Sitting Like A Buddha
I wanna sit down
and be quiet and get to know myself
in silence,
it’s hard to do that
i’ve sat on park benches and tried to understand others, by observing them,
movements, strides, clothing, shapes, skin color and all
but not myself, that’s a lot easier to do, and still impossible
but…
but
to know myself, that takes time and silence
and I’m addicted to all this stuff,
sights, sound, and noise coming at me
and work… those 40 hours…that paycheck
if I was brave I would quit it all’ll
and go towards the isolation road
but I don’t
the world has me in her clutches
and rides me as she pleases
and I forget it all, like a lap dance
Vipassana
mind searches for little things on breaks at work
it can’t be too serious
cute, seminude picture of a girl on Instagram
crazy funny, texts with a friend about a girlfriend on messenger
I know, I should be more serious
but the mind doesn’t want that
it wants to laugh and smile,
need a break while your feet and back hurt
nothing serious please
no concentration
you don’t want that
somebody troll me!!!
call me stupid, an idiot or ugly
in the Instagram comments
let’s laugh at the ridiculous news of the day
a small respite from the workday world
squeezing its small noose on your neck
nothing serious please, we are immortal
Glance From A Woman
Can invigorate me
when I am down
a glance from a woman
can lift my downcast eyes
the glance from a woman
can send a volt of electricity through
my body
the glance from a woman can heal a downcast
eye,
which indicates a little hope for the downtrodden
and a slice of cake to the idea of beauty to a man
the glance from a woman without even sex
can be all you need
and this rarely happens; for the fear of the longing
of sex in a man,
BUT it is always pleasant when it does.
What Is Within
Everything that you repress
that is within,
all your anger, jealousy
hatred lust is buried with in
all the times someone hurt you
all the times someone wounded
you, that is with in
when rejected you repressed it when they
repressed you all that is within
and your body does not forget it
it can repress the thing, but never forget it
when, you see a person
in that way, you start to understand them
and that is okay
The Homeless
It seems like there is more of them
and they are getting younger
they need rooms and phone calls
and their cloths are bad and they smell bad
Why so many homeless?
I do not know
but I do that I could easily be one of them
their tribe is rarely spoken to
the other classes want to pretend that
they do not exist
and I think about beggars and billionaires
and everyone else
shit isn’t fair i say
and my mind and ego says, “it is not supposed to be.”
How many things can you google?” from the poem “Brain Like Pebbles” sums up Damion Hamilton‘s work in this new collection. Each poem is like a new tab on the internet, reflecting on store clerks, strange people, homelessness, social media, the weather, road trips, work ethics and clocks and so much more. His words venture into the darkness of the soul coming out raw and passionate. From his poem “The Gamble”: “so some of us try to live as best we can with these dice and cards of life.” These poems capture the roller coaster of life.
~LB Sedlacek, author of “Four Thieves of Vinegar & Other Short Stories” (Alien Buddha Press)
Ok, here it is: Damion Hilton lets all of life flood into his poems: the humdrum of sleep, the heroic of homelessness, all of it–the gritty and the grand, poems that are anchored by a full-throttled sense of self-discovery. The genius of WHAT AM A DOING is that Hilton sees his life from the outside, as a life like all lives, in which eventual tragedy is given a poetic reprieve”.
– Gerald Schwartz
