it's funny the things you forget
when asked for an 'interesting fact' --

you sleep on them for days
and exhume them from the ground
because they matter! so deeply!!
there's no metaphor that does them justice!!
it's poetry because it isn't!!!

i don't know my siblings.
my parents sleep in my dead grandad's bed
and i received his cupboards:
yeah, we're pretty much begging to be haunted.
let's be positive, it'd be nice to see him again.

thanks to reinforced childhood superstition,
i still pick up pennies from the ground
(yup, even with my germ phobia).

i used to write to the tooth fairy!
she warned me about gum disease.
her name was tiffy, but it turned out to
just be mum writing with her left hand.

as an internet-addicted hermit,
little me hated going abroad
since the only friends i felt i had were online.
there's thus a list of places to someday re-visit -
rotterdam is one.

i'd like to be somebody's muse.
if my life plan fails,
i want to work in a funeral parlour:
it feels as though i'd do it justice.

watching the same film more than once
just isn't something i do -- except grease --
exceptions can be made when it's on TV.

i mean, c'mon, it's grease.

she asks at last,
is this one for me

“of course it is,
was waiting for visualizing
the Oh,
when I heard
you stumbled into it”

she then confesses,
she has
a “tendency to stumble”
without an explanation

her answer is in her manner subtle,
that instantly invigorates,
so decidedly her style,
her answer,
raising more questions,
defeating the illusion of
anybody masculine overconfidence of the challenger

she puts the ”oy” in coy,
deflating my upper-handed attitude,
with an answer tantalizing and hinting,
so simple, it explains everything
and nothing

it seems that when she stumbles,
it’s me that actually,
“all fall down”

ah woman,
when you best me,
it brings forth the best
and adds an
“a”
in this poetic beast,
two play fighting cubs nipping
each other. the in us gaming

in this wordplay game,
so exciting,
her subtle reasoning teasing
results in a man as
a happy sore loser

he gulps me into peaces
__

led to his bed.
eyes kissed and asked to
come and go to where I
dream and imagine
but do not think.  

he gulps me into pieces.  
oh my god
oh my god
oh my god.  

and when he sees I am at last
in peaceful,  
speaks.  

god could but desires not to answer
all who call out to him.

thus the human was invented:

an imperfect messenger

a version of his image

that answers you in

pieces of peace

as best as any

human can

.
The waves spilled the rising tide
back into the scattered footprints  in the sand
deeply entrenched in life’s mystery,
receding into every breaking wave


A stiff sea breeze put back every grain of sand,
elements of a larger object gathers,
gravity firmed, into the silent shoreline chasms—
a beheld essence washed out to sea
by the fugitive tides and retreating sea-foam


Soon all trodden traces visibly vanish;
unmarked mileposts on a metaphysical pathway
slip away back to a windswept shoreline
and elapsing summer tide


Seabirds glide in slow-motion,
held sway into the shapeless gusts —
as if feathered puppets hovering,
hanging from the rafters
of the burgeoning orange sky


There's an uncommon peace in the renaissance;
effervescent crisp ocean air filling
the indefinable emptiness
marooned within each heartbeat’s echo


Each new breath inhaled,  disappearing within
the unhealed hollow of every thing once believed;
fully aware this life is unholdable as time,
yet feeling many things deeply retained
    in each passing moment—
slipping away like a handful of sand
sifting through all these hands once held


Presence becoming wreathed in a miasma of stillness,
space that levitates like an unpredictable fog
that seeps into the gnawing voids
of an unsated hunger



harlon rivers  ...  August 1st,  2018