Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
8.4k · Mar 2012
Sins of Thieves
Riq Schwartz Mar 2012
sins of thieves are born
of patience, care, courage, strength
virtues every one
7.4k · Oct 2012
forgive
Riq Schwartz Oct 2012
Belief is never sweeter

than to those who can't believe.

Reconciliation is for

those without relief.

Forgiveness comes in times and places
farthest from our expectations.

But ultimately,

we're the ones

who must forgive

ourselves.
3.7k · Feb 2012
[untitled 1]
Riq Schwartz Feb 2012
i love alliteration
like kings love living
like lions love killing
like love lost leaves aching
and wonder
wide wonder
where we were, when we were
we were
so...
alive.

awesome.

some sleep. others dream.
fetch fire from fire
blaze
blaze and black
opposites. awesome opposites.

still not us.

some sleep. some slip away.
slippery like fish.
i dont like fish very much.
live late. love long.
life
if it is life
lives
lest life linger, sub-par
sub-average

far more fitting.
(the former phrase, of course, following "fish"
sans "sub-" sentences)


some sleep, some dream.
others, oddly enough, bother both
both worlds, which while one works without what one would supply
(some sleepers dont dream)
dreamers, sometimes, seldom sleep.
rather, wrestle restlessly, fervently
futile fights
fighting fear, hate, hardship, hardly having strength to share their ideas.
folly.
does it seem, slightly
that they need both?
sleep and strength?
brains and brawn?

take teamwork, temporarily.
you and i...
we
we would win.
we wish,
we wonder,
we wander wherever.
we watch,
we would, whatever,
win.
because we live.
like lines long for letters
which would whittle words from whiteness
we would work with one another
and,
so,
we could rule the world.

would you rule with me?
please?

because i love alliteration
like lines and letters love leading listless eyes
lacking lids
courses carved across canvas
craving closure.
craving cause.
point.
place a period.

pause.

pax. peace.

pretty please?
3.4k · May 2014
Verbivore, pt 1
Riq Schwartz May 2014
I live
  dream
  die
to create
    complete
each letter
         word
         turning phrase and
         thought-out straightaway

You read
        breathe
        digest
every syllable
letters strung
like a popcorn necklace
fingerpainted fragment sentences
authoritatively artistic and
defended in brazen resolve



my keeper of the slight,
the nuanced, softly sung,
down-quilted gerunds:
holding, brushing, sweeping
tasting, loving

There is no sound in space.
No quiet nothings whispered.
The sunlight on my face
now scorching, cracking, blistered,


Starvation
comes quickly
when the cook's not around;
so when the words stop
if need be,
feast on me.
3.4k · Jul 2014
Bubble Gum Girl
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
My time with you is
the first few seconds before
all your flavor's gone.
2.5k · Jul 2014
Chemically Inducted
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
Everything she writes is tagged
#DEPRESSION          

You break my heart, know.
Even with these chemical
bonds holding me together,
these frail spiderwebs
weaving around ventricles,
you shatter them like a
calm breeze, playing child,
a secret told to the wrong set of ears.

The characters in (y)our plays [on words]
are the crux of (y)our matters.
We're all ancillary like stepping stones;
pity (y)our destination begs leaving
no stone unturned.

My stepping stones are tablets, though.
20mg doses of baby steps,
crossing voids like I see in (y)our eyes.
My mouth is cavernous,
my throat the steps to hell
(wide and steep and too easy to trip down).
Each night - a crusade to save me.
Each morning - a body count.
One. Good enough for me.

Each time I sign on - the body count grows.
I have a bad habit if writing poems that are too personal about people I don't really know. This is one of them, so I threw in a bit about myself for good measure.
2.4k · Apr 2013
Thermodynamics: Part II
Riq Schwartz Apr 2013
I'm cracking up
Like rotten eggs
Like seven years
Of ****** luck
Like old mosaics
Losing tiles
Spiderwebs
Across my windshield
Sending thoughts
Into the ether
Each one taking
Part of me
I'm cracking up
Like cheap ceramics
Broken, scrapped,
And then replaced.
Riq Schwartz Aug 2012
Step one,
choose your topic.
Likely yourself.
Because what greater
subject could there be?
None
surely.

Step two,
choose an image.
Find something
that can serve
as a metaphor
for you.
Find the rain forest
for instance.
Or perhaps a pond
frozen over in winter.

Yes,
these should serve nicely.

Step three,
place yourself
somewhere in the midst of these things.
Let you be
the trunks of the trees
supporting the lush, green canopy.
You, poor, tired,
supporting the thick boughs
that are the real life
meters
and
meters
and
meters
above you.
Or is your face
the ice of the pond.
All that people ever notice
is how much you can take
before you break.
But there is so much more
just beneath the surface.
So much
teeming with life.
No one knows
how deep you go.
No one will know
until the ice thaws
     (which is unlikely to happen anytime soon.
          but the metaphor was never meant to extend that far.)

Step four,
write yourself in
to the piece
in such a way that no one else
will be able to identify you.
     (Unless they're **** cunning.)
Perhaps disguise your identity
within the purpose of the piece
or the flowing imagery
seeping through the spacious cracks
in your technique.
Riddle the work
with subtle ins and outs
and minute complexities
that vex the reader
away from your intentions.

Nicely done.

Step five,
ruminate.
contemplate
your reflection
as it appears
in your monitor.
Not the image of your face
bouncing off the glass
but the snapshot
of your thoughts
so opaquely back-lit.
Remind yourself
that this is for you
and no one else.
Proofread.
This is just for you
and no one else.
Revise.
This is just for you
and no one else.
Justify
this is just for you.

Step six,
post to a public forum.

*Check back in an hour.
Surprise! The poem is about me!
See? It's satirical.
Sorry it was so long.
1.9k · Nov 2013
The Casualty of Causality
Riq Schwartz Nov 2013
Seldom am I so direct,
Like Wayne, Parker, Kent,
I prefer my subterfuge.
But these words are penned
     (figuratively speaking)
by the penultimate,
              tumultuous,
and often callous wordjockey
yours truly.

As I've said, I'm seldom
more than the sum
of my company kept
[let slip,
reacquainted,
self-righteous reconciliation,
          regret, repeat]

And today, I find
myself
writing thrice,
twice toward pride,
once of consequence.
Que sera sera.

I'm lead like a horse
who had to drink -
or perhaps imbibe?
your softly streaming sentences,
words which kicked like a mule.
Remember, I was hoarse,
parched.

On that parchment, I find these words:

I am a cause...



Truth at last, truth at last,
Thank God almighty...

     ...you know the rest.


I stand on this principle -
that I cannot stand at all
sin ustedes
your words the salve,
my words the therapy.
"Progress."
Just Cause.

Now, waxing on
toward the triumphant,
anthemic Aye!
If you are the cause and the casualty,
then each daily account
of what might be made martyrdom
should be cannon.
Am I eliciting allusions and assumptions?
Inadvertently, but then precariously so.
So the pieces fall,
the causality, literary
the eventuality, progressive.

Aye, we are naught but what
we are made of by others.
So each concussive consonant chips and chisels
off the ol' block.

To a good Mister John Henry,
my gratitude.
Written as acknowledgement to everyone who contributes to my muse and helps me along the way. Title and theme inspired by someone who's stopped coming around.
1.7k · Jun 2014
Matters of Podiatry
Riq Schwartz Jun 2014
I count my steps,
my heart like some
mis-ticking pedometer
uneven and syncopated
disassociated and dislocated
     with my head in the clouds
I found, retracing my steps,
my foot in my mouth
all the while we kissed.

No wonder, then
that you tasted like
the roads we traveled together,
each time more insipid than the last,
and each word I spoke
was muddled
dry and bland
or saturated and sticking
under fingernails
between your teeth
1.6k · Feb 2012
Imperative, Pt. 2
Riq Schwartz Feb 2012
Your mind sings the verses
you write in your spiral,
but nobody hears them,
uplifting or viral,
before you start singing
to somebody near you.
And so you write verses
how no one can hear you.
1.6k · Feb 2013
This May Be Mildly Offensive
Riq Schwartz Feb 2013
ten cent poems
hiding in numbers
a shotgun blast
of ink and paper
hoping that one slug
strikes true.

knick an artery,
crack the bone
call yourself
a marksman wordsmith

im sorry i saw
through the muzzle flash
im sorry i told

but to be fair..

you lied first.
and im not sorry.
This probably isn't about you.
1.6k · Oct 2012
Moment
Riq Schwartz Oct 2012
STOP.

Don't move.

Don't you know?
A moment is too small to exist
in very much space at all.

Haven't you heard that time is like a bird?
It can't fly backwards,
and moreover, it will
NEVER.
Let.
You.
Catch it.

So please. I'm begging you.
Don't move.

You'll scare the moment away.

Because you see, I was thinking

we could just live here,
you and I.
Stay forever trapped
in this time and place,
silent and still
as the grave,
until eventually,
the world would forget about us.

Our moment has no place in the world, you see.

We would be expelled
and left behind.
We would be a satellite,
around and outside of time.
We would be a trail of exhaust
left lingering as time drove past.

We would be a feather
left on the ground
as time flew away.

But I wouldn't mind.
And something tells me
that you wouldn't, either.

Because moments as rich as these
are wealthy enough to support
not just one soul, but several.
These moments are banquets
for life
and love,
fear, pain,
sorrow, passion.
Again I say, life.

And this moment is a feast.

So I propose that we stay.
I propose that if we do blink,
that we are ever so cautious
when we open our eyes,
because the breeze from our lashes
could blow it away.

I propose that if we do eat,
we make like faeries
and feast on time and not space,
so that we'll never need their mortal food again.

I propose that if we need to smile,
that we instead choose to glow.
We could be like a star,
seen from so far off
and with such beautiful intensity
that people forget that,
that light is not the light of that star,
but the light of a star
that was so
very long ago.

I could be that.
And something tells me
that you could, too.


Don't move.
Don't say anything.
Don't tell me you love me --
I already know.
Don't tell me you're happy --
we will never be happier.
Don't ask me to kiss you --
our hearts are so entwined,
like vines of ivy
up an old brick wall,
that if we move,
they might break.

Now remember this.

Moments like these cannot be created;
they are found.

Surround yourself with beauty,
so that when you find one,
you can live forever.

And do not EVER
move so fast
that you would scare it away
before it lands.
1.5k · Aug 2013
antithesis
Riq Schwartz Aug 2013
I'm putting on my flowing cape
to contrast against these
skin tight words,
delivering truth, freedom,
beauty, hope,
love, joy, ***, war
hate, passion,
and emotional genocide

I'm flaunting my anatomy
in mis-measured feet,
peculiar textual bulges
with evidence of discrepancies,
and wondering why
the mayor won't call me back.
I don't have any answers to anyone's problems.

Sometimes I like to think I do.

In those moments, I'm sure I seem this stupid.
1.5k · Jul 2014
Cafe Casa
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
Even with the mood lighting inside
this lethargy induced spiced chai
I find these things elusive
like good cell phone pictures of concerts
or, dare I say, a happy poet.

Despite generations of artistic indulgence
I find these things apathetic
androgynous, as it were
with indiscernible discrepancies drawing
daft conclusions from the quick-sought eye.

I too struggle to find the truth behind the lines.
I craft as though I know my medium.
I create broad sweeping arcs across
my own right side brain
but see them smudged and distorted, distended,
dripping their dynamics through the cracks in my floorboards.

Cinnamon vanilla maple ginger
shots at first class from coach
and here on my three foot throne
I squander the warmth of my ******* latte.
Riq Schwartz Oct 2013
I'm slipping,

stepping silently through
mountains of air
wind
whipping this clay shod body
earth and sod and
stones to small to see


I'm stuck,

this pen wedged within
my corpus callosum,
not big enough to handle the task
not up not *****,
doesn't have the stuff.

I'm all.

Honest, to the tip of each hair on my head
cut and styled, and put into place;

truth bubbling out
from behind crimson painted lips;

but so that I may not mince words, / there is nothing straight about me
save the razor's edge / with which I detail my semantics,
my words cut with conveniences / resilient as talcum powder

you / we have so much to look forward to
1.4k · Jul 2014
Shipwreck
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
We perceive the deep
like some siren song
sinking depths below
where our skin ripples
and runs laps around
and around and around
the surface tension
and cool breaking breezes.

The sunken sand and
rusted portholes
don't draw down
the moisture in our skin.
Next to the slowly sloping
dunes of deep
we are a skin-shod Sahara.

We are pulled by and against gravity
because, in fact, the bleak black
crushing back against our ankles
begs for the darkness we hold
shackled out of sight.
The death of the sea finds
the secrets in me
and it makes them it's own
as it swallows me whole.
1.4k · Mar 2012
Unhappy Endings
Riq Schwartz Mar 2012
All my friends keep dying--
I buried one today.
All this time we're buying
all gets whisked away.
All these words defying
what I want to say
as all my friends keep dying,
and all their corpses stay.
1.4k · Jun 2014
Shift
Riq Schwartz Jun 2014
Thy blowing blue breakers
sweep overboard,
take color away from
the faces of the men,
washed in white walled foam
and cyanotic sapphire
speak novels in seconds
no well placed punctuation
such is the way of the sea

I'm searching the heavens
for happy notes
over sour tones
and mis-pitched harmonies.
As I stargaze, I'm trampled
by depressive episodes and felonies.


Now,
your bold bone breakers
bring drought and salt
but nothing savory here.
Nothing ventured and
nothing gained,
streets washed of life, weeds,
wear and tears
the only water to be found
wasted on self expression
instead of survival.
Such is the bane of our fathers.

Women's feet shuffled like playing cards
and men's backs bare a striking resemblance
- striking? stricken -
to the laugh-lashed shaming
of their own emotional dilapidation.
And might your mind be free
from weather and tears
you have but to hear/see/smell the broken
to become undone
Like so many pages, dead dry leaves
nestled inside leather-bound luxury with a broken spine.
Thy mindless diction fixes
namebrand problems to
hot button topics,
trafficked into pipelines
down polluted broadcasts of
girls girls girls...

Your voice bellows and breaks.
We are nothing.
Whatever color or shape you take,
We are nothing.
Whenever you go and
whichever language you abuse,
remember in your heart that we are
nothing
like
you.

Women's feet shuffle on hardwoods
bringing heart to the beat
as men's whitewashed canvases carry
the quintessence of quixotic movements
in and about key changes
the same as we paint our love
around the fringes of each other
and frame unfamiliar faces in lip-locked sepia
blushing, brushing
we carry the color of previous strokes until
we are each our own historic hue
staining others for future use
in cobalt, mauve, maroon, chartreuse

We harness our pain
in the alchemy of experience
to create beauty.
1.4k · Nov 2013
Granite Sky
Riq Schwartz Nov 2013
The bleak, unbridled 
fury of a granite sky
bids me, Welcome Home
Riq Schwartz Sep 2013
Call me stricken
by her
          my favorite color.

I want to fill my ears with static
to give my thoughts some room to move
and my eyes monochromatic
with an artistic side to prove


She writes
like shes giving
Noah Webster a *******,
her labyrinthine constructions
of consonants and vowels,
leading in circles
obliterating disbelief,
and I
          AM

the words.


She tastes like ***
and nostalgia
nauseating my pages,
wearing thin over keystrokes,
repetition,
               the mother of decrepitude
so my muse
               decimates my thoughts
          one in ten
     one in ten
one in ten
*CRACK
1.3k · Jun 2014
Laundry
Riq Schwartz Jun 2014
My laundry consists
of clumps of socks, jeans, bed sheets
Once-used towels, and you.
1.3k · Jul 2013
[M]obey
Riq Schwartz Jul 2013
you may watch me crest the icy black
surface of your minds wide ocean
with moonlight catching brilliant spray
and casting shadows of doubt
follow me down
     and listen to me
   singing you to sleep
a pacifist lullaby
of malcontent
and lonliness

your breath is as level as the choppy seas
and your thoughts will follow wherever I please

I know that you have reservations
keeping your heart bound
safely to the shore,
your hopes lapping loosely around your feet
receding,
returning,
remitting,
refreshing,
and all the while you know
that the whitecaps
     are the faces of regret
     are the voices of dissent
     are forces to be reckoned
and that stormy seas are only a problem
if you're trying to stay afloat

each night as you dream, your thoughts set sail
and I will be your great white whale
1.3k · Jun 2014
Collector's Item
Riq Schwartz Jun 2014
You're too loud for
your porcelain throat;
your rose blushed
china doll cheeks
crack each time you smile
     -- just a little
That silk-smooth black
hair does nothing
to keep you warm in winter
but frames your face
in perpetually delicate contrast

Your words are hammers
Actions are sparks
as much a threat to yourself.

I'm not afraid of you, only
of when you come to life
and your expression never changes.
Eyes glazed over
standing silent sentry
unaware that features
are only paint thin;
thinking a silk-shod body
makes you a princess
rather than a plaything.
1.3k · Feb 2012
Good Morning, Sweetheart
Riq Schwartz Feb 2012
colours sing their a capella hymn
lighter tones emitted from your skin
brush the light aside as morning's rise
shows us something glowing from within
1.3k · Aug 2014
F5
Riq Schwartz Aug 2014
F5
I fear I've become
formulaic and dishonest
though honesty has never
flown freely when I bleed.
I instead inscribe
insolence, decadence
dolled up in demand and
hand picked participles
to show my snappy wordsuits
down this two dimension catwalk.
I've tasted the fraudulent freeverse fantasy
and washed out what I've done
years past, former lives,
servitude to scheming rhymes
and tracking down the feet
meter by meter.
See!
I own the jargon,
jot it down freely
with a casuality undeserved.
Read carefully, cause herein spouts my effort.

Slink back to default,
once in whiles,
show them that you
got it still.
Baring teeth or
gleaming smiles
differ at souls'
windowsills.

And simply so, it seems again
like pox against my aching skin
I simply substitute some time
to rhyme and let it all begin...
Sometimes you need to
1.3k · Jun 2014
Solstice
Riq Schwartz Jun 2014
'Tis the season for
deconstruction
and rebirth with rebar
'Tis the time for me
to create the word
chauvimaniacal
To drink
more than my doctor wants
but less than my audience deserves
'Tis a passing, flashing
immolating infatuation
toward progress
through denial and other forms
of self medication
It's summer
and I not-so-secretly
******* hate it.
I do, I really hate summer. I want my arctic vortex back.
Riq Schwartz Mar 2013
I punched the volume ****
like Tyson and Holyfield,
plunged us into silence,
our heads swimming in
phantom sounds.
The sun was a muffled glare,
but you squinted at me
and broke the silent virginity
with a cough.

The planet whirled
like an exotic dancer,
stars screamed how beautiful they are,
but were outmatched by our sun
just because of how
close it is.

The stars never go away.
Not really.
We just stop expecting them to be there.

We sat still.

And me, with all my
hypodermic words
unable to scratch the surface.

And you, with all your
delicate features
unable to soften the blow.

Because at night, we exchange
one star for millions,
though none of them
can keep us warm,
and all we want
is to see where we're going.
1.2k · May 2014
Verbivore, pt 2
Riq Schwartz May 2014
I'll swath my cliches
in over verbose decadence
and ask forgiveness in the morning.

Edging
     toeing
the fine line in between
Fighting to *live

- or -
living to fight
in champagne surged soirees
of surreptitious allergens

Some ******* ballad
donning metalcore methods
aggressive to a fault
     that is to say, earth-shattering
unyielding, unwavering, unapproachable
un-*******-believable

You, me,
they, we,
truncated
but never forgotten
Had
but never spent
Forgotten
but never lost

Your name is in my autocorrect
with siren songs and call signs
from generational grievances,
Chivalrous misandry,
chorus discord
callous

Chandeliers swing
low like chariots.
Samson told us to keep dancing.
We were only listening,
abreast one another,
clad only in our genres.
We were so much more
until we were

lost,
but never mattered.
1.2k · Aug 2012
Cafe
Riq Schwartz Aug 2012
I so wish that I could see you
In a dimly lit cafe
Treating your spiced chai like an injured bird
And your face like the exhibits
Of local art on the walls around you

I thought I saw you there once
But it was too smokey
The air thick with conversations
And reunions after 24 hours or less
I'm so sorry that I missed you

But I know that later on I'll find you
Like I always tend to do
Sitting in your usual spot
Exactly like I would expect
On our couch
At home
I love my wife. She is my joy and my muse. Happy anniversary.
1.2k · Jun 2014
Divisive
Riq Schwartz Jun 2014
Feel too much

and
if you find folly in those
freeloading fascist hacks
who tell you to write prose
or shoot photography,
tell them to take notes
      -a mental picture-
because you're headed off to the heart;
Taking back roads through
the bile of memory
to touch what it might just mean
to be.
Journalists content to watch.
Sojourners just might find.
A poet will be your guide.

Feel too much.
Please know that I do love our prose-bound brothers and sisters, and I married a photographer. I'm simply embellishing to help the thing earn it's title, as it were.

Inspired by/in response to "Feeling Too Much" by Alyanne Copper
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/754305/feeling-too-much/
1.2k · Mar 2013
Carpool
Riq Schwartz Mar 2013
We cannot get to
Happiness if we are not
in the carpool lane
1.1k · Mar 2012
Heart Attack
Riq Schwartz Mar 2012
I come to you tonight because
your heart was never yours to love,
and so I wage this heart attack
to give your heart a sample of
the pulse your heartbeat seems to lack
in darkest nights, when corners, black,
send racing chills throughout your bones,
while palms perspire, mind is racked
as thoughts that you are not alone
break up the deaf'ning silent drone
that is your heart against your chest.
The only thing that you can't own;
the only thing that you can't rest;
the only one to know you best
would tell you simply, "do not fear,"
and this command, the simplest,
is coupled with, "cause I am here."
And with these words spake in your ear,
the corners soften as your eyes
begin to pierce the the all-too-sheer,
now lifted veil, and with its rise,
so lifts your heart, my unseen prize,
and settles down as shadows start
to dissipate as cloudless skies.
So proven is my point of start:
my love, it never was your heart.
1.1k · Apr 2012
wanderlust
Riq Schwartz Apr 2012
We are lost in the tide
just a few feet from shore.
We are swamped by the size of the sky.
We are fickle and frail
and I've never felt more
like it won't matter how much we try.

I am lonely and loved
and exhaustedly glad
for a few simple minutes of rest,
so I looked to you with
what small fervor I had,
while I stood with my conscience undressed.

You were so full of hope
that we might get away,
but as time passes, so do our dreams.
There I saw in your eyes
all the fear and dismay,
with your heart torn apart at the seams.

It was so cold that day,
sitting still in our home.
It was early as midnight could be.
But the wanderlust shrieks
as the memories roam,
with the mind drifting out to the sea.

I was swept with the tide
washing out from the land,
and it carried me into the deep.
When I got there, I found
there was nowhere to stand,
so I laid down and drifted to sleep.

You were lost in the stars
looking down at the world
with the moon passing by overhead.
You were ground to a halt
as the whole planet twirled,
and you missed everything that I said.
1.0k · Jul 2014
Trite; Contrite
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
You stole my breath
but needed only ask.
Gave love freely
and demanded the same back.
You took no ****
so never gave one.
You showed me the way
- my eyes followed you -
to feel no regret.

You were bold and brazen,
I was empathetically italicized,
leaning on you
in times of duress.
You gave and gave and gave and gave and gave
two-bit trinkets
half-assed like alimony.
I took and took and took until
I was overburdened and
rooted in place.
You walked away like an action hero
and never looked back.
You showed me the way
- my eyes followed you -
straight out the window.

Yesterday you gave
     me a call. Said
     you were fine.
I didn't ask
     if you felt my eyes
     searching you out
     in dreams,
digging deeper through memories
to us, together.
You teaching me to love
     selfishly,
showing me the way you did.
My eyes followed you,
  followed yours
     following her,
and you showed me the way
you felt no regrets.

Perhaps sometime I can show you
how I find my way
straight out the window
and let your eyes follow me
down.
Lots of help from Jamie L Johnson (http://hellopoetry.com/jamie-l-johnson/) and my dear friend Blu. As always, thanks for reading!
1.0k · Feb 2014
Elementary
Riq Schwartz Feb 2014
We're too old now.


Too old to indulge in

partitioned plastic plates

shatter resistant

but molded to hold in

three ounces of fun

per serving.


We've outgrown yesterday's

gaudy voice acting

and crude cartoon lines

washed out, two dimensional

color schemes

and character types, now

redux in high gloss CGI,

300 dpi

1080p

5.1 surrounding

both of our senses.




What's that?

We have three others?


But we've no time

for scented markers

on monochrome pages

Breakfast food no longer

simply sugar and bread

We swath ourselves

with succulent self-importance

tech savvy misanthropy

dolled up in decadent

anonymity

We are too old

to go to a friends house and play.





A list of woes and throes

gives us nothing-

leaves us nowhere

except in thinking

patiently praying

that we may never outgrow

our love for the things

which we've long since outgrown.
Riq Schwartz May 2014
The sound of flesh tones
takes me back to you,
somehow.
The flavor of your words,
the smell of snow
sending your skin crawling;
windows pain and
suffer in ice.
We perch precariously
hardly inside my car,
bleed into night
breathing delicacies
into the hollow air,
our hands full of each others'.

If this poem had melody,
it would sound alarms.
Sickly sweet thumps from
drums dripping discord
hard lines
lead down
lead down
lead down
Keys to carry our
lock-boxed thoughts
overseas, we
are just unaccustomed
to these breeds
of attuning, intoning,
singing serenades
in shameless shades
like ghosts of each other
found only here,
some haunted isle.

I hear your breath in the fog
See your body like a moment
Taste you bitter in recital
like some copiously black coffee
which your tongue taught me to love.
You burn my hands,
my lips,
my lungs.
You burn.


Syncopate and center,
taking this legal pad
for some sort of joy ride
to break all the rules with.
Warm now beneath tips
of pen and ink and finger,
blues bleeding;
You stay, still
stuck in my mind,
impervious to scrawls,
and immune to memory,
yet found in songs of
another's composition.
990 · Mar 2012
useless
Riq Schwartz Mar 2012
I wrote a book called "Useless"
a thousand pages long,
and every page is useless
a thousand letters strong.
And each disjointed sentence
on each disjointed page
makes up another chapter
that I could call a day.

And in this book called "Useless,"
each task I was assigned
took up another hour
I wanted to call mine.
But in this useless novel
where nothing lasts for good,
it made such little difference.
I wish they understood.

It seems most of my pages
were writ without my words
by many other people.
Oh, had I only heard
the voices of the others
who told me not to write
unless I was the author,
and never stand contrite.

The creases in these pages
were put there not by me,
but by the "Learned" people
who thought it best to be
the leaders of my charges!
The heroins and kings
that lead me on to vic'try --
the "freedom" that it brings.

And so they tore those pages,
divided from the spine
of that old book called "Useless."
I loathe to call it mine.
There each and every paper,
now added to their own
collection of these useless
thoughts, was ne'er made known.

'Till dust began collecting
upon the golden leaf
that read the title "Useless"
so powerful and brief,
until I dared to read it
and so lament each time
I had no say in rhythm,
in meter or in rhyme.

And there spread out before me,
each letter cold and black,
contained my very life, still
no life was reading back.
I wanted so to burn it
and send it to its grave.
'Till, better or for worse, I saw
this book is all I have.

I quietly replaced it
between the other books,
now something less embarrassed
by all the space it took,
and realized there with reverence
I needed a new page,
to change my manuscript and
above all else, engage.

And so I keep old "Useless"
so that they might believe
that I write in these pages
for them and not for me.
And here I write another.
It does not have a name
since only time will dictate
the nature of my game.

Now tired of that story,
monotonous and prose,
I altered my technique. now,
it, something like this, goes:
I wrote a poem called useless
though I dont think it is.
You see, it is a prologue.
980 · Jul 2014
Solar Scriptura
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
Less notable
than the day we set still our pens
and let rest our wandering muses
is the day the sun
does not rise.
960 · Dec 2013
Beguile
Riq Schwartz Dec 2013
she tells me how my touch is deft -
scribes lightly through the morning haze
pedestrian within the fog
traversing nights transpire days
     your shouting shatters solitude
     it brings me back mortality
     ethereal my thoughts to write
     these poems' eventuality
a heartbeat muffles crackling lungs
while veins write words upon the breath
and what great privilege given to
the last ones spoken till your death
          you find me speaking lyrics to
          the harmonies I find in you
Juxtaposing simple rhymes and easy meter with a sonnet build - just for funsies. Iambic pentameter escapes me at the moment.
949 · Aug 2013
Girl Called Spiral
Riq Schwartz Aug 2013
Every room has a din.
You just have to listen
hard enough.

This din was a spoken one,
like where actors mutter
"...rhubarb, rhubarb..."


Her steps made a percussive
clacking sound
that echoed from
wall       to       wall,
pervasive and acute.

But what truly stuck out
                                                             ­                 did so from only one side.

Her, the weird one.
  Her, accident prone.
   Her, the girl with
            one wing.

In a room full of faeries,
                       she stuck out.
                   An entire people
who hid themselves by day,
                           and she
was sequestered.


Everything
twisted          
down          
in a

s    
p      
i    
r
  a
      l
      i
    n
g

d  
e    
s    
  c  
    e
     n
    t

But what would you expect
     from a girl with one wing?
Riq Schwartz Mar 2012
apologies like stones in homes of glass
i watch you sleeping, drowning all the while
a sad array of closets stuffed with bones
veneer release -- a desecrated smile

i take my leave of life devoid of love
and turn it to the mountain precipice
a metaphor of solidarity
where Aphrodite earns no sacrifice

i leave you laying in the urban sprawl
a pearl among the sands of broken dreams
where i cannot articulate my fear
that everything may wind up as it seems

and so i prematurely take my leave
and so i leave your life as love leaves mine
i write upon the walls of this, my cave,
"a tribute to the death of life divine"
Riq Schwartz Oct 2013
You, my dear, are dead, I said.

I am not so, she told me.

You are, checked out, moved on, deceased!

Then why so tightly hold me?

[Inhale...]

I feel the way your body flakes
Like chipping bits of bone
I see the way your fingers quake
Whenever you're alone
I tell you that I love you, and
you always say it back
But you never lend a hand
Whenever I'm about to crack
You say that talk is wasted
Because words are so ****** cheap,
But jealousy is tasted
When I'm talking in my sleep

For fear of letting go, and so
admitting that you're dead.**

But she was done responding
to the voices in her head.
927 · Oct 2014
Let Linger Lightning
Riq Schwartz Oct 2014
I've resolved to hold out hope
Some offering resilient
Passed down, an heirloom
From day to day to day
Through this damning night courier
I sell this trinket for a pittance of sleep
Please, just ten more minutes of pittance
And so hopelessly I'm found
Face first in down, safe swaddled dreams
Abound to excavate another vein
And so hopefully I'm found
Panning for dreams for passing tomorrow
Wishing that the sun would rise reminds us that it will.
904 · Aug 2016
Resolute
Riq Schwartz Aug 2016
So many things to say.
Between the floods and raindrops,
pain and heartthrobs,
living for better, for worse,
for now,
for following through
on the sins we commit to.
Somehow
we expect to see light.
I can feel with my skin
but it's blistering,
I can't hear,
but I know you're not listening.
You'd be here
anon and otherwise
punctual.
Instead you're a societal gut-punch
who makes me puke.
Truthfully, I'd set camp come the dusk
where I knew I could feel the warmth
from your bridges burned.
Feel the light, dried and cracked.
Tell me what you learned.
890 · Aug 2014
Sonnet 2.8
Riq Schwartz Aug 2014
I'm languished here in lack of lit'rature,
for treading words - writ oceans black and pale.
I woe my want of discipline demure
to hoist my mental canvas and set sail.
To set this sextant sentence south to north,
my odyssey sees strange sands lap aground
with trepidation slipping slowly forth,
and omnipresent, inauspicious sound.
Please show me now around this simple isle.
Lead me by hand to cliffs by time distressed.
Forgive me then if I retreat a while
to cast off, searching ****** shorelines' rest.
This covered ground, font foliage, anon
will meet me once this weary world is gone.
885 · Dec 2013
Ritardando, Crescendo
Riq Schwartz Dec 2013
There was nothing ahead
but the blazing red
brazen brake lights watching
for the likes of us,
with somewhere to be
besides the whipping chills
of concrete and ice
spliced into our state,
uniquely white.

Inside, the air
surged the song out
and over our bundled bodies
thermal anomalies
in the amalgamating night.
Music
wrapped and coiled,
covered the lazy silence
like insulation commitment
to keep us safe,
deployed in case of a conversational
head on collision,
curtailed with soft sounds,
in amber lamps
simple.

Your particulate words
freckles in the face of ill
conceived ideas of entitled
Sirs and Madams,
my van Gogh brush
damning them all to hell.
879 · Aug 2016
The Trials of Writistry
Riq Schwartz Aug 2016
It's so hard to compete
with well shaped human form.
My lines are all bulky,
uneven, and lumpy.
I've no ******* to caress,
no hips and no rear.
That is, I do have them,
but you'll not find them here.
It's so hard to compete
sipping long slurps of mead,
somewhat sweet, something biting,
when shots come much quicker,
they get you there
down the line
move along
spending time
wisely. I
have to take mine.
I can't rush this.
You must understand.
I'm a poet. I hold these words
tight in my hands.
I release them, but slowly,
like time's grains of sand.
There's no **** here,
just titles.
No models, just writers.
Our words are our craft.
We drink, we expire.
If photos are worth just one thousand words each,
then I am the camera
with the film out of reach.
I struggle with knowing that I'll never get the coverage other artists do. I married a photographer, and I won't presume that their work is easy. Mine is difficult to interact with, though. I demand time, I demand attention, I demand thought. This is okay; this is even good. I need to demand the same level of attention to my writing that I expect from a reader, even if it won't get as many <3's as the next GIF over.
874 · Jul 2013
Dreamer
Riq Schwartz Jul 2013
I had four dreams last night.                                                           ­                                                                 ­          

In my dream
there was a man
alone in a room
surrounded by frames without pictures,
walls without windows,
faces without voices,
living another man's life
exactly as he was told he should.
He did not feel sad
because he thought
there was no point to feeling.
So he thought he was happy.


In my dream                                                            ­                                    
I saw a woman                                                            ­                                    
laying alone in bed.                                                             ­                                   
She had watched her life                                                             ­                                   
slipping past                                                             ­                                           
day by day.                                                             ­                                             
Her children had                                                              ­                                  
grown and gone,                                                            ­                                    
and her lovers                                                           ­                                     
forgot her name.                                                            ­                                    
She fell asleep each night                                                            ­                                    
embraced only by the cold.                                                            ­                                    


                          ­                                                                 ­                                             In my dream
                                                                ­                                                                 ­           was a boy
                                                             ­                                   who sat and watched his friends
                                                         ­                                       running and laughing.        
                                               ­                                                   He wished that he was beautiful
                                                       ­                                         and that everyone else would like
                                                            ­                                                              loo­king at him,          
                                                                ­                                                   his hair and his makeup.
                                                         ­                                                         But they dressed him up
                                                              ­                                                       in a suit and tie          
                                                                ­                                   and they cut his hair short
                                                           ­                                     and everyone thought he was just
                                                            ­                                    bad at being a boy. Disappointment.


In my dream, I was a city.
My streets were filled with dreams
and the dreams were filled with ***
                                   and greed
                             and pain
                         and lust
          and loneliness.
My buildings ached
like weathered bones
and I felt myself being torn
            at the seams
because no one cared
to hold me together.
And as they died,
they never knew
that they
      were me,
          and I,
I was immortal.
859 · Jul 2014
Down feathers, Down falling
Riq Schwartz Jul 2014
Being blessed with wings
does not endow you with the
strength you need to fly.
Sometimes you gotta hit the gym if you don't wanna hit the pavement.
Next page