Archangel angles,
achingly awful, added
awestruck awesomeness.
© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.
Category Archives: poetry
We’re Safe in Our Space
The early morning drive,
well, the early morning start,
started with us piling ourselves
onto floorboard,
floorboard and seat,
piling with blanket, pillow and bucket
(the bucket, in case my stomach rebelled)
We three, well four, if you count me,
are riding, our cousins, to see.
We don’t have much on the plate.
But it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter our state.
We’re taking a trip, riding on floorboard and seat.
Riding and reading, if our stomach allows.
Riding and drawing, if our pencil stays proud.
Riding and pushing, if our brothers do crowd.
We’re taking a trip, riding ‘round Shasta, quiet and loud.
The miles pass in seventies best,
they’re draped in greens and grays,
and then they are kissed;
they pass with silent rumbling sound,
under our feet, to our left and our west,
while number two clowns, number four frowns,
number one sits with with his eyes to the ground.
and I spread ‘cross the car’s center mound.
We try to play “license plate state.”
There is some “prize” to win if fifty we find,
or for the brother who makes it fastest to zed,
Oh, travel, rumble and sled.
Sightings of Shasta loom right ahead,
that great ice-headed mountain’s rising ahead.
And Grandpa sings “How Great”
as candied peanuts and “Lemonheads” 1
are shared from Grandma’s small plate.
Strong voice and hospitality great,
are shown while moving ‘round Shasta’s great peak,
shown while we nudge to gain room in our little grand place.
We’re with parents-grand; we’re safe in our space.
© rl busséll 2018 – All rights reserved.
- A Lemonhead is an American brand of candy, first introduced in 1962, produced by the Ferrara Candy Company. ↩︎
Image from:
Take a Walk
I take the silent step.
Keep my eyes up,
not looking to the broken ground.
I try to take a walk.
I try to keep from talk.
I try to still the clock.
You know the feeling.
You know that feeling,
when Picasso’s time 1
is spread wide and thick,
when the wind never seems
to go your way.
You try to catch your breath;
and it comes in fits and starts,
and it comes in flames and sparks,
and it comes in warring larks.
And then it fades.
You know the feeling.
You know that feeling,
when El Greco’s stretch, 2
seems real and right;
when proportions’ light
seems off, and not just by a mite,
and your limbs, they scream and bite.
They scream and bite,
and you’re stuck,
forever stuck on the bridge
with Munch, 3
and the screaming never stops.
You know that feeling.
You know the feeling.
© rl busséll 2018
The Vision of Saint John – by El Greco (Doménikos Theotokópoulos) 87.5 × 76 inch oil on canvas (1608–1614 New York, Metropolitan Museum)
- Picasso’s “Blue Period” 1901-1904 http://www.artic.edu/collections/conservation/revealing-picasso-conservation-project/pablo-picasso-and-blue-period↩
- Domenikos Theotokopoulos (1541-1614) “El Greco” known for his elongated figures he is believed to be a precursor to Expressionism and Cubism. http://www.elgreco.net↩
- Edvard Munch (1863-1944) Norwegian Expressionist his most famous painting is titled “The Scream” (1893) Upon his death he bequeathed all his works in his possession to the City of Olso. Munch Museum was built to house them in 1963.https://www.theartstory.org/artist-munch-edvard-artworks.htm↩
The Best of My Heart
When the sun is done etching her lines upon my soul
and the sand is finished falling,
remember that you are the best part of my heart.
And all the ups and downs,
all the pressings into shapes untold,
all the works spilt from our misshapen molds,
all the words tumbling and shaping our souls
have not broken us upon our shoals.
Thus you’ve stood with me;
through the torrents of our times,
through the sickness of my sins,
through the fury of my fires.
Thus you’ve stood with me;
beyond our reason,
beyond the promise of Jordan,
beyond milk and honey’s flow,
beyond the silence of the night,
beyond the whispering cringes of the salty bite.
You’ve clasped your hand in mine;
knit your fingers into my flesh;
called your name by mine.
And in the passing of my time
never will I know a better me
than you.
© rl busséll 2018
For she who is a better me.
Where is the Heart?
Where is the Heart
When it beats too swiftly?
Where is the Soul
When it soars?
Does it beat its wings,
Does it flutter,
Does it hover,
Or merely wish to be Heaven born?
I can feel this sin sick soul within me.
Adam clinging to my Breast
As a Mother clings to her dying child.
Weeping.
Where is the Heart
When it beats too swiftly?
Where is the Soul
When it soars?
Where is Faith
When the footing is lost and
Tumbling o’er and o’er?
We are told it is invisible,
This faith we cannot see.
There are times when
I wish it would solidify
that I might
Behold my Destiny.
Where is the mountain that I can move?
copyright rlbusséll 2006
His Time for Everyone
Oscar rose before first light
to capture the sun’s
play upon the field.
There he stood, with his brush
at ready,
to steal the running sun’s
play upon the field.
With a loaded brush, he
played upon his field;
laying down the morning,
laying down the even,
laying down the season,
from spring to cold hiver.
In the rouges of the morning,
in the harshness of the noon,
in the azure of the evening,
he stole the colors of the sun,
he captured in the nineties
his time for everyone.
© rl busséll 2018
Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer) by Claude Monet – 1897 60 × 100 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
There is no time
There is no time for poetry;
for words that tumble out of mouth and tongue,
for words that form waves that spill from lung.
There is no time for poetry;
for words that make men tumble and weep,
for words that bring the dead from sleep,
for words that tear rocks from the keep.
There is no time for poetry;
for our words lie slick upon our tongues,
lie still before they’re born,
lie broken and torn.
There is no time for poetry;
words ever ready to set men upon the shining seas,
words that cause men to charge from quiet into chaos.
There is not time for poetry.
© rl busséll 2018
The Watch
Annunciation light breaks upon a chiaroscuroed stage.
Empty of armor, empty of pretense, empty of rage.
’Twas that nascent note of all crown’s clatter
dimly heard by those with ears to hear.
Now is the time to bring your spear
across the desert heat and there forge,
remake it into pruning hook, yea, reforge
bit by bit, your warring heart. Uplift
mired sinews caught in want of greatest gift.
Every branch, root and petal pleads, nay,
rejoices for the consummation of the day.
© rl busséll 2018
catalpa tree blossoms
Let Us with Splendored Crown
Let us pull the heavens down.
Let it lie upon the ground.
Let us stare and stammer down,
lumber1 some new sound.
Let us, with splendored crown
laid upon our laureled brow,
take up towering tower;
make this our mighting2 hour.
Then He’ll know we are greater
than our sum,
Then He’ll see a greater we.
Twill come,
thunder from a burnished sky.
Take conference with you and we.
Take no umbrage that we did not flee.
Take no pains at spired crescent valley.
Take no anguish at this our pillared city.
Take He then long and quiet slumber.
Take He then waiting and no cumber3.
Take He time while tower and number
take foot and city spread.
The Emperor Napoleon crowning himself by David
© rl busséll 2018
Compline
Lovely day takes her bow
and so spills her veil upon
the hardened ground.
Her velvet fingers
slide softly over memories,
but like the ag-ed past,
she can’t quite recall
all the all.
On her birth, she spoke
of hope and never loss:
brightness, light and the turning key.
Expectations.
New eyes seeing new light.
Now her time has left.
Sputtering for breath,
she gasps for the elusive hold.
© rl busséll 2018
The sunsets in Texas
For Boo, a sun in the dark world.
rl busséll — poet 
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