Monday, November 16, 2015

soar

You will feel you are about to break
one day
you will bend as your overburdened shoulders
hunch deeper
and the wings that you soared upon
so proudly, will cringe
and you will wonder if
they were meant more for folding
than for flying
and one day
that black cloud will follow you around
and one day those painful
memories will hover near
and you will want to give up,
but don't.
The strength that you need
has been within you all along. 
This is simply the moment
to prove it.

~

RNH

fertile

A burst of gold and green
Blankets a memory that endeavors
To grow and although
The ground pretends her hard
Surface extends further, just
One press  
And rebirth begins. 

~

RNH

skeleton walks

ribcage full of tornadoes
how they twist
how they rise
into grand cornucopias of gray
a bouquet for each breath
and the skeleton walks
unrevealing. 

~

RNH

icing

icing on your fingers and lips
a fine, soft fall of glitter, a pre-snow 
to the promise
like the beautiful things that you cannot
get enough of and the lingering
sweetness
that you cannot resist. 

~

RNH

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Sweep

spiderwebs crowd the content
broom to the corners and I sweep
their tangled tethers from my waking
eyes
disassemble their view and rewrite. 

~

RNH

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Binding

The silence is a voice, too,
and through the screaming clatter
pierces the shorn two
edges
making them meet. 

~

RNH

Sunday, November 8, 2015

ping

felt the ping-pong of the heart, glitter
shimmer with such radiance
at the silly charm and the tenderness
flitting disco ball rainbows inside. 

~

RNH

Just Strings

for a moment, I
was not this body 
or this voice, I
became a violin
and lifted joyfully and played. 

~

RNH

Saturday, November 7, 2015

Upstream, Downtown

oh, how the whistle blows
when three bartenders ask for the girl's
request and answer
another man, ringed, swivels
to glance sideways when his
wife's gone and she sips
their knee-deep glances and keeps
wading, smiling
through the people, upstream.

~

RNH 

Friday, November 6, 2015

fend

the sword strikes down at the middle
of the rapier
with a clang
echoes through the valley,
the grass trembles and creatures,
small, flee into the mist. 

~

RNH

Black Fuzzy Caterpillar

How could you let me go ?
Said the cocoon to the spotted moth.
With stretched wings, Because,
It was time
To grow, as all things must
And do.

~

RNH

Dr. Frankenstein

transfigured from cherubic
to ghastly, the divided heart,
a Frankenstein of twisted purple-gray
muscle coiled with barbed wire, 
with each pulse
the amber beats against her cage
mental manifesting alive
as the saline
whittles her 
soft edges
and the monster bleeds without fear

~

RNH

Sunday, November 1, 2015

window prayer

these are the windows
of my heart
and my mind
that I may stay open
so that everyday the light
can pour in 
and shine out. 

~

RNH

Anti-Violence

have to let the sharp things roll
away from me
they call my name
and whisper control
lies
to the effulgent ghosts
that sway in peripherals
hypnotically

have to let the spirals unravel
as far as they need to 
collapse to remember
the power of rescue is always 
one breath away
with the antidote
balanced 
in my hands. 

~

RNH