Late Night’s and Words.

Artist: Alex Garant

It’s the indigo of soul, raking fingers over words with the sight of an observer yet squeezing a pulse riddled beneath time. Sometimes I get lost remembering what day is overexposed sentimental parabola. I can re-taste the awkward laced aches, cadence of surreal and honeycombed sea spray of tears.

How did the years of late nights stretched feverishly pairing letters into words with only a lamp holding my hand through the sand dunes of my eternal?

Life’s shadows are poetically hammered reflexively through the insights transfixed in my evolutionary tomorrows.

“Keep going,” stabs endless and my thoughts fly over the tracks piercing my fingers; I’m thrown from the jetties into a monstrous avalanche — self-doubt and harpooned worries crush the air escaping intimately from skull’s breath.

I turn the page from a riff of music — black ink dipped notes add buoyancy — a smashed cacophony is sounded from minor to major. Key changes soothe the pressure of critical introspective sharpness.

Some words get stuck at the record’s throat – it’s a black hole. That static ridge of knowing it will never be perfect — let the words go and start again at a Thrush’s song of morning.

Carolyn Riker | Artist: Alex Garant

Simple Soft Prayers

Artist: Paula Belle Flores

Simple
soft
prayers
earth to sky
for all who carry…
their heavy
lonely
lost
dying
the scares of unknowing
searching
there’s an abyss
of cries
seeking
wanting to be heard
sometimes
not by words
but love
of their being
I send
simple
soft
prayers
earth to sky
for all.

 

Debut book of poetry and prose will be available later this autumn, 2016.

We’ll Rise.

Artist: Seung-Hwan Chung

Remember, even in the darkest mist, we’ll rise at the crest of stars and the vested moon and surrender to halo of cosmos. Even at the worst of our weary and anguished flesh flooding on the blinks of twilight – we’ll find the chord of treble and clef and anchor the swell smashing against breast. We’ll carve a cave in an hourglass and time will be altered to settle the cells of our soul’s song.

 
Second collection of poetry and prose, Spring 2017

Flannel Feels: Kiss of Autumn

Photography by: Maria Shanina

Flannel feels
the day
unfolds, messy
into pillowed dreams
crisp air, 
dazes
dense greens,
tinged
with kiss of autumn
breath slows
eyes wane closed
dozing soft and silent
as rain dances
on still waters
as flannel feels
hold my hands
with pause.

Carolyn Riker | Photography by: Maria Shanina

Pure love can’t be contained.

Photo by Collage al Infinito by Trasvorder

Speak softly when light dims and darkness is the deepest sea. Be fluent in the hush of your being. Voice kindly when utterances become whale moans; for this is the expression of seaworthy poetry.

Sail wide over tropical and into the isle of synchronicity.

Be the sea. See the sounds of silence. Listen.

Open mind’s windows and star gaze with moon – it rinses over achy ebony. Sway seamlessly into the sanctuary of oscillating riffs and offer jazzy blues to transfuse fluted bones cradling heart.

And once there, breath becomes transparent. Stars are non-sequential concepts of mind. Pure love can’t be contained and nothingness is peacefulness. Real is a placeholder — the center of continuous – it helps us to navigate while we touch earth and sky.

We are the inhale of each exalted exhale – the dream of our unfolding — we are creative and divine.

 

What isn’t said…

Image by: Anne Brigman, 1918

“The ten thousand things are born of being. Being is born of non-being.” ~ Tao Te Ching

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t go down into the darkest depths and cave like quarries but I do. It is where I see clearer and how I write about what isn’t said; the hurts, the raw and real and true.

I will share about the unusual, the heightened extremes and the template of how we came to be who we are.

Life isn’t always pretty. Silence can be loud. Not all can be trusted. Nature is necessary. Grief isn’t linear. Racism roars. Elitism divides. Sexism rapes.

Avoiding the underbelly of what isn’t said, hurts me more.

I will not shun or shame you for your misery or place you beneath me because of your scars. For I share my own sacred lineage of dis-ease. Our flaws are exquisite in their vulnerability and carry the golden ratio of our truest song.

I will work hard not to boast or exclude because I know how much it hurts to be snubbed and seen as wrong. I’m far from perfect and fail and fall hard.

I have learned how superiority damages the spirit of tender. Double standards create a deadly divided doubt inside.

Trust is earned. Consistency is paramount. We can agree to disagree and still remain our individual self.

It is scary to stay in the fire of conflict but usually worth it, when we lower our guard and find a common ground. My deepest dream is we can practice together and no longer be exploited for our weaknesses, but witnessed with a safe candidness.

For in that precious space – our truest self can freely offer the diversity of our giftedness.

A Writer & her Bestie: Procrastination

Procrastination: The ability to rearrange the pantry. Eat a bag of chips. Play with an imaginary etch-a-sketch, using clouds…

Wash the car. Edge the flower beds. Walk the cat (again using stealthy imagination skills; otherwise I would not have fingers to type this.)

Avoid the manuscript sitting menacingly on the table. Move it. Move it again. Rearrange the pages so the corners are at 90 degrees. Look up right angle.

Make a flow chart on creativity. Greet squirrels. Wonder if they gain weight. Avoid the scale. Think fat thoughts. Time how long ice-cubes melt. Crunch some random numbers because my brain is hungry. Eat a cookie.

Practically hug the “Pest Free” salesperson, but explain to him great detail how spiders, although I don’t care for them, are really great for the environment. Snakes too. And mice.

He thanks me. I smile the I’m-still-wearing PJs-look and my hair needs to be brushed and, of course wave enthusiastically.

Betcha he’s thinking – Whoa I get paid big bucks to listen to this shit.

I pretend to be a sloth. The carpet is a beach. Manuscript starts to laugh.

Oh.My.Gawd. I’m loopy. It is an affliction.

Someone please tell me I don’t have a disease.

Look up random diseases.

Write a really, really depressing poem.

Help. Me. I’ve fallen and-I-don’t-even-want-to-get-back-up.

Thank you for reading.

Much love, Carolyn

PS: Debut book of poetry and prose will be (hopefully) published in October/November, 2016.

The Imperfection of our Perfection

Photo: C. Riker

“The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering.” ~ Ben Okri.

For the last few days, I’ve been deep in thought and full of ideas. This quote is the comfort my soul’s cells needed. Let’s keep stretching to find the mosaic of our truest dreams; the imperfection of our perfection and the discovery of our unfolding.

Daydreams saved her.

Artist: Tahel Maor

Paige wasn’t of this world. Sufficed to say, she still had to visit. The row houses, closer to the city, were sleepless. Tightly smashed together their façade faced a hectic roadway.

Wide boarded, full porches were painted heavy. Each step bemoaned turn-of-the-century longing. The air’s stale breath was of pipe and whiskey. Inside, walls were damp and musty darkness hung long in the drapes. It dripped into her lungs.

Paige’s smallness was forced to hide. She retreated to the only place feasible; a sliced out pantry.

Mouse droppings littered the shelves. Food spilled on the floor. She left naïve shoe prints in the rancidness.

From her perch she studied and witnessed more. Mice eaten mattresses leaned against stained walls. The smoke’s thick air clinked with heavy amber fluid filled glasses; it made voices grow louder as obscenities struck inner ear’s delicate chords.

Quivering deeper, where veins can see, Paige squinted to dim and became inner stories — ones of pure greens and blues. Wide and far and fresh. Sandy beaches left footprints and waves renewed. Sailboats never sailed before, became a thing of ease. Paragliding dolphins and funnel cake rafts became ordinary.

She could no longer see the congealed jar of dead saved fats and flies crawling on pasta flanked tea towels. Paige escaped higher through mind’s spiraled stairs. No one missed her in the din of violent card games. She pulled her pale socks closer and rocked safely through hammock clouds; her inordinate daydreams saved her from this weary world of now.

 

Garden and Rose

Photo: C. Riker

In the garden
of petal and prose
sun obscured
by flower heads
cedar boughs brush air
cloaked of arduous echoes
ladders of overgrown,
misplaced thoughts
supine to waning watering can
rusty clippers stilled
as straw swept sounds
suffer sharply
through dense thorn and cane
a labyrinth of solitary
seeks quiet-soft in
alcoves of garden and rose.