Category: Waxing Poetic

When, if not now?

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, National Poetry Month, Waxing Poetic2 Comments

When, if not now?

A recluse to your own life,

are you banished from your own time and space?

When should you emerge from solitary submersion

into mental goat-cheese hills,

clouds coating molasses hillsides, at night –

fallow-fogg’d and faint?

Fainting in self-imposed hunger

you wander, buckling at knees,

well-scabbed, heaven-noticed.

And for all that, so little to show.

It’s the sound of excuses low on batteries.

The oldest, leather’d tales of one made sick

on sumptuous delights of dark.

And still, all those black, moonlit hills of your desires,

shivering wistfully in an adder’s den of want.

“Do you want to be healed?”

Such a stupid question, unless you’ve seen

all this before in light-adjusted caves

of self-pity; the forlorn battle-weary sojourners

preferring to fight without armour, eyes closed.

Closed to adulations begged for, wept over, demanded, refused.

Full steam ahead on an undersized train

sliding down carefully-crafted embankments of misfortune.

Divvy out carefully those shelter-shined coins of detail,

actual currency of a life lived on purpose.

Let your body to your soul state its intentions well –

walls you painted over, once your prison –

now, just old, flayed relics

of too many days reminding you

of too many days.

 

This pedlar in impatient thoughts

On By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

This pedlar in impatient thoughts

travels light but burrows down, heavily

down, and down and down again;

to the parsonage of promise, wall-papered

in the sweat of dreams.

 

The days, carefully patented against

her own times, roll out

like dried tobacco leaves, the inhalation of

a promise, made, kept,

broken, and made again.

 

Pencil sketch clouds smudge

a looming graphite across the vast skin of sky.

The forest, sotta voce, stock still, looks

nowhere but down to the nourishing dirt,

kneels up to the humming heavens.

And, for all this cantabile chorus,

throats out a steely enervation,

where none but she can hear the silent praise.

 

She grapples in morning still

and shivering, licked up from bowls

of her own gratitude, there

to shimmer hints of the new,

bridal day.

In the interest of recusing myself

On By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic2 Comments

In the interest of recusing myself

from the intentional acts of living in

salience and satisfaction,

I remove paper clips from bundles

and places of collecting –

days not yet taken,

things taken too often,

conversations unfinished,

gazes left unyielded to awe.

 

And I forget to wait.

 

In the interest of restraining myself

from the morbidity of beloved melancholy

I reach across heavens of tear-stained songs

and their owners, too shy to keep singing –

and touch the lips of those like me,

who might never have sung

were it not for those heaven-kissed notes.

 

And I forget to wait.

 

In the interest of reinventing myself

I recall to mind the person least reticent

to dance naked before the large window –

unblinking, shameless with wanton wit;

those long-wished for days not yet cast aside.

Not forgotten, merely unremembered.

A bold and chivalrous persona void of

the self-effacement unknown in our youth.

 

And I forgot to wait.