Sorrow is a lonesome river,
she feeds a deep blue sea.
She'll take all the tears you give her;
open the gates and set her free.

When it rains in Georgia,
it's flooding sacred ground.
From Augusta to Savannah,
that's holy water coming down.

Lift your chin up off your chest,
raise your eyes up to the sky.
The flood has reached its crest,
let the warm sun sanctify.

Sorrow is a lonesome river,
she feeds a deep blue sea.
She'll take all the tears you give her;
open the gates and set her free.

r ~ 5/16/14

love; something everyone wants
but no one knows what it looks like.

#life; something everyone has
but no one knows how to use it.

#sad
  #depression
    #pain
      #death; for when poets get ‘the feels’

      #heartbreak #you #him #her #heart
       Poets who fall in love fast with the
       Same reckless abandon that made
       You climb all the way to the top.
       Those scars used to make you cry
       Now they make you write.

elephants have memories
long,
to my way of thinking,
that must be hell!

imagine, remembering
in detail,
fine and complete.

the days of your life.
beginning at number one,
when all slippery,
slimed and mucked,
you were forcibly expelled,
into a world, of hard knocks.


image, each stumbling step
as you grew,
each slur,
each pointed arrow flung your way,

first fall, first hit, first miss
first kiss and all the desperation, set between.

and then,
you hit your teens.
emotionally bruised and battered
and running for the bell
placing 563rd  in the
contest of popularity.
trying new styles of clothes, dreams and personalities.
hormones raging, momma texing, paging,
virginity flexing
and all the other
****** bluff...guff....stuff
..."hell yeah i can never get enough"

finally you get to remember,
the grown up stuff.
projects due, bills to pay,
finding somewhere half decent to stay, grocery lists,
other people constantly ******,
in a it's all your fault kinda way.
deadlines,
diminishing lifelines, standing in unemployment lines,
waiting to pay a fine lines,
playing mine or yours in
your divorce foray.
and honest to god,
thats just the day to day
k-rap.
living low and *****
until the next pay comes along.

ok, there would be,
indeed some,
remembered joys,
some flowers,
among the weeds.
but thats mere fodder
and seeds,
for a better poem .....
written on a better day.

so finally you are old.
you are so, over it!
all creak and cracks, pills,
bad backs and bengay..

not to mention, the teeth
that sit in water glass smiling away,
all night.
on the table bedside.
that my friend, is just not right.

you are counting down the days, the hours...
watching.....home and away.

til one day,
you make the mortal coil's end...
and your shift is done and dusted.
bucket kicked,
daisies planted,
dirt kissed....
                  .....recalled.

all that.... and ba-jillion more
memories looking for time
on the elephant's mammoth mind - memory  dancefloor.

What do you say to a child in pain
when nothing can ease the burn,
          the hole,
the enveloping wave
          of darkness?

Words are not a chain
to fastly anchor
          one's soul,
to cling, to save,
          to harness.

Time is the only healing rain
to calm the churn,
          make whole,
to fill the vase,
          drown the sharpness.

And love. Mountains and oceans of love.
This is all I have to give.
My words are not enough.

5/15/14

My ink may run
as black as coal,
as dark as
a dark night
of the soul.

Or flow red hued
like the morning sky;
as red as love,
or red man's blood
on hard-baked clay.

Yellow ink hues
my many suns,
my moons
the color of
dry bone.

Blue-inked waves
may wash my
blues away,
or sing the blues as blue
as muddy waters.

Gray ink clouds
on a fog-shrouded
empty highway
take me from here
to the Blue Ridge
mountains.

White-capped sailors
sail the arctic
as lost as
my white ink
on a blank page.

r ~ 5/13/14

beware when you fall in love
with an artist
be it a painter, a singer, or poet

for the artist will
paint you
with strokes and hues
in shapes of every kind

sing about you
with heartbreak lyrics
and feelings which rhyme

write about you
with the simplest words
and a secret message she wants to say

beware of the artist,
and her love
one wrong move
and you're an artwork in her display