Drinking wine by candle light
Small flame that might've
toasted music
Holding off instead
a flood of grief
Some wall I must retain
Some hope I still maintain
called life
...or was it love or...

one of those foolish things....

It's not important now
I am not known for caving-in
complaining
Not one for asking
nor for needing much
to hold my own...

I just need everything--

Boundless days of youth
forever slipping  
Only one dream yet remains

Wash over  
tender tide
The sea has found the breast
Seals it with its mouth
a hunger
lunging toward its home
of earth-warm woman
a deep surround

Longing there to cry
to take her back
to take it out on all
the taking

hurt of it
the bitter
and the knowing
loss of song

I can't recall

...The music that I cannot make
for lack of everything

Keep distance, the Snail said,
I don't feel safe with humans around
and my pace makes me so vulnerable.

He took a deep breath and added,
do you ever feel my toil
to move from place to place
while the winds blow in gusts
and the world passes by like a storm?

My minutes tick like your hours
and hours days
as I climb the mountains of walls
cover furlongs of ground
rest and restart
never really knowing
where the path ends.

And you only add to my woes.

Your prank of a kick
rolls me back and down
all the way
to beyond from where I began.

A teardrop gathered in his opal eyes.

But it really doesn't matter,
a smile broke through the tears,

I see with all your pace
you're so far from happiness.

The hollow wind funneled the voice
of the distant night-train crossings,
awakening  a  familiar  silence
hanging from the vast wilderness sky
A restless heart hearkening the echoes,
imagining  a  runaway  Pullman
flew away off the rails,    airborne
on the winged wind headed north

Winter  pausing  for a moment
in  the  shadows  of  familiarity,
as if parsing the unspoken breathings
in an  echoless  surrendered sigh;
uncertain if tacit words set free
could ever allow a heart broken
        to feel whole again

There  is  no  absolving  voice
that whispers in a solemner tone :
        Death  has  no  mercy  ―  
love remains marooned in the wake ,..
and it feels like the world’s gone mad
letting time be the arbiter of perpetuity

The fading dream of a motherless child;
a wish to be held maternally
fell to the ground with a thud,
        breaking the silence,
dissipating formless as the shape of water

Muted cold lips so full of questions
morphing into fugitive sighs
come the unsettled night;
when shadows disappear like frail memories
that  passed  too  soon  to  grasp,
thickly palpable as the warm breath
a winter bird alone on frosty branch

There’s no fear in braving the darkness
in the  winter wilderness of life borne alone
There’s no way of knowing what you’ll find
down that long empty road back home
Life just flashes by silently before your eyes
        through the windshield
    of countless miles and miles

And there’s nothing you can do about it ―
It’s like hearing the moment of truth in a lie
when all I was looking for
was  how I got here in this now,.. yesterday

only finding a hopeless poet
scribbling  slightly stained pages,
spilling  a  bitter  sweet  dream ...


        harlon rivers ... February 2018


///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Who knows how long I listened
To the gentle crackling of both fire and page
As the shadows danced lethargically across the room
Quiet but not silent, my thoughts were clear
I was content for the first time in a long while
A fitting memory to store for the long journey ahead

copy this poem and
throw it out the car window
may it justify the street sweepers -
existence  
may it clean the ears or wipe the *** -
of the less fortunate
maybe folded twice and used as a -
coaster or pick at the teeth of the -
clinically gluttonous
set it afire and let it warm someones -
bones
turn it into an airplane and flick it into-
a windstorm
may it scrape the dog **** from designer -
shoes
serve the purpose of its master in whatever
way he or she may choose .....