From August, 2014*

My wife, Karen, and I were on our way home from running errands. It was lunchtime, and I stopped at a fast food restaurant to get some items to take home.
Standing outside, near the doorway, was a homeless person, obviously ready to ask for whatever he could get, money, food. As I approached the entry he said,"Excuse me sir, can you help me. I'm hungry, and they(manager) will not let me inside." Looking into his eyes, I saw the need, the fear, of being denied so many times. I asked him what he wanted, he told me, and I purchased it for him. I handed it to him as I returned to my vehicle, and in turn he said, "God bless you,thank you."
Leaving the parking lot, Karen said,"that was a nice gesture you just did for him", for she had been watching and listening to us. Driving a bit further, she turned to me and said, "How do you know he wasn't Jesus in disguise."
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copyright-richard riddle August 04,2014

The sun touched the ground
and turned the world to ashes
the domed tower stands.

If I could speak love, my words would skip beats

You may not have been birthed in the soil,
and granted,
you will not blossom
when spring melts winters wake
but inside of you
grows a thousand gardens
full of exploding stars.
You are of the earth
and your ashes
have been constructed with stardust,
and set free with the wind.
So you may not have a pretty face,
and your body may hold stories
of too many moonless nights alone.
But if you reach inside,
you will find a forest
for a ribcage
and a restless ocean heart.
So don't ever let anyone tell you
you are nothing.
You are a galaxy
holding a million different planets,
and my dear,
that is not nothing.

I hate reading you my writing. you've seen my skin split but that is nothing compared to this. I won't let you look at me because I am so afraid you might see how sorry I am. you can turn away but guilt is ebbing from your spine and I absorb it's heaving glow. I bet you didn't know flowers grow towards the sun
2. if I could count how many times I think you've lied to me I would need a thousand hands. every finger would be calloused and burnt but veracious. I've dived into glacial waters and lost perception of the surface. when I see the sky, I swim down to touch the sand
3. I once was with a boy who fell into an abyss of addiction. fourteen months of malicious intentions that rendered me to ash. now I am smeared across your mattress and swept into the cracked marble corner of the window sill, kissed by the silk rhythm of the curtains. I am the needles you dropped on your carpet. I would give you all of me but you don't want a fraction. you know, that boy had my ring that said "I Love You" and he tossed it in the lake. I had another that said "Always" and it's somewhere in your home now. the lake will dry before I ever see your bedroom again
4. you have more lyrics memorized than words printed in a novel. the backroads of Carolina are veiled by tree branches but these streets only seem significant when you're singing in the backseat of my car with your head cutting through the wind and your palms caressing the curves of the atmosphere. and after all, she is much more lovely than I. you recite songs we've heard in the exact locations where they flowed through us for the first time, although it's been months since we've listened. you can remember every time we've ever ****** but not one time you've grabbed my hands
5. we fell in love in the winter. it is so **** warm outside. I hate it because I can no longer become entangled beneath blankets heated by your body. you love it because there are a hundred places to be now. all of them without me. but it's the lack of words from you that destroys me much more than your dexterity. if you can kiss the hickeys on my neck why not the scars along my chest? why are there scratches marking up your frame like a road map and knive handles sticking from my back? twist them and I'll scream, cut me and I'll bleed, but nothing you will physically do can ever injure me.
6. there is something about the f word. and I don't mean any of the words you like to yell while you're ambling down the halls or skating down the street. this word: Forever- makes me want to hurl myself off a bridge. I wonder if you would stand there and try to talk me down like the one boy we saw who broke his bones. it was February sixth. It is April and I can't drive past there without wanting to mimick his very moves. maybe I pray for Forever so badly because you would never bless me with it. maybe its because sometimes I feel like my words are a foreign language and you only grow frustrated when I speak. maybe it's because loving you is mostly like sticking a loaded gun down my throat. I often slip into my fathers closet and pull his pistol from it's case just to remember how it feels. but you are far, far more dangerous
7. if you are hearing this you are sitting beside me, or beneath me, and you should know that you have saved me. when I found out you couldn't sleep in your own bed while I was gone (and how you could not write because music is too much like poetry) my brother told me, "good luck loving him as much as he loves you." what he doesn't know is how I can pick you out of a crowd of a thousand in just an instant. everyone asks me why I love you because they don't understand you. I don't understand you. that is why I love you.
8. I have read the minds of stupid boys with loud mouths and pretty smiles but your life is still just foggy windows that I cannot clear. I would love to hear you make promises but I don't think you can keep them. you were with me when you had two girls by your side- how could I ever know where your hands are now when I am not holding them? I would take a bullet for you but you're the one holding the gun. I always kiss you first. I always beg you to stay. but I am constantly so worried that you will slip away.

If a hiker, at Point "A", begins walking backwards, will he be "meeting", " or "passing", those places he had previously seen?

In the morning, I gather my thoughts of yesterday
Like the foraging chipmunk, collecting acorns
And stuffing them miserly in my jowls
The past is sustenance for a somnolent soul

As age condemns my faculties
I pull, from my once copious jowl
A jewel of sorts
A garnet set in fool’s gold

My memory is manufactured
Assembled and disassembled
No longer what was or is or will be
But was and is and never has been

I confine my thoughts to winter
Where barren fields and sterile trees
Offer less to recollect
And empty my jaws of these useless reminiscences