...a diary of the falling dominoes chapter

invisibly dying from the inside out
no one is looking into unseen eyes
no one can hear a muted voice fading
no one is close enough to be near

the deafening thrums echo
anxieties’ racing heartbeat
within morphing flesh shell ,
gasping for new breath
in a hovering stale silence

from a distance
the broken mirror ricochets a subdued light ;
much closer the reflection reveals
someone I once knew by heart

now an unrecognizable mask
enshrouds a terminal emptiness
inconspicuous at a fleeting glance ,
impossible to discern what storms rage
from the inside out ,... unnoticed  

an uncontained wildfire
smoldering within,  lies in wait
for the imminent winds of change
to fan the flames into the final
eternal silent ashes

a poet reaches out demurely
offering a candid look
into the window
of the imperfect human soul

there is no poetry
met by indifference
just gathered unread words scribbled,

squandered time
dripped slowly on an empty page ;
moments turn into days
days turned into years

invisibly dying from the inside out
an unfinished life trickles out
like seeping blood evanescing
from a bottomless puncture
wounding ... penetrating the heart,
leaching out the slow death of a poet

for poetry is only words unless they touch someone ...

befallen to indifference is poetic death
by salted paper cuts ...

a muting suffocation
that hiddenly erodes away,
silencing the passion
of a musing soul
one unread word at a time ...


© harlon rivers ... all rights reserved

The faith in tomorrow's sun
does brighten as much as the
Present does and like memory
Does make sepia prints of the
Days gone by;  even of darkest
Times no others really know-
Am ashamed to acknowledge
Where weakness hides and
Says to Death it is cruel of you
Not to make it quick and so
I am waiting still for Now to
Pass as slow darkness comes

words drift away unfettered
from whence they came,
passing like undreamed clouds
– pragmatic eyes to the sky
   in a searching stare –
unsought thoughts disappearing hence
a fog bow fading into sunlight

there are days when
   it comes out in my silence
there are days when
   it falls down in my tears:

muse – muted in poet's pause,
heart and soul whispers
  laid bare unwritten
  behind parsing eyes
disregarded words let loose,
        ungarnered
the way low hanging fruit
falls benign — unharvested —

   shortsighted  insight
   from a bird's eye view
silently fermenting traces
and unfiltered memories
come and go unheeded words,
discarded like the passing
   time of our lives

at times  it's  ludicrous
   to follow down
lingering footprints
left behind callous:
when the shoe won't fit;
slogging across eroding
time-worn stepping stones
scattered on this twisted line
these feet have been walking down,
trying to make a getaway
   from myself

walking away from the memories
like so many indelible footprints to escape
– while dreaming stardust into stars
   in nameless constellations –
reaching out from the inside,
   site unseen,
   trying to experience
   the empirical shape
   of  stifling  silence
   in a theatre made by chance

distilling the gifts and burdens
of trying to live a worthy life
   only I'll see...


harlon rivers ... September 27, 2018

An innocent glance at photo’s still waters
feeling a revenant song heard calling in the wind
as the tears come streaming
with the loving and the hurting

The heaviness … Oh the sweet heaviness
a fading heartbeat settles in palm of hand
with the accepting tears of merciful surrender

The weight of a fallen mountain
upon the footprints that held up an unseen world
Helpless to stand back up tall as a sky so far away

The substance of the unshouldered weight to bear;
evermore gazing unto the sunset to understand
the beauty of the light,.. and a hopeful sweetness
at the dimming of a longest day

An unknowable ache and suffering of the leaving ―
an orphaned love with a faith in contrary hopefulness;
a joy at the dawning, going home
toward the guiding light


harlon rivers  ...   June 2018

I’m a friend of darkness
lock lips with it
in a lover’s embrace

I mourn the dawn
beg favors from the twilight
hold every hope
in my uncertain hand
for a day when the sun won’t shine

And I know
by my wayward feet
by the tremors in my hand
that darkness creeps silently
up to my borders
crosses every line
and will someday defeat
my meager defenses

I have prepared my retreat
a forced march
to the grey Pacific
where everything in my life
ends
and begins

The solemn swell of the waves
a fitting harmony
to that last sweet song.

Rest stops and road weary vagabonds
Peanut butter, water and stale bread;
Cookie crumbs and lip smirched paper cups
Somewhere's last weeks coffee stained newspaper
Blown out tires and the side of the road  
Deep, thick, unmistakable, bear paw-prints
lie fallow ― undead in the mud
           

Feeling the raw silence of what you’re thinkin'
ooze out of a festering puncture wound within
Churning soliloquies  gnawing  away
at the unspooled  threads  fray,  
understanding there’s  no  fear
in  less  than nothing  to  lose
                                  

Sometimes change happens
so fast you don’t even notice
We can wait a lifetime and never be sure;
never taking that first step that leads to a journey
of a thousand miles ― just a step away


It’s not some kind of bewitching
     loneliness  spell  cast
never seeing another sole
in measureless hours and days
Passing moments languish imponderably,
there are no feelings I can see,
        by  looking  away ―
always as blind as we want to be


Wanting what was taken more than what is given;
still doing the things we learned we shouldn't do again
The longest miles are the trodden ones
with only traces of learning how to be
    alive ― off the grid; alone again


It’s a journey where there's no map to guide you
Just  a deepening furrowed lifeline standstill
Stalled at a crossroads in the palm of your hand;
uncertainty deriding  where you’re headed ―
both a reason and an excuse when we're not sure
we're not alone on such a long one way road
we've been out here traveling  on
 

Forbearing the truth that holds my soul,
the only way through the ache
is through the wound
                                     ... and
I’ll get down this long road somehow


    harlon rivers ... May 2018
     ... travelogue 3 of some

I sit in the sun room, I am shaded for the sun
is only newly risen, low slung, just above the horizon,
behind me, over my shoulder, early morn warm

Slivers of sun rays yellow highlight the wild green lawn,
freshly nourished by torrential rains of the prior eve

The wind gusts are residuals, memoirs of the hurricane
that came for a peripheral visit, your unwanted cousin Earl,
in town for the day, too bad your schedule
is fully booked, but he keeps raining on you,
staying on the phone for so long, that the goodbye,
go away, hang up relief is palpable

The oak trees are top heavy with leaves frothy like a new cappuccino,
the leaves resist the sun slivers, guarding the grass
from browning out, by knocking the rookie rays to and fro,
just for now, just for a few minutes more,
it is advantage trees, for they stand taller in the sky
than the youthful teenage yellow ball

I sit in the sun room buffered from nature's battles external,
by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization,

and my thoughts drift to suicide.

I have sat in the sun room of my mind, unprotected.
with front row seats, first hand witness to a battle unceasing

Such that my investigations, my travails along the boundary line
between internal madness and infernal relief from mental pain
so crippling, is such that you recall begging for cancer or Aids

Such that my investigations, my travails along the sanity boundary
are substantive, modestly put, not inconsiderable

Point your finger at me, demanding like every
needy neurotic moderne, reassurance total,
proof negative in this instance, of relevant expertise!

Tell us you bona fides, what is your knowing in these matters?

Show us the wrist scars, evidential,
prove to us your "hands on" experiential!

True, true, I am without demonstrable proofs
of the first hand, my resume is absent of
razors and pills, poisons and daredevil spills,
guns, knives, utensils purposed for taking lives

Here are my truths, here are my sums

If the numerator is the minutes spent resisting the promised relief
of the East River currents from the crushing loneliness that
consumed my every waking second of every night of my years of despair
                           divided by
a denominator that is my unitary, solitary name,
then my fraction, my remainder, is greater than one,
the one step away from supposed salvation...

Yet, here I am sitting in the sun room buffered from
nature's battles by white lace curtains which are the hallmark
of all that is fine in Western Civilization

I am a survivor of mine own World War III,
carnaged battlefields, where white lace curtains,
were not buffers but dividers tween mis en scenes,
variegated veins of colored nightmares, reenactments of
death heroics worthy of Shakespeare

Did I lack for courage?
Was my fear/despair ratio insufficient?

These are questions for which the answers matter only to me,
tho the questions are fair ones, my unsolicited ******,
they are not the ones for which I herein write,
for they no longer have relevance, meaning or validity,
for yours truly

I write poetry by command, by request, good or bad,
this one is a bequest to myself, and also a sidecar for an old friend,
who asked in passing to write what I know of suicide,
unaware that the damage of hurricanes is not always
visible to the naked heart

These hands, that type these words are the resume of a life
resumed,
life line remains scarred, but after an inter-mission, after an inter-diction, an inter-re-invention
in a play where I was an actor who could not speak
but knew every line, I am now the approving audience too...

But I speak now and I say this:

There are natural toxins in us all,
if you wish to understand the whys, the reasons,
of the nearness of taking/giving away what belongs to you,
do your own sums, admit your own truths
query not the lives of others, approach the mirror...

If you want to understand suicide,
no need to phone a friend, ask the expert,
ask yourself, parse the curtains of the
sun room and admit, that you do understand,
that you once swung one leg over the roof,
gauged the currents speed and direction,
went deep sea fishing without rod or reel
and you recall it all too well, for you did the math
and here I am, tho the tug ne'er fully disappears,
here I am, here I am writing to you,
as I sit in the sun room.

Memorial Day, 2011