Untitled,7/30/10
A father and son
kicking a soccer ball
in the alley below
while mariachi music
fills my ears
And I think
that’s pretty good for now
poem by Ryan Cole
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Like Water
For I am like water
Following the path of least resistance
Through stagnant pools and rapids' rage
Like water
I will always find my way
To the sea
poem by Ryan Cole
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My Father's Hands
I see my father's hands
Long fingered, elegant beauty
Shivering tremors replacing strength
Once they held the world
Once they held my hands
Safe in their elegant length
when I first faced this world
My small hands in his
shivering tremors, giving me strength
I see my father's hands
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poem by Ryan Cole
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Ten Weeks and Two Days
Ten weeks and two days without a drink
And I can't say I miss it yet
I don't feel the absence of anything
More it is a presence I perceive
How much has changed in that time
How many worlds have risen and fallen
Empires of my folly
Grief and joy and grief again
And the question I'm afraid to ask
Where will I be,
Ten weeks and two days from now...
Without a drink, perhaps
poem by Ryan Cole
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Too long in this place
I have been too long in this place
An exile to myself
living in the half-life of the memory of your smile
comfortable in this splendid squalor
but cast loose and cut off
drifting, rudderless,
I could never touch your savage grace
or tame your dancer's soul
Yours was not a heart given to forgiveness
or bound by temperant soul
but I am here
still in its shadow I linger
Too long in this place
in the lost light of the memory of your smile
poem by Ryan Cole
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Ocean Park (4/10/11)
I no longer live in Ocean Park
Though I am never far from that place
Kept close in the quiet corners of my heart
Instead it seems I spend my days in passing
From a place I do not love to somewhere I don't want to be
And in my dreams there is you
So far away
Farther even than Ocean Park
With it's salt sting and morning fog
Known far too well
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poem by Ryan Cole
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I Know Nothing About The Rain (With Apologies To T.S. Elliott,9/1/11)
Do you still love me, she asks
fragile moment, simple words
Fear and longing mingled like our breaths
hanging precariously in the air
People talk about the weather
To fill the savage spaces
Empty Silence, empty words
And we talk about the weather
What can I say
What do I know of the weather
Falling gently, scattered drops
What do I know of the rain
Do you still love me, she asks
In the interval between
What do I know of love
Falling gently, scattered drops
And in the rooms the women light as a feather
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poem by Ryan Cole
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She waits for you across the river (8/20/11)
She waits for you across the river
In the soft untrammelled field
Beneath the warm sun
She waits to hold your head
as it rests upon her lap
To whisper the words remembered well
Sweet and smooth as promised grace
She waits for you across the river
Go to her now, call her name
She has made a place for you
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poem by Ryan Cole
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2/7/12
You are not the tears I shed
and I am not the words you speak
as we are not these things that make us
Separate/together
What is the sum of us
words and tears
The whole seen in fragments
Like the items thrown haphazard into an overnight bag
for a weekend tryst,
forgotten, put aside
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poem by Ryan Cole
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