RC DEWINTER - POEMS

RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (New York Times, February 2017), Cowboys & Cocktails (Brick Street, April 2019), Nature In The Now (Tiny Seed Press, August 2019), Coffin Bell Two (March 2020), in print in 2River, Adelaide, Event, Genre Urban Arts, Gravitas, Kansas City Voices, Meat For Tea: The Valley Review, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Prairie Schooner, Southword, among others and appears in numerous online literary journals.

​old flame in a minor

​when you were true
making love with you
was a jellyroll in blue

your rhythm always
perfect on the downbeat
your gravel growl the counterpoint
to the glissando of your tongue
your fingers stretched flaming octaves
across every key of my delight

but now every note is sour
a little sharp here
a little flat there
your memory a discordant jangle
of minor seconds

 

​Rabbit

​In the pale spring sun I sit,
enervated, frail,
burdened with writhing demons
that riot every day,
infecting what should be calm with chaos.

I am singularly ill-equipped to conquer them;
if there is nothing rippling the surface
of life's lake I invent something,
some vague possibility of disaster,
and then I am done for.


Those devils take what I make
and set it in a hall of mirrors, where,
multiplied, magnified, its golem mouth gapes,
raw and red, and swallows me as neatly as ever
Jonah's whale swallowed him.

Drink and chemicals are bandaids at best,
temporary salves that solve nothing.
So frozen I sit, afraid to move,
wishing for nothing so much
as a cloak of invisibility.

​a few things i forgot to say

​there is no strength
like gentleness
i know your strength
you need not prove
a thing to me
wrap me in
your gentleness
and i shall be
content
 
the cacophony
of the circus
that is the world
is drowning out
the words
i so need to hear
come closer
whisper to me
the truth of your heart
 
if you would understand me
read me like a well-belovèd book
listen with your eyes
not your ears
my speech is clumsy
what i write is truth

​midnight music

​the symphony of the lost community
you orchestrated
pounds in my veins
its syncopation my heartbeat

you and i were charter members
of that outcast tribe
we knew every inch of that terrain
it was mapped in our genes

you walked those mountains
fearless openhearted
i lagged behind
afraid of what i might discover

when you fell you did it quietly
with no surprise or apprehension
you predicted it and owned it
like the ancient soul you were

i was not there
to see you sail into blackness
and had i been
it would have made no difference

what is to be will always be
i could not rewrite the page
you came a brief bright comet
the instrument of my redemption

​rhyming…sort of

​life has a whiff
of brimstone about it
the ground crumbles
beneath my feet
and the wind
sings a dirge offkey
even the sky
is weeping buckets

my pockets are empty
my heart's empty too
my eyes are surrounded
by circles of rue
all i desired was stolen by you
life in perpetual midnight blue

if it's truly better
to marry than to burn
than burn i will
there’s no lover
here for me
but I won’t roast
roast in hellfire
only desire
i carry a redhot torch