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missing her face today
as the winter frost sets in

in my mind  i hear the gentle click
of her knitting needles,
she knitted her love with artistry
in 8 ply wool jumpers, scarves,
vests and cardìgans, all scented
with peppermint, jasmine  and rose
the handcream she used for so many years

i go to the cupboard and pùll out the last
piece of her craftsmanship,  a cardigan
in shades of blue and purple, pull it on,
wrapping my body in her love, sighing
as the tears fall from my eyes

i am missing her today....
as the winter frosts sets in
?
Did we ever understand life?
Understand why some clouds are stagnant while others are in motion?
Why the Orion’s Belt doesn’t seem to change from it’s position?
Why peace must be attained by war?
Why there’s over a billion of us but the concept of soulmate seems so futile?
Why we pray for change but want to remain the same?
Why we don’t  acknowledge each other’s differences but want to be accepted?
Why love has guidelines but no one can achieve it?
Why everyone’s so infatuated with conversations that incorporate logic when nothing makes sense?
 May 2018 harlon rivers
Sjr1000
Invalid curtains
Broken down houses
Mold is growing
Everywhere

Not many live here anymore
Used to be a boom town
babies born
Everyone was employed
Took coupons at
the company store
Milled that wood
Ground that red ore
they don't build
washing machines
around here anymore

Invalid curtains
blowing in a toxic wind
nuclear plant failed
but that wasn't
the end.

The wind is still blowing
down main street
twitching the
"For Lease" signs
If the mud doesn't getcha
The *** holes will,
Schools?
Salting the roads?
There isn't any more revenue

At least Rays is open
the general store
Thomas's, the hardware store
next door
Tony's One Stop Coffee Shop
Barney's Pharmacy
Sellin' out those Oxys
The gas station pulled out their tanks
The doctor's gone
The dentist closed
Got to go forty miles to go to Costco

Still catching trout
at Jackson Meadow
down the highway
Pulled out an 8 pound bass
Never knew it was there
Put it back
Old guy one more life to live.

Staying here is all we know
No one knows we're here
Just like that 8 pound bass
One more life to go?
even though
We keep hearing singing
in the sundown snow,
the dying song
of a dying town.
In the tradition of James McCurtry, Greg Brown, Emmylou
I am looking at the door and
My heart is ever sore
My hands are aching
From forever slapping at the door
I know that golden memories are there.

When I stop slapping at the door
I stand naked in despair
I realize that love is there somewhere
Somewhere and everywhere
It keeps me straying from the truth or dare.

That love is always somewhere
Somewhere and yet so near
Neither less in spirit form
Neither more in earthly norm
Love is always here somewhere, so close.

I am looking at my feet
Bare and on the floor
And deep within my heart I find
There is an unlocked door
To feel that love has gone before.

I turn the **** and
Open the door at will
To find the golden memories in there
I grab the shackles off my heart
And pull out the storm
To blow away my heart's despair

Now I understand
That love, your love is here deep within my soul
Love is here and everywhere
I have only to let it flow.
On my sister early death I wrote this poem in answer to the ode written to her while she was still alive and I had not seen her.
She sits in her room
Beside her lonely loom
And dreams of times of grace
And suitors come to her place.
But no one has come here,
So she sings the songs
Of being alone too long.

None will come so near
That she needs to flirt.
Instead she gathers her hurt
And weaves it into tapestries
Of such stunning majesty
That only she will applaud,
Because there is no god
That will transform her to be
A lady of famous beauty.

She never has known why
She was born forbiddingly shy.
She fears to speak and convince,
Always she is prone to wince
Instead of smiling and inviting.
Her lovely pale face whitening
With dread she cannot speak
And that makes her feel weak.

The sun rises and it sets
She has nothing to regret
Or to remember gladly
But sadly she has grown
Comfortable being alone
Since  the pain is remembered
And she never delivered
From the roaring noise
Of life without love’s joys.
wooing/seducing: the where of the first kiss always

~for Robin Carretti, who loved it best~

‘tis true my battlefield tactical brought me  
many victories
when that was fool-desired

no chain mail, walled armaments, arms crossing,
all failed

to the single softest siege engine in my possession



and the passing passionately poems read
back ‘n forth, non-negotiable demands,
vicious but viscous
red lines,
day remainders of the contusions of night's angry passions
and the
disputed but muted disparities of both

nothing, no, never broke the spell of:

the first kiss, always upon the neck
May 20 2018
 May 2018 harlon rivers
WCA
Step by step
As I descended
Despite the ache in my bones
And the weakness of my heart
I thought of all the things I could have said
And all you could have done.

You were everything to me,
Everything I wanted to come home to
Everything I never wanted to leave.
And it is a strange feeling
Watching something never quite real fade away
Step by step.

**

"It's getting late."

"Don't go just yet."
human revelations in our sleep poses

she sleeps with both arms back, murmuring,
  flung over her hearing head,
as if she is surrendering

nightly

me slip away for a few, only to find  
her left hand ****** by her arm crook'd,
fit to her temple, as if to bear the weighty weight
of a heavy head plein des thoughts, dream-mares, tales and talks,
too dense to contemplate
without assistance,
armed support to hold on, hold up,
fighting/ accepting as a unwanted outcomes
or retrying old misdeeds
(no, no, oops, that’s me)

stirring,
she swift motions/crisscrosses her arms into an X,
a human parts tiara atop, on blond tresses, that fully messes
any remaining daytime efforts and her nighttime wild dancing^

no one reveals me,
none inform on me what positions
my containership adapts, adopts when my woke-guards
are dismissed/released and
lay unprepared to disguise my innermosts exposures

ow, early am resting comfortable with a six poem-pack of
slept hours on my tool belt,
so far this weekend one shot fired before the day officially
is belle rung and these poses thoughts
are upon what my eyes alight

can’t decide if knowing how I dance in the bed at night,
reflationary, deflationary, worth fact facing,
for this is no secret

my sleep hours are colored,
admixture of moving pictures,
punctuated with
stills of past and future,
the poses
of how to greet, were greeted,
withstood upheld ran from wept, murdered,
faced up, faced down, go unrecorded
and the
poems residuals
and the
poem prophesying-
both!

fearful confessions for acts
committed and foretold


Decision: I don’t want to know
7/20/18 7:08am

^(tango-ing with both, familiar and the unexpected men
who are she-allowed to lead for few minutes,
her cover up pose
expertly rigidly flexible, but her head thrown back to say
this is how far you will be allotted, allowed to dance/take me)
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