shoulders of
Painted lanes

Long shadows brood over a tattered fragment of memory,
Of that dark place

And isn’t it all so wondrous strange

And I, will not speak, but watch, in curious reverie

And listen from the hammering heart of God

Pro Tempore

Fear somewhere in the frayed rope of my broken body, of all the stumbling courses my next step will endeavor, breaths to belly, falls to foot, caught or found in these patient unscheduled lessons I’ve found in circumstantial impacts,

I am nautilus in this lonesome concourse of crashes, where your hand pulls back from too deep a witness of all I failed to express, faultless, oblivious and innocent, searching the quiet drawers and closets for keepsakes,

And I discounted your immediate forgiveness of all I failed to manifest, refusing I was worth your love as I am, peeking out from a daily routine, drifting across archipelagos of sleep,

Would you be there, silo lean-to shelter, against my aching shoulder, unwilling to rise to heights it knew in youth,

It grieves me to ask for tenderness I perhaps should have shown another, or myself,

Are you yet behind the next bend, beyond vapors rising from heat colluding with mist, some unknown pulsar, warping the darkness with your searchlight



Daniel Christensen is a poet and author of speculative and high fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including SpecPoVerse International, Trollbreath Magazine, Book XI, and Harrow House. His poem “Love Poem on Theme by Whitman” was featured in the live stage performance of Open Dance Project’s 1968. He received the Editor's Choice Award from The Last Stanza Magazine for his poem "Brooklyn." His short story “Automata” was published by The Blooming Onion Literary Magazine. Additional publications include Clepsydra Literary and Art Magazine, Florida Bards Anthology 2025, Lucky Lizard Journal, and Lunchbreak Review, among others.