the sunset
even enamors
the clouds...
see?
they blush pink
when he comes
to meet
the horizon
sinking below
in
ecstasy.

Eleven thousand
            three hundred
     sixty one miles away
in a place   I’ve never been,
     you are thinking
          of all the places
you have never   been
     or haven’t   been,
some for seasons,
          some for years.

A Paris   pomegranate   sunrise
     from the Pont des Arts,
     bright     colours     shimmying
at the   pulse   of romance.

The   blood   cell   rush   of Shibuya,
   Tokyo at night among
a river of     strange symbols,
   blinking   TV   screens.
  
Prague dredged in frost,
   feet-chatter   on cobbles
          past the Jan Hus memorial
under a   cool   periwinkle sky.

Glossy tulips in Bilbao,
   metallic curves,
   trill   of   syllables
     by the teal Nervión.

I think of you,          far away,
   same planet, different   spot,
the future washing towards us
   full of scrambled   images
and     white     noise,
a trickle of hope at your   toes,
   through my screen.

Remember
The last time We were
in Dallas together

That place where We met
We loved and We lived
and where We were
so very alive in Our time

There in the beautiful city
Resplendent and Refined
Where we spent Our moments
in love in life
and the quiet vibrant
Love of Life

Remember
That last time
We went back home
to Dallas

On that day we awoke
in the early morning
When I asked if you
were ready to leave

You stepped gracefully
to embrace me
You said We had time
Do you think We might...
please

You knowing surely
without a doubt
you never needed
to plead

We made love
like We knew
that We meant it
We made love
that isn't made fast

We made love
in the joys
of pleasing each other
A love that would always
however still last

We soon then
were on our way
on a beautiful bright
late Fall day

To see someone
back home

You there then
golden and glorious
Happy and smiling
Sipping on a Sunkist
citrus soda

We put the car on cruise
and We sailed away
Slipping quickly from
the rustic western country

To merge swiftly
into the flow of
the magnificent city
Toward the inbound
expressway

Remember the majestic
towering skyscrapers
as we made the loop
around downtown

The red flying Pegasus
still flying on
as the emblem
of Our hometown

Reunion Tower
and the magic of light
The Top of the Dome Club
at the top of the world
Such wonderful times
at the top of Our life

Remember Our date there
when We were yet still young
that lasted the afternoon
Throughout the evening and
all that beautiful night long

For You then my Lady
A perfect Chardonnay wine
For me Johnny Walker
on the rocks

All to perfectly bind
the heart and mind
To a wondrous moment
Overswept yet fixed in time

You by my side as
I always had hoped
Like that very last time
We were in Dallas
together back home

We made our stop
to meet with a doctor friend
He knew what I could never
believe and what I never
wanted to have had
to comprehend

You were gone by measures
You were gone by degree
You were going
and near hopelessly
gone unto me

Yet I still hoped
and believed

The last time
We went back home
to Dallas together again

But still on the way back
from Our bright shining city
to what would become
the darkest of desolations

You still were happy
or so it seemed
You were bright and beautiful
like in a perfect dream

We stopped at a restaurant
I ate a lot...but You did not
You stepped away for a minute
and then I met you at the car

When We got back
to that place
where together
We last lived
We embraced and
You said again...
please

Surely You never
would have ever
needed to plead

We first lay there
together a moment
to recover Our strength
Entwined together
You and me

Then We there
were immersed within
that precious moment
When all of beautiful
intimate art is
expressed in life

And all of love
becomes perfectly
tragic art

There is where
I felt the trickle
of Your tears
as they fell down
onto my chest

And then there
upon my heart

After that last time
We were back
home in Dallas
together.

Remember Dallas.
We always
will have Dallas.

-R.

7/17/17
-LA


-4MAR

It's all so quiet
Silent within its hidden slumber
And dreams a beautiful dream which guides and cools the Windrush on the water.

Its dream song flows through my patterns
Atoms wave like sunkist fields of wheat
So peaceful is its essence
It is silent when it speaks.

Black Mind

It’s more than friendship for us.  We’re closer than that.  we never needed the same blood to call each other brothers.  We bleed similar ideas and thoughts, like telepathy is our only way to communicate.  We’re linked in ways most will never know, See, we’re cut from a different cloth. In our ragged robes we feel like kings because we know we have the greatest jester at our sides. Mind that this is a love poem, love for my friend, my brother, my phone call at 1 am, chatting about everything and anything.  I never walked down streets with such confidence before. his are my guard rail, stopping me from slippery streets and inattentive eyes.  I don’t think we can count the times we’ve defined our code.  It’s not a code of arms, we don’t need to arm ourselves with each other at our sides.  I’ve gone from the boy I was to a man I want to be, thanks to him.  I don’t think he’ll ever understand how much he’s done for me.  It’s been such roller coaster ride, dating best friends and losing loves, we stuck by each other, Spartan warriors would be proud.  He’s like a spider web.  Hidden in small spaces of serenity.  He catches anything that we need to survive and destroys anything that could harm me.  serendipitously our friendship evolved like Pikachu and Squirtile.  We have that Pokemon type of bond, I’ll choose you, every time.   No one will understand when I say, Saving him from SunKist liquids is our defining “broment.” See, in that moment having a bottle rise to his lips, I knew that he needed me to tell him the dangers that lie ahead, as he’s have done for me countless time.  Now, It could have been the time you  told me you hated me in middle school, or the time you tried to save me from a fire breathing dragon. He became the one person I can count on, in a world where a clock ticks too quickly.  It’s you and me against the world, They don’t know what they got themselves into.  We are soldiers, brothers at battle, we start wars with words because our poetic voices are needed in the struggles of a lost generation.  But,  we don’t need to take up arms, we pick pens and write the words that no one has the heart to say.  Our words prove that we never needed the same blood to call each other brothers.  Because it’s more than friendship for us.  We’re closer than that.

My raybans still covered
my swollen  eyes as I stepped
inside the Rite Aid,
in my pathetic attempt to
hide from the neighborhood how much
I had been crying.
Tears of anger and
some of despair and
others of sheer exhaustion
had coated my cheeks
and worn the edges of my eyelids
raw and reddened my
corneas.
I had stumbled out of my apartment
in an effort to rid my body of
feelings, assuming the brisk spring breeze
could somehow sweep up everything
I felt and whisk it away as
quick as it had come.
I squeaked past a couple
******* clad women with
sunken eyes that bore holes
into the glass of the cooler
as they stared longingly at the
rather large variety of
malt liquors, the selection of soft drinks
lesser than the collection of
40s I passed on my way to the
back of the store.
I distracted myself imagining
the taste of the various soda pops,
a wild cherry Pepsi dissolving into my
daydream tongue right before it
turned to Big Red Cream Soda.
Diet Sunkist in hand,
I stared at the ingredients on the orange soda bottle and reread the same words
over and over as he interjected himself again and again.
I made my way to the counter,
feeling ever grateful for my sunglasses
as more tears welled,
and I cleared my throat before mumbling a way-too-weak-for-an-outgoing-girl hello.
Before I knew it my distraction faded
from view, and I turned left down Oak
as his face peeked out in my
rear view mirror in the majesty of
the sunset.
I shook off a feeling of admiration and
reminded myself that even after all this time
he still manages to disappoint me as
he always has.
I murmured something about how,
"He ain't ****" like I'm some bad
***** that doesn't give a **** about a dude.
But then I remembered how deeply I had loved
a man who never loved me back and
never failed to prove it.
My stomach began to drop,
leaving me feeling as empty as the
messages he had sent me in his pathetic
attempts to convince me of ******* masked as
the rhetoric he knew I wanted to hear,
just enough to keep me around for his
(admittedly) selfish reasons.
I loved him and hated him all at once
as I realized 4 months ago when
I told myself (and him) that I was moving on,
it was only my head that had,
my heart still staggering, like a
drunk stumbling off a belly full
of cheap whiskey,
And as I later drowned my sorrows in
TV dramas and artificial sweeteners,
I vowed to get that last piece back and really let go...
I'll start tomorrow
when I sober up.

Layer upon layer upon layer,  it is too cold for skin
and my sunkist days pull away, while I reach and grab for a hand to hold.  

Missouri is a surprise party for someone who hates surprises.
Missouri is a cruel joke, handing you the ripe-to-the-very-second
sweetness of a strawberry summer and snatching it away at the
last second to watch you fall to your knees and beg for mercy from the
biting wind and your stinging lips, no chapstick to be found.

Layer upon layer, sweater under coat,
socks over socks under boots made of steel.

If there is one upside to this brutal chill, if there is
it would be peeling back this extra skin, this shield of
fabric, to reveal steaming pink underneath.

It would be that
cold weather
makes ***
even better.

I’ve got better things to do
Than not drink orange soda
My winter is long enough
Without that summer in a bottle

It’s the taste of my youth
That magic orange soda
Fanta, Crush, or Sunkist
They all take me there

Carbonated sweet sun
This icy orange soda
Every sip is a portal in time
Take me back, take me back

Last night in bed we spoke for days
We made big bright plans for a life that we’re yet to see
The house we will buy and what our children's names will be
We drew dreams of honeymoon nights and days soaked in ecstasy
Sunkist hearts, smiles as warm as fireplace flames on Christmas eve
Years gone by and our big bright plans have taken sail across the deep
Where the tides rage high and the winds blow by
I guess our big bright plans have died at sea