Fred Rik Kesner

`
...

Late afternoon carries its usual drift,
a few steps folding into the next crossing,
someone adjusting their bag as they pass,
a shopfront glow shifting when the door swings wide.
...

One stares across the fading yard,
Where autumn gnaws the rusting gate.
The days once raced now stumble hard,
And every hour arrives too late.
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Morning comes softer now.
You rise without rushing,
the house no longer waiting
for your first move.
...

A stray raggamuffin breeze skitters through the yard,
catching on the rags left drying on the line—
each one a small refusal, a frayed rebuttal
to the tidy doctrines the elders once stitched.
...

'crosscurrent morning'


Streetcar wires shivering above the block,
...

'Backward Carriage, Early Draft of a Life'


The train shudders
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'melded roads'


They stay with me.
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'please hold the line'
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'quieted grain'


day thins on toothy edges,
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'Late Cup'


day thins on toothy edges,
...

'An Older Poet's Advice'


Self‑inquiry begins as a shift in emphasis,
...

'Younger Poet's Reply'


I hear what you say about self‑inquiry,
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"The Secret Cartography of Debden"

The exercise book was a shallow grave
where a boy first buried the things he gave
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'Standing Where the Easel Was'
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'waking lights'


The room sits in its late-hour weight,
...

They call us mad, they call us cursed,
For we will not bow to their painted gods—
Their temples reek of incense and decay,
Their priests chant empty words to dying fires.
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people are our real legacy;
one day sure, entire poems
shall have been forgotten,
while remains a phrase or
...

O Dionysus, breaker of chains,
I sing not for the meek, the tamed, the gelded—
But for the wolves who howl against the night,
Who tear the velvet lies from rotting thrones!
...

Secrets remain shrouded, unspoken,
yet I see them seep
into the spaces between breaths.
Truth, as it stands,
...