Let it be quick

On October 13, 2012October 14, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Parables, Waxing Poetic4 Comments

Domestic violence is never an easy topic to address in any setting, let alone with poetry. And yet, where else should one seek to draw attention to the ugliness of the issue but through the beauty and precision of poetry? May these simple, unadorned words, reach into all of us and may we, together, be each others’ rescuers.

Let it be quick

The car screeches into the driveway, askew, radio blaring

and your hidden fears become visceral terror for what’s coming.

For hours now, neck craned, head cocked with ear against the door

your sweaty palms flat against the wall, you listen. Listen.

You flatten the wrinkles in your dress hoping against hope he sees;

he sees you, not the face of his discontent, not the end game

of nights spent boasting of adventures never taken,

trysts only dreamed of in whiskey stupors,

of the feigned and faint glory days in High School hallway peacock parades.

“He doesn’t mean what he says”, you say.

“He’s just having a hard time right now”, you say.

“Oh, I just fell”, you say.

You agonize within, thinking tonight, just maybe, tonight…

he’ll see the girl who caused him to leave his hometown,

for you. Only you. Always you. That’s what he said at least.

You’ve parted your hair the way he likes

and even donned the Junior High barrette he insists is still sexy.

But as the door crashes open what little courage you’d mustered

scurries away like the mice living in your pantry.

And as the first fist comes, you pray:

“let it be quick.”

Waiting for the train

On October 12, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic6 Comments

Satisfied am I with the twisting melodies of yesterday’s yearning?

Driven am I to bedeck my mind in frivolities of yesterday’s learning?

Poking holes in theories ill-suited to soulish life

but still beholding too near my swollen strife.

* * *

Come what may, then, bestir what’s left of daytime’s faith

and mix it up and blend it till sweet to the taste.

Whirl these dervishing bedevilments and find the pearls made sand,

and make them pearls again – in heart, less than in hand.

* * *

Make the numbers match the math when teasing out the will

to sit, to silence all, the tongue, the words, and still

endure with me these acrid hours like waiting for the train

of hopeful dreaming coming soon, once more to love again.

Standing

On October 12, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Several weeks now have past

and troubles met and served up, last

like ham sandwiches and potato salad, cold;

you shudder to meet even one so bold.

They stare you down like cheetah with prey

and meet with eyes worn, disheveled and grey.

They pierce and stab, thrust and joust

your long-stem soul now sold, like Faust.

Perchance to seek, to try, to reach

for God knows what, these things, rare, teach

the lessons, ill-gained, that bring us round

to find once more our feet on the ground.

Satisfaction guaranteed

On October 12, 2012October 13, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Marvel at the cost of such pedantry,

succumb to the vagaries of baubledom, hoofery, and chicane glaminosity.

The suit fits well, the shoes reveal the glib and jabber of your craft.

In your pocket you finger loose change,

rubbed together like shuffle and jump bumper cars.

See the shine he says.

Looks good on you, he says.

One last gander, he says, take it for a spin.

You check out the merchandise while he checks out yours

and, together, you strike the deal to deal the strike.

Inside it smells like an Alberta forest with a hint of cheap cologne.

Something doesn’t feel right, he switches feet too often,

hasn’t looked you in the eye, yet,

and talks faster than you can type.

But something about this impish clown ghetto pulls one hand to sign,

the other to wipe the sweat from your anxious brow.

This parade of top-down, convertible politics

sits in your gut like so much bad stew.

Need and want swap places and you sigh…

But in the end, your satisfaction is guaranteed.

After all, the payments won’t kill you,

but the possessions might.

Kill ’em all

On October 10, 2012October 11, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Parables, Waxing Poetic7 Comments

An obvious risk to such provocative pieces is their potentially divisive, incendiary nature. I post because I am compelled to write what I feel. But I do so in full recognition that what I feel stands in contradiction to what many others feel. Hence, with conviction but also humility, I post…

Yes please, describe for us your toxic, platinum dreams

you grumpy old men, front lawn savages and blue-haired fussbudgets

whose projected fears force our embroilments.

Like a bikini at a funeral you bluster and fidget

and point fingers with one syllable jeers, taunting of yesterday’s better standing.

Only then will we learn that the beach of our desires

doesn’t meet your death loving, tea ‘n sympathy standards.

You clink glasses with friends at darts, or grab ass in the elevator,

but turn a blind eye to a man on trial

because his head covering took away your comfort.

Wrap yourself in the flag for protection

from those sandy, bearded bastards who kill your friends killing them.

Then, with hand on heart, the right politics,

a cigarette tucked behind your ear, and misty-eyed blindness,

you look for ways not to look for ways.

Let’s help our kids by killing theirs.

Let’s build our future by robbing theirs.

Let’s pad our budgets while emptying theirs.

Let’s speak for us by silencing them.

We don’t need to love,

just kill ’em all.

That’s what Jesus would do.

night

On October 8, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic2 Comments

Winking past benighted minions

still and soft, she glides away.

Severed light pushed off her pinions,

for she had nothing left to say.

***

Dark her bosom, darker forming,

full of starry, whiteling lights;

perched atop the scalp of morning,

waits for courage to ignite.

***

Now to find the peace so wanting,

till we are awake again,

sleep bejewels our hearts unflaunting,

send us now thy rest, our friend.

Triangle Poems VI

On October 2, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing PoeticLeave a comment

Gubernatorial

Just as we were making way

the circus came to town.

We began to hope,

but had to stand

in a booth;

and truth

fled.

***

Penmanship

The scratch of ink on paper

still thrills a writer’s heart.

Her quill skips and weaves,

darting hither,

following

her heart’s

end.

***

Cheese

Good, like sunny afternoons,

and flowers in a field,

aged milk matures

to bring a taste

of heaven,

ripe and

old.

***

Checkers

Red and black go dancing past,

old friends still sitting there

well past dinner time.

“King me” he says.

“That’s not fair!

You won

last.”

***

Stilettos

Calves as tight as trampolines,

she totters high above

we humble mortals.

Forcing a smile,

she winces

and looks

down.

Morning run

On October 1, 2012October 1, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Waxing Poetic3 Comments

Flagrantly I fall into mists of morning’s madness.

What is it I so crave about this pain?

Droplets of dew vie with damp, glowing forehead

and share a breath of dawning air.

Footfalls fast, no frequent, and plodding,

struggle to overcome this sluggish lump of futile flesh.

Dear God, help me to see the horizon,

because there is my end.

My beginning.

When a song knows you

On September 27, 2012December 22, 2013 By robertalanrifeIn Life of Rob, Music and the arts, Words...always words3 Comments

On that rare occasion when comes a song that catches in your throat and your moistened eyes lift; your heart swells and your tongue cleaves in silence to the roof of your dry, gaping mouth, one can only listen…

Music has wafted its way through the corridors of this boy’s life without either asking permission or signing a release form. At any given moment a particular song or sonata or ambient guitar piece has bored a hole into the otherwise forbidden regions of my soul where God doesn’t even like to go. And it stays. It stays and plays, disturbing the water leaving manuscripted ripples of memories repressed or forgotten, faces attached to long lost friends, pieces of time squandered and scattered on the floor.

I don’t mean to sound sullen for music has also drawn, even driven me, by the Spirit into all manner of delightful wilderness as well. It leaves its mark gently, but insistently, borrowing from what it knows will always push my heart into the deep end where my affections direct my thoughts and together, meet my will.

And I am changed.

It does seem a little more than mere serendipity when just the right lyric encased in the perfect package of notes, irrepressibly good and right, finds its way to my hungry ears. There is that moment of instant recognition. Someone knows this, has felt this before me and I am not alone. At these times a kinship is unveiled. Someone is already walking with me along pathways I had thought previously untraveled, and soothes me in the knowledge that they’re only unknown to me. Others have traversed these waters, even successfully, and been found by God, waiting on the other side; the same God you may have inwardly chided for his conspicuous absence, barely perceivable as you stumbled and groped along.

I remember the first time I ever heard Bridge Over Troubled Water. It occurred to me how duped I had been into believing I had already heard the best song ever, which at the time might have been the Thomas, the Tank Engine theme song. I was seven years old and nothing would ever be the same. I begged my parents to purchase the album (now extinct flat, black disc-like things with countless grooves magically holding music).

The next similarly visceral encounter was my discovery of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring by…well, I had no idea then. Cliché as it might be among the classical music elite, no one can deny, in good conscience, the genius and mystical profundity of the piece. To this day it shatters me every time I hear it.

I was captured again when, on a drive from Calgary to Cranbrook, B.C., I encountered Bach’s Wedding Cantata and the opening Kyrie of Schubert’s Mass in Ab for the first time. To say I was captivated would be an understatement of hyperbolic proportions. I had to pull the car over, so spellbound was I at the unforgivably beautiful refrains. My love affair with this music continues unabated.

You may think it trite by comparison but, lately, my descent into a blubbering, snotty mess has been evoked by a simple little song, We Were Better Off, by Elenowen, a barely known duo. It has taken its place among those selections added to Rob’s warning,-this-one-guarantees-tears-so-avoid-public-places playlist. Go ahead, listen and tell me what you think. I dare you to do so without at least a hint of connection. If you feel nothing at all, you’re either at the pre-coffee stage of your day, a grumpy pragmatist, or a zombie (no pressure).

Music, like the people with whom we share it, comes at the most unexpected times. And, when it does, my self-imposed melancholy is banished if only for a moment as the notes probe places left unexplored and I am placed under God’s laser-specific microscope. Now that’s theology. If I were to say at those times that I now knew this song, it is then God reminds me that, in fact, it is the song that knows me.

Da signe al fine.

Sonnet from an airport lounge

On September 24, 2012September 24, 2012 By robertalanrifeIn Waxing Poetic, Words...always wordsLeave a comment

This is not autobiographical. I repeat, this is not…oh never mind, you decide. As a recovering alcoholic with almost 10 years sober (no, stop, please…enough), this is an all too familiar scene. Trying to wash away fear, doubt and pain while dulling the insistent voice of comfort offered us by God and stranger. Hurting together is still better than drinking alone, n’est pas?