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Ron May 2020
On his table is a cup,
filled with a need,
to satisfy her receptacle,
of weights and measures,
without such whose proportions,
he could not know.
His own hands mix sugar and flour,
chocolate and longing.
His mind must be precise,
Or her words may grey out,
to a flavorless poem,
a definite defeat of taste.
The chocolate cake he knows she likes,
smooth dark frosting,  
rich with butter.
His mind needs more than tablespoons,
Of sugar and flour, cups of it,
Mixed with a pinch,
Of a sweet sultry gaze,
Sifting through his lover’s day.
Till with his hand he cups her chin,
And turns again,
to mix her mouth with his.
This woman is his table,
And he the cup.
Ron Oct 2020
I guess you could have called it poetic how by the age of 16 I had no recollection of what happiness tasted like on my tongue, but yet new well the taste of sorrow. Some might say it was poetic and tragically beautiful.
It was not poetic, nor was it beautiful, but it was tragic. It was so very, very sad, and that sadness has only expanded now that I’ve grown to see others seek glory in sorrow.
The sorrow of another is never glorious, never something to seek, unless to alleviate the source. Sorrow is not strength. It is a lump of hot iron in your chest that burns you from the inside out, and it is sour and harsh and repulsive to taste.
And yet still I have no right to think that the sorrow of another is anything other than tragic, or any less so than my own. Though it is human, it is not nature, your sorrow is your own, and belongs to no other.
Sorrow is like an abandoned building, empty and lifeless, resigned to a fate it does not know.
People never seem to pay much attention to abandoned buildings though,
until they become one.
Ron Dec 2020
I let symbols stick to me,
as I cling to the threads of language,
between myself and the selfish world.
I taste large crowds in my mouth,
suspended on the threads,
between their language
and the reckless world,
searching still,
those hidden alphabets,
I forever seek.
Ron Aug 2020
Just as I locked my door, and pocketed the key,
I glanced over my shoulder only to see,
My tortured soul staring back at me.
'Look, I said,
"this name is your name, this door is your door,"
And though I accept that now; why did I put the key,
in the back of my mind to hide it from me?

So my soul let me go,
but my name has been lost,
Along with the key.
Ron Jun 2020
Her whispers gone
With the evening wind
Like silk lips on
My electric skin
Her thoughts unspoken,
leaking through her eyes
With her whispers drifting
even now I wonder
Whether she loved me
I shall never know
Ron Sep 2020
Antiquity lives now as a pale-yellow dust,
Confusing to the remnants of its ruins,
While old bones bleach whiter with age
Ron Jun 2020
Tea is the leaf of soothing, of subtle scent,
The tender leaves filled with the murmur
Of every fragrant garden.
Here, when my tea kettle gently tweets,
I will brew your gift to me,
And taste your flavors through careful sip,
While your perfumed steam ascends.
On such a cloud my poet's spirit soars,
Surely my soul will find new heights,
And come again with immortal songs.
But why should such a patient drink,
Refresh a lonely old man such as me?
There was a time when I would seek
The sounds of ice to quench my thirst.
And so often I have filled a humble vase,
With flowers of chance to soothe my eyes.
But now this gift of tea! And I need no more,
To calm my spirit or rekindle my dreams.
Slowly I sip and  in the rising steam,
Picture each hour of friendship you have shown.
Accept my grateful thanks,
Oh humble cup of tea.
Ron May 2020
Delirium trembled the lemons
Green envy soured the limes
The apples cut with peals of laughter
As the onions started to cry

The berries grew more juicy
When the kiwi told the tale
Of the bananas secrete wishes
To run off with the kale.
The idea for this poem came from a bottle of lemon liqueur.
Ron Aug 2020
That cold narrow slab,
hardly any larger than a child's bed,
is where Alejandro died.
I bore away with him the tears of his gods,
the weight of his death, the frailty of his love.
I who separated them, his words and things,
Who did blend them with the cries and torments,
of that most foul and dark place
Knew he had come to an end.
With no smile amongst my flooding tears,
I longed for home for a few wretched hours,
While I waited him to breathe again

Could there be no sorrow too distant, too remote,
No lash to hard, no fear too impalpable,
To quell our captors delight?
Alejandro from birth through ****** pain
His faith an undefinable surge gaining perch,
Within my stirring and unearthly sleep
Dampens my dreams to tears
rest well my friend,
for I have remained with you,
throughout these many years.
Ron Jul 2020
slender clouds.
smell of light rain
midday sun is hiding again.
within this liquid luminosity
I only just notice my clothes
are somehow soaked in color.
Ron Jun 2020
How long would you have loved me?
A lifetime?
Ah wait, but that was too long?
Let us say just a moment.
Life is best but a moment,
If life is scarcely a day.
Might you have loved me then?
Perhaps while you drank,
From my life’s delicate cup,
with your sweet face turned up,
To love's exquisite taste.
Just one rapturous moment,
While my love inhaled you,
Like the soul of a flower,
For the space of a breath,
Within the breath of my space,
Where my words had no power,
But did their best to express,
Something so divine, so enchanting,
As your souls lingering scent,
Thrilling through all of my mind,
But at last in a sigh,
to be breathed out and spent.
Just one moment no longer,
and then all of my strength and desire,
all my passion exhausted,
With nothing left of my fire,
Gray ash scattered in the wind.
But then would you have clung to me?
Would you have then loved me?
Or would you have loathed me,
and scorned me,
And ruthlessly flung me away?
Yet again?
This maddening moment, I beg let the next,
Show what it chooses to reveal.
Is it enough that you loved me but a moment?
It was I after all,
who let fate spin her wheel.
What though from my dream when I awake?
My love a mere frolic it does seem.
What is life at best but a dreaming sleep,
And what is love, but just a dream,
A brief fleeting thought,
Only for fools to keep?
Ron Nov 24
Evening enters early now, under miles of cloudy skies,
Blue eyes a silent vigil, to rain falling to the ground.

Water falling steady, within its millennial sound,
In these darkened times I bear witness to it's cry.

Far away on a cold mountain, a darkened road slants steep,
In rainy clouds is a village, where people rest their feet.

I stop to smell deep of the dampened maple wood
Whose frosted leaves are redder than a month of summer flowers.

By my first strange and fatal view
By my desires which then did ensue
By my long starving hopes, that remorse
Coerced my words with a persuasive force
Whose beauty of fall now surge and then feed
Now trapped within the silence of leaves.
Ron Sep 2020
My mouth I do think,
is munching my words.
How weirdly my tongue,
Still seeks out the norm.
A slobbering salivation,
of unwritten sayings,
My teeth a brazen thief,
nibbling thoughts in the night.
Lips obscenely shaped,
in the poets’ hungry quest,
For the strange articulate taste,
Of a pilfered sour waste,
from bland and bleary words,
I am forever forced to swallow.
Ron Aug 2020
Were my light even brighter
I would be invisible
I could live concealed in my realm
never once knowing
the absence of joy
I would be stunned
by that void
into which shadows vanish
forms dissolve
and in falling,
I would imagine flying
without a sky
Only sounds would reach
My surviving memory
Clear as a tinkling bell
and never again
Would I have need,
for feigning introductions,
or false niceties.
Ron Sep 2020
Who has placed a shadow,
between the sun and I
to sense the aura
of a dark atmosphere
just under my mortal skin?

Who then chases my myth,
soaked in the blood
of the primordial hunt?

Who will concentrate,
My unknown language
into a singular cry
that falls heavy
into the eternal night?

Who then will search for me
Within the endless depths
of my suspended life?

Who will find meaning
in this poem hidden
from the hands of knowledge
waiting in shadows
with a hesitant touch?

Who indeed,
Would even care so much?
Ron Jul 2020
Little by little
I feel languid with life.
Who pities the vigor that withers?
Only the image in my mirror
Joins me in tears.
Ron Jul 2020
Strange how I’ve accustomed
the word ‘Placidity’ to me.
After many years of casting aside
I now draw it on like a glove.
I arrange it like a ballcap.
I make my bed with it
And plump up its wishes
To lay my head upon
I used it to tame the creature in my closet
Encircling my bed with a moat of shame
I then tethered a wolf of fear
Quite near its darkened entrance.
There for life’s tutoring to creep past.
And now I sleep calmer
With a wide-open mind.
Strange how I’ve accustomed
the word ‘placidity’ to me.
Ron Oct 2023
I view you move, a luxurious dance
on paper the pen, has merged with my hand
I see your vivid, yet blurred velocity
The desk where I sit, now creaky and cramped

I see your languid, nubile sensuality
My eyes two windows, of a lover’s glance
I see your delicate, curves of simplicity
Feet once mobile, now rooted they stand

I see you gathering, spring in your arms
My vision awash, thoughts colliding but soft
I see your effortless, beauty take flight
Now quieted mind,

What now should I long for,
In life?
Ron Mar 2021
Oh mean man with silver hair,
Once well I did know you,
Walked long with you
in the hard heat of the day,
Learning well of the wickedest ways.

Oh mean creature with silver hair,
Your face like a gnarly old tree,
Green moss upon your shoulder,
Hard pale eyes reflecting
A much meaner image back at me.

You taught me to be silver and mean,
As cold waters frosted
by the mid-winters moon,
Stripped naked now of all kindness,
Turned away from such pitying views
Ron Feb 2021
His bathrobe fell open in dust-colored folds,
the texture of his shadow now wrinkled and old,
And he was worn and tired and weak and cold.

Staring hard at that foggy face in the mirror,
His reflection a future prediction of death,
Eyes open uncertain at his intruding breath.
Ron Jul 2020
Solemn I sat drinking  
and never noticed the dusk fall.
I sat dreaming and never knew
it was evening that grew
Till the fresh falling stars
filled the folds of my clothes.
So drunk I arose
In search of moonlight water
To quench my solemn thirst
For just a little longer
Ron May 2020
I dreamt that for you
I had swept a path,
through a bright summer wood
placing soft scented rose blossoms there.

or perhaps,
having no way of knowing,
I had only swept the path
between those many scented roses?

no matter,
tonight the rain will again fall upon itself
to wash away the roses
so strange how the rain tastes like tears.
Ron Jul 2020
Cold and dim
the year draws to its end
Sipping my wine,
I search for the warmth
of sunlight on my chilly porch.
In the garden of my house
all leaves have fallen
In the garden of my heart,
many memories lay rotten
I tip my glass
and drink deep of the dregs
I look to the kitchen
but no light there glows.
Half written poems, unread books
Still stacked beside my creaky chair
But my autumn light is gone now
and I’ll not have time
to read again this year
Ron May 2020
Green leaves of vine no longer in bloom,
A tranquil ember of sunset burns.
As evening comes, the skies may snow,
Can you drink one glass with me?
Before you need to go?

I’m saddened by the last red roses
there beside my steps,
At dusk I found but two alive,
And with the chilly twilight frost,
I know they won't survive,
So this night I gazed by starlight,
to cherish their fading red.

It's cold this night in autumn's month,
And quiet within a lone old man,
Lies down his weary head.
And dreaming deep, he falls asleep,
amid a falling snow.
Dawn then comes clear and cold,
breathing stilled, he does not rise,
red petals frosted cover his steps,
no sunrise finds his eyes.
Ron Sep 2020
I am endlessly yearning,
To be included in learning,
The symphonic hum of autumn.
Ron Jun 2020
High heat, in a Bogota alley,
A man lies still, a bullet in his chest,
The blood wound glows red-hot,
Life seeps, drop by drop,
As he lay lonely in the ally’s damp sweat.
Fire stairs tower all around,
sun scorched at their rusted red heights,
And I,
I slept like the dead.
I dreamed of a midnight dance,
in my home, gleaming light,
young girls decked in flowers and lace,
sharing their dreams with breathless delight.
But one alone sat there deep in thought,
not part of this joyful scene,
Why her young soul, who knows,
was plunged into the saddest of dreams.
Her dream, an alley in Bogota,
an alley where a friend lay un-seen,
a black wound in his chest,
seeping blood, a cooling stream,
As I,
I slept like the dead.
Ron May 2020
What is it you would like to do she said?
Please listen close I returned…

I would like to ravish your body and mind,
submerging myself in their depths,
It would titillate me,
With fresh thoughts of you,
while I bask in your sharp intellect.
I would tickle your toes with my tongue,
And gaze on your face in the sun,
I would feel your soft lips upon mine,
And laugh as my breath breaths you in,
Your sweet mouth would be
So exquisite to me
As if flavored with berries and wine.

Is there more she said with a flush?
Oh much more I gasped in a rush!

I would give you a candlelight bath,
In water soft scented with spice,
I would sit next you,
Inhaling your dew,
All warm in your wonderful light.
I would taste the backs of your knees,
And all other spots that you please,
I would peacefully sleep,
wrapped up within you,
And wake with you wrapped up in me.

Well she exclaimed, please do continue.
My pleasure, my love, I replied.

I would whisper my longing desire,
while caressing your graceful neckline,
And with the softest of touch,
Enjoying it much,
I would kiss your most lovely behind.
I would wander the depths of your eyes,
While I gasp in continued surprise,
At the one thing I know
As I lounge in your glow
Is that I’ll love you for all of my life.

Well then she says,
What are we waiting for!
Let’s start the bath!
And me?
Well,
I’ll be a rubber ducky!
Ron Aug 2020
Strung tightly he remains
Like a violin in mating season
And the banal carpet
His two bare feet do stain
Solemnly still he stands
In his kaleidoscopic rain
Until mystery dissolves him.
All in perfect poise somehow.
Ron Jun 2020
One by one they awaken
Those dark and callous
beasts of darkness
Do they ask questions
about life as I do?
I awoke and I walked
The long hard way
until I saw the questions
Of life were lies.
Today the sun streamed
Bright all day
until the beasts of darkness
scampered fast away
Now once more
I will strip the night
from the new moon’s flesh
and wear it like a crown
wrapped generous around
my callous and beastly head.
Ron Jul 2020
Please hush those books
of gruesome dark beasts
page after page they tremble me
They feed on my grief
with a hunger that rivals
the sadness of sudden parting.
Yet I am nowhere without them,
those beasts who never die.
They gnaw at me like oceans at shores.
Perhaps I too would be full of beasts
if not for daylight to make them lazy.
Or maybe those books only spill the blood
Of those beasts of grief they would conceal?
Ron Jan 2021
Beauty is a late soaking rain,
on a long dead garden.

Beauty is a sunny face,
On a sad cloudy day.

Beauty is a feather,
Floating lazy in the sky.

Beauty is knowledge
Of times uncomfortable,

Beauty is surreal.
Ron Apr 2021
Willow trees wept
in a grassy glade
Gold a glowing cloud
sun fingers made
Below quiet waters
ran dark as death
No sound no wind
no summers breath.
Ron Dec 2020
All night long my restlessness
wandered longing
those wet city streets
dripping dropping, raindrops fall
Until my silent moan
woke me alone.
at daybreak a sole bird chirped,
singing sweetly in the dawn
If only to find such happiness,
in the morning’s quiet song.

All night long her restlessness,
Prevented her from sleep,
So she walked and peered
with eyes still closed
inside those deepest parts of me.
A sound then broke with the sunrise sigh
amidst the drifting winds.
Opening eyes lashes damp
With tears to the morning skies,
did she too hear the birdsong cry?
Ron Apr 2021
Black snails are drawn
to my vines of green
Sliding so silent
where my vegetables gleam
Slow yet steady,
from my distant dark streams
Running beyond the carrots and peas.
Sliming my spinach
The bottoms unseen
Black snails eat voracious
Till bare earth they leave
Destroying all growth
In my garden of dreams.
Ron Aug 2020
Where yesterday small men
felled a large tree,
in its height and beauty,
for no good reason.
Where it was now,
only emptiness remains,
It’s tree bloodied stump,
now level with the ground.

The wind finds its own place,
and waits there holding its breath,
for a sad lonely moment,
calling to no one,
sudden in its stillness,
surprising even the rain,
expectantly drifting in,
still looking for the tree.
Ron Sep 2020
Water plays
in the shade of trees
Clouds flit through
new moonlight
Alone in the darkness
stands my shadow,
completely unnoticed
in the damp twilight.
Ron Jan 2021
Oh stormy eyed woman,
Only dark and desolate places,
Can bear your clouds tonight.
Like a young and petulant child,
scribbling quick with curious hands,
The colors of your cloudy traces,
leave silver lightning on our faces.
Patient as water turned to ice,
motionless trees within the night,
Sigh in longing for a bright sunrise.
Only those who perish a bit,
Can bear your crackling light.
Impatient though,
you won’t stay long,
Blowing westward to the call,
Of distant fields in thirsty song.
Ron May 2022
Though dry I may yet drown
In the past life of another
Peering out with blue-grey eyes

Hard frost stilled my early morning
In splintered shards that pierced the sky
Cold air lacking in weight and time

On that frosty frigid morning,
I too was someone’s child.
Peering out with blue-grey eyes
Ron Jul 2020
I had a buddy,
My buddy was a toad,
my buddy is flat,
He is flat on the road.
Don't laugh, 1st poem I ever wrote, 6th grade, got an "A".
Ron Aug 2020
You'll be a lousy, solitary, misunderstood poet
Someone told me as they buttered my fresh baked bread.
Time slowed
The winds stopped moving
And the afternoon sun shifted its path
To follow those words instead.
The knife made its way
Still slippery and warm
Back to the butter dish
You'll become a coarse and crummy poet, they said
you're tailor-made for it,
you're ugly and skinny,
quiet, dull and dreary.
You'll write in small rooms with low light, pensive and poor
you'll write, they said
as the butter now soft
soaked into the bread
in front of a screen on cold nights drinking wine
tainted with scorn
weeping with sorrow,
and rage, and dread
The knife had by then sunk into the butter
the butter my poem,
the knife the life I have led.
Ron Jul 2020
Your beautiful thoughts like butterflies blow by,
With such swift colors on their fragile wings.
Some are less articulate than a sigh,
And others simply names,
of ancient songs and lovely things.
What delicate fluttering’s of escape,
as they pass beyond my grasping reach,
To leave their haunting wispy shapes,
Eluding my careful traps of speech.
And though I watch and listen and wait,
To view the colorful clouds blow through,
I’m longing for some colors escape,
To venture near my heart so true.
So maybe being a fortunate captor
Should it happen time to time,
That one be caught so trembling,
Within my mortal rhyme.
Then to you I would give in haste,
This,
my most precious find.
Ron Jul 2022
To all those silent.
Who remain willfully quiet,
Reflect on this,
When death creeps confident,
Under your door.
Ron Jun 2022
Sudden in their startled flight
Of black birds flocking through
calling in the coming night
Across the moon they flew,
Fat round, silent white.
Ron Jul 2020
This mournfulness, this restlessness
these inner convulsions,
Bound on a cloudy island,
heartache within, body still dying
all this hard fought by me.

And they were vast,
those tears, those pleas, those hearts that bleed
great walls of steel, calamity,
harsh words, and promises,  
Of spring to be,

Life undone by a stubbornness mine
Destruction achieved in perfect rhyme.
Some gray mornings
the wind and I,
Still wish for a sun to see
Ron May 2020
Contemptuous demons
please leave my sight
Leave me mourn my bygone life
a worthless act in others eyes

Long within the house of my sister
Betrayal’s demon still it lingers
with virtue none around its finger
a putrid infection bathed in blisters

Hear my oath oh ghoulish lout
I swore one day to cut her out  
Of my life, my will, my restless winds
Deception cast by seductive sins

I roamed among her rancid rooms  
While bloodied fangs at me she bared  
I discerned the slash marks in my hair
Too late to find my reason there  

I once released my trusting soul
Through her hidden hellish rusty gates  
And ever since have reconciled
A family lost, my eternal fate

So hear me now and let me pass
Oh demons of my crimes gone past
Return once more your master’s home
And leave me live my life alone
Ron May 2020
But she had always been there,
in one guise or another,
to trace the skies in strange delights.
With her brilliant wings of radiance,
She soared through paths of glittered air,
There were no stars,
no suns to seek,
no Mars, no Venus, no Saturn’s rings
But still she flew in harmony,
Above my jealous stare
Ron Aug 2020
Flee now from witches and wizards
Along ethereal paths of dreadful haze
Careful now of those tower lights
Searching the mists for human blood
Wicked the bones rattle hollow around me
Resilient the mystery of darkness remains
In the past periphery of my childhood days
Ron May 2020
It's you!
I've understood it ever since,  
she who hummed me,  
a most tasty recipe,
To make me gasp in sheer delight!
But Alas!
My gasp was so strong,
that I almost died from it.
Darkened dreams,
so rich and creamy!
If only our lives could always be,
Such a velvet libation,
As the ****** sensation,
of chocolate!
Ron May 2021
Let me go
You whispered
And I left you
Left my desire of you
And all our earthly things
Wind chimes and silver rings
On and off your flickering
Of an arbitrary love.
And I went wandering
Through rooms and halls
With soft echoed calls
Waiting for me
To be me again
When sudden
from behind the veil
Was air there fresh
To breathe anew
Cool, rational, clear
A clarity of me
from you.
Ron Aug 2021
A Cloudy Prologue:
  
Do you remember?
When once you were but shadow and mist?
Shadow and mist you say?
“But no”, cries the cloud!
I have always been part of the light.


A Drifting Epilogue:

After a stormy night without clouds,
I rose like a dog to a sound
To the memories of my days yet to come
Yawning large in the mid-morning sun

I yawned like loves loss battered
Drawn in with music un-remembered
Or perhaps a wise old tree awoken
In young fields of silence and sleep

I mused however so briefly
on loves quiet definition of beauty
But could not talk a semblance of reason
Into the weather the clouds or the season

I asked loud for the clouds to stay quiet
Yet release their heaviness required
Raining syllables with color and laughter
As I ran wild in the glistening streets

Because clouds do not intimidate,
Only do they imitate.
Imitations meant only for one.
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