Poetry by Robert Frede Kenter

             Tim Vrtiska CC



Gone  (for Helen)


Gone, like a raven
black hair
and feathers
and the black eye
that sees fire
and the remains 
on the ground
from a massacre

Gone, wind-swept
hair, paper-thin
skin. Words. 
I used to wrap
myself in you
like a blanket

On Soho streets, I
have not walked
for so long,
in front of Museum
of Contemporary Art
I ache.  We held
hands, palm to
palm, rock little
baby don’t you 
cry, mama’s gonna
sing you a 
lullaby.

Gone, stream
cold, season
anxious spring,
downtown streets
too painful to walk

because you are 
no longer walking
them with me.  You are
a leaf, a 
monarch, a
spirit.  You walk
beside me.  A 
glow of light.

Beaming searchlights
on streets where leaves
blow.  I took photographs
in Fargo, North Dakota
downtown, art bars,
cafes with Seattle
artists’ paintings. A
world apart, empty, 
more so without you.

Gone, raven beak,
hard sharp talons,
big black bird, with
wingspan for mountains

Reading a book on
the French Revolution,
generations seethe
with desire,  hope
fear and sadness,
cold sorrow, blood
stained snow. Sing. 

I must sing. I grow
my hair long, like 
the overhanging 
trees of mournful
willows in Kew Gardens.

I search a meditative
circle, search for you
in a circle of sticks, 
stones 
geometric patterns.

O river flow, 
flow as rivers
shall, in states
of beauty. I mourn. 

On edge, in despair
I see chains, broken
movements of history,
broken force of 
movement.  Standing
at a wall of corporate
sponsors. My people
you have had enough.

At the edge, sleeping.

To lay down
in the margins 
of the page
holding out for love.

Held up in anguish.

Guns of love, shot
down, how radiant
the flowers. 

O raven, in tree.

Above,  the moon,
a grass lawn,  bathed
in street lamps and
memories that haunt.

My skin cracking
Across the wrist.

O raven, black-eyed
raven, ghost in the trees
icicles hang 
and clang
together, music
of ice cold aquatic capillaries

Gestures of arms
moving with sure aim

through the perils 
of  

empty space. 





Time 

I marked time 
             the ceremonies of your passing
in lantern light   
             lit a candle to rage  
to shed   
what made no sense
               a  shock 
emptiness 
               in rooms once shared
dreamless sleep
              an electrical current
in streets 
humming a grim 
              dirge 

O    melody you  who
              Art now
endless



Robert Frede Kenter is a writer, visual artist, editor and publisher who lives with ME/FM.  He has work forthcoming in or published in journals including: Visual Verse, Anthropocene, Fevers of the Mind, Burning House Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, ARC, New Quarterly, Grain, writ, paragraph. His chapbook, Audacity of Form, is available from Ice Floe Press (2019).