Spellbound by her radiance
My blue natural resourceress
My damsel in distress goddess
Her Amazoness princess kiss
Casts no drought apocalips
As her spoiled kids languish
In their ignorance is bliss
I try to dry her eyes' anguish

Of floods that pour from existence
Human condition hurricanes
Of pain her tempests weep in vain
As tears of capital disdain
To wash away the stain of gain
Poisoning her brain again
Pollute her womb's bloom as we play
This methane game another day

And force her to create instead
Four horsemen mounting steeds of dread
Nightmares that run the greed stampede
That sleep in heads and soil beds
And reap the dead and dying seeds
The growing hungry mouths to feed
Exceed the planting fruited trees
Still we believe we need not grieve  

Or mourn the lesser lost species
Mere casualties to devil's deeds
And all the weeds of Eden's Eve
At its root but one deceives
And fells her to bereaving knees
Where mortals know not what it means
To taste the breeze her spirit frees
Into the wilderness of dreams

This Holy Ghost is serpentine  
Forked-tongue, snake-oiled fear machine
Robotic slaves to industries
Still fueled by God complexities
With processors that just don't see
Or hear her songs of harmony
Life's ever-beating melody
She gives us temporarily

...a diary of the falling dominoes chapter

invisibly dying from the inside out
no one is looking into unseen eyes
no one can hear a muted voice fading
no one is close enough to be near

the deafening thrums echo
anxieties’ racing heartbeat
within morphing flesh shell ,
gasping for new breath
in a hovering stale silence

from a distance
the broken mirror ricochets a subdued light ;
much closer the reflection reveals
someone I once knew by heart

now an unrecognizable mask
enshrouds a terminal emptiness
inconspicuous at a fleeting glance ,
impossible to discern what storms rage
from the inside out ,... unnoticed  

an uncontained wildfire
smoldering within,  lies in wait
for the imminent winds of change
to fan the flames into the final
eternal silent ashes

a poet reaches out demurely
offering a candid look
into the window
of the imperfect human soul

there is no poetry
met by indifference
just gathered unread words scribbled,

squandered time
dripped slowly on an empty page ;
moments turn into days
days turned into years

invisibly dying from the inside out
an unfinished life trickles out
like seeping blood evanescing
from a bottomless puncture
wounding ... penetrating the heart,
leaching out the slow death of a poet

for poetry is only words unless they touch someone ...

befallen to indifference is poetic death
by salted paper cuts ...

a muting suffocation
that hiddenly erodes away,
silencing the passion
of a musing soul
one unread word at a time ...


© harlon rivers ... all rights reserved

In my dreams, there are colors and carousels
Swimming and spinning
Into a helix of broken hesitation
The dread I feel is insurmountable
Palms drip sweat
Consciousness fades from asphyxiation

Devils awaken from careful slumber
Growling and gnashing
As they enslave my heartbeats filled with envy
In my dreams, there are shadows and shipwrecks
Slinking and sinking
Into depths blurred by this reality

The knell of a late January breeze
The ghost of winter trapped among
the evergreens
Spirits swirl and pivot , scribble picots
on red clay floors
Tin claps time in the pre-dawn hour
Hounds bray confused in the windblown
morn
Sparrow shuffle from hardwood to rusted
field as wild geese fly into the promise of February sun* ..