Pick up the new book (and the old one) at Studio Be in New Orleans or visit my website nikrichard.com
My brother, the brilliant @nikrichard dropped off some copies of his new book at @studio_be_ , pick up your copy while supplies last. #studioBE #ephemeraleternal #ADreamForSale (at Studio Be)
We say goodbye, but no one ever leaves us. They die on the outside, but still live within. Once we love them we become them, and all the people we’ve been with become all the people we’ve been, and all the people we’ve been become all the people we are. I know it’s hard to forget about them without losing a part of ourselves with it all. Can I love you and love all the other people you’ve loved? I wouldn’t know where to begin, but I’ve survived hurricanes much worse I’m sure I could weather again. It’s difficult to let go of old people we were when they’re the reasons why we are the crowd we’ve become, but I’ll try to calm the mob in you while adding to your parade, still careful to not let everyone you are come undone.
The sky tonight was an electric shade of blue and it reminded me of you, and that’s funny because your eyes are brown, but your personality has that certain kind of hue to it. That’s right before the clouds opened up with noise and thunder, you're so similar. 3:00 am and I wonder if it's possible tonight to get any sleep. This rain fights the same way you do, beautiful, and wont stop until its listened to. #poetry #prose #3am #therainiskeepingmeawake #ADreamForSale
Just trying to find the art I’m good at so I can make more of it.
I try to fall in love at least once a week. Lately I’ve been falling in love with music and cities because people don’t always love you back the way you want them to. Instead of setting myself on fire, I’d rather buy a ticket to New York and fall in love with the view. Or listen to Coltrane and fall in love with the blues. Or run my finger across a map and fall in love with the idea of falling in love with someone new, somewhere new, in a place I’ve never been and in a language I’m not that fluent. But sometimes I can’t help myself and I still fall in love with you. All of you. Over and over again. I fall in love with the memories. I fall in love with the possibilities. I fall in love with cities I’ve never been to, like Montreal, or Paris, or Little Rock, Arkansas. I fall in love with new Prince songs I’ve never heard before. I fall in love with bad advice. I fall in love with that missing hour of sleep I lost last night. I fall in love with the people who love me every now and then just to see what that feels like.
I'm always here for the people I hurt.
Choose your weapon just in case this doesn't go as planned. Hold my hand but hold your knife too. I promise I'd never hurt you but this might kill you. Will there be any pieces of us left when it's over? If it's over? I've never done this before - loved someone I couldn't hide from. Can I love you when I'm still in love with everyone else? Can you love me when everyone else is still in love with you? What are we gonna do other than clutch our knife and our gun and hope the other doesn't run when things start to burn? We always love the savage but never before was that savage a friend. Stability or madness? I'll choose the madness, again.
There are people out there who know what it’s like to walk around with a book inside you. For years you feel heavy and weighed down because you have this story to tell, but you’re not quite ready yet because it’s a story that you’re still living, whatever that story is. So you write, and write, and delete, and start over, and little by little you come apart, but in a beautiful way, until it all comes together. And you have a story that no longer lives in you, but one that you will live in from that day forward. And you feel free, you feel lighter, you feel complete, you feel finished - A Dream For Sale is that story. It’s not the first story, and it won’t be the last story, but it is the story I have to tell right now. If you read Love and Water and wondered what happens next, I’m ready to let you know. // A Dream For Sale - August 27th 🎈✂️🎈