When the raw things sing

On November 2, 2014November 2, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

When the raw things sing, it sounds

like piano keys, struck and hammered

down into shapes of peaceful oblivion.

It hides like so much gold bullion, culled from

its darkened corners. The reverberant tones

refresh the song, renewed in its own

useless glow. But, only the fondest

things find place among the stars.

When the raw things sing, goodness comes

unfettered from the whipping posts, where

splinters of music protrude from the broad

skin of our places. Its volume grows

with each stroke of note and stem.

Lines, heavy with light, take space

among dreams and laughter of clouds.

I guess it only looks for seeing ears,

and the urge to sing.

Picture found here

First Kiss

On October 31, 2014November 1, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

It was a moment, pulled taut

against an aching clock.

Oh, the smoothness of dairy speech

thrown long upon its patience, losing.

Forever in a cup, glances placed

softly on fingerprinted skin.

Eyes, twinned and pinned like

fridge magnet promises, align.

Whatever passed as ancient minutes

lumbered through their cast-iron fog

until they gave up waiting –

and removed their shoes.

Picture found here

Maybe if you just dust up?

On October 24, 2014October 24, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Maybe if you just dust up

the linen places, warp of whim,

woof of faceless ignorance –

the spaces forgotten and forlorn –

this closet could breathe again

its four season’d air?

Maybe if the hanging things of dappled hue

were reminiscent of something more than

Draconian memory, stuck in reverse

but high-waying and fog-heavy?

Maybe if those picture frames were big

enough to house more than a single

face? Now, they just huddle in face-

less corners, waiting for the life-

giving noose.

Maybe if the epaulets on those padded,

big-girl shoulders were strong

enough to bear more than their own

weight? At least that’s what the closet

partners say. Instead, those renegade

fabric funsters greedily march the other

way while mold builds, where moth lives and rusty

hinges of busy-body clocks got

too pushy.

Maybe if you let the clocks forget

the time they’d have more company?

Maybe you just need a better broom?

Picture found here

On the back roads of heaven

On October 23, 2014October 23, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Sometimes when the wind shifts

and the denouement of the drive

awakens us to other roads left

unexplored, a kind of sadness

descends on the journey. This one

road upon which the gravitas of

grace spreads out long and lavish,

leads to lost places;

corridors of corruption,

alleyways of dreams,

aborted or forgotten, lanes of

loneliness, streams of sadness.

In their ditches of dread we find them,

hiding from the obvious, oblivious

to all that lay before them. Some

roads only appeared once they were

needed but quickly disappeared once

taken. It is then we kick

open the passenger door, deeply

dented and dusty from the drive, and

offer sojourn-solace on

the back roads of heaven.

Photo taken by me on a back roads trip in Washington State, October 2014

Without the hoopla

On October 19, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

A band plays while geese sachet

across a sodden lawn forget-

ful of their own ridiculous demean-

or. Such raucous creatures so divinely

inspired to annoy. Though, there is a care-

free story in anything mind-

less enough to shit

while walking with friends.

Perhaps they know something we do not.

Image found here

Last of the summer, leaves

On October 11, 2014October 12, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic, Words...always words5 Comments

I watch while the last of the summer leaves

the last of the summer leaves,

cornered by color, bullied by wind,

pushed from their tenuous

one-finger perches. Dangling

from hope, they yet cling to what was.

To what can never be again.

Buttressed now by stealth and stain,

the trees hold their breath and, in bloated hues,

leave behind what could never have been kept.

The molten days of August, now

Eastward creeping, cannot match

the closer dawn of winter’s darker agenda.

Change waits for no one.

Our frightened but fawning fraternity,

grips the once-dangling inside jokes.

But our song-sick companionship, bends

to sight and chance and change.

Beyond the clutch and ken of

drowning dreams, old stories, made young

again in the telling, sleep in

the quiet choirs of shared experience.

Love, always trumpeting her own exploits,

is writ larger against the dim and shrinking page.

Huddling for warmth against the inevitability

of inevitability crouches the promise of the new,

ripped and wrapped in golden heaps of trust.

Grasp too tightly to the branch and nothing

comes to shape what shadow left behind.

Trading form for frame, green for gold,

gone for glow, tired specters of older

days return to their places to sleep,

and dream of dreams.

The pledge of change.

What is left after un-leaving

stays bleak but for a moment.

Soon, the barren skin of dawn

must shed to bear and bare what only

death could bring.

Everything.

At the corner of validation and forgot

On October 5, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Parables, Waxing Poetic1 Comment

At this drunken shoreline, patterns return, in

quilted quiet. I can revel again in spiced hours,

deaf to the biker-ghosts, bad-mouthing

this demure, paper posture.

Thoughts are a little rumpled, like the sea,

what with these ferocious memories; un-manacled,

like cottonwood dreams, blown out into the world.

This world I am watching.

* * * * *

She walks down the street, locking

every wandering glance; stolen stares from

other hungers. Sad limbs, built for laughing strolls,

carry instead their weight in

desperation, the roll call gestures of

fragmentary magnetism. To look down is to invalidate,

the one thing that renders such creatures immobilized.

She never looks straight on. Being seen but

unknown has honed a peripheral awareness

to a hawk-like precision. It’s the hollow

look of the lonely.

* * * * *

That’s a tiny dog for such an imposing guy.

It must have something to do with an ill-

fitting black t-shirt. I still love AC/DC, too. But

the designer sunglasses match the grey goatee and flip

flops well enough to doubt the bravado, question

the impartial coarseness; his language just color-

ful enough to hide the deeper grey.

The fear of more.

* * * * *

Her weighty eyes climb his rusting frame; a gaze

made full in the weight of familiarity. His jaw-

line, thin, like his tired neck, perches on

shoulders, stooped, but unburdened by

neat and tidy, pressed, quick, or stoic. Endless pages

pass between their easiness, two souls in single,

unflinching presence. He remembers less

than the love she feels, spoken through his

wrinkled palm in hers, their fingers entwined.

The tapestry of their years.

* * * * *

The penny arcade discoveries of wide-mouthed boys –

more magic through a cheap telescope than my pretense of self-

imposed juxtapositions. Their cocky, self-

assured swagger breathes the new air, heedless of my

artless anxiety in their art of care-less play. Can voices

really be that loud? So much more gets spoken in

the repetitions of unpracticed

wisdom. Their code is a skateboard sculpture. Life

on a flat, four-wheeled universe. Soon,

when fearful complexities begin to gnaw

through the ropes that tether youth to

moments and days, will they remember

this foolish display of seaside

time, gloriously wasted?

* * * * *

This guy has no story to tell. At least

that’s what is suggested in the gymnastic

dodging of eyes and steps from

that hand. Oh, that hand, weary, upturned for

that drop of grace found in spare quarters, lost

among our Visa receipts. Well-rehearsed

well-wishing will never match the possibility of just

one good conversation. His stench, reminder of loss,

friendship’s nemesis, gift of forgottenness,

taunts him. It’s one more reason to avoid him.

He owns nothing.

Well, except a checker board. But, that’s designed

for company.

* * * * *

A tide and a thousand waves later, a laptop

overheats my knees. It reads 17%, the same possibility

I’ll remember their faces by the weekend. I am

like them – just another stigma.

Or, maybe another story waiting to be written.

Unwritten.

Rewritten.

Here at the corner of

validation and forgot.

homeless-man

Images found here and here, respectively

I suppose

On September 17, 2014September 17, 2014 By robertalanrifeIn Words...always wordsLeave a comment

I suppose I thought that, once the days had shaken themselves loose of the encumbrances of motion, and the menace of time, the twittering sky could finally waffle, untethered, under piecemeal clouds to consider her options.

I suppose I thought that, given the distance involved, someone might be better off to find oneself caught in the dilemma of giving up uncaring responses to caring questions than not to answer at all.

I suppose I thought that, with that last bitter twinge of guilt, not so hidden but buck-toothed and fuscia-brimm’d against the waiting whiteness, the notes might be in tune.

I suppose I thought that, underneath the quivering madness of illusion, hiding behind curtains in a living room full of misapprehensions, would come the smallest sigh, the narrowest glance.

I suppose I thought that, without a second thought, mysteries caught up in stubborn embrace of tired stories pinned to old trees never well-planted might actually find bards to sing their praises.

I suppose I thought that, with enough poetry strung out on lines of hopeful thought, and enough poets, kindling together those lines, breath might swell again into a coughing history.

I suppose