The January Selected Poet is

Joseph V. Danoski

Please feel free to email Joseph at: Dojonaki@Netscape.Net

SUMMER SUNSET

Saw the sunset at the end of summer,
The dawning world of autumn colors;
The sunshine now a little colder,
October shadows on my shoulder.

Was the season of my darkest secret,
An evil sky of deepest regrets;
The crimson night of roads not taken,
The fading light of lives forsaken.

My friends are like the flowers gone,
Ghosts in the frost of autumn’s dawn.
My life is full of buds unopened,
Of seeds unsown and blossoms broken.

There are summers in the midst of winter
That we relive when sunlight lingers;
On rocks the red of Colorado,
That hold the gold
Of  El Dorado.

THE BEAST OF A THOUSAND NIGHTS

Outside the walls,
The wolves and the wild dogs howl;
The wilderness encroaches—slowly beginning
To prowl.

The streetlights stand as lines of resistance,
Trying to keep darkness at a distance . . .
But the evening deepens with its darkest fears,
Becoming a beast with a thousand eyes and ears.

And how do we stop the night from falling?
The season of the creepers from crawling?
How do we contain the wind and the rain?
Or cage a hurricane howling in pain?

Out in the wilds,
The old ones awaken and moan;
The Wendigo approaches—slowly reclaiming
Its own.

The city has but a feeble defense,
With its armed forces and electric fence . . .
As the evening deepens with our darkest fears,
Becoming the beast of a thousand nights and years.

How do fight a nuclear nightmare?
The rising tide of darkness and despair?
Stop a volcano or the ocean’s roll?
When angry nature is out of control?

THE STUDENT SUPERNATURAL

I had a fatal attraction
For the in-between,
Out-of-the-way places;
For the pathways to abstraction
And the abandoned no-man’s-lands.

Now I’m standing at the faces
Of death and desert sands.

I was the student supernatural,
One step beyond the purely factual;
Exploring the realms of the unwritten
Unresolved—
Dissolved with myths and legends
And the mysteries unsolved.

Always off on tangents intangible,
Following passions irresistible;

I would trip the night fantastic
Into unearthly,
Otherworldly abodes.
Into ghost-plays so dramatic
And the enchanted out-of-bounds;

Now I’m standing at the crossroads
On all-unhallowed grounds.  

BLACK RAIN

Strange how the cold rain washes colors
From the leaves,
And the life from the trees; leaving
Them skeletons
In the gray . . .
Funny how it strips the beauty
From the flowers,
Dripping like an acid; leaving them
Wilting,
Withering away.

Ever since the black rain came,
The shadings of meanings
Have changed; what was familiar
Seems strange, the furniture
Rearranged.

It’s weird how warm tears wash mascara
From the eyes;
Down the cheeks in dark streaks, marking
Up the face
In slimy trails . . .
Revealing the naked truth behind
The makeup,
The plain beneath the Jane; all the ugly
Garden
Slugs and snails.

Ever since the black rain came,
Everything’s going down
The drain; the same gray day after
Day, getting harder
To explain.

And now the foul rain is seeping
Into my skull,
And deep into my soul; flooding my
Sunless skin
Like the sea . . .
Until I’m flaking away like banks
Of soft clay;
All this debris floating downstream
From slowly
Eroding me.

Joseph V. Danoski lives happily on the “plains of his imagination” in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  He published his first book of poems, Shock Waves: Letters from the Edge, back in 1987, under his infamous pen name, Jonathan Konrad.  This book is still being sold in local bookstores, and has been reviewed favorably a number of times.   

Through the years, Joseph has had quite a few of his poems published in the city’s newspaper, The Berlin Reporter, where for a time he had a byline in its poetry corner.  In 1997 he was asked by the Chamber of commerce to write something appropriate for the Berlin Centennial Celebration.  After researching the history of the area and the paper-making industry, he wrote a poem titled, The City Built from Trees, which he was subsequently invited to read at City Hall.