Delicate Strange

Forward:  These poems were written between 1975 and 1992.  I do not divide them by date because they seem to spring from a timeless place which was and continues to be so immediate that it would be misleading to label them before and after or then and now.

These poems were written in the usual poetic places... wherever I was at the time... longingly by candlelight at the back of a junkyard in southern Indiana; scribbled through tears on a napkin in a pub in Wales; sprawled on a hardwood floor in California; feverishly spitting words out, recovering from sunstroke in the Arizona desert; studiedly healing, passing long hours in a borrowed bed in London.

Writing poetry is my attempt to make sense out of the apparently aimless grieving and odd hopes that inform my life.  A poem makes sense just because it is what it is, and perhaps anything can become a poem.  I am working on it, myself.  ~ J.R., February 3, 1993





Time is a Little Girl

Time is a little girl
who leans her lovely face
into yours
and smiles and takes your hand
and pulls you
laughing
through the back streets and boulevards
and in and out of windows
of not quite forever
and
some day,
when she's tired of her play,
she lets go of your hand.

 
I Must Be Invisible

I must be invisible
I am a ghost
am I?
like someone in a dream
I can see
people laugh and drink and talk
as they greet each other
but moving between their tables
I am invisible

you are there
I call out to you
and you don't hear me
I am
am I?
on the other side of the veil
horrified
I am not real in your world
am I am alone
in mine

Complete list of poems:
Time is a Little Girl ~ Beautiful Android ~ Glass
Duality ~ Walking by the Shore in My Thin Black Coat ~ Harbor Light
My Need For You ~ Pale Reflection ~ I Must Be Invisible
Angry Moon ~ I Walk Through Walls ~ Will ~ The Death of My Brother
Young Man ~ Lucas on His Birthday ~ Dawn ~ Eclipse ~ I Must Become That Which I Love
Weep Carefully ~ Hunting ~ Tamed ~ Curious & Beautiful: A Rainy Day in Cardiff
Space Invaders ~ Water ~ Avebury


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