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Joseph Danoski

The January Selected Poet is Joseph Danoski

Please feel free to email Joseph at: dojonaki@aim.com

joseph

ANOTHER STORY

Time to turn a corner, time to shift my gears;
Time to travel time and turn back the years.
The key to my future is locked in the past;
All my lost memories returning at last.

I remember the me I used to be,
And now it’s all coming back to me.
What was the something I didn’t see,
That made her turn her back to me?

There was another story, there was another floor,
A room in that house I’d never noticed before.
Something I thought I saw as I walked by her door;
An object on the bureau she locked in a drawer.

And that something stole her heart from me;
Well, at least momentarily.
What was it I think I didn’t see,
That made her keep her back to me?

There was another story, not just another floor;
A door to a room that was never there before.
Something was out of place, a strange look
On her face;
I gave her some privacy and gave her her space.

What was it she whispered that I wouldn’t hear,
As I went back outside and had another beer?
The first of September on that summer day;
The last day before blue skies started
Turning gray.

What was it I was not meant to see?
Now it’s all not coming back to me.
So I’ll get in my car and drive away fast;
The key to my future still locked in the past.

THE WILL TO POWER

How much stronger must the will to power be?
How much longer will it take to break
What holds out to me?

How much larger than life must I try to be?
All this stuff that bleeds from my soul
Like the sap from a tree.

How many miles to go before I can sleep?
How many seeds to sow before I can reap?
Before my will to power
Is allowed to flower
And bear fruit.

How much stranger must the name before me be?
How much longer must I be
Prisoner of obscurity?

How much stronger must the will to power be?
All this life that I must die before
Fame will set me free.

LAKESIDE LIVING

Thunder rumbled all that summer day,
As my blue skies slowly turned to gray.
Storm clouds gathered over lovers’ lake,
Bringing rain in the year of the snake.

I remember when she got the call,
And I watched my summer start to fall.
I awoke alone at autumn’s dawn,
To a cold woodstove, and she was gone.

My baby and me were on the beach,
But she seemed different, out of reach.
She told me I should jump in the lake;
Such a hot day—good advice to take.

But everything was about to change,
The relationship was turning strange.
Didn’t realize it was our last dance,
The last season of summer romance.

I played my flute to the lonely moon,
And wrote a song in the key of loon.
We used to swim to that distant shore;
Now, never again forever more.

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 titled Shock Waves: Letters from the Edge back in 1987, under his 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 read at City Hall.