Author: RDP

The Anniversary

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Lines flag the throat and knees are noise,
but I remember the time back —
the easy sun when we were young.

Rotations and revolutions see tender changes,
from flowers, jewels and racing hearts,
to coffee drips, notes and evening’s tired hellos

There’s wear on the bridge and the back aches —
sameness fades as time rides the tide,
but I remember the time back —
when the fresh snows fall, or the calm rain,
the pour of a drink in a clean cup, or the ocean waves.

We, together, a timeless love song
that I cannot be without.

The Tattoo

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Blood and flame,
quiet sparks, this wooden bed.
Gods know the quickening —
the eye, the hand, the wrist, wrapped in fine skin.

Flesh marks tracing bled pattern,
soft heathen.
Horns and raven’s wings — cut me in silver.

Earth.

Spread me with axes and shields,
all that fair and fierce longing.

Over and under, over and under,
weave braids and veins
and cut the heart, fighter.
A shield born of ash and mist.
Touch me again.

The Wanderer

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Oh, Red, I found you again,
in the night’s tale.
Warm palms, wool gloves,
magnetic magical lure of the throat;
imagined memory.
An interception of the pressing dark, unconscious haze.
The flashing pearl revealed by upturned petal and sapphire gaze.
My gods, the panting;
heaving chest, anxious beat,
a tearless, tired eye.
You, please.
Wanderer, discoverer, wanting change conjurer.
Promise on our song and wait again for the sun’s bed.
I swear with wringing hands,
despite the sky’s expanse and endless, agonizing time.

Brooklyn

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There’s a fearful beat that persists in my chest.
Squealing agony of the railway brakes,
unyielding stone and aging towers penetrate a pensive sky thick with weeping clouds.
All is drab, distended, dripping, and gray.
Mists draw from concrete pads and breath suspends tensely in the humid negative space.
Strangers pass, each with a downcast gaze, masked face.
Amid this and all,
the unseen sensation of a conjured aesthetic — a memory of something long completed.
There is a sound here that you made.
Your resonance tattooed like a perpetual autumnal bearing despite winter’s biting snows and summer’s cruel sun.
Don’t despair —
I can hear you, and your eyes look cold like mine.

The Memory

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Aye, lover, it’s been long.
Minutes piled beyond counting.
The revolving nights work waves —
crash against nets, pots, and so much rust.
Tanned hands turn silken gray loops;
sweating brow,
but such bright auroras upturned at the sun,
and carven lines, rooted in ancestral deserts.
A soft call of morning stirs memory,
and the air’s easy caress touches high,
like fallen feathers and snow.

Touchless

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Packed away in my mind’s space,
he waits, ever-present,
wrapped in cords and sheets —
in whispering curtains and dancing morning dust.
The midnight moon conjures that invisible stranger,
outlined in pointed shapes, blue and heat,
glossy gray, and soft, wintered loops.
My guts, my skin, hopeless in the throat’s sound,
audible only in the sponge twist electricity of thought.
Sighs and a pounding pulse against the touchless hands — ethereal ecstasy beyond the dirt of the earth, oceans, and time.
Daylight banishes him to sweetened vapors, whispers, and sun streams,
and I am left physical — changed.

The Faraway

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Open the door to the stars and lead me.
Jagged dark, the backdrop to moonlit points on restless waters.
Twinkle, lightyears away, our breath frosting in the void.
I am clawing for locks and keys and the respite of the shining light …

in your hollows,

in your center.

Rainbow auroras, the swipe swirl of fingers,
and lips whispering of faraway places in the sky.

The Dark

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Stranger, bring me to the dark. There are salty swells that lull the hull, and I am swirling, hurtling toward the abyss.

A cold ache spreads throughout — a voracious desire beyond the quell.

Those books bang, such a ponderous sound, the vibrations and expectations.

Bring me to the dark. The candlelight and the anxious warming breath, unrelenting, fast and impure.

Lieutenant, we feel the difference in the darkness, and honesty uncaged and wild. Leadership surrendered and our minds bear, forcing toward the blue-black of spattered stars.

Secretive voices are wispy rasps, and I lament my life’s beat; how far I’ve allowed his hands.

Pirate, please.

Golden knuckles and calloused touch — the skeptical brow and petrified gaze. That pounding, desirous pulse. Bring me to the dark again.

The Thieves Spell

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He is heavy in the chest — his limbs like petrified bark. Sweat dapples his brow, and there is a cloudiness in his sight – a type that even enchantments cannot correct – a poison that courses through the tiny tubes of his existence, striking and thwarting all that makes his matter.

She is a summer storm as she works, her hands muddling and concocting. He eases as he hears her careful worrying, ad he minds the beating of his heart: fast, then slow, then fast again, and then slow. Sun behind clouds, then moon, then sun again, and then dark.

Continue reading “The Thieves Spell” →

The Freedom Fighter

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Rain pearls touch and slough off leaves,
damp fog languishes and rolls.
The sodden tread nears, and breath;
crisp, fresh, upswept, and sharp.
Shining shapes upon flesh —
flashing, brilliant;
eyes like a breaking dawn, cresting sun.
Brush near the throat, the manic beating,
and sign to me of sands and terrors.
Open-lipped and torrid, seasoned by galaxies and dust, we resist.
This, in our secret silence,

dark star,

vibrating daydream.