We met when you were small
a tiny white puffball
I placed a band blue
round your neck to
show you were my kitty

I knew so exactly
what you should be
good, kind, lovely, sweet
smart, fun, strong, complete
the package with loyal

and you were, so royal
without blemish or soil
upon your pure white fur
heart free of smudge or blur
your name was Snowbell

you grew to know it well
from birth to when you fell
crimson mottled splotch mess
stained your angelic dress
a broken vessel as am I

speaking of how you did die
your life story in my eye
tale of cuddles, head rubbed
rolling joyful in the mud
you spirit confined

by man’s wall defined
freedom’s what you pined
for ever gazing at door
shut stuck wanting outside

Petite Cherie, where now you reside
may sweet freedom fully abide
may you live without doors
fields of grass be your floors
enjoy them, please, it is your right

for this world which held tight
to be lost in pursuit
finally allowed to be you
I let go the band blue
but never my love for you

Petite Cherie, run, be free—
please wait patiently
for the time when we
both have naught but grass floor
no remnants of that shut door.
~
NM
04/06/19

Withering pines, whispering wind
Breaks the night with callous din
What silence speaks in darkest corners
Drowned by forests full of mourners
Another friend fallen, rent and hewed
So spoke the forest, we go to our doom

Now there is nothing left
that's worth the mention
Yet there is so much more
I wanted to say

The years have passed
as a whirlwind
There was nothing left
that together we had

The horses The trailers
The tractor and truck
The saddles and the tack
All then gone for a song

A funeral dirge
of the saddest kind
A song about the
loss of We and Us

Destruction was there
then relentless
Only one single thing
I could keep

Just a wallet I bought
In Our last days together
Holding the picture ID's
of Our Sons

So on I alone
went through
unending destruction
As though all Hell
existed alone against me

Until I again studied
the sunrise and claimed
a new beginning
alone there
beside the sea

So sorry you're not
still here with me
With a beautiful
start-over play
for keeps

I heard for you
it went very badly
And you languish
In doom and sorrow
and grief

I hurt for you
Knowing the very
moment of
abandonment

You set loose
upon yourself
The worst of all
of your fears

Are you happy
that you succeeded
Did you accomplish
all that you planned?

Didn't you know
I would get up
and go on and do
what we did together
by myself once again?

So on I must go
to restoration absolute
of that which was
Ours then to claim

Knowing you're
gone forever
However
I am again myself
surely restored

But not now nor ever
would it be possible
To recover
Our once
precious Love
once more

We Shared Love

We Cherished Life.



-R.

(10.11.17)
-LA

-4MAR

Should wedding bells chime in a dream you have, I pray the man,   miming affection     near the altar is not me. I am ragamuffin; a butcher with no cleaver     in his shadow,
instead a bouquet: Clenched in my silhouetted hand flowers turn into torch. I burn     as a filament in a bulb half-expired. I have smoked through my pocket money    in order
to scatter cremated angels from my throat.    I am cloaked by anguish      my grief    poorly sheathed   a tattered nerve. I have only learned        how to praise darkness.

Light is painful as it shimmers against frost: grass gleams in steady growth    discolored
scars healing. Here I am letting out a blood-letter addressed to you, wondering    if I send   a snip     of my own vein will it remind you how     one missing piece    from a whole            can forfeit the future. All any future is:      a motion into the next moment,  its pending indecision none can envision.      We can’t help but revise malleable pasts. Memories flux     rippling water and enough light changes it’s refraction with each new  ripple.        I cannot be a lover if love is not static    humming at least from its hymnal.  

I   write this letter in calligraphy mourning,    like most poets do – rending heart  rendering  this broken universe – with bone and feathered quill. This feather is from my wing, the pair fallible love clipped         the first chance you took to kiss my darkness.

I’m charting learning a path to winter in an opposite sky:
one only I can fly.

My voice is cracked from crying
Who then will sing your dirge
It's hard to speak or say goodbye
Or stop my hands from trembling

Tears roll down as we shared the grace
I try to sing but start to cry
Now I stare at a soulless face
Hoping that somehow 'tis all a lie

Dressed in white, your arms by your side
The door is closed as you take a ride
To an Isle that lies beyond the road
A road there is with no return
A place that someday even I will follow

While I can't tell you how I feel
At least I can write you a song
That those who hear ur Epicedium
Will cry for then they know
An angel had left for home

I have reached the end of this corridor.
The space between the walls either side; where I stand.
This space is tiny.

I have been funnelled here. The route was so direct, so easy.
The easiest.
The end, so predictable and terminal.

We walk this path so well. Along the way we read such inspirational things in such cheap places.
The sentiments and motivational words surround us so much that we are numb.

The inertia set in years ago, but sparks have ignited in me in these late times.. Each one all the more misguided and further from reality.
Far from this reality.
I suppose, where I crave to be?
The results are unsuccessful.

My dreams flicker through grey matter like remnants of a Universe lost.
The distance from whence I came?
So great that I can only produce tears in response, as I comprehend it.
Silent ones.
Nothing should be spoken of this - I see that now.
*Deaf ears

But the road is a dead end.
The raccoons rampage your cooler and
The compass moves no more.
The stars stay in a moving place.
Circumnavigating your home upon
Every hour.
The poor, poor girl wanders the
Desolate halls. Books strewn on the tile.
Where shall she go? What shall she do?
The toothbrush moves redundantly so,
Updown, updown,
Updown.
Free-verse haikus, a figment
Of the imagination. Five-seven-five
Forever.
Molasses spills from every orifice,
The throat's opening blocked by
Slop and gunk.
Will anyone help?
One would like to think so, but
No such luck.

Stare in the mirror and
Comb your hair, your train
Is boarding now.

I've got your ashes in a box on the shelf.

Sometimes I look at it to remind myself.

I see the pictures that we took when you lived,

Before you became a box on the shelf.

They remind me of the memories,

like a seance with the dead,

all the things that you said

flow through my head

when I see that box again.