Rachtious Palmer

Poetry doesn’t need you.

[rachtiouspalmer]

Love is timeless.

I wander in it completely free.

Looking for you.

Content to be on fire.

Inside the burning world between us.

[rachtiouspalmer]

As my head bowed at day’s close

Near the fire of my age

And my eyes shut with moonrise

I found my birth curled

In my room a sleeping cat

And death

Not so unwelcome kept watch

Over me a loyal hound

To see that rest

Breathing and dreams remained

Still calm so I again wake

For death well knows it can

Take at the end

Me only the once

[rachtiouspalmer]

Here I stand at my open door Among the fear stones And the wood course and splintery Ready to burn

My hearth whispering red whispers  Its warmth reaches only eyes Dry as they are The quivering rabbit in the dewy field grass 

Above a stone home a lavender sky Darkening again against my hope Was it I who birthed this solitude of the heart? I gather my water and shut my door

[rachtiouspalmer]

The stone arches. And my hair runs black. Silver black in the cold moon blue.

A slow hand down in the water. Disturbing clean glass surface. Blank night out here.

I sniff the frigid space. There’s a lashing tongue that seeks you. Hunting scents beyond the wood.

My limbs grow long against death. Time is nowhere in my blood. I am born a more honest wild than they.

[rachtiouspalmer]

An ode to one lost. She the dark child.

Letters across stone carved. In me a ghost swells.

Tears spill down mountains. I read.

Curled up to infant space. Her pain offers touch.

A friend ignored. My searching fingers.

Where undying gifts lie. Mine now yours.

[rachtiouspalmer]

[rachtiouspalmer]

The claw foot tub of your crimson story leaks. The winter falls from your head and dips in the iron rich nectar. Staining the pale unnatural white closer to home. You wear lace and ribbons. As the landscape wears snow. What keeps them on is the threat of pride. There is no way to enjoy your potential. Unless my hands are kept to myself. Unlike yours. These words watch you reach inside. Into the dark where you believe your fear. But there is a light in your heart. A light soft and crowned with the gentle thorns of desire. It shines from your girl eyes when you’re sorry. Another sign of myself as the father stirs. It longs to hold you up. Hold you down. Hold you close and hold you open. Hold you as you know you need. If only you could be the one to marry life and death. To spawn the new you are now. The new you know you’ve always been.

[rachtiouspalmer]

I am in the woods. All manner of directions exist. Every tree a compass needle. Every stone a fate. The ancient killer stalking me is hunger. Nothing more. Unless I make fire I freeze. Under a blanket of watching stars.

[rachtiouspalmer]

It comes to me slithering up the channel of dreams as one great reach. A reflection burning water and lapping up consequence. Soothe it whispers.

Soon I will be your bed. The restless limbs and that carnival mind. Smirking you try to companionize your fear and you would but for the tedious knocking of desire. It will make entrance.

Gushing forth memory. Tragic just one wish should remain. A promise of eternal life. Bored you drift.

And ever the champion of fate you keep all locked away above sight. Above reason. Above law. Above mist.

[rachtiouspalmer]

Stallions majestic graze,

and stand proud under dreams,

in my apocalypse sky.

The hoofs of gods,

in thunder tumble above,

as rain swells cloud up black and dwarf

the mountain.

[rachtiouspalmer]

I miss the stars. The city robs them away. A blanket of electric amber hum cast upward. Burns my celestial map empty. In my youth I counted them. Watched them in their slow spin in the heavens. In order to know my place. My direction. Now there are none or too few. And those that see me still from their perch. They gaze down sad. At the world of men so defeated. Fixed on their own fading time so hard. Fire imprisoned and put to the lash. To sell a flickering fluorescent story to children. Who have forgotten the cricket song. Who never knew the same music within and without. Who shrink in terror at naked nature and prefer a crowded isolation to silent solitude. Who drone on scrolling dull past all the dancing dead. Consuming in noise. Shrugging in boredom. As we blind in ignorance. One million silver suns.

[rachtiouspalmer]

your aching gaze stares through me, the light gauze light from a window long not clean;

it’s a late summer day breeze outside, I only hear stiff branches claw the pane;

blood swells the thick girth of instinct, this door frame of old oak rough on my leaning skin;

at the foot of a winding iron bed frame, limp satin and a worn in leather brown strap hang;

a graceful pale pitcher and water bowl, the four legs of a small table and the creaking floor;

where language ruins the world with word, now only eyes and tongues and teeth do our speaking;

[rachtiouspalmer]

red dreams, not a clue who broke the knowledge;

drab scene, bothersome;

cold test, what numbers say to children;

fine sweat, pressed under the grins again;

black rose, a devil inside my good choice;

tall wall, bad substitute for a vicious grab;

quite wrong, no one speaks ill of the late comer now;

pure fault, wish away laughter for medicine fix.

[rachtiouspalmer]

The last one I remember. Vague in the shadows. Waiting for your nod.

The flowers hum to themselves. A lady in the park. Tired of travel.

Perhaps we live here. Street vendors do. I sigh and sip warmth from a window.

Across the street and two doors down. The chapel bell tolls rejoicing. Blue sky birds and life has begun.

[rachtiouspalmer]

aspects of crime, the judicious and nonsense;

your surrogate mother, the cruelty in her fix;

fresh green tight, it bites at your privacy;

stumbled en route, a silly young arrogance;

freed by a yes, here tear lust open;

sought after locks, permitted to deny me please;

braids are trusted, when I hurt you there you hurt;

same crime absent, coward culture the father of ills.

[rachtiouspalmer]

In agreement about the weather. You and I exchange notes in the form of photographic charm. This ancient desire to know you.

And we feel in our bones that we aren’t to last forever. No say. On our way to the dirt let us at least have a taste. A licking up of each other’s wounds. That sweet nectar life leaks from your swollen flesh.

Swollen with the blood of long gone lonely kings. Their ambitious silent queens and desperate hungry peasants marked for death by birth. Ancestors all.

Who through time like us lost their breath and fell dizzy and possessed when also so very close. Like you and I once strangers to showing each other such naked love. Assuring us together between the truth.

That all we ever want is to devour another soul in passion. Devoured ourselves we strip and drive and bite. Longing in the end to leave each other soaked and breathless. Writhing on the bed of validation.

[rachtiouspalmer]

In a sky still clinging to the day. I see a moon and its invitation to dream.

Moving silent through the gate of trees. Two sharp sentinels thrust their insistent watch upward.

Tearing through the soft air of my eyes. In an effort to grow.

The stacked brick and rods of iron follow asking their hard permission. All life up and out from the earth.

Even the loyalty of dogs stands. The defiance of gravity.

I watch as my people pass through their gate of iron and brick. Like my moon through guarding trees.

Like my dream through still waking skies. Like memories of you through time.

Like this is life through death through life.