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onlylovepoetry Jan 2020
lovely questions, lovely quiet

them words, soap bubble-burst, in my mind’s eyes,
but no finger pointing, this the way to go, no,
here lies the poem, you need be writing,
here, buy the poem, release belief, be the relief


thinking past loving, glory, pain, depths plumbing,
farewells, opening gambits, unplanned strategy,
first move, drugged highs grand expectations
chase, hunt, capture, surrender, regroup, defeat

skip to only endings directly, where’s the fun in that,
no, lovely must be earned, only years later cannot
recall, name, why we separated, but each, her face,
cut, grooved, in the cells, how I stroked her skin, thrillingly

finger’s cells keep memories in cold storage, summoning
with great and minimal difficulty, reversal atmospheres,
breathing the air we shared, oh god, oh god, how,
could I have let the times escape, each lover lost, unforgiven

lovely interrogatories, each, a cup, half full of changelings,
the passions expended, losses unintended, greater fool,
the chameleon fooled only himself, each memory a blessing,
a curse, and when sleep darkens the eyelids, the tears pool

no peace I find, the wetness caresses both the closure,
and the retelling, drowns me  in measuring cups of
who I was, who I am, and demands do better, do it all
over again, only with lovely quiet, with tenderest kindness

and guilt clings, hope lingers but sleep arrives as I count
my sheep, repeating whispering of “do better, be better,
do better, do better, be better and better, and better still

5:08am
1/14/2020
onlylovepoetry Jan 2020
for all the lost, everlasting lovers

~for mara~

why this morning does the emoting
cast me backwards to all my lost lovers,
imagined and real, yet lasting in crevices hidden,
that beckon, asking to be reclaimed,
recalling when our names combined, many meetings
of lips, kisses so old, decades, yet so well realized

that to see, taste them, is blink, easily accomplished

day beginning, with deep penetrating glances rearward,
unclear how this clarifies the muddled visions of what
the future dreams may contain, ah, love and pain,
love and pain, a tango tangled tandem, indeed,
one hopes the past is prologue, pro for lips sensitized logged,
those kisses past, kisses yet dreamt, those works-in-process

stir the body to rise from the couch, to stretch my arms

up/skyward, grab jeans, go the Persian immigrant on the corner,
for a bun and a black coffee, who wishes me a good new year,
stunned silent when embrace him with hands-full, for his wish for me
enables a gratitude overcoming that only strangers can give;
those lost lovers yet lasting, thank them too, wish them happy year,
winter warmth, comfort them in my crevices-kept, forever retained

Love you, miss you, never gone, never forgotten, ever first,

everlasting...


1/3/20
7:11am
onlylovepoetry Dec 2019
An Optimist’s Guide to Falling in Love With a Woman


have a very minor fender ******, you’ll never get a persons digits any easier, consider it a bonus first date, a stress test interview, when humans on their worst/best behavior, their true nature revealed and tough exteriors melt when gallantly take full responsibility, details to be discussed over dinner

risks: she’ll  will never ever let you drive her, even after, no...never ever after, the issue is closed, ‘twas your fault and is non-discussable

critique her order standing behind her at McDonald’s. blowback assured! charm resistance and openness will be tested, but you claim pure concern for her well being, even after offering to pay  a dollar for every calorie ingested if she only switches to a plant-based burger

risks: hamburger grease soul staining, no love stain stick remover handy and everybody knows mixed marriages really never work tween bronco busting cowgirls and city tree huggers

you take a spill, nose in the phone crossing street, she lifts you up with wonder woman strength and gentility, you sputter with half-feigned indignation for you’ve embarrassedly first sight-fallen in love, all your words and everything else is failing and flailing as she tends to the cut, drives you to her office where she stitches you up, while cracking jokes that are truly funny

risks: she is a Dallas Cowboy fan, or worse, someone else got there first, and you need life long therapy

she’s in seat 10C, Miami to NYC, pretending very poorly to not be reading this very story-poem you’re creating, but doing so VERY poorly because she is editing, making suggestions, punching you in the arm excitedly, asking if you want to share a cab home, for she reveals that she too, secretly dips the quill in ink and needs an expert opinion, yours for sure since you’re SO good looking too!

risks: the weather diverts the plane to Baltimore where you live together happily after-ever, cause you’re both tired of life in cities with 3-13 perennial losing NFL teams and it is exquisitely equidistant from your annoying relatives
and ex’s





Baltimore Washington International Airport
4:29 pm Dec. 2nd
  Nov 2019 onlylovepoetry
harlon rivers
The windowsill frames
each passing morning
It speaks in a language
only stillness hears its say
Anchored to the wooden studs
of fortress walls
that bind solitude,
enduring all that
autumn's curtain call unveils

Distant towering evergreens
look back with taller eyes  
than yesteryear
As these timeworn eyes
look beyond
and wonder why
   they've not grown of age —

Time passes away
so quickly
while waiting
for season's change —
and I, wistfully dreaming
how the trees bear
the weight of the sky

Fog lays below
the fir boughs,
blanketing the drowsy
near valley fields
Where deep roots repose
in the clay of truth
that swaddles all
abiding mother earth
   carves in stone —

A monument
to all forbearance,
just a mortal human
could never hold

Pensively envious
how long they hold
their eminence,
patiently suspended beneath
the nimbus rafters stay;
remaining transfixed
without a ray of sunlight
— searchingly leaning  
into each fleeting  moment
of unclouded sight


harlon rivers
onlylovepoetry Oct 2019
“My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw”


Love’s Labor Lost Act V: Scene. Shakespeare
(Hosannah: an exclamation of joy, adoration )

<>

you force-return me to this excerpted, exceptional phrase,
recovered from a prior dialaogos tween myself & the Lord above,^
an original gift from Him to William, and now you, to us, together

though these conversations, soft but hard unyieldingly,
with each verse a play in the J'accuse game,
games theory states, we are not evenly matched,
the outcome noisy, but generally predictable

the cracked light made famous by a departed muse,
who robbed proudly from *****, passing it on to
a millennium of generations, we honor this transference, by

letting us exclaim: Hosannah!

this silence of love is flawless
no interfering words necessary deemed,
sound without sound, no entry crack visible,
a great plain, a continental ocean, no horizon given,
this then the perfect diamond of humankind,
the glance cross a room, the grazing ******* upon a cheek,
the succinct serenity of perfect, this I grant you





<>


2019
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