Month: October 2016

The probity of the wind
Has lost its variant thoughts
To existence, lost to the presages
Of my heart, my only thoughts of you.

More precise than a decision like
Imagination turned idea to become vision,
I slake my thirst of you towards its light
A mosaic of the same variants you gave to me

As if our drink of each other was not enough.
You came to me like this cipher to unfold
Even the wind had lost its way along your
Eyes, your lips your breath of chaos and choice

That I may overcome my derision of believing
I could ever be enough for you, as if my heart
Were inlaid to the same ivories and abraxas like
An angel consecrated, lost to your sacred love.

It is I now unfolding before you
Defied by my secluded heart, as the pain
Of not knowing whether you will ever be there
Escapes the grasp of honesty time can never hold.

© K. James Ribble

Rhapsody realm finds
My new imagining
Become solipsistic – my heart a
Diaspora of Life
Surrounded by
Sphere of Self molded from an
Autumn moon of jurisprudence
Fathom delights of the night
Like torment meant for
Darkness undiscovered,
Careful not to un-due
Judgement find owning rules
Belies the trauma of conscience
A grace before my soul undone
Above this pain a
Window into [the] living
A grasp of time like
Gasp out-of-air privilege of
Unknown sunlight of Winter’s doubt,
Into the Doubt of night.

© K. James Ribble

Bolted from a dream, this dream
Burned to memory like parchment

Embossed, its impression left on
The fragile notes of my reverie where

Remembrance comes alive, reflective
To the touch like hope is tactile to

The rise and departure of superstition
I am a callous apostate, falchion raised

Screaming to the heavens in fiery draught
I reach for attendant understanding trying

To make sense of where my dream has been
As I ingest the facetious smiles

Of angels their humor lost on the very
Manuscript where I record these visions

Their recounting contrasting my conjecture
Finding my own evidence that falls to

The confines of these very words (of doubt)
That anything has happened at all –

It was just a dream.

© K. James Ribble

Copper of the Upper Peninsula
Served as a primary color, the palette
Paints the caverns of iron across my young boy’s mind;
A calico of adolescent travesties chasm the rise
In the burnt brown waters of the Fence.
Memories of this place reek of my childhood so innocent
Not even the conifers could redeem my purity of heart
There aside the clear natural effluence of the river’s bed.
I Learned to tie my first Duff and Nymph while the lure
Of the river remains almost like a limb of my soul
Keeping branches of the summer sun to stream its
Yellow light across freckled face and sky-blue eyes.
That one morning we hiked upstream on a path
Thriving in moss, the rattlesnake fern so abundant we
Walked careful as deer not to slice our waders. We launched at
The Three Sisters, pines tall as the sky, who were waiting for us
To begin our day while the trout laughed at us, bellies aching.
My first brownie struck the lure so hard I nearly leapt clear
Out of the water with excitement as my neighbors laughed.
The beauty of his iridescent coat was matched only by
Way of my Tears of sorrow for gutting and cleaning him
As that afternoon’s lunch. It was as though I needed to thank
Him for his loss while I watched the breading, the heat of
The fryer whispering to me of his plea: “Do not cry for me
Young boy, You are mine now, forever.”

© K. James Ribble

Photo: @d3imagery / http://www.d3imagery.rocks/
Tahquamenon Falls – Paradise, Michigan

Ardent rain grasps
Hold of Autumn clouds, a
Panacea of lost thoughts
To my Heart of Changes.

© K. James Ribble

Motionless lies the soft summer day;
And as the morning dew
Slowly loses its battle with the sun,
You come to me like the Summers Friend…
Joyously, you and I walk the earth’s
Soft green fields and fill the cool
Woods with our laughter.
We murmur of days to come
And how we must ride
The Circle of Life.
I embrace your amber body;
We watch the magenta sun set
As evening brings you closer to me.
 
© K. James Ribble

There simply are no other
Excuses
Maudlin characters that they are
To justify my heart gone awry
These alibi actors upstage each other
Shed my Torment like
Crackling paint on the eaves of my suspicions
Crisping jingoism in the August sun
I cannot linger here
For these reasons
Any longer
(And so I must find my way
Cast into this world)
Even my own mystics cite too many pleas
Castigation’s mitigation of my own divinity
Set Against a pretext to personal freedom
I can never find.

© K. James Ribble

As I come
Closer and closer
To my destination
I see a clarity
Unfold
Revealed in twilight
Splendor
Like
Garden Rain
On Vermillion Flowers
The warmth
So incomparable
It gives to me
The stability of Life
I have always sought
Not unlike the
Sun that seeks
Solace among
Other crimson stars

© K. James Ribble

Snow music falls silent
Among the crisp dew
Waiting for night
Inside the foyer of God.
Cathedral echoes are heard
Down long halls that smell of oak
Of kings and queens as Songs
Attend to the snowdrifts outside.
I approach this castle, my memory
Hearing quiet melodies of time,
Sing canticles of my ancestors
Vetted to a confluence of light
Attracted by each to a
Curtain call of immortality
Between the stars of heaven
And my heart.
 
© K. James Ribble