A Threesome

Well, sort of

Image by Marcelo Chagas.

It started with a cry,
an inhale of a million possibilities,
an exhale of radiant innocence

The delicate nature of a child
was greeted
by the violence of brutality

The verdant soil of my being
slowly, surely, withered,
as patches of love were crushed
beneath the footfall of fear

Dishonesty, betrayal, power,
they replaced what could have been
sincerity, safety, warmth

It was a life kissed by death
before even the first breath

The moss-green grounds of innocence
turned parched,
stone-cold remnants
of the drought that came too soon

And so the innate emerald of my soul
s-h-a-t-t-e-r-e-d

Everything soaked in blood-red nuance,
I was left inhabiting a foreign land without color

Life, like a flower,
never got the chance to
b-l-o-s-s-o-m

Still, the sun kept shining,
the water kept soothing,
kindness kept breathing

And somewhere, the faded green lands persisted,
The questions in the soil stayed rooted

Why?
&
Why?

How can the shattering still echo?
How can you miss something
you never
got to hold in the first place?

The shattered blossom of my beginning
ruled me for years,
a vice grip around my mind,
a blade at my heart

The emerald inside broke in another life,
but in this one, with its pulverized particles
I’ll build a land of rainbow colors,
I’ll invite the brightest ones,
I’ll make space for the darkest ones

And maybe, one day, even the green will return
to the place it always belonged,
my birthright

© River’s Writings 2025

Image by Cottonbro Studio.

Time Tames the Flame

Do you see, what I SEE, when you picture
the future
or do you feel what I feel when you see
the now?
are your eyes open to my reality? do you
pray to my God or hold yourself to
my expectations?
what they say of you, I think of you
I KNOW of you, waste not your efforts
do you not see the way I see you?

Platitudes of revenge in (re)vengeance
thrust into throngs and throes of your
taxing throne
questioning on cue, cupid arched his bow
but I was bow blind
beneath colliders of histories and pasts past
grandiloquence, holding you as sacrilegious
swells RISE
in roused continuity, circles etched by
perfect Psalm palms, HA, intelligible.

You punish us both, futures sketched out
across grandiose ideologies
promises unintended to be fulfilled hold no
greater value, than lies
you hold falsities, twisting tall tales, etched
further than those sketches, kept out of
REACHlies create more than just a story, like some
cold and closed life.

Closing in on lived fairytales of your bellicose
and closeminded nous
value me not so vain IN vain we cross
cRiSsCrOsSeD carmine lines with soil sowed
in crestfallen coteries of curses
cause and effect or simply a causation cry?
I stare, transfixed, at your kinetic crucifixes
tattooed on your thespian skin.

Birds fall from skylines, more cities than
skies, more phone lines than star signs
we look up to them for guile guidance, like
“wise men” we look up to them
stars passed centuries ago, like lovers lost
generations ago
we look up to them, kneeling in steel and
slate for their fates were already SEALED.

Zodiacs of ME in enigmas of US oscillate
for tonight, the turning is just sustenance
for twinning bodies
starved of birthrights clad in wrongful sins
numbering twelve
twice-bitten, once beatified, a zero sum of
you plus me equaling our genuflect genesis.

pOeTiC MaSh-Up -

Fleering from muted skies like only I could
in calumny concupiscence.
A conscientious objection to the mundane,
muted maelstrom?
So your conscience carries you on cynosure
clouds? Irascible boy.
Incessantly floating, engulfed in enervation
a self-made inferno.
You sunk beneath the weight of my world.
I sank to the depths where the pain kept
you from me.

Image by Cottonbro Studio.

© Edward Swafford & H. R. Sinclair 2025