all things live forever
nudge shape the others
the mind in sleep tries
to build another world
I dream my life awake
ears open to a lullaby
sung by death to soul
until the old body dies
Category: Death
Dreaming The Old Man
Through slanting doors and broken windows
odd furniture in dim rooms
old books and roses rotting with age
I follow you,
charts and crumpled maps and paper
glitter like a lost hope–
Sudden sky and wide water
reeds along a shore
under a silver willow you call to the other side.
No limb or vine to hold my feet
my boyhood swept away
to a green recess of memory
nothing to pull me back
only rock and sand, sky and air bathed in amber light,
Peace, I am with you
looking in your old eyes, stretching out a hand
sinking in a river of night
transparent stones on the bottom of a lucid pool
I glide in bright shadows
fish swimming
in and out our one and separate selves
All Photos by Rayn Roberts
Apparition by RR
Nosegay
What Chopin wanted most
was to die
in George Sand arms,
on his deathbed
all he got
Was a nosegay of violets
She left at his door
When her daughter
turned her away–
People can be such shits.
He wrote a friend on his deathbed, “She promised me I would die in her arms.”
Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin aka George Sand, Novelist.
And yes, I’m aware that the event may be based on legend, but many believe it is true and by it’s very intensity, a legend becomes a painful little poem with a nasty but truthful conclusion. It is justified by that truth. “Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.” ~George Sand
Solitude
What begins from the first day?
The world goes slowly white,
Not black and white: black
Is all colors, but white is empty.
Even the greatest go, they
Cannot change or come back–
In Japan they do not wear black
When someone dies, but white.
The greatest stand alone to sing
The time, a poem, their life, a fact.
Cover Photo 
by Rayn Roberts
The Killer
I am the misconceived unconnected son of an ordinary woman who baked as many cakes as your Mom, loved me as much. My father went to war, saved the nation, came back shell shocked with medals and memories he cannot tell. Something went wrong with me. It was not the boyish pranks, soap on your windows, Halloween T P on your house or car. I am evil behind a mask, the guy who breaks into your house, microwaves your cat, leaves a note, “I just had to see.” I feel no remorse, it’s all good fun. I’m the unknown gunman of the drive by shooting, hitching a freeway, waiting with a rifle, dropping a cinder block from an overpass… Tense, clean-cut, overly polite, the All-American type at the 7/11. I pack a 38, take a bus to Nashville and murder six people in the mall for the thrill of it, the fun, the fame. I am the unexplained American dream gone nightmare destined for the black print of the newspaper — The brute in us all, the reason you bolt your door at night.
*Cover Photo by Gwyn Henry
The Wave & The Wind
Rikuzentakata Ôfunato Kuji swept away
No trace they were ever there
Otsuchi Miyako Yamada
Sôma Namie Minamisôma Onagawa
Kesennuma Natori Ishinomaki gone,
The earth gave and the sea
Has taken away Banda Ache
Two hundred thirty thousand
Gone in the Indian Ocean wave.
I am thinking of Phuket on Boxing Day
The waters receding so fast
Fish were left flapping on the sand,
The boy drawn by hunger
Or a child’s fascination
Not knowing the danger
Walking out to catch a few–
Then the immense water-wall moving
He turns, runs– is gone.
Some say the Lord taketh
But where were healing Jesus
Allah the Merciful
When countless cries went up,
Where were the thousand hands
Of listening Kannon,
in paradise where she was
Blissful in her Pure Land as if
Tsunami’s never happen?
Do the dead hear the whispered calls
On the kaze-no-denwa wind phone?
Rayn Roberts 2017
Ouroboros
What the hell was I thinking
coming here
to a Hell, I keep asking myself
what on Earth
I’m doing here and come up
with the same
and different answers– Heaven
The Serpent
devours itself and then looks
for more to eat
because it is always expanding
contracting
Thirsty hungry restless alive…
Rayn Roberts
9/25/17
