periphery

Mountains formed because of you along
A valley that sets aside who you are
Allows for the angle of the sun to cast light
So defines you still within a joy you lost.

Mendacity persists even in the afterglow
Of dusk a precious reminder of your skin like
The auburn stutter of a star’s last thoughts
As I rise to the chorus timbre of your light

Marked by this constant remnant of the dark
We’ve become tragic cause for sorrow assumed
And rest on the periphery of time’s loss of wonder
Just as I come home to you on Christmas Day

 

© K. James Ribble

Triptych

You are the only one who knew
The man as I was knew me in my
Prime real estate self virile as the
Aurora of the sun the one who sired
Your children by way of a lost love
We could never find you are the only
One who will ever know that man who
In his time shown bright as those
Tuned-in-to-you eyes shown like
Shooting stars across a deep blue-black
Sky falling to earth as we made love
Like LA snowfall in July when that
Time became a trilogy of innocence
Across the triptych of a Journey to
An outland of known/unknown origin
Where our hearts became fodder for a
Cruel star eating all the light we could
Ever emit like time and light and a soulful
Song spent decaying within those beds we
Shared so long ago how could we possibly
Know that man -that man- has come to this?

© K. James Ribble

Awakening

Dream like the knell’s overhang
To a Proclamation of an auto-da-fé
The scene unfolds like a chanteuse
Sings of evocation in dreams-of-a-dream:
My best friend and I are back in Brooklyn

We are sitting on the Front
Porch of Detroit as my friend
Drives up in his jeep but
The car is soaked in Krispy Kreme
Powdered sugar while we dance the Dance

We practiced all day long
A dance to the tune of a song
I remember but I can’t remember
So I fall back asleep and see myself
As a child maybe two or three and

And I am crying, crying looking for
Consolation as my point of view changes-
Now I look into the face of my young self
Become lucid in the dream – my dream-self
Calms my child-self as I become aware

Dream of quietening my young self
Take both of my lucid dream-hands
Cup the face of this blonde child-self
And look directly into our
Cloudless-Sky eyes:

And my lucid self Knows;
The child is being watched –
Now Aware and awake.

© K. James Ribble

As I Am

As I am my own mimesis
Actor abstruse and unscripted
Yet keep hitting the snooze button on
This unplanned life ‘till I finally get up –
As if the wind gambled – so I get to my feet.

Like sad wisps of air floating in my dreams
I traipse along cold floors of chance
Keep throwing the dice just to say
I know I’m coming back to good-luck thinking
The fortune of us can weather the changes.

I build what I can set plans to a theme
Try to dance to sooth my heart and avoid
Acrimony those ideas to vapid vacillation as Escape-
A common melody of time’s relentless stare.
I try moving in agile company to lose its sarcasm

As if my sense of humor went awry like gin
Composting all these thoughts in fields left fallow
For the oncoming Winter proclaiming to the land:
This is my future my own performance, cross left
Downstage, towards an unlit proscenium of sorrow.

 

© K. James Ribble

Begins

For whom I’ve come to know
Your pathos has never been warmer
Knowledge brings a temperate formation
Bearing equal measure amidst the stars

Such a cool ride we ride only to hide
Behind the sun of natural cause tempests
Shed light beyond ourselves rendering doubt
No more – just as dawn begins to set.

 

© K. James Ribble

This Time

There is this time
A re-play of memory –
A memory that comes from
Another place – memory
Washing over me like rain
From a time that is not
Of me – but Before me
So many lifetimes ago.
These re-collections
Found in sepia just
Before they leave me,
Manifest in quiet jamboree
Of pine fire and lilac
Opens to overlay upon
This View inside me,
As if the memory still resides
With the person from whence
It came – I am just a vessel
For this Moment passing
Through me like wind gently
Embraces a leaf, together,
Falling to the stream below
Floats gently bound for oceans
From so long ago.
© K. James Ribble

Mercury and the Moon

We became vagary like the moon and
Just as mercurial, a momentary flutter

Aside the contortion of our hearts,
Like sprites on the Lake of Summer –

A reflection of us cast the same light as
Projection of time splays towards Now.

Culmination of distance no longer applies
So here, like a resolution of abundance, we are

A launch to become as one, unfinished as
A Dance, rough as quadrille along lost shores,

Just our own digression, like vapor as it rises
Across the morning moor of sunrise, you and I.

© K. James Ribble

Sans S’en Apercevoir

Original Intuition lost before the
Illusory of a hidden coast
The shores of my tense long past forgotten
The insight of my own crystalline dreams
Became a pretense to altered paths

That same ocean that carried us to
The aquiline of dissipation, came forth
Before I ever knew you were already
In love with me, and so I cannot fathom
The pillaring of your heart before our earthen ways

To an absence of our succession before the
Highest beliefs that the same genuine Manifest
Of Time illuminated the entrance to our edifice,
Our capture, like the brilliance of the sullen sun
Before it becomes lost to the neighboring stars.

This now confirms all concatenations,
The timing of You and I, as the caste of our love
Seeks grounding to the gates of forty years –
A seedling we placed in each other’s hearts now
Bears the link we’ve always known would come to this.

 

© K. James Ribble

Of You and I

Like a vast murmuration of our hearts
We stand as portraiture of grace
The vantage of our visage transformed –
Our realm, a Golden symbol of eternity.

 

© K. James Ribble

Replenish

I am spurn
Of magnanimous origin
Lest lose all light beyond
My own shadow

Relay of tears capsize
Over fears of patience
The fields of which are drawn
From our Well of deep love

Insinuate the time as
You always do and bring me
An ally of a heart beyond rebirth
To the coronary of unbridled joy

This is how I am when
Within your presence –aloft
Before the granite fires burn with purpose
Our everlasting love will replenish the earth.

 

© K. James Ribble