Month: May 2017

All this time I just stepped aside,
Not once questioning the decision
Until long after twilight set the dawn on fire
—right before my eyes—
while I bemoan a late spring.
Moon in the meantime,
Just in time for fire by the lakeside,
Just the shadow alone on the lake
Is reason enough to let the morning go …
But I realize this before it’s too late
And –in this moment – am captive to a
Frequent flight of thought,
Just past the eclipse of time -/-
Time enough for you and I.

 
© K. James Ribble

Like the red cliff

Of fearlessness

A gambit is displayed;

Gleaming, for no reason.

There only lies the question:

Where does love live?

With all the crescent moons?

All the birds, aloft?

Cannot gain the magnificence

Of this thought in the

Same direction it was given.

Clarity unfolds

Like the world’s vision.

 
© K. James Ribble

Oh, Chorus of Camber!
Find me beneath the earth’s blue bale!
Cry with me the night’s limbering
Of haunts as cattails sway
In the listless wind of embrace!

Sing to me in endless climb
Like the pitch and peer of the sea!
Light us before the storm is ended
So we may roe and tumult
To the death of dawn!

For I am wracked by this
Ancient land as we lure in pace
Each to the draught of sleep,
That dreams may break the silence
Of distance as the dew of night

Collides with a cloudless moon!
Sing to me oh Chorus!
Bring me the night’s limbering
Of haunts as cattails sway
In the listless wind of embrace!

 

© K. James Ribble

Words I’m bleeding
Pour quiet, venial as

Vernal starves to elicit
Words I say from the

Fount of thou sands of
Voices passed

Since my longing
Began in embers,

Clear of the fires lit,
Resides in winds of

Grain, Symbol-as-Self,
Carries across umbral time

Matching aslant the
Tethers beyond tomorrow

Bares a path for shattered
Night as egress abates the dawn

 

© K. James Ribble

Galaxies come and go as
You dressed us in
The softest light
A mirage of catastrophe
Bodes only in explosions
Of the finest silk
Borne from the solar
Winds of time

Walking these lands
We’ve enshrouded our
Selves in the golden breath
Of encapsulation
Like a thievery
In the colors of song
That base our clothing
Of love seen for eons by
The peoples of this place

This redress comes not
For us but consumes the
Afterlife of every star
Each nova seeking expulsion
Towards the proposition that
This splendor is our success
To be endowed with the
Beauty of eternity

 

© K. James Ribble

An election of my days
Become temporal like clouds

This quiet sits down once in
Each and every day a

Sound evaporates with the
Constancy of tears in daylight

Sends its message in
Degrees of Tangibility

Its undercurrent of awareness
Awry in the aire of now, encloses

The Hall of lost thought
In an orientation of

Redemptive purpose this –
My own periphery spherical

An etymology of decision
Begins the entanglement

Of entelechy, becomes
Simple consciousness found

As my soul becomes
Manifest in this earthen life

 
© K. James Ribble

As I embrace you, the
Slow Light of Fades

Spills a Jasmine silk of air,
Embraces night into wisps of

Knowing that I must leave you now
Here in the amphitheater of this time

This catacomb of our restlessness,
Astronomy of our hearts a map

To collisions of us the way stars
Belie the shadow of exile

Of illumination, a library
Of topology our loving cannot follow

This shortness of time becomes
Brackish as water beneath us, my gaze

A window to the candles’ whisper, their
Shadows dancing like leaves

In the flutter of night the way
My sorrow casts its imprint of your face

Upon me – the same light of softness for
Which I cannot be without

And yet your kiss shapes all of me
Together as we rise and dress

The night foregoing our hearts torment
Captive to the daybreak of dawn.

 

© K. James Ribble

If tears were become beauty
My life before you would weep
The river of my ever flowing heart
Until every drop proclaimed
My love for you –

If sorrow were become grace
Like the light of your eyes
This, my grief would still
Cast an unending stream
Of the deepest courage

Would never run dry by
These raging waters of my
Devotion to you,
Distilled by the wonder
Of your consecrated heart –

If silence were become truth
For all the loss of this world
In which I have found you
Across the ages of every epoch
Before the beginning of

You and I, let this soundlessness
Break me into a million pieces
That I may take every shard of
This broken earth and offer them
To you in unceasing fealty

That it may heal you in the
Same Light of life you
Have given me, my gratitude
Beyond this realm of heart
Beyond the sphere of divine

 
© K. James Ribble

Like chess moves
Like the flow of
A Salem river the
Air seeks majesty here

Surrounds us like the
Willow bends its branch
To touch the flowing gold
In silhouette and shadow

While the sun careens
Its light before the end
Of day, prodigal and bereft
I feel this candid breeze

Begin to speak of sorrow
As if I am floating foreign
Benign to even the sounds
Of its memory, Memory that

Ever greets its last hurrah
Bitten on the tongue of
Gentle weeping, quieting to
None in the silence of spring

 
© K. James Ribble

 

exhibit a

I’ve come into
this world
A sensual being
like a First Memory
In this Time of Memory
[memory is time]
All collected,
hedonistic
Coherence of Thought
Surrounded,
Blinded by
All this (time)
as though
I’ve walked into darkness,
Only to keep saying
It’s OK! It’s OK!

exhibit b

hedonistic
Coherence of Thought
this world
I’ve come into
like a First Memory
I’ve walked into darkness,
[memory is time]
In this Time of Memory
Surrounded,
It’s OK! It’s OK!
All collected,
All this (time)
as though
Blinded by
A sensual being
Only to keep saying

repeat exhibit a

© K. James Ribble