Copyright 2008 Nik Richard

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2 This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental sort of. Copyright 2008 Nik Richard All poems written and produced by Nik Richard Cover Art by Nik Richard Illustrations by Nik Richard Photography by Nik Richard Printed in the United States of America ISBN: nd Edition 2016 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce or perform this book without concent of the author.

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7 Introduction I need love and water. Have you ever heard something so out of context, so random, so unforgettable, and so accidental that speaks to you in a way the speaker didn t intend it to? When I heard this phrase it was more like a whisper that sounded too much like a secret that I never forgot. When I heard it, I didn t quite understand it, but I began to repeat it. The more I repeated it, the more I heard it and I found myself becoming a sort of prophet babbling a divine doctrine inspired through a vision I wasn t quite ready for...,but the only problem was I didn t quite know what it meant... until now.

8 Water is the very essence of life and love is the closest we will ever come to experiencing death, but sometimes we can easily confuse the two. There are many things that we convince ourselves we need in this world. That need varies from person to person, culture to culture, and religion to religion, but no one can survive without love and water. This ubiquitous need can sometimes serve as a painful reminder of how alike we all are in a world of differences, when relationships sink in seas of unforgivingness and social structures crumble in waves of natural disasters. What you are about to read is no book. It is an act of contrition of sorts. A jumbled mess of published private confessions, journal entries, conversations, revelations, realizations and social commentary. It vaguely tells the story of a series of events that happen before, during, after, and possibly causing the greatest natural disaster on American soil. It s a religious experience as well as a blasphemous attempt at explaining how one escapes death through disaster and finds God in love. It is a story about love, water, sex, death, a HERicane, a flood, an Aquarius, a baptism, and how they are all actually one in the same. At times if you get confused as to who the main character is, it is because these writings have been redacted. The same way the Bible is a redaction of many different stories told over the course of many different periods, about many different Gods put together into one in-cohesive, contradicting doctrine, so is this book. If something appears to be missing... it s because it probably is. And if you think I m talking about something else other than what is written... I probably am. Nik Richard, New Orleans, 2008

9 Love and Water a collection of poems by: Nik Richard

10 10 It was Van Gogh that quoted Richepin who said somewhere: The love of art means loss of real love. To love art means to love everything that love is not. Art feeds off of a need, a lack, a desire, an incompleteness... while love is content with a peaceful death. Death is something we will never experience. It will forever remain a myth as something we hear about, something we try to understand, and something we see others go through, but never come back to tell us about. We try to categorize death as a state of being as an attempt to gain some sort of grasp on the idea of eternity, but the only one that can BE without an end is God. If we can BE alive and at the end of that life continue to BE dead then we have made ourselves eternal with God, and if you read the first books of the Bible you will see that God has done everything to make sure our days are numbered and few. The truth is death is something we will only hear about, and the closest we will ever come in this life to experiencing death is being in love. Just like love, death is an inescapable attempt at forever. A desire to live on after we re gone. Love, like death, is very unchanging. They both begin at their peak then start a slow process of decomposition as the words fall apart on the page. Some say that love is life, but like death, love attempts to grab hold of forever and defy everything that life is.

11 She loved me to death and it was killing me...so I began to write. What started out as list of confessions slowly became a eulogy. I now see why artist wait until after their death to publish their greatest works 11

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13 Do you trust me? Yea, I trust you to tell me what I want to hear when I ask you questions you don t want to answer. I trust you to make me believe you. You always make me believe you... Trust is something you have when you love someone enough to not find out anything to make you love them any less. Yea, I guess I trust you. Trust is when you know you have something to hide but you don t want to say anything that makes you look insecure because that s always mistaken for guilt. Yea, I guess I trust you. Trust is nothing more than a challenge. A game you play when you know you have nothing to hide. And the teams are always unfair. So do you trust me like I trust you? 13

14 Don t ruin the mood. Just let your ears do what ears do, and let your lips do what lips do and if your lips do what they re supposed to what you have to say wont get in the way. I m trying to get in touch with you. Lets just feel around a little longer before we discuss the situation and find something we both disagree on because words tend to get in the way of what we re trying to say, and we both had our minds made up yesterday and our beds made this morning and woke up with made-up images diluted with delusions of grandeur set up for disappointment because my made-up bed was no fairy tale once you ruffled my sheets with reality. 14

15 I think it s unfair that we chose my place because now my bed is unmade while yours is still made-up and leaves more to the imagination. You re so unfair. So careless the way you leave your hair behind when you comb your mind in my presence leaving me an afterthought. I should have thought as I tried to shake the sour taste of salty kisses from an un-bathed neck that you came unprepared. And you are so unaware, or just don t care like the time is weather because you always leave something behind for her to find. like your hair or a feather. 15

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18 18 Shall we tell of our confessions in tomorrow s morning prayers?

19 If she doesn t know will anybody care? 19

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21 Nik Richard, also known as The Voice of Reason, has been a performance poet on the New Orleans poetry scene since his senior year in high school. He is currently a senior at the University of New Orleans pursuing his BA in Urban Planning. His creativity in film has earned him an NAACP Award, AFI Silverdocs Award, and a PBS P.O.V. Award in the 2008 Myspace Film Your Issue contest for his interpretation of disaster tourism in New Orleans lower 9 th ward. Love and Water is the first self-published book of poetry by this artist, and hopefully the first of many. For more information about this artist and his work visit his website or him at: nikrichard97@gmail.com nikrichard.tumblr.com

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