Damion Hamilton

"I'm from Saint Louis and work in a warehouse. I believe poetry should be raw and written in one's blood. I've been published in Thundersandwich, Zygote In My Coffee, Chiron Review, Fifth Street Review, www.laurahird.com, My Favorite Bullet, Mastodondentist and others."

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

(Inspired by Carson McCullers novel of the same name)

Reading the Modern Library version of the novel

And studying her likeness on the cover

That angelic face and those angelic eyes

She was only twenty-three when she had written it

And she had the pen, the motion, the way of the masters

A heart can always seek and very rarely find

But always seeking somehow

And one can sit on a porch still at night

Looking at the stars

While Mozart plays on in invisible ears

And we're away from the kids, who are playing

Games down below

And we are glad to be away from the kids

But we are happy that they are down there still

While Mozart plays alone with the stars

In youth, sometimes we think that the music

Will go on forever

But someday the notes stop ringing and we feel cheated

And the music stops and are bodies ache

As Mozart plays muffled in the shadows of the stars

Well, of coarse there's beer, and I like that best too,

Along with the people in the coffeehouses and bars

Dreaming of: breasts, limbs, grenades and automatic rifles

But men rarely act, because their bodies, hearts

And minds are weary

Turning the magic of those pages with coffee smeared thumbs

As one feels as if one should hear trumpets and laugh and smile,

And tell people about this wonderful book

And it's late on a Friday night; even forgetting the women

That give only apart of themselves, and it's usually not the heart

The word is giving this night, as my heart chains rattle,

I smile thinking of her