Like the young man I once was
I assume the Summer
As rain to sun
Cannot fathom undoing
What I’ve become only
To find my way back
Start Again this time
The Weight of stars past
Nova of my own abandon.
© K. James Ribble
Can’t Sleep
Like demiurge-macro
A silversteen walkoff
Trying to sleep
Too wired for anything but
THOUGHT yet
Your warmth still retained within
The sheets of my bed –
© K. James Ribble
Vituperation of Faith
A forest chill has formed around me
A glaucous and opaque request
Noting that I am viscous all at once
Before falling into disarray
This greyness cannot fathom
The relentless purge of color
From a disowned parque of my mind
It Surrounds the clamoring of evil
My own devotion resting lost among
The silence of these trees that sing to me
A chorus of redemption that seals its
Way between the rictus of my own liturgy
Becoming Lost before an anarchy of faith
That I am remotely softened to the touch
When the sound of your voice recoils my
Heart into an open hall of grace and
I cannot breathe any longer – I must
Leave this place leave before I am
Erased standing right in front of you
Seeking to be recovered by my own deliverance.
© K. James Ribble
No Doubt
I am an enfilade of sunlight
Cast its last moments of life
Above the horizon, a cast away
Of my own device rendering
A subterfuge of new choices
Against the form of an extraordinary
Chance to wish good among all men
Billowing from the ramparts of dawn.
An accomplice of doubt catches wind
Of his debauchery only to concede
To strong advice that a benefit of living
Does not come without cost.
A tantamount reflection into the times
Of that moment projects back all that I have
Given in a path only to you where
My walk toward you has just begun.
© K. James Ribble
“No Doubt” first appeared on this blog in October of 2016. It was since published in Figroot Press – Issue Three December 2016, a wonderful collection of poetry, prose, art & photography, found here. Check it out! >KJR<
Languish
We were like the wind
We were like the wave
We were like the sky
We have come to this
Languishing in the torpor
Of our technology.
© K. James Ribble
An Apology
There, in the parlor, I knew
This love would not last
If that’s what you could call it
But I did not have the courage
To speak up –
I could’ve said something
Been more attentive to the Voice
Inside me – but I was naïve
And unaware, following rules
Not even I could believe.
Thus the cruel stage was formed
Upon a barren set of lonely
Scenes, a pauper’s place,
A remnant of what could have been
For this I cannot say how
Sorry I am for deceiving you
If there’s any consolation at all
Know that I pay a heavy price
Inside my own despair of loneliness
And the deserted silence of time.
© K. James Ribble
Synonymity
I used to live in LA
Pasadena, Alhambra, Central –
I could walk to Korea Town.
Lived in San Diego too,
Coronado, Ocean Beach, Golden Hill –
The Silver Strand was my beach of choice though
As much as I loved Redondo.
The Strand’s position south of the NAS is an honest line
Geology’s trick appropriated from the Pleistocene Epoch
Lending the landscape like an open sore to be healed
By waters warmed to the beat of a California Sun
Where each wake laps its walking rhythms into virgin sand . . .
It’s as if there was a covenant between them,
Endowing all signs of life with a glaze of gold
Beneath an ocean floor of deep blue love.
© K. James Ribble
Admission
I am open to you.
Seamless.
Like warm pockets of water
In the ice of Superior,
– and you look at me –
Suspended from access and weight as
I become Admission to this moment:
Like warm pockets of water
In the ice of Superior,
– and you look at me –
Suspended from access and weight as
I become Admission to this moment:
Like a Capillary of time’s aperture,
Free-falling toward your light, after-glow
Of your own expansion, as your essence
Cartwheels among a thousand dreams
Free-falling toward your light, after-glow
Of your own expansion, as your essence
Cartwheels among a thousand dreams
Into waves of us on
the shoreline of Emerges
Onto your own Shoulder of Orion
Salted water on a fresh abduction
the shoreline of Emerges
Onto your own Shoulder of Orion
Salted water on a fresh abduction
Entrusting the majesty of love
To the Open sea of us,
So There are no other gateways –
Beside the one I walk towards
Exit into your breathing,
Into your eyes.
To the Open sea of us,
So There are no other gateways –
Beside the one I walk towards
Exit into your breathing,
Into your eyes.
© K. James Ribble
mathematical
Rushing sideways into my own puzzlement,
The recondite aftertaste of a déjà vu above my head,
I peer, snake-like, into the mathematical equivalent of
Boolean’s theorems, seeking an account to self-inflection.
Like a lost record I find the whim of neuron, cannot explain
This impulse view where mind’s a category-five misdemeanor,
The force of it catches fire just alongside my purview of Heaven –
Even as I write the logic and logos of it, never once does it unfold.
Familiar frequencies of a past known only to me recur and,
Again, there is my unforsaken love upon a fallow bed of loss
Compiling the desert in all its expanse to the oblivion of
Finding you, my love, the pieces of our love upon a lap of sorrow.
Straddled across the you and I of us, finding how incredibly
Lucky I’ve been, still – there is no replacement for that time –
It belongs to us, this immutable moment afforded to you and I:
This is all I ever wanted with you, for you – as I am found
Inside this universe of love unaccounted for – just you and I.
© K. James Ribble
Pose
Caught the back of a dream
Overlay of memory, vision-ephemeral
A Dissipation, like fog, the dream
Image revealing its mystery right
Before mind’s eye, gone just before I
Can tell the Truth of what I’ve seen
So I become quiet . . . listening
The vision lasting only milli-seconds
Recalling Enough to know that I’d
Seen the trace of that moments’
Face appearing like the last
Frames of film through a
Projector the flutter of light, a
Flood of memory that was meant
To inform my heart that
You are still within me
Harbored deep inside an unknown
Crest of time, floating before me
Like light that dances in-
Between shadow, soft but untouchable,
Unspoken, out of reach of you
Yet find I am still drenched
Deep within, you are still
Deep within me, only memory remains.
© K. James Ribble
Thespian Drummer 
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