Long Red river Poems
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She taught her fury to dance on the edge of the abyss, hating like a silent storm,
I always thought it would pass like a cloud sliding across the sky of a quiet May day,
a wandering dream between illusions and whispered advice from sleepless, restless nights.
I felt it would pass like a summer rain washing away the sins of the dry, sad earth,
listening to accusations like voices of wind slamming against old, dirty windows.
I knew some were true, but not worthy of stirring storms of envy and vengeance,
I thought it would pass without raising a shield, hoping reason would be the bridge of light.
But her determination transformed into a river carving its path through cold, hard stone,
and I, watching as I yielded a grain of sand, saw everything collapse into the void.
Oh Lord, I said to myself, it's just violence born from the shadows of untamed desires,
so I took the horse from the stable of dusty dreams, sharpened knives like a magician of shadows,
and set out to fight, a knight of the night ready to face both sun and moon alike.
She finally found her rival, an adversary worthy of the dance of destruction she craved,
she found the mirror to see her desire to lose herself, I mounted the horse,
the sword gleamed like a silent promise, ready to tear even the sky in two.
She always wanted war, and I will fulfill her wish, let love now be an extinguished flame,
as it was extinguished when it first arrived, my hesitation will dissipate like smoke in the wind,
and blood will flow, a red river under the moon, hers and mine, a macabre dance of hidden desires.
Light in darkness
Why in the world do you bother? I’ll never be your Prince.
You’re getting all hot and bothered,
But you’ll never get my intimate kiss.
Your lies flow around like a red river;
The bodies are all up stream.
I’ll never be your sinner and you’ll never be my everlasting Queen.
Visions flash by like a drunken night star-ship.
Diamonds fall down from the sky.
Lights scream at me when the world turns dim.
Metaphors talk in my dreams each and every night.
Liver’s continue their dancing; I’m all alone in this place.
Everyone goes to the happening;
Find the truth on my vacant blank face.
I’m dancing inside! Outwardly portraying the end.
You’ll never be my one bride; life has taken away all that ‘Let’s pretend’.
Words are easily manipulated; I write in blood, sweat and tears.
I never claimed I would become the greatest,
But this rock has rolled for years and more years.
Time is a fleeting illusion, I once possessed inside my hands.
I live in a head of confusion, where all I do is all that I can.
Dangerous times call for changes; musical mind clocking in.
Lyrics are filling the empty pages;
Deeper and deeper I’m sinking down in it.
Fires are burning all around, lighting the darkest night.
Earth is The Devil’s playground
And I’m down on my knee’s searching for the right light.
A God in a world of fantasy; imagination my only truth.
You are the drug that I cannot handle.
You keep me moving; you push me through.
(C)2019 Aa Harvey. All Rights Reserved.
Poetics Poem, Red River Gorge, KY
I traipse the course of a forking, rambling stream
Barefoot from the rounded top of one small boulder
To another, the slashing strikes of cold water
Startling my every careful leap, place to place,
Landing with deep, short gasps, yet wordless
In an utter joy of intense sensation over sun-sprinkled
Spots so bright against the deep gray hollow splotches of
Drenched stone. The stream does not trickle
Along this gorge, but roars the air and throws
Its echoing roundabout the cliffs like a newborn
Learning its scream forth from being
Buried for years beneath massive storeys on up to
Greater views. But, the stream continues its carving around
The hillside. And the newly-born cries will
Find the voices of self-expression with each gasping
Leap from boulders to cliffs, climbing in a wrapabout
The gorge’s hidden, grand lowlands and rising
Of its own ineffable poetry so fully held within the birthing
Of Nature herself, all that which carries
Of language as spoken
In the heart of God.
**********. **********. **********. **********
(C) sally Young eslinger 10/9/2020
And perhaps the blood had to flow like a red river under the moon,
Perhaps the skin had to open like a flower in a storm,
To let the soul break free from the grip of silent shadows,
I do not blame the hands that painted a silent story on the body.
But how do I tell the one who still brings silk bandages,
The one who kneels beside me as gently as a breeze,
Trying to gather the shards of a stained glass that has learned to be broken,
How do I tell them that I have learned to live in fragments of a forgotten soul?
How do I tell them that this wound feels more alive left under the open sky?
How do I tell them that what they carry is a treasure of light,
The tenderness of their hands, the desire to heal the shadows within me,
But that I no longer carry a heart that beats to the same desires?
I don't want to break them as I was broken by life's storms,
I don't want to shatter them with the burden of the pain that enveloped me.
So let it bleed like a spring flowing from the mountain,
Let it breathe like a wind whispering through autumn leaves,
Let this pain be a part of me,
Not something that needs to be repaired, but something that needs to be known and felt.
Please, leave it uncovered under the starry sky.
Perhaps healing does not lie in covering with silk,
But in freeing the soul from the cage of pain,
In letting go of what can no longer be held prisoner.
Face of an Angel
I hear the distant rumblings
of artillery shells
I hear the singing sound
of stray bullets
I lift my head to look
around and see the toll
Bodies scattered like
leaves on a fall day.
Some with limbs torn from
them like a barren tree.
Some with their entrails exposed
like a lion’s prey.
I feel no pain, just a
sense of floating
Of being outside my
body.
Of looking at myself
with a red river flowing
from my leg.
I hear a distant cry, “medic”
I sense a shadow above me
and see a helmeted head
with a red cross painted on it.
I see the face of care and
compassion.
I see the face of an angel
Like skipping stones on red river in heart
Let it be known love of God is holy art
No two creations will be the same
Some love with laughter others love with rain
The laughter is the joy of the Lord
Easy to breathe in hard to avoid
The tears so teal tall and true
can be from joy but from pain too.
God is great, He assigns a muse
We make mistakes but God never leaves you
Could even be God is a she
God is bigger than gender identities
What if God in the wildest of hopes
Sent many in white wisdom cloaked
He sent them to encourage humans
Not at all a worry as the color of skin
God did not make mistakes
Even loves the ones who love to hate
If God is art of heart
Be careful what you create there is not dark
What if you found light in the dark
Could be Christ won your heart
Or could be in Muhammad or in Buddha you took flight
Winging your mind and soul to new heights
Musings on faith is there only one way
To cross the dark in the light of day
If love is art in many forms created
How you love the creator and if you do may be fated.
I loved you John Wayne!
I wished you were my father
or maybe an older brother
who’d tutor me to be tough
when manners weren’t enough
and toughness was needed
that civility be heeded
and not to brag or complain.
O I loved you John Wayne!
As soon as I was old enough
to earn the price of admission
I saw your films in succession
at the first run houses down
in the big deal part of town
and enshrined each one on a list
taped to my bedside wall
and read about the ones I’d missed.
Shucks, I loved you most of all!
Fort Apache and Red River
took pride of place on the page;
they’d eaten up my weekly wage.
I missed the Yellow Ribbon;
I hoped I’d be forgiven.
At the Rio and the Broad
(in a dicey neighborhood)
I atoned with films you’d done
before I was even born.
Western after Western
and tales of oil and whiskey
and scheming ladies, O so risky!
I hoped I’d be excused
when I compromised my muse
by adding well-built gals
to Duke and all his pals.
Montez, Russell, and Lake
made my hormones quake.
O I loved you, John Wayne.
I could feel your bashful pain
When the pretty lady roped you
and hat in hand you’d bow,
the furrow deepening on your brow,
and utter monosyllables plus “Ma’am,”
no longer a ram, more like a lamb.
O I shared you pain, John Wayne!
And still I loved you John Wayne,
your true grit and donnybrook,
your menacing brow, the look
that said, “Enough, my friend.
“This bull is going to end!”
You swaggered? (not quite it--
as if your boots didn’t quite fit?)
You took him by the horns and shook;
Plomp! Down went the snook!
How I loved you, John Wayne!
And I love you still when again I see
the doughty Duke on my smart TV
as much as Papa’s lone old man,
with fish chewed down to the bone
loved Joltin’ Joe Dimaggio
when the Clipper’s legs began to go
and he was hobbled by his heel.
John Wayne, you were the real deal.
BLACKLAND PRAIRIE
From Red River down to San Antone,
The Blackland Prairie’s all but gone—
Scoured clean by progress, tilled and torn,
By “civilized” greed, excess born,
A plundered land that mourns the dawn.
Where bison and pronghorn used to roam
In numbers lost in time and stone
Now parking lots and outlet malls
Stretch gray and wide in sterile sprawl—
Concrete vice buries the loam.
Ghosts drift where tall grass once did sway,
Sad silhouettes lost in furrowed clay.
Buffalo wallows—now just names—
Erased beneath the plow’s steel frames.
That black gumbo soil, wild and deep,
Swells in sorrow where once it did sleep,
Its spirit stripped for cotton’s cash—
The prairie buried and turned to ash.
And the prairie wept.
Fire was its father,
Rain its sacred hymn.
Crickets echoed softly
As the dusk grew dim.
Bluestem bowed low
To the buffalo’s tread;
Fields stitched with wildflowers—
Blazing red and violet spread.
Nature held her courts
In the Blackland meadows.
But the prairie wept.
Now less than one percent remains
To carry what the prairie claims—
Memory stitched in roadside seams,
Shadowed by asphalt and lost dreams.
That “Blackland gold” once vast and grand
Now clings in patches along the land.
Switchgrass, Grama, Indiangrass—
A lineage mown too short too fast.
Their names replaced by foreign green:
Bermuda's blade and Augustine.
And still, the prairie weeps.
Learning the threacherous tricks of the despicable ones
Enabled the greed-driven soldiers to conquer with lies;
Torpid days of guilt came to smolder them with disgrace,
Trudging forth the conquered souls lost wealth and praise.
Immense was the anger of having been betrayed by their own;
Gentry souls fought in the fierce battlefield to defend their reign.
Gushing blood became a red river, corpses in open graves;
Observance is repressed with disdain, the South still grieves.
No remembrance for the slaughtered ones, no mercy in their voices,
only a deplorable silence; their heads won't bow and show sympathy.
How can a nation be whole, if it is divided by an ideal of pride that rages?
Unrest troubles them, it's time they restored fairness and human dignity!
Prosperity is
absurd without unity,
it's a disaster.
Written on 4/11/2016
Contest judged on: 4/13/2016
Past a peaceful day out Western Trail way,
Our lowing herd settled on coarse sand bars.
We hands bunched under prancing prairie stars,
Once clean grub tins and cups were put away,
For tall yarn desserts, dance, and campfire songs.
Lit by burning buffalo chips and sage,
Our campfire blazed hot, challenging the dark,
Holding at bay the prairie wind’s chill bark.
Night herd began with strums of a guitar
Backed by a fiddle and an Ozark harp.
Cowboys sang of Betsy from Pike’s sweet charms,
Dancing do-si-dos with scarves on their arms.
Two waddies circled our bedded down herd,
Singing Old Paint to the beat of horse hooves,
Echoing us boys’ songs by the fire
As coyotes chorus to the sparkling sky.
Past riding drag, eating dust all day
Worn waddies could cough up a few tunes.
Our homesick cowboy choir danced and sang
Then tiptoed to bed rolls for a few winks
Until our turns, on the down low, to croon
A sorrowful Red River lullaby
For trail weary doggies laying at rest,
Promising fresh rich grass in the Big Sky.
At the break of dawn, we were up and gone
Roping and riding; trying not to yawn.
A clear morning sky offered welcome news
No thunderstorms, floods, or frosted-up dews.
A stove-up drover that morn did advise
“Savor your quiet nights and be trail wise
For a cowboy’s work is never to cease
Before the railhead and cattle’s release.
Some year, long paired iron rails must appear
With barbed wire strands to encumber our way
As Progress closes up loved cattle trails,
Dooming open range to vanish away.
As the parched summer grass, we too shall fade,
Our names lichen covered on graven stone,
But breathing as legends we shall live on,
Riding trail bred tales our kids will hear.”