Ris Howie

Ris Howie May 2013

Untitled

I try to say I loved you
but the words get stuck
behind the memories of your blue black thumb prints
on the corners of my heart.

Ris Howie May 2013

What We [Didn't] Hear

Honey don't you realize
When they say "don't make another your home"
They're speaking directly to you?

Exceptions, is not a word within the vocabulary of the universe.

Baby don't you see
When he says "I will always love you"
He's got fingers crossed behind your heart?

Existential, is not a word within the vocabulary of your love life.

Ris Howie May 2013

Red Solo Cup

I do believe it is safe to say
     your world has changed
Ruled by a red cup.

I wish it'weren't quite so apparent
    your heart has likened
To an ash ember now forgotten in your truck.

Out of the night that covers you
    your person has diminished
Showing it no longer has an unconquerable soul.

Ris Howie May 2013

Reverence-See

I feel, without the findings feel of those hidden-hands, which I cannot see,
The warmth-waking-wishing potency of crawling down-
wards from a state of reverence-see
Seeing! with those eyes of heart; the beauty love of a God of eternity.
I don’t wonder of it: knowing not to know is the
Devotion, a given test of my ability to look and see past visibility
My faith: built, as bones in me, to accept unconditional Truth from thee.
Trying hoping, I love, without alterations finds, true to Your methodology,
Crosses across’d the paths, which He wind Walked,
Speaking to the storied ancients of those miracles-measured
I yet didn’t live to see, but take on faith-
and a measure of reverence-see in the wanting of inspiring a little You in Me.

In the style of Gerard Manley Hopkins

Ris Howie Mar 2013

Erasure

No amount of toothpaste can wash away the taste of who you were last night

The words, foreign lips, and alcoholic tint of 3 a.m. hide in the corners of your smile

I do believe you think the sun rising again causes some rebirth of you and erasure of the night

But though the dark of the world may fade the dark of you may not.

Ris Howie Feb 2013

Permanence

The biggest relief after losing someone like you
is realizing I'm smiling just as big in the pictures without you, too.

See this photograph was key
to realizing you weren't a miracle, miracles are free.

Sitting shotgun to this heartbreak scene
it doesn't take a Polaroid to remind me what you no longer mean.

I'm smiling just as big in the pictures without you, too
a reminder all people aren't a permanent tattoo.

Ris Howie Feb 2013

45

The cold is poetic,
Purposefully forgoing the pleasures of your heat.
It's a mind set,
To sit in the stillness elagiac,
Just minding my own in a numb 45 degrees.

elagiac; lamenting