The DNA of Us

Thespian Drummer

I sought Correlation and forged a sympatico within
A boundless hostility unknown even to myself.
This anger, tempered with regret, unleashed a season
Of the coldest winter in the midst of Summer’s stare –

Callous, unafraid – still the words pushed through, (though
Left dormant inside recklessness,) like time caste aside
From my own perdition, aghast in the steppe of Reason.
An agony away from internment confounded by a reign of tears,

I fought a galaxy of despair unknown to me, scraping the tomb
Of all that I had lost, an escalating monument to redemption set against
A sky of rivers that all lead to you, the floating rhythm of your face,
The sigh of your smile, the seconds of your breath –

I lead into you [now] before our time has come, into expanse of sunlight
Yet unspoken, castaway inside your eyes where I become lost, found but
Isomorphic to the same image of you before my own eyes, purely
Captured by our differences in sameness
Across an untouched horizon of fire.
 
 
© K. James Ribble

The Chaldean

Thespian Drummer

 

They were images, phantoms blue like Negril
A synesthesia of sound, color, and the
Syncopated smells of lilac and jasmine – all
Forming the warm Symbol of you
I long to hold.  

 

I want to tell you, as if I were a Chaldean sensing,
Poetry written is the physical transference
Of the spirit-world to us here on earth – and I become
Aware that it is our ability to Listen that makes
Cogent equal to the depth of your own willingness

 

To release perception, to un-marry those thoughts
Of who you are and just for a moment consider –
I am who I am – but there are symbols that surround me
That also have bearing of who I am.  It is this conduit that

 

Is my voice as I speak, as I listen to all that is around me.
 

 

© K. James Ribble

The Gist

Thespian Drummer
“On the gist of the daytime fleecing of thought vs. writing, I conjured up an absolute soup of consciousness, dimly lit vagueness on the outskirts of time.  Basic, inept and diligent attempts have been, are and will be made in the morass of autonomy frequently tapped for sense and source of authenticity, never fully revealing the recipe of choice.  This is not to say that all is not lost on the confluence of gravity and prose.  I myself have often visited these realms with dubious intentions never once forgetting that it is I who must substantiate the course, bring life into otherwise lifeless memory and track down all beginnings of idea to the One, the Ultimate presentation of literary excellence.  How to gauge this elusive talent?  Is there a baseline of intellect which harbors such a metric?  Can these things be left to the unforeseen conclusions of Art and Beauty?  Moreover, is there a common ground upon which all writing is judged by its reader?  I believe these and other even more relevant questions and their answers lie just outside the equinox of virtue, that morality that brings forth words like honor, loyalty, vision, piety and truthfulness.  Upon these words I gauge my life, my thought my ever present regard for that striving of the divine in my life, my time in which I am here to express and ask the question, ‘Who am I?’”
 
 
3-11-03 12:23 AM EDST
Ringwood, NJ

Cirrus

Thespian Drummer


I’ve been disengaged from time
Aloft in the cirrus of thought,
Outliers given triumph over
Managed expectations. 

Frayed, I see thousands of miles
Ahead of my own ascension
Charted into Life before my eyes,
The apprehension leading to trusted

Waters on intuitive navigation. 
That same Incredulous sky asks
Indignant questions against stark
Memories malignant with cause –

Yet here I remain alone, as if untouched,
Refer only to the touchstone of
An obsequious self-landscape where
Oxygen is thin at ground elevation, my
Abandonment breaching into starlight and revelation.


© K. James Ribble

Life Enigma

Thespian DrummerLeave a comment

Clandestine retreats of the Heart
Make certain the
Secrets of Love‑‑
To know and understand
To wonder and speculate…
It’s like the angle of two mirrors:
you cannot look
directly towards your face.

© K. James Ribble

Undone

Thespian Drummer
I’ve plunged headlong into you
On the longest note of music
I sing your smile, your stunning
Crescendo of all that you Are and I am
Fraught with the tempo of your eyes,
As I embark on one more sequence of your laughter –
Even as I utter the smallest notes of your look my way.
I am lifted towards you in every adagio
Of your soft skin your eyes of limitless aria

And take shelter inside the quiet
Of every phrase of
your shoulders
your breasts
your every fold of you
Like honey across an endless ocean
Of your song, a canticle, undone, in every way.

 

© K. James Ribble

The Last Poem Of The Year

Thespian Drummer


          Poor New York New Year…
1988 lay scattered on her streets
Like the calendar pages of a year
Thrown casually out a window
From the twenty first floor of Pain –
          In the shock of a New Year,
She dilates herself from too many tears,
The autonomous reaction of too many people
With too many sorrows…
          I feel her grief like the
Excruciation of a diver rising
Too quickly from the depths in an ocean
Of her streets,
My blood boiling as pressure becomes
Imbalanced, a Harlem summer night,
No food on the table, children screaming.
          I walk her streets in 
Traffic jam quietness,
Acquiesced with thoughts that
Her suffering will be released someday,
The gridlock of her life purged with hope.
 

 

 © K. James Ribble

At Dawn

Thespian Drummer

I am prompted
By an ambered, saddened sky
Beyond my sacred heart
Of dreams of you,
Across this loneliness
Drenched in calm,
Importing just how much
I’ve missed of you:
An entire lifetime of
Your gentle touch
Your loving kiss
Your royal embrace –
To wake at dawn with you by my side.

© K. James Ribble

Ritardando

Thespian Drummer

I. Breathless I emerge un-cleansed,
Tantamount to the arbitration of a
Suggestion, and usher my own
Greenery of choices bearing witness
To passionate decisions – in spite of
My own dismay – thus,

II. I see its why, aside from
Political metaphors
Ringing hollow, (as
 Ascendant depreciatives
 In a non-descript world), – only its

III. Color, yellow-fisted, reminds
One of winter-sky at dawn, an
Immersion of Cloudlessness and
Absence combined with resolution
And absolution in grays.

IV. I rise now, fettered by the light,
A common undertow of reason under my wings,
Faculties ablaze with conscience, while
The choices amass an unlikely ally,
While the Greenery resolves to act upon me.

© K. James Ribble