If what keeps you up nights
are poets
make no mistake
you may be one,
if poetry
possibilities increase–
The one way to know
is let words
keep you awake
and never give you peace.
Photos by Rayn Roberts ’19
Category: Poets & Writers
6 Poems by Rayn Roberts @ the Seattle Star
6 Poems by Rayn Roberts / The Seattle Star
The Seattle Star is a Neutron Bomb
“Look deeply at the big picture beyond revenge to compassion / We are broken or someday will be, but still beautiful, broken / Kintsugi, it all depends on we put the pieces back together.” ~ from “These boys, These Men” by Rayn Roberts
Buseoksa Moon South Korea
Enough meditation, three a.m. earbuds Dream # 9
reading Merton’s Seven Story Mountain in stillness,
the temple bell shakes the universe, calling monks
to save all beings in hell, a cock crows in darkness.
A half moon spins the stars in a black pool forming
on land in sea the spirit dance unfolding nonetheless.
Do not count the cost, no one, nothing is ever lost.
In fitful sleep I wake to the apple autumn morning
dressing herself in crimson, grey, brown and gold.
There’s a bus to nowhere, somewhere I think home.
I feel the half moon human mind moving to fullness
asking clearly, “Will you stay with the solemn monks
Or return to mad electric nights of paradise in Seoul?”
Sleep walking dreamer that I am, I hesitate, can’t wait
To go back to a circle of friends, lovers I know, my bed
a dream-pond of incarnadine leaves sinking to rest,
the bell is tolling, calling, shaking me awake, I think
but it’s just the glaring city moon tapping on a window.
Rayn Roberts 2019
Rayn Roberts 2019
Korean Buddhism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXf_V18wQUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXf_V18wQU
Buesok Temple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpX6Rf_JuY&spfreload=1
“Dream #9” is the song by John Lennon
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
Spring is an Empire
Photos of Leaves and Trees by Rob Kashey.
I Have This Thing
I have this thing about Patti Smith
Her street punk poetry
With back alley images
And anger towards righteousness
Mixed down into a driving beat
I have this thing about Annie Lennox
Her rhythmic’s sweet dreams
From a thousand twisted beauties
Shrouded in powdered nudity
Layered through aural sound barriers
I have this thing about Joni Mitchell
Her paved yellow taxis
Over blue summer lawns
Chasing circle game coyotes
Courting sparks of jazz folk
I have this thing about Janis Joplin
Her whiskey scorched cries
Filled with pearls of pain
While balling social chains
Into wrenching sonic layers
I have this thing about Yoko Ono
Her belief their love
Would absorb the hate
Until her primal screams
Became a choir at Lennon’s tomb
Art Gomez 2009
“I Have This Thing” © 2009 by Art Gomez
Who is Rayn Roberts Anyway?
He says, “I’m not really a poet. I just dangle figures on a little stage to share insights and poke fun. Everyone from Robert Frost to Charles Bukowski, Ivor Winters to Alan Ginsberg and Anne Sexton are responsible for showing me how to do this, but there are other perpetrators, I fear. I’m not as much a poet as a puppeteer.”
Nevertheless, Rayn Roberts is found in Anthologies: Illuminations, Expressions of Personal the Spiritual Experience (Celestial Arts an imprint of Ten Speed Pres, 2006), The Book of Hope (Beyond Borders Press, 2002), The World Healing Book (Beyond Borders Press, 2002– Journals: Rattapallax, Rattle, Between the Lines, Chronogram, City Works, Poetic Voices, Retort Magazine, San Diego Poetry Annual, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, The Pedestal Magazine, The Sow’s Ear Review, Thunder Sandwich, Turbula, Oddball Magazine, Vagabonds: Poetry of the Mad Ones & Void Magazine.
You can find him in Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Powell Books & Online. Hear him on KSER Radio FM 90.7 in PoetsWest broadcasts or if you’re in Hartford CT, Poughkeepsie, Long Island, Stockholm, London, Canterbury, York or Dublin this year, you might catch him on tour this fall.
https://www.pw.org/content/rayn_roberts
