Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
.
I know this place,
light stone avenues,
fig, pear, apricot and apple,
trees that line in rows,
cut paving with neat gutters
**** white granite buildings,
as ferns and creepers
cascade from roof gardens,
the green shining vivid
in appreciation of being alive.
And I connect across the aeons,
this place was my home,
from centuries long passed,
yet reaching out to be found.
The avenues mimic my mind,
long straight and narrow,
broad and winding,
leading to sedate squares
to sit and feel the sun,
to bathe in beautiful isolation.
And the trees sway
casually in a breeze so soft,
it caresses the branches,
enough to tickle the leaves
and cool the ripening fruit.
Here, the forest erupts,
circles around this sanctuary,
forming a natural hedge
to this garden of tranquility,
this oasis in the maelstrom,
this home in my heart.
Flowers of honeysuckle,
jasmine, of clovers and lily,
adorn walls and buildings,
bright in contrast
to the shadows of the trees,
bloom with the intensity of colour,
riotous in hue and arrangement,
yet, ordered to Nature's Law.
Paradise wrapped in image,
slicing through time and space,
my place a thousand years ago,
my place to claim forever,
and the wind carries me home,
I know this place,
because it lives inside of me,
because I made it.


© Pagan Paul (06/06/18)
.
There's a brick wall in a neighborhood not far
Though if I were an ant
might be like the distance of here to our star

Sometimes I transform into a fluttering butterfly
and over the grand impenetrable wall
I fly

Just to see what's on the other side
Brick walls dividing neighborhoods
 Jun 2018 harlon rivers
Traveler
Beyond these pages
I'm still alive
Raring to live
    Before I die...
At least another
Hundred
Thousand miles
Wheels swiftly spinning
A Traveler wearing a smile
Perhaps we'll meet
Along the way
Have you ever been
To outer space?
We could watch
The moon go by
From a dark
Starlit sky
.....
Traveler Tim
 Jun 2018 harlon rivers
Traveler
Deep in my psyche
There's a poetry thirst
Dry are my thoughts
In wind storms of words

My heart is a desert
Of blistering heat
My mind is crawling
Towards a salty sea

And there at the edge
Of an ink-less abyss
I so hunger
And thirst
Just to write
And to live
>>>>>>>>
Traveler Tim
 Jun 2018 harlon rivers
BMG
I realized tonight
While I laid in what use to be our bed
I realized that your voice
has left my memory.

I can't hear it anymore
Not like I use to.
I can't remember it
I kept trying so desperately to remember

What did it sound like?
Any of it
when you laughed
or even cried.
What sleepy noises did you use to make?

I can still see your smile,
thank God I can still see it
I can see the crooked grin
but I can't hear you.

You're beginning to fade
I don't know how to stop it.
I don't know how to memorialize
every part of you.

You're drifting away
I thought I could hold on for eternity.
I thought for sure I’d keep every bit of you
Locked away in my memory
I was wrong.

You see we’re human
And humans forget
I'm so scared one day
I will wake up and
you'll just be gone.

You've been gone
4 years now
I don't want anymore
of you to leave me.

I will not,
I can not survive that.

I squeeze my eyes as tight as possible
Hoping that the memory
of your hand on my thigh
will come back

Hoping I can still feel the feeling
of you fingers laced with mine...
It's gone.
I can't remember how rough the felt.

I can't remember
the exact shade of green
your eyes held
I have lost the smell in the air of
when you first got out of the shower.

I still remember
it use to be my favorite moment
First thing in the morning
but now it's disappeared
with so many other things.

It’s losing you all over again
I don't know how to stop it,
stop you from becoming
a fictional time in my life.

You were real,
We were real.
You loved me.
You loved me so much
I know you did

There are people
People in my life now,
that have never heard your name.
That never knew us...

People that have only known me
Without you.
How is that possible?
Who even am I without you?
Just a casing of who I use to be?
A hollow person with nothing to give?
These people don't even know
They don't know me at all.
 Jun 2018 harlon rivers
Lora Lee
Lick the words
from my lips
let them slide down
your throat
like fruited jewels,
   dark, hard candies
   that melt into cream
a healing liquid  
oozing into my
               ventricles,
pumping milky beats
out through
           your cells
permeating the deep
of my wild
  
My syllables will
   wrap themselves
      around your syntax
frothy hybrids
of buttered silk
                and irony
heart-to-heart
conversations that
flow into the ether,
as heaven's night
endlessly begins

We twirl our tongues
into guttural utterings,
lustful verse
that glides from
slick-fervored ice
to an outpour
                    of lava
We feed each other
dreams
our saliva like honey
dripping with dawn's
tender glow
as we open up
like baby birds,
begging to be nourished
at all costs

Here,
in this lingual forest
Your breath finds a home
on my tastebuds,
my tongue
in your
          cheek
            
In between the tumults
of our
exploding oceans
This
     is how we
  love
 Jun 2018 harlon rivers
L B
I continued the gentle climb
passed building, birdbath, “bathtub Mary”
and was stopped by the sound--
Endless mission of the river
as she made her way over the rocks of early summer.
I knew I'd found our home
At the top of the stairs
a wooden deck off second floor
Up the fourteen stairs to our new door

I could see her now fully
gleaming
beyond the red oaks and wild cherry
framed unspeakable
by greens
and fragrance of the multiflora rose
just coming into bloom
I could go on-- but there are so few words that fit
the sound of a river so content

She whispered to me between her gurgling song
“Hush....”
The sea is resting now
after a long day
gnawing at the edge
churning in deep hollows
ever so slowly eroding
this peaceful coast

Sand is the issue
of this marriage
sea and sky
combining to
make the land large
in its retreat

A handful of sand
to the winds
my life
to these tides
Next page