Excerpt for The Heart and The Hand by Dean Harkness, available in its entirety at Smashwords

The Heart and The Hand


Poems by


Dean Harkness



Copyright 2011 Dean Harkness

Smashwords Edition

Poem In A Japanese Form


Falsetto rings down -

A mobile phone perhaps, or

A pigeon's high coo.

Five Little Words


This is a Love Poem.

This poem is a love.

A love is this poem.

This is a poem, love.


A love this poem is.

A poem is this love.

A poem this love is.

Is this a poem, love?


Love, a poem, this is

this poem. Is love, a

love this poem? Is a

poem a, 'Is love this?'


Love, is this poem a

love? Is a poem this

poem? Is this love a

poem? Love a is this?

Ode to Thomas (the ginger cat)


Buddha sinks in deep green

(enlightenment holding joss sticks'

smoke ribbons unfurled)

and ponders on ash and clay.


A ginger tom slinks in unseen,

marked with the mystique of Mohammed,

lies winding-curled,

and gives nothing away.

Cemetery


In a forest that on the dead feeds,

flakes of names fall and are forgotten.

The place they marked, now covered by weeds;

the dead, supped through soil when rotten --

swallowed by root, exhaled by leaves:

carbon, hydrogen, oxygen returned.

And so it is this solemn place breathes

with those we've buried and those we've burned.

People Strutting



Purchase this book or download sample versions for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-2 show above.)