"downriver" poems
Almost like a mirror to
Look at you. A sort of Alice on the other side
Of the looking glass.
You are a reflection I never thought might exist.
But there are flaws spiderwebbing cracks into the glass,
The picture so minutely cracked here and
There that it might all just
Fall out of the frame.
Words, picked like highhanging fruit,
Stack and
Form the
Edges of your
Mind--
brilliant walls of Buckingham but also the boxes of fruit
(high hanging like the words) floating down congolese waters
and into the heart
--of Darkness? only kurtz knows
but does it matter? still Grand as ever--
They're words I see in myself on my side
And music from Mechanicsburg Anchorage Dar es Salaam
sings down the same Congo we share
But the only cracks I see are with me.
Your words and wit are the envoys,
Celebrated diplomats from the Heart that lies
downriver.
eyes flash and the Fruit is bountiful and
Hail the heart (wherever whatever it is down the River).
The words are strong as the man who sent them
(somewhere in the Heart)
Such strength to speak and shout
Respect commandeddemanded in the fruit
I often wonder if I have it.
And each time I know I don't
Another crack is born.
the tally man sends his beautiful fruit--
strong as everforever
To the world, smileonface and gleamineye--
and you're him
on the other side
at the Heart.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 10:00 PM UTC
She wraps me in her icy flow
and chills me 'til I'm warm
Soothes away the open space
With sand and pebbled shores
She tries to lull me downriver
Gently pulling, drowsing
Massaging the miles off me
Relaxing
I know she lies
I know she'd take me to the big river
Carrying me like an eddying breeze
But I want to lay back and dream
And slowly drift away
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 4:39 PM UTC
But let's forget
About those meaningless worries
And jump into a river
We could go skinny dipping
As the sun melts off the side of the earth
Forget regret
And hold my hand, I know its cold
Ill calm your shivers
And warm your lips
As the trees turn to intricate silhouettes
Just pretend
we're wild & free; like they say we should be
We'll poison our little livers
With laughter and loss of cares
As we become more forgetful about tomorrow
Or the next
Day. Tonight, just me and you will
Drift, together, downriver
As glass bottles float around us, enclose us
Neglect the
Natural enquiries of how late it is
Or that it's getting darker
As we drown in eachothers presence
I recommend
You let yourself be decieved
And flow downstream. We slither
Softly bumping limbs underwater "accidentally"
Don't defend
Yourself. I know we aren't in love
But could we act it? I'll deliver you kisses
as we sink
Deeper into
The depths of a pretended plot
Of an olden day flim, where the girl gives her
Spontanious side a chance;
And the boy plays his part.
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 6:09 AM UTC
To be still in one moment
Where two hearts, together make one whole..
Where I bless his eyes
As the dawn caresses the sky, and
Whisper sweet my name against his lips, breathless
Lays my heart-skin, awaiting the drink of his tenderness,
Echoes in the quiet...
Skin sensations pressed soft against
A soft hypnotic night's breath... I hear it carried by the winds...
and I am swept downriver in a maelstrom of memory and ache...
Warm scents musk a timeless aphrodisiac, as
I dream in bare skin, my urgent pulse beating,
Fluttering endlessly...
To the place where he seeks me,
Touching my breath,
Reaching inside my heart to the corners where I breathe,
Pinning me beneath his pleasure
Senseless and nirvanic...
Strummed in the rhythm...
Of slow hands...
Hands warm and seeking, unfolding
Within urgent whispers;
Sacred moments slip into timeless joy;
Where midnight hides behind moon-shadows
Cradling the syllables of our deepest ache,
In the fire that whispers through us...
Breath,
Tangible as a caress...
Tangles in the flow,
Swaying beneath shadows...his smile, the only temptation
I ever needed, wraps tightly around
My nakedness;
There is passion in the way he smiles,
The heavy lids of his yearning eyes gather me into the heart of him,
An endless spiral...piercing my heart...burning my soul...
While whispers tumble
Surrounding me within the sanctity of his emotions
Awaiting the feed of my lips....
Lips swollen and bruised; awaiting
Amatorial sin, pounding aloud,
Warmth spreads, lusting for love, while
Kisses nibble the desires of tomorrow;
Freeing me hot and dewy
Beneath the circles of his tongue,
******* pierced with the ripening ache of warm breath,
A graze of teeth, absorbing the sensation of
A lava heat flow, molten moisture
Upon sinned skin....
The arch of my back
The touch of his fingers...........breathtakingly slow
Pulsing desire through me;
I Lay my mouth down
And prepare a slow dance to traipse hot along cooled
flesh;
Oh how he quiver-throbs!
Moaning my name as his fingers press me firm against him,
Pounding rhythms that mock my heartbeat,
Where the moon finds me arching in the moan of my sighs....
Delicately fierce, his
Fire rages through me,
As whispers plead upon the long, slow,
Wet lick, relentless under
The silent cry of surging tides
And I moan within the scorching growls of his flesh
Whispering incoherent mumblings
Falling against me, to tremble flesh to flesh,
To satiate not the momentary quivering flames,
But all the self and soul of love;
To be still in one moment,
Where two hearts, together make one whole............
Aug 8, 2012
Aug 8, 2012 at 7:44 PM UTC
Plastic artifact reminds me of her. Flesh and blood, she melts her own icon.
My Goddess, I worship our craft, married in the Nth dimension.
Our candles illuminate each hemisphere, synced red & blue, purple state.
Pulp of war profits in arms, fisticuffs gerrymandered and rigged against us.
We remember asunder, yet constellate in ways we cannot disconnect.
Put us back together, again forever, to care for the always already poor.
Rich boats raise all waters. Overboard, she fends for herself against all odds.
Statuesque pin-up, femme ichthyologist of garb, gaggle *** sushi swim mate.
Corners enshrine our meditation department network, transcendent yet in touch.
Taste felt on tongue brings us closer together to see and hear what’s happening now.
Hearts over matter, heads roll, eyes forward; brains make the most of a sticky situation.
Sounds blend synethesiastically, our opposite angels harmonize to build twin passages.
Wend our raft downriver, stroke unbound tandem wrists and ankles from spawn upstream.
Our cocoon igloo ensconces like alien cavewomen thaw out their men, then mate on the spot.
Through the delta, Venus beckons, her molten artifice pools our hull. To be baled out by Lucifer?
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 2:32 AM UTC
This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
I never got to swim the backstroke
before Brunswick Basin bled
Lake Olympia from amidst her oak,
before Deer Creek went dead.
*The streets'll burn, the bodies break
and the blood washed away by beer.
The streets burned, bodies broke
and we're still here.*
Shadow people wander the sidewalk,
been here since the bombs dropped.
Never got no noisy television,
just watch the streets and shadows in them.
I'm pushing up just like daisies
and pulling them up for fun.
Convinced that I'm going crazy
from the trips that I get on.
*Jane says she cannot get it:
"something hidden...back when children."
You're always looking for the road
where we used to drink too drunk,
where you look to have again
what we had so long ago.*
Do you feel it coming?
on Earth His will be done.
Collapse a long time coming—
still nothing new under the sun.
Summer is for the living.
That's a bubble-bursted, sun-dried reason.
It's the end or I am fibbing,
still live up the rest of the season.
*First came the flood then spilled blood.
Had anyone caught on of that to come
you know we'd never have let it begun.
But it had:
got you, your mother, and dad.
Surely there was nothing we could do
but hunker down, get a job, and rue
the day they brought us into
the Old World and buried the New.*
I hear tell that downriver
the water gets warmer;
I hear tell that valley below us's
a hotter n' hell, body-ridden bowl of dust.
—
I hear tell that upriver
the trout they run thicker,
the water cooler, air smoother, and **** sticks thinner.
I wanna flee up that river
but I'm not that good a swimmer.
How do we know?
We think we're smart,
in fact we're geniuses.
But we're still sitting
and can't stop talking about...
This Apocalypse Summer
has really got me down,
but then I'm up running
through what is left of town.
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 1:20 AM UTC
Downriver...crystalline ventricles
gurgling, bedded stones believe
rest--greenhorn's hymnal.
Land kept at your sides, passed
and passing, love's dicast.
Gushed alter of the wayfarer,
perfect turn of phrase--spurred onward
gravity's lane.
A commingling smoke of candle and
incense--bird's parallel, lucid Coming...
divined gauge.
Euphoric to be had of earth,
overflow at rain's touch.
Errant yonder, solvent sketch...
at-long-last's monotone declarative.
Soul's minutiae in plain, downriver...
downriver...downriver.
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 2:05 PM UTC
You sweeten my life with your sugary smile
I can’t start to describe how that tastes
But I can feel rivers oozing out of you.
Into my bloodstream you go
Swimming and destroying my heart
I won’t let you go until it’s time
To say goodbye after you rot me.
You won’t catch me just yet
Not with that look in your eyes
And not with iron thighs on my chest.
But down you’ve gone into my bloodstream
Swimming and destroying my heart
Going downriver until it’s time
To rot me, then let me rest.
If I had a body you could possess
I’m sure you’d see to it that I’m depressed
With all of my happiness wasted away on you.
7th June 2016
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 4:19 AM UTC
I am empty.
This pen has run all out of ink.
After all, aren’t there only so many ways
You can scream “sorry” to the wind?
A finite number of variations on
"Miss you," whispered into the infinite silence?
You are no more than an echo on my bones
But that knowledge does not keep me
From laying open skin and muscle
Layer by layer, baring my bones
Like some garish xylophone
And clumsily tap-tap-tapping,
Trying to recreate the faint melody
That hovers in the twilight of memory
Nothing more than a vague outline
Nearly blending into the horizon
You are no more than a ghost in my darkened corners
And still I chase your insubstantial form
A will-o-the-wisp that draws me into the marshland of my mind
Looking to catch the faintest impish flash of blue-gray mischief
Pursing the shadowy figure in hopes that this time—
This time!—
It will prove more substantial than the vanishing mist
My arms have closed around, every time past
Once again I pick myself up out of the mire
Trying to brush off the clinging regrets
And plod back towards the path
Feet dragging and leaving furrows in the ground
Like an empty pen, still scratching its way across a barren page
Determined to ignore any more dancing lights in the distance
Knowing all too well that the resolve will only last
Until the next one flickers to life and calls me into the darkness
I am empty.
Nothing more to say about reckless dreams of forever
No reason to keep staring downriver
Wondering how far that ship might have sailed
Had I chosen to remain at its helm through rocky waters
And yet, when I look back at the blank page
I discover that the pen wasn’t empty after all
And the trail it left behind
Still spells your name
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 8:44 PM UTC
Walking to work
Pausing to watch westering geese
Cross the early tints of sky
Formation fraying from V to S
One day Ill fly away
Remembering another morning
They turned in air, downriver
Whilst you slept
My hand pinioning your bare shoulder
Lips kissing your nape
Mar 13, 2016
Mar 13, 2016 at 10:09 AM UTC
pinky promise
we've forgotten our mortality
our impulse to smile at blooms
we've stared at childhood photographs
and wondered why we look so angry
the art of fault and denial are synonymous
we've stopped speaking in hopes that silence really does
speak volumes,
our bodies could fell, cracked down like oak and our voices
remain like cocoons, papery whispers swathed in duff,
still breathlessly prating, foolish and juvenile.
which goes to say-- our thoughts
far procede the vessel, would last beyond our
deaths and ancestry--
i once spoke about anger being passed down
through the blood of irishmen - who long held the
propensity to bar fight and brawl
long standing feuds poured from mouth to mouth
downriver, across the gap, occasionally skipping a generation
the woes of our fathers are dead languages that we keep--
tongues we deliver on our own
we lash out and are our mothers
or laugh and see our fathers
never quite our own until burgeoning, and not even that --
not all of us bloom, some of us violently tear away
break the root and toss ourselves among the rocks
wilted but brilliantly colored
desperate to
learn how to speak.
Apr 5, 2017
Apr 5, 2017 at 11:00 PM UTC
Wild flowers,
Water fall stream,
Misty mountains far along the breeze,
My dreams; so serene
downriver,
Filthy place where I stay,
Could go on & on, though too tired to explain;
I want to go far far away,
My dreams that my heart yearns to stay;
So close; but so far away
Pushing through everyday,
Depression poems are not my forte,
Though it's about to evolve to one now anyway,
You see no drive is an interference;
To not stay where I am today,
To my dream that I want to lay,
In a field of wildflowers; who needs a bouquet?
We all have dreams,
This is mine,
Conquered on the Devils time
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 3:42 AM UTC
Steady thumping, thumping.
The boat travels downstream.
The water is brown, from silt.
The current is swift but calm.
Trees line the edges of the river.
Green foliage, thick on both sides.
The sky is blue with white clouds.
A bridge passes overhead, with cars.
Downriver, a large load is being pushed,
to the locks in the dam up ahead.
The water is deep now and dark.
An eagle cries out, and lets fly.
I bring the small vessel to a stop,
and watch all around me.
A train on the side of the water,
the barge moving away,
trucks on a freeway above,
the hum of shipping goods,
and the beauty of nature in one.
Tranquility, and constant motion.
I slowly begin to turn around,
and begin the steady trek,
upriver to where I began.
Jul 6, 2019
Jul 6, 2019 at 1:49 PM UTC
we are the champion kids,
mean starry-eyed gangster babies,
fresh from the trailer park;
soaking up diamanté danger
in glittering pink sequin bikinis
and rhinestone cowboy hats.
sunset swinging boricua gold hips,
robbers dripping virginal deceit as
'nilla ice cream coats fruit punch lips,
sighing softly under neon moonlight
as we stumble through camelot,
drunk off the fumes of the city.
hollywood heavenly stars light up
our flesh and the fake palm trees
at the 76, a true downriver delight.
degenerate beauty queens beaten blue
by cinema kings craving insanity
and perfection in sweet cocaina lines,
selling our souls to weekly devils
for a big shot of treasure trove ***
chain-smoking cigarettes because he
called me his pretty little gangster baby;
lazily watching him fly through traffic,
i love his rollercoaster disco mind.
falling in and falling out of the world,
floating across the sparkling nebulae
as he waves his pistol and blue paper
in my face, hoping i'll awaken from
dope saturated celluloid dreams.
praying my baby will come back to me
from the crackhouse down the street;
she smiles to the world, but i can see
the tear stains on her golden cheeks.
Mar 24, 2020
Mar 24, 2020 at 5:28 AM UTC
They told me not to set myself on fire to keep someone else warm. But god do the flames feel good.
"I want you here but I also want not to want you here"
"why do you do this to yourself?" he asked her, holding her arm gently. He was so sincere she couldn't bring herself to lie. "because at least the cuts on the outside heal."
left bleeding from mental lacerations
tangled in my skinny jeans
slinking heroically downriver.
we don't say goodbye. we know it's the end but maybe not saying it will make the world stop for just a moment longer.
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 7:57 PM UTC
Across from the plaza
where the homeless
and street people usually gather
on concrete steps
by the Truckee River
stands an old stone church
stained glass angels
stare down from the belfry
roof whitewashed in pigeon ****
Today their unblinking eyes gaze
not on the poor and desperate
but on smiling families
a tilt a whirl
a bounce house
a mini carnival for children
happy squeals fill the air
vendors set up white tents
along the swollen river
a band begins playing
as a crowd gathers
I sit on a metal bench to rest
notice a bar welded
across the middle
recently added
dividing it in two
a clear message
for sleepy eyes
Further downriver
away from the festival
the eight dollar microbrews
the bassy hip hop sounds
the mingled food smells
two panhandlers sit inside the "B"
of the giant "BELIEVE" sculpture
across from the Virginia Street bridge
eating plastic wrapped sandwiches
passing a bottle in a brown paper bag
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 12:20 AM UTC
There once was a river,
that flowed two ways.
It broke all of the rules,
and achieved the impossible.
It grew and grew, then shrunk
and dipped into darkness.
Upriver it flourished,
downriver it forgot.
Never was there ever
something quite like it.
It left no tracks.
Appeared in a whisper and left in a rush.
The breath came from the wind and
the course was where ever.
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 1:03 AM UTC
i sent my dreams
downRiver, into your open
mouth. and i stood there,
shell-shocked by the sight of
you,
wondering what it was like to really know
you.
i watched your eyes close,
as the sunset silhoutted your sweet curls.
i exhaled a silent prayer, and hoped
the wind would carry it into your lungs.
my heart pumped blood into
the River
my body did not know
how to swim. so i stood and watched
you,
drinking in the world, without
any idea that it was my
blood that tinged the water.
i wanted to tell you everything
i wanted to scream
i wanted to touch you
but you looked so peaceful,
floating like you were
born to defy gravity. i could not
disturb you and ever forgive myself.
so i knelt where i was,
letting the saltwater trickle from my
face to join the River,
as it took you far away from me.
Dec 14, 2019
Dec 14, 2019 at 6:34 PM UTC