Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
 Feb 2018 harlon rivers
L B
Could the sun be
    just
    a hole up there—
    that if I could leap
    would enter that breach of light

Someone!
   Throw me a line!
   Give me a reason
   There’s never enough
   in this life of breathing!

Someone!
   Explain why dreams roll a soul
   toward the cliffs of day
   Wakes to ache
   then stuffs its mouth
   with necessary same
  
Inhale—
   button shirt—brush hair
Exhale—
   necessary glance in the mirror
   (yes, still there)    

A lifetime!
   in a shallow instant’s stiff clear water
   (Yeah— still there)  
   in endless caverns of tired eyes
   above mouth still trying
   to say SOMETHING!  
   from ever smaller eternities
   in the glass-flat empty....

Please! Someone explain!
   this draw of breath
   one forcing itself upon another's
   life
   of beating —
   Violence in my chest!

Why hearts don’t sleep—

and I wind up watching
again and again—till
I am the ******...

...Morning lies
   in the mists of a humid *****
   who moans and sweats
   and boils her hips—
   and I wind up watching!?

“Will someone please…!"

   ...and I wind up watching
   bedspread, bed sore, death bed
   till you’re breathing easy
   when she sits and picks
   her collapsed bouffant
   damning the makeup
   that got crushed in the sheets

…Morning
Lies--

   with no expectancy
   both tired of knowing...

   ...The Devil lost his balance
   in my presence one night


...tired of knowing—

THE WILL!  
THAT WILL!

  ...walk away
   or continue to play

   I could open this screen!
   watch the world STEP BACK!
                                 SLAP FLAT!
   as trees and dwellings flush like quail
   to prop their tottering panic
   against the blue—

You—assume composure...
   compose assumptions
   Await my next—

Move like a spy
1990
Why I don’t play chess or any other game
for that matter.    
    
“...and when you're really out there
the windows all have opened onto nothing...
Death having long since-- left the scene.
When you get really out there
it's all--
and nothing…”
 Feb 2018 harlon rivers
Lora Lee
If I could
pinpoint the
exact moment
your breath
touched mine
washed me over
in ocean waves
sea creatures glowing
in delightful recognition
as the seedlings
of connection
shimmied into our being
and, dancing within me
in its own lifeforce
your mind a living,
breathing animal
your heart, purring
and whirring its sacred forces
into my molecular structures
your soul throbbing
in mitochondric pulsing
(oh what
a delicious vibration
of ribosomes
)
Between us, we hold
the true treasures
close, in frothy
                       tenderness
a purity of the expanse
of our universe,
swathed in prismatic color
colors that shift,
these fresh hues
for which there are no name
they are lucid and fine-woven
as silk histories
yet deep as earthcore
your eyes, voice
are forever burned
into my own
every day scriptures
that rock my shattered parts
into wholeness
and,
like ancient magic,
I conjure forth
the holy gospel
rising from our bones
every second of
every minute
as our deepest fires
our most secret filth
our murky corners
our darkest hours
we weave into light
brilliant and lustrous
multi-layered in the richest
folds of the earth
and as you place me
upon the shores
of your garland-graced
                              throne
Now I'm alive in a new
kind of light
and
all I can do
is love
        and love
and love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOcxD3IWW0
 Feb 2018 harlon rivers
Diane
It's easy to see why you fell in love with him,
It's easy to see why you hoped you found forever
But you didn't.
And that disappointment felt like a death
and you have been trapped between anger and denial
for four years.
You think you must bury him in order to bury your grief.
And convincing others of this too
has become a game
where you sleep and play
inside your litter box.
Now the feces of hatred and revenge
stick to your feet wherever you go.
You must turn him into a monster
by telling anyone who will listen
that he is haunting you—and you really want this to be true
because that would mean he was still interested in your life.
But when you are alone and still…you remember...
coffee and stories, genuine kindness
and you know, his only crime was breaking your heart.

I understand your heartbreak;
you saw your knight in shining armor,
The answer to your loneliness.
Your pathway out of poverty.
His demeanor is gentle,
his quiet, listening face
hears your words with truth and interest;
every sentence is allowed to live its full life
until you are validated and understood.
He is your biggest fan, a loving caregiver.
Children and animals are drawn to him
like a shepherd or a father or a friend.
We both know he gave 8 years to a child,
a paraplegic who wasn’t even his own.
Bathed him, carried him, wiped drool from his chin
and in between all the doctors, made him laugh.
He offers himself to everyone this way, so

I understand why losing him hurt you so wholly
I know this, because I love him too.
But I think you and I define love very differently;
I wouldn’t want someone whom I had to threaten to make him stay.
I wouldn’t derive my identity from an unspoken contract
or imaginary promises that I insisted he owed me.
I wouldn’t try to destroy another human being
for the sole purpose of hiding my own embarrassment.
You see, love would remember his beautiful soul
and love would sincerely want him to be happy

Even if that meant he found happiness without you.
A kind, self-sacrificing, honest man is being slandered because a woman he dated briefly turns rejection into victimization.
what does the W stand for


my 2:00am friend?

left feet touching and yet I am clueless, unsure in what language I should compile the possibilities and

reread my poem and shotgun taken aback

you make my urgency feel so trifling

and I read your are back but you are more gone for,
love’s  misfortune has you, graced,
like a hole in the barbed wire fence,
had bled you dry and let the seeds for
the next planting go astray;
this is comprehended for my fences
are so busted in so many places that
all the animals escaped only to return
at feeding time, their curiosity of the outside world
limited

and W has limited infinite answers

for there are no names that begin with W
for farmers in our native tongues

suspect if you are reading this it must be after 2:00,
indeed it’s 4:07am, and the puzzlement is face flushing,
annoying and curiously intriguing...

and i remain,
“sincerely” yours

L.F. Poet




p.s. thanks for reading my stuff
why my existence was just one unending question?

even in the formless and endless pitch black (his HP alias),
could hear Him smile and communicate:
if not You, then who?

We love your dreams where answers run wild like an
Oregon waterfall,
only you understand that the whole world encapsulates into:

love thy neighbor as thyself!

which must be recited as a poem
standing on one left leg

then, smiling,
god extended his only finger, touching each of mine eyelids:

sleep, friend for we need your questioning dreams,
your faith unfurled and unfulfilled
for in your unending inquiry
is all of our
in the beginning, our anti-matter rooted creation,

the Holy Dark
2/19/18 3:06am
http://www.seraphicpress.com/rabbi-hillel-on-one-leg-me-too/

n the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
Next page