Here’s a poem I wrote about River

I wrote this randomly, since I’ve been listening to a lot of Aleka’s Attic, reading a lot about River, and drinking a bit during nights. It’s not really much, or anything great, but I just wrote it since a lot of stuff has been happening in my life that isn’t too great. I recently rewatched MOPI and MOPR and it just made me realise all the commonalities in themes in loneliness, helplessness, and a certain silent anger towards the injustice of the world, in Riv, Mike, and me.

So this just came to me in the middle of the night and I wrote it. Posting it because I just need it to exist somewhere beyond myself. To free my mind, and to appreciate an amazing artist through art, on a forum dedicated to keeping his memory alive. It doesn’t follow any rhyme scheme or anything. It’s just free flowing, without a structure, really. Let me know if this content belongs here. If not, it can be removed.

Here’s the poem-

• Golden boy. Sun-warmed and honey eyed; Dew drop tears and rainforest treetops grazing the blue of the sky. Lithe fingers on alloyed strings, Scooping up the seasons deftly. Smooth words like water over riverbeds, Flow through the lion-mane, wild in the air, Shining like a midsummer sun. Happy. Brief. Unconditional. Uninterrupted. Free.

The Corner Dunce boy. The golden cage closes in, Slowly and then all at once. Burdens too great to be borne, are borne still. Nickel strings are woven into poetry, And life is breathed into paper and film rolls. Loves are found, and loves are lost. Hazy days, blinding flashes, deafening screams. Dreams and needs climb higher and higher over the insurmountable Hollywood hills; And the remnants of childhood slowly slide off their glossy magazines.

Brittle boy. Facing the wilderness, with his back to the world; Yellow pelt bathed in the promises of the future; Coarse voice, like stones clattering over the shore. Smoke, cinema, and cynicism. Petulant smiles stretching like a road that goes on forever- No end in sight. The sun slips absently beneath the forever-winding Sunset Boulevard. Now, eternal darkness.

Boy, boy, boy. Age slid past him in a dark, crowded club, And dissolved into the autumn air. ‘Twenty-three’, you think, afraid of the years in your age stacked against his; For your pile grows, but his is destined to remain frozen in a sliver of bygones.*