Category: Poetry

I walk with her
In the acreage
of neglected dreams
she escorts me to
A realm that sees
the angels sing of time
Gathered in a featherless
touch of Agony
where even Michael weeps

archangel tears of anguish

Such is the nature
of her beauty
Like a satin quill
of starless nights in
A Giverny of lessons I try
to scribe, the whole of
My hope and sacrifice
enstates all,
all to her other-wise –

and even then,
just past the ethos
Of this forest song I sing
I am drawn to
Her eyes of Awe

a frightful and lovely truth
That I am within the pleas
Of her only cost,
the cost of being human
Vulnerable enough
To love as the angels sing.

 

© K. James Ribble

A frail memory floats in
turbid waters of absence

reclining altogether in

satisfaction, undone by the cloister
of whereabouts

moments later, a conversation
about monuments and semantics

reveals more than just words
it’s as though conception has taken

a front seat in this house, this
wanton disrobing of submission

so it goes along
-chaos-collected-

managed forethought only
long after the discussion ended.

 

© K. James Ribble

Midsummer brings
The ramparts of dawn

To canterfields in a haze
Of Delphic greens

And cornflower blues
Where the silver strands

Of Edifice seek the ocean
Air it cannot breathe,

Here, like a break of light,
You come to me on

The cornerstone of betrayal
Like a semaphore bleeding

Stillsymbols of this city’s
Light-spill casting disparate

The rooftops in sorrow before
Each derision of my soullessness

Becomes a camouflage
Reflection of dry, fraying clouds

As if the cameo of fairness
Grants this day’s night of being

The night now a grey elm
Of strides in elements
Of redress and return

 

© K. James Ribble

Snow sets to the
South of me and the
Sun, in a blaze with the
Light of Prometheus,
They begin to sing –

All the people sing in a
Language of chorus
So their dialect,

A paramour
Of Forgiveness,

Denies the madness
Mended in divine cost
And tenderness, this
Precedence casts hope

Like a robe clothing
The room in release –

For so many,
The syntax of artistry
And argument will
Spill the ageless
Tears of night.

 

© K. James Ribble

Dusk settles me
In a round filament
Of light casting
Its last strands
Of motion
Through my
Window as
Birds sing the
Day song of evening –
Summer engulfs me
Framing this moment
In a triumvirate of life,
The light, sounds, and breeze
All a millenary of minutiae
Enshrouding the day in
Persian golds, details of love
Like a lapidary of time
Revealing the ornaments
Of my reverie in the earth
As comes my heart
Now comes my rest

 

© K. James Ribble

She glanced over to
Me like an afterthought
Aghast to the realization that
Her self-image carried the
Callow’s weight of mauve
Effortlessly falling into the
Sanctity of remnant time …
And as her gaze returned to
The mirror, a memory of her
Childhood began to sing of
Summer yellow skies and long walks
With her father, long since passed –
Where the aire of regret came
To rest as the fire of burden
Burnished bright in her eyes.

 

© K. James Ribble

Mount the canvas
Take pictures in the rain
Come hither on assumptions
Dress time in phrases
There are no
Reasons, inchoate
In drone in chrome
Be done be pursed
By light [be]
Infinity, call my name
Come home says Arrival
Become destination

 

© K. James Ribble

I speak in real time
As head motions hand
to write
I’ve uncovered layers
of Self
the fog of years
roll revealing
slowly the nature of Now –
Wrought appears at
The edge of
these grasslands
Stops to eat
with my hunger
Along the walkways of a
Furrowed homestead
meditates with the
whippoorwills in the
Summer fauna
all green against green
The infinite gesture
of life unfolds
I hold myself in this
cradle of thought
As the wise
abutilon sings to me.

 

© K. James Ribble

The lake’s canvas of
Touch-craft seeks the foreign

Dignity of my weary steps
This my longing gait, motions

Toward your arms and bribes
The flowered shore of dusk –

Consumes the day, this day
Aligned askew to a lust-red sun

Resolving to an effortless
Musk of silence [approaching]

The hush of night as
Thistle cries weary on this

Occasion of my remembered
Softness of you – and I plunder

The night asking merciful stars
Please, please bring me to you

Your image glowing moonlike
Beside these imploring

Shores of my Alone:
That I can smell the day lilies

Above the floating lotus
Reminds me that I am still

Furlongs away from you
So, so far away
From you . . .

 

© K. James Ribble

Crystalline caveats mount
The vested blur of time

Awash in the reverence
Of reminiscence – this province,

This taste of your skin has been
Embroidered on my lips of memory

The afterburn so lost within me
I can only recall the moon-kissed

Glow of your heart as if redeemed
By the angels of nocturnal fires

As if all blatancy of emotion to
Suggest even the slightest ocean

Depth of searing want – and so
I’ve capsized inside of you

Exposed my soul adrift on
The nimbus waves of your

Soul to heal – let me heal,
Heal your heart in this time.

 

© K. James Ribble