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Risa Njoroge Jun 2019
Letters are old school, but I guess so am I.
In a way, I guess that is true,
I sometimes feel like I am an old fool,
Stuck in the Motown groove,

The 21st Century is not for me,
Waiting a minute before I can hear the next song,
And when it eventually comes on it's one filled with hate,
And let’s not even talk about trying to date,

They said to leave a message after a beep,
For my old soul that means a beat,
That brought with it dance and heat,
Words and rhymes and a drumbeat,

See back in my day, a letter meant waiting on the mail man,
And not looking for blue ticks from an app I got from an online store,
It meant post stamps and asking friends to proofread,
It meant punctuating every line so that you knew without you I could not breathe,

Being in love was not just words and play,
It meant dancing in the street; we called it grooving,
Not sweet talking and lying,
The old fool in me is tired of trying,

Am not saying that you are lying,
But you are in no way trying,
To meet me in the street,
Or groove to a Motown beat,

I wish you were sending me flowers,
While you were out there spending time,
With worlds that were not even meant to be real,
My old soul needs more than one-off dines or drinking box wine!

See back in Motown, when a man loved a woman,
He could not keep his mind on anything else,
He did not put a little loving on her, or shelve her
It meant the whole street knew her, and even knew her favorite beat!

I have known only one other of your kind, the sweet-talking guy,
You have me down on my knees wondering when you are going to leave,
That is not love, I don’t know what it is,
Feels like it, but this is something else!
I went ahead ahead an fell in love, but after self searching and listening to a great friend, I realize that maybe this is not love!  
Happy reading!
  Jun 2019 Risa Njoroge
David Adamson
Dance was the shape her body gave to music.
  Jun 2019 Risa Njoroge
David Adamson
The first time I saw Los Angeles,
it was after midnight.
Descending from Cajon pass and
entering the chaos of light and
the formless poetry of traffic,
I thought of Ezra Pound’s line from near the end of the Cantos:
“I cannot make it cohere.”
“It” is the most important word in that sentence.
In language we can conjure wholes too big for us to comprehend.
Push hard enough, and names fade and pronouns are all we have left.
So what is this place?
#urbansprawl #citylights
  Jun 2019 Risa Njoroge
David Adamson
Forgetting is the only clarity.*

It was a day of forgetting.
No unquiet dreams or
casual reunions with the dead
who wander the halls of sleep,
the bodies of someone else’s loss.
No ghosts in the gazebo.
No echoes in the fading light.

Exiting sleep’s empty waiting room,
She woke. Blue sky blinked into her eyes.  
The room’s climate began to clear.
There was writing on the wall.
Old fragments came to closure.
The windows slowly turned to mirrors.

She fiddled. She soared.  
She played with her ancestors’ building blocks.
She lent a myth to god.
She stood in a garden with five black stones.
She foretold an eclipse,
Burned the witch of winter,
Stepped in the same river twice.

The moment froze.
Then there it was.
The compound inviolate paradox
at the heart of things,
the answer flickering in light and shade,
to the sound of a child’s voice,
then the roaring wind.
She chuckled as it faded to a point of light
then vanished, like the picture on an old TV,
Like the moon shrinking into the alarm clock’s face.

Her breath brewed clouds above her forehead.
She sat aloof in the empty air,
Alone in the immense morning,
At rest in this inviolable disconnection,
the clear cold innocence of now.
Risa Njoroge Jun 2019
These tears she cries could float a ship,
The loneliness that fills her heart runs way too deep,

The miles between them is sky wide,
The time between them is half a clock,

Strangling the framed picture she misses him,
His tiny little hugs & his melodious laugh

She even misses the noise,
Mostly she misses his voice,

She misses the way he smiles with all his teeth out,
And how he ***** his middle and index finger when he is zoned out,

She often struggles with her choice,
And wonders if he will understand why she is chasing this dream,

Her hearts prayer no man understands
One more day apart will drive her mad,

Everyday she falls further apart,
"You doing it for him" she reminds her breaking heart,

"Us against the world" she always said to him
Now she wants to tear it apart to play with him

She misses her child,
She misses her son!
I haven't seen my son in a couple of months, I miss him
Risa Njoroge Jun 2019
She wore a long black dress,
That showed off some of her dark skin,
And a little bit of her *******,
Her hair was pulled up the top of her head,
And she had on thick reading glasses
You would think she was about to take a test,

He wore a light blue shirt and dress pants,
And wore a golden watch with thick leather  straps,
He asked her to sit by the big wide window,
So he could look at her under the golden sun,
When his hand touched her skin,
"Cafe' con leche" she whispered to him,

Before today they only existed in each others dreams,
Exchanged many letters,
Where they talked about many things,
Fears, hopes and secret needs,
They spoke about Wishes,
About lack of kisses they both now seek,

She shivered as he touched her lips,
His cold white hand lit fire to her dark skin,
They wanted more than the wishes and horses,  
They wanted hugs and kisses,
A fine romance
Where they could both feel safe,

Wishes and kisses,
Dreams and Desires,
Beggars wishing to riding horses,
Me and him hoping to stop time,
Cafe' con leche their fingers marry,
Tonight they will live out their dreams!
  Jun 2019 Risa Njoroge
David Adamson
The language I learned from you
was the wordless speech
that tongue teaches tongue
that eye flicks to eye
that skin lets through
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