this.

Daniel Damiano

I hope to mellow with age,
turn the past as a page,
elongate my short fuse to a jump rope
and skip.

I hope to mellow with age,
bottle up all my lacquered rage,
and float it out to a distant ship.

I hope to mellow with age,
cleanse my ire with sage,
with years after to enjoy all the bliss.

But if I can’t live to a ripened age,
and have only days to change my ways,
well...then I must do something about
this.

---

Daniel Damiano
Daniel Damiano is an Award-winning Playwright, Pushcart-nominated Poet, acclaimed Novelist and Actor based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recent recipient of the 2024 David A. Einhorn Playwriting Prize, presented by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 in NYC. He has thus far published two books of poetry, 104 Days of the Pandemic (2021, fandango 4 Art House) and, most recently, The Concrete Jungle and the Surrounding Areas (2024, Bottlecap Press), along with three novels, The Woman in the Sun Hat (2021), Graphic Nature (2022) and, most recently, Advice from a Cat (2024), all from fandango 4 Art House. His acclaimed play Day of the Dog is published by Broadway Play Publishing. His poems have thus far been published in Gyroscope Review, Philly Poetry Chapbook Review, Curlew Quarterly, Quagmire Magazine, Crooked Teeth Literary Magazine, Newtown Literary Journal, Cloudbank, New Voices Anthology and HotMetal Press.