Waking up !! ... Startled by a dream !!
the sweat soaked sheets were cold
as the frosty autumn of his life.
Staring at the ceiling... moonstruck,
with eyes wide abide glare,
varying subtle tones of light
filtered through the tree branches
beheld by way of the open window.

Each moment’s hue flickered
as the clouds opened and closed the night sky
like the blink of an eye;
each wink of azure allowing the moonlight
to penetrate,   infusing Sepia colour
He felt an undeniable obsession
with the bittersweet reverie
of such a poignant awakening ...

Constantly sifting through
the mind's dust and ashes
searching for the clues and missing pieces.
He needed to know there was a reason
to believe his life was not lived in vain...
Those countless years of feeling he never belonged,
haunted the empty space in the sheets beside him
on this darkest of lonesome nights.

Oh… he was certain,
in the very deepest depths
of the heart of his soul
... he had loved infinitely,
throughout the many changing seasons of his life.
He needed to know that the unrequited love
he had felt was not just a reflection
revealing the tender love shared
from the depths of his hopelessly lonely heart ...

Walking a lifetime of miles on his own
did not come without paying the price of freedom.
Solitude is a bitter pill to swallow at the end of the day.
Now he felt the wanderlust
of the long and twisting pathway
had lead into an absolute corner,
as a sobering loneliness
evolved into an ultimate revelation ...

With his back against the wall  
the past loomed large behind him,
his life flashed before him;  
tears of trepidation overwhelmed
as the threads of a life’s tapestry
unraveled before his mind’s eye.

The only dream he ever feared
was to walk alone
at that predestined parting moment ...
Dropping to his knees at the threshold...

Never needing to know how to say goodbye …

Harlon Rivers

Neglected room, stuffed with old afterthoughts.

Archaeological dig:
    Sifting through the rubble.
        Layers in time,
            Time in layers.
                Related to me but not me.

Fossils of the past.
    Exhuming.
        Dusting.
            Cataloguing.
                Laying to rest.

Neglected room, re-purposed.
    Space cleansed.
        Potential prepared.
            Doorway anointed.
                Bed christened.

Fresh room,
Fresh space,
Fresh stories.

The rain falls.
Scatters across the ocean
and gathers on to the shore.
Sifting through the wind,
it flows upon the rooftop,
then tapping against his window.
He wishes the rain away
and watches it travel toward the west.
Surely to settle on the plains,
eagerly awaited
by his fairy.
He can see her arms stretched out
and her eyes closed.
Twirling in the showers,
smiling as the rain soaks her skin.

To travel into the night.
To be light on the wind.
Hidden inside a raindrop,
he could touch her.
Caress her wings and
finally watch her smile.
This precipitation he despises so well,
reminds him
of the dream that mesmerizes
his waking breath.
The fairy.
Playing in the rain.

experiencing myself
empty of desires,
yet continuing to fulfill my promises
and keep myself alive and active.

hard work
isn't as bad if you meditate,
formulating ideas while sifting through memories.
a strange form of meditation while cleaning houses,
yet all the same distracting from the present reality
until you're on your way home with the funds to
provide healthy food, shelter, and a bit of recreation.

hard work
is barreling towards me.
I am planning to jump over and on top of that wheel
which I was in constant fear of and conquer it.
Not only for myself, but for the ones I care for.
If I cannot be there for myself and conquer my
own demons, then I cannot be there for others
to help them conquer there's. If I am a poison I
shall only continue to seep into those I hold closely, I
refuse to any more. I'm
withstanding.

I will fight the major influences which rest within my being,
I will trim down the fat to create the muscles to carry myself.
No more leaning.

I am standing on my own two feet.

Until I can control my desires,
I cannot stand with you. Until
I let go of desires and just be.
Strength will help me to let go of the
poisonous cracks in the morals I have
so easily let sink beneath me.

I recognized myself as the person on a horse,
while the horse is up to it's eyes in mud, as
I continue to whip the horse to move forward,
rather than getting off and helping it out.

I realize now that I am the only one who can bury my strength,
just as I can choose to let it carry me. I have found that perhaps
instead I should be carrying my strengths so as to only grow more
powerful, within and without, so that if I need to set it down to
help rescue another's, I shan't be just as helpless.

here's to building on top of what is, rather than taking apart
what was, so as to create something new out of the old.

creation's purpose is beauty  
destruction is wasteful

let us create and if we are finished
move on to the next creation,
rather than continuing to
poke and prod at the old.

The world drones on,
trudges forward
sifting through slush
in search of snow
tenaciously deafened
to Earth’s beckoning song.

I’m thinking of empty boxes

cardboard constructed resting on dusty shelves
neglected discarded
when a new box is acquired
and eventually placed on another dusty shelf
beneath a dusty shelf
which is beneath a dusty shelf

The room is filled with dusty shelves
the red pulsing walls covered with stacks of dusty boxes
growing higher with new contributions
decaying and moth-eaten
becoming as old and decrepit as
the owner who hide them away

We keep buying new boxes
hoping that it will be the perfect fit
sifting through decayed paper and
water stained photographs
for the part that matters
but we never really find it

So we put the box away
hidden on a dusty shelf
in a dusty room
in a dusty heart

I searched for these words up in the attic
with narrow ribbons of enlightenment streaming
through all-too-small windows
igniting the drifting dust specks on fire,
and on the streets in the gutters
that were gloom-spattered with murky water lunging
towards the grated storm guards
as if they were salvation.
I scrounged through soaked and disintegrating cardboard boxes
bearing the letters L O S T A R T S
and old, musty and molded trunks
that had broken locks and missing keys.
I dug them out of  soft-cloth linens, carefully selected them
from heaping mounds of scrap
-like sifting through a junk yard-
to find those precious bits of silver,
sweet iridescent bubbles
encasing so delicately words like
"language" and "cellar."
I gathered these knic-knacks and baubles
and I alighted them with utmost care
through winding black back streets in my little burlap bag
to my borrowed safe-haven room. And without
turning on the lights,
the door was shut and stopped and I was perched
with great secrecy,
cross-legged upon my bird's nest of a bed,
daintily extracting each little orb
and examining them and all their wonder.
Tri-dimensional little things, that, no matter how you turned them,
seemed always to be a bi-dimensional halo of pale, golden light.
They shone, each minute embryo, like an old-time city lamp,
before such evil things as electricity came
and robbed them of a candle's beauty.
And its core, as is true with humans, is its most glorious aspect.
There is a transparent ocean in there,
with roiling waves that spin the currents
and coax every particle to circulate.
And caught in the eye of that undersea tornado are flecks of glitter,
so tiny that you would not be aware of them at all
were it not for the magnificent glimmer that they sparked,
magnifying and throwing back the fainter glow
of that ethereal encircling band.
Pixies that danced at the autumn festival.

I found these words for you,
broken and perfect and shining,
and collected them on a shelf where I could view them
before I handed them over to you.
I collected them with you in mind.
Can’t you tell?
I found words like “lustrous” and “lust”
because they reminded me of you.
I arranged them sporadically,
and smiled to see “alabaster princess”
sitting unintentionally before my eyes.
And how you are my Alabaster Princess.
But oh dearest-mine, be wary of how you find these words.
Use them sparingly, and do not tarnish them.
Keep them like nuns keep themselves: virgin.
If you must write them,
then write them in pretty hand-made inks,
and decorate each letter with dips and swirls, each letter a flourish.
And if you must utter them,
say them quietly, and in simple complementary sentences.
You can be Kennedy for a day,
or speak softly and let them be their own big stick.
Keep them uncommon, like you are uncommon,
and know when the repetition of weaker words can make them herculean.
Guard these words with all your strength:
with that sword hanging deftly on your wall,
with that letter-opener on your kitchen table,
with that pocket knife in your favorite pair of jeans.
Those words will save us one day,
once the world has reverted back to an aristocracy.
With that noble face of yours and this clever brain of mine, love,
we’ll con them into making us their master,
gold and land or no.
even if the sole things we own are our names.
And we’ll teach them again how to speak,
with all the sweetheart mightiness of poetry that speech was intended to have.
And we will learn to bow with all the eloquence of B.C. bible writing.
Machiavelli never saw rulers like us.

We’ll cry like the Devil on a Sunday morning
for the alteration in our names from D’evil,
and whomever first declared “they’re there yonder to get their git!” shall know my wrath
(although that may have been me).
Parlez vous Français?
Non.
These words that I pillaged
from the mouths of great stone grave monuments,
I hope that you will remember them well.
I hope that you will pour over them
and gaze at them in all of the bedazzled stupor that I did.
And once upon a time,
when children loved to read
and sought the same type of affection that I have at last found in you,
when even the Greek gods were playing with pens and devising an alphabet,
I sat there on rocky shore, seasoning with saltwater,
drawing with my toe under the waterline,
your face.
Pretty as a picture,
and worth a thousand words.