Trying to make
Someone happy. It
Does not matter if
Outside
a harbor café
our bikes are taken.
We talk across
A straw wrapped
Chianti bottle. Love
Multiplies in cool
Air from a door
Kept open
and unlike
fishermen
soon heading
again
To their seabed,
We’re not sure
How to fit in
the future as
More than needed
Adorns the moves
To make someone
Happy,

I keep my bottle,
my pauli girl
On ice, staying cold
Between each sip.
I keep my words
For now
On mute
staying quiet
On my lips
I don’t keep my
Love
She keeps me
living light on
dollars, hers
really
from tips.
I keep my thoughts
Together. They
Might like birds
break rank,
Coming on them
In the brush,
They scatter.
I keep my hand
On the throttle
Cause there’s
Air today that’s
Gone tomorrow

rlb 8-20-2023

It might be an escape
Made because of a
Puzzle. What can be ignored
On a lush island without
Anyone expecting, tomorrow
Is not going to be today.
Or even more attached in
not
Asking for what
Cannot be.
Maybe the slightly raised
Housing left by
departing soldiers is
a reality but not theirs’.
Not theirs when
Just looking without,
Observing
they are painted into
Memory and those
reasons for running
from the prettiness,
from being seen,
and being
observable
Knowing that being
Seen is then
what will be.
To forget facing
A channel and
Gray sky, so
There’s relief
Maybe temporary
But still looking,
alone, there
is a different
Sea.

rlb 8-20-2023

Whether you are or not
You cleared
your thoughts
so you
might descend the clifton
street steps and let me
like the leaves Fall
away, maybe with
new shoots this April
holding you
steadily on the ledge.

Making it simple to forget.
you wanted peace by
showing one side
only, though that
profile with beauty
and intrigue, was
enough to make someone
sure they must live to
see the other
side of that moon.

I could take all
The unfairness of the
World. I would not mind.
The surrounding cold, the
Coming darkness.
I wonder if it is
Something you never
Wanted, until now.
Your arm around me.
It could be quiet as
The cloister.
Or my arm about
Your shoulder. A block
Party’s noise.
Instead of the aches from
A hard day’s work, or
The stings remaining
From the inevitableness
Of life.
The curtains will open
Next morning.
If light moves in waves
It happens in secret like
Love not unreturned
only not revealed by
The covering star light.

RLB 06/23/2023

The door bell chimes hang
On the dining room wall.
If only the dusty brass tubes
Had been rung by you.
Solely happy when readying
The craft for its first
Voyage and any
Words you say are
Codes between you
And a fearless crew.
The door re-closed
Again, with its window,
Its push plate, no
One to count as
It swung again and again
For fifty years and still
I knew you
Could not come through.
When you run the show.
The rides and arcades,
Tests of strength and
Fortunes divined, it
Becomes a guess whether
There is room for love
As though a train
Creaked and screeched
In a restless move
Carrying fading memories
Away from towns we
new, now gone.

RLB 05/30/2023

I hesitate to post this poem, as it suggests disrespect, but it has some deeper meaning that is valuable. I personally am a follower of Jesus’ teachings, but dont subscribe to religiosity, human-invented dogma and imposed power from of any religion. It is a poem that I thought enough about to use my hand made stamps to render onto paper. The poem itself is by RLB, back sometime in the late 1970s.

I took a couple stanzas from a previous poem ( Verge of a Dream: Unveiled ) and made a graphic.

Another train will
Roll in, I won’t
think it is me
missing you.
When you were
In a curtain of
Silence… with me
Thinking and feeling
But a tag along of
No importance,
Instead
You had planned
without yourself in
The picture only for
me, unexplained and
luckily unexplainable.
Not making up
for a wrong
but like a surprise party
That, that day gave me
Anything I ever
Wanted when
The dream the
Night before
Had said I was
All alone following
Invisible
Behind someone
Who had jumped
The turnstile into
Lives they
Are lessening
by their presence.

RLB 03/17/2023

I did not know
or expect
more than I
should
when returning
was what was said.

As promise was
not a word
You used or
maybe not
for me. And could
only guess
for anyone else.

I did not know
if coming back
was to me.
I’ve always felt
you knew
too much to
talk about truth.

I did not know
and would not
ask or
want an answer
but remembered
is too faint a word
for what I felt as
now wondering if
The embraces
were more or
less the same
for us.

RLB 02-10-2023