Author: Thespian Drummer

I awoke this morning in
A projection of dreams
The manifest insight like
Denominations of subtle time
Like morning light
That’s never static
Fluttering in a steadfast,
Changing lumen onto you
Here now with me
Beloved lover
Of my longing soul
I am free within
You as all this
Life, this place,
This instant we share
Like scattered stars
Magnifies you among
Every soul I could ever love
In a future I envision
Distilled as you and I

© K. James Ribble

From the intersections
Of youth you will start to see
(I see) a young face fading,
Wilderness of growth makes
The fading ferment
Day-by-day as each
Reflection in consequence
Forms the occasion
Of unmade decisions
Forming in a wicked wind
As if those crossings
Of all those years stepped into
A future I read long ago in
A Shakespearean play and I,
I ran into that life without
Ever looking back,
Costume, makeup and all
Never to wonder ‘whether’
Kept going no matter
The outcome always
Trusting the universe
With all my heart in
Full-throttle naivety

© K. James Ribble

Impelled by your memory
I keep coming back
To the shoreline looking
Where the pines, stiff with salt
Reap the forever of their complacence,
And rift the white after-rush of water
With their shadows

I smell the sweet ocean air
Of longing as it seeps into
The bones of my own derision
Imploring me to come back
To look for you knowing full well
You are long since traveled on,
The white road and horse as companion,
More than my heart could hold in hand

So I am crestfallen within you
Instead ever vigilant to the history of
Your heart as I survey the tree line
For your peregrine friends asking them
To watch over you above the same
Vast lands of us and the roads we will
Travel once again to each other before dawn

© K. James Ribble

There’s a lessening of thought

tonight

Something I [never] believed

was possible

And yet here I am

Motionless in a sea of

transgression

Open to the world in

All its wonder

Caste to a frequent

Infringement of discovering

Day in daybreak

Absolution of economy

Never once

Did I look back

To forget

Its all mine

All mine

© K. James Ribble

Resolution ends in a mayfair of this
Bespoken heart of mine – creates the
Truss to all these lands of rule, this my soul
Of longing stands before your presence
While pleading for dismissal of my marrow
Between the deep visions of your russet hair &
The memory of your ebony skin upon my lips

Release me from this wantonness of late,
Allow the sun of our ancestors to reign free
Across our bed berthed from the legacy of this love
We’ve created to let these lost majestic threads
From which our hearts unspool release as tangent
The crying desert fjords of us in flowering
Sandalwoods and the myrrh of lost time –

Adjacent these reins of power we build in a
Triptych light of agony where infinity calls upon
Itself, showered in the unjust, quiet restraint of fire
Revealing the blue fragrance of your hair filling me
To the ends of earthly limits, this symbol I hold in
Devotion to your rule and expose lamellate lands to
Attest I will always be within your august light.

© K. James Ribble

I was
At the front of joy
In the station of regret
[while] I waited for the next
Collection of regards –
Only to behold the inquiry
Of my desires – all for which
Those years I no longer
thought valid, between
The mirror of light from
The lake of these sorrows,
And the wonder of your
Crescent smile — so
I am profoundly yours
Into this illuminating night.

© K. James Ribble

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