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An old man cocked his car upon a bridge;
He and his friend, their faces to the South,
Had trod the uneven road.  Their hoots were soiled,
Their Connemara cloth worn out of shape;
They had kept a steady pace as though their beds,
Despite a dwindling and late-risen moon,
Were distant still.  An old man cocked his ear.
Aherne. What made that Sound?
Robartes. A rat or water-hen
Splashed, or an otter slid into the stream.
We are on the bridge; that shadow is the tower,
And the light proves that he is reading still.
He has found, after the manner of his kind,
Mere images; chosen this place to live in
Because, it may be, of the candle-light
From the far tower where Milton's Platonist
Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince:
The lonely light that Samuel Palmer engraved,
An image of mysterious wisdom won by toil;
And now he seeks in book or manuscript
What he shall never find.
Ahernc. Why should not you
Who know it all ring at his door, and speak
Just truth enough to show that his whole life
Will scarcely find for him a broken crust
Of all those truths that are your daily bread;
And when you have spoken take the roads again?
Robartes. He wrote of me in that extravagant style
He had learnt from pater, and to round his tale
Said I was dead; and dead I choose to be.
Aherne. Sing me the changes of the moon once more;
True song, though speech:  "mine author sung it me.'
Robartes. Twenty-and-eight the phases of the moon,
The full and the moon's dark and all the crescents,
Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six-and-twenty
The cradles that a man must needs be rocked in:
For there's no human life at the full or the dark.
From the first crescent to the half, the dream
But summons to adventure and the man
Is always happy like a bird or a beast;
But while the moon is rounding towards the full
He follows whatever whim's most difficult
Among whims not impossible, and though scarred.
As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the mind,
His body moulded from within his body
Grows comelier.  Eleven pass, and then
Athene takes Achilles by the hair,
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born,
Because the hero's crescent is the twelfth.
And yet, twice born, twice buried, grow he must,
Before the full moon, helpless as a worm.
The thirteenth moon but sets the soul at war
In its own being, and when that war's begun
There is no muscle in the arm; and after,
Under the frenzy of the fourteenth moon,
The soul begins to tremble into stillness,
To die into the labyrinth of itself!
Aherne. Sing out the song; sing to the end, and sing
The strange reward of all that discipline.
Robartes. All thought becomes an image and the soul
Becomes a body:  that body and that soul
Too perfect at the full to lie in a cradle,
Too lonely for the traffic of the world:
Body and soul cast out and cast away
Beyond the visible world.
Aherne. All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man's or woman's body.
Robartes, Have you not always known it?
Aherne. The song will have it
That those that we have loved got their long fingers
From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's top,
Or from some ****** whip in their own hands.
They ran from cradle to cradle till at last
Their beauty dropped out of the loneliness
Of body and soul.
Robartes. The lover's heart knows that.
Aherne. It must be that the terror in their eyes
Is memory or foreknowledge of the hour
When all is fed with light and heaven is bare.
Robartes. When the moon's full those creatures of the
full
Are met on the waste hills by countrymen
Who shudder and hurry by:  body and soul
Estranged amid the strangeness of themselves,
Caught up in contemplation, the mind's eye
Fixed upon images that once were thought;
For separate, perfect, and immovable
Images can break the solitude
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes.
And thereupon with aged, high-pitched voice
Aherne laughed, thinking of the man within,
His sleepless candle and lahorious pen.
Robartes. And after that the crumbling of the moon.
The soul remembering its loneliness
Shudders in many cradles; all is changed,
It would be the world's servant, and as it serves,
Choosing whatever task's most difficult
Among tasks not impossible, it takes
Upon the body and upon the soul
The coarseness of the drudge.
Aherne. Before the full
It sought itself and afterwards the world.
Robartes. Because you are forgotten, half out of life,
And never wrote a book, your thought is clear.
Reformer, merchant, statesman, learned man,
Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn,
Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight and all
Deformed because there is no deformity
But saves us from a dream.
Aherne. And what of those
That the last servile crescent has set free?
Robartes. Because all dark, like those that are all light,
They are cast beyond the verge, and in a cloud,
Crying to one another like the bats;
And having no desire they cannot tell
What's good or bad, or what it is to triumph
At the perfection of one's own obedience;
And yet they speak what's blown into the mind;
Deformed beyond deformity, unformed,
Insipid as the dough before it is baked,
They change their bodies at a word.
Aherne. And then?
Rohartes. When all the dough has been so kneaded up
That it can take what form cook Nature fancies,
The first thin crescent is wheeled round once more.
Aherne. But the escape; the song's not finished yet.
Robartes. Hunchback and Saint and Fool are the last
crescents.
The burning bow that once could shoot an arrow
Out of the up and down, the wagon-wheel
Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's chatter --
Out of that raving tide -- is drawn betwixt
Deformity of body and of mind.
Aherne. Were not our beds far off I'd ring the bell,
Stand under the rough roof-timbers of the hall
Beside the castle door, where all is stark
Austerity, a place set out for wisdom
That he will never find; I'd play a part;
He would never know me after all these years
But take me for some drunken countryman:
I'd stand and mutter there until he caught
"Hunchback and Sant and Fool,' and that they came
Under the three last crescents of the moon.
And then I'd stagger out.  He'd crack his wits
Day after day, yet never find the meaning.
And then he laughed to think that what seemed hard
Should be so simple -- a bat rose from the hazels
And circled round him with its squeaky cry,
The light in the tower window was put out.
Seán Mac Falls Jul 2012
.
I have seen her playing
With light, edging her hair,
In crescents so fair.

I have watched her fingers
Twirl and twine, beaming gold,
Threshing precious hold.

I have witnessed the taming
Of the sun's rays, captured,
Spinning in rapture.

And I feel for the pale moon
Who offers his frail, vestige light,
While she sleeps at night.
mûre  Jan 2012
Blessed Crescents
mûre Jan 2012
Dark eyelashes
That flutter at my clavicle
Alight upon stepping stone freckles
And whisper-paint my canvas
With nothing-everythings of orange violet red
(Realizing reveries of your pretty head)

What blessed crescents

The sigh pumps slowly though my veins
The colour of sky after summer rain
palladia Jun 2013
awkward is a promiscuous word. it flirts unintentionally. it seduces mentally. but most of all it's so disruptionally absurd even the first-come-first-serve basis comes 15 feet behind the typical quota. but it really isn't that serious. it would be awkward plus if i wasn't active right now. does that sound appealing to anyone? well it better. i'm no vanguard when it comes to distribution of emotions. they'll be distributed equally, thank you, and don't worry about getting more 'cause they'll be pieced out safe and fair. lord jesus, we need some sorrow-getter-overs in here! i'm always telling those who ask me for advice to relinquish the suffering and let the good times roll. not that it'll save their hides, i snicker mimically and divert the attention to something inappropriately interesting, like a ***** bumper sticker or a animal corpse on the side of the road. and you are gonna turn into one if you don't stop that crying! man i need some fresh air and i'm not talking about the innocent kind. it's more of the obvious, over-cynical cyanide-soaked air that formaldehyde would blush over. there are two r's in sorrow because the s and the o and w need to be capsized into one rowboat. i never thought i would compromise intimacy with loudspeaker attention-grabbers and then the sailboat does a belly-flop and lands head first in the witches' cauldron. which is like Hamlet's, but a lot less systematic and bunches more pagan. it's synthetically miserable but enigmatically moral. dance of the morals is another program i like. it has to do with the regard of selfish hope and loose pragmatism. pagan! ****** i know it's pagan but it's pigheaded trash like that which gets stuck in the garbage disposal ever so often and we don't have no time to clean it out. i use a fish net that once occupied a corner near the stove which had the net chewed through by ***** rats that inhabit the lower quarters of the bathhaus. it's nothing significant really but more or less a principle in not making leftovers from the unknown trashpile near the barn. attention: entrance alert. "too bad for" who cares. i'm sick of this. "too bad for". that's all said? "let's chat a lot" what? i thought maureen was coming over at 7? who left the cat out again--the dog's gonna have a field day playing cops and robbers, and there are always reallive guns. and i'm stuck back at square/ground one/zero figuring out how i'm gonna get the next day's meal without having to cut off my head or make the microsoft paper clip icon appear with those embarrassing clips telling you how you should appear to your boss on your first interview. and find out that he's a man after all. and ultimately regret what you said every two minutes. wish i had contributed crescents more to the goodness, and not brush over like a stuckist's paintbrush. he's actually using blood instead of acrylics- that's when i get running. wish i hadn't have done that. wish i hadn't. we "hadn't" too much, you know? i wish we had to have "hadn't" before it hadn't have been created. still my emotions are sold and i've cast a mold far too ugly to be a stupid cupid. can we get on with the show, please? no thank i've had enough cranberry pie for right now, maybe buttercup the parrot can have the rest? the cat hates water. then why is he swimming in the dog dish? i'm not complaining, just hesitating to say how i feel when i want it. yeah, i know you're looking at me make a sucker outta myself on your camera. all those poses weren't hard to accomplish but you aggrandize the bad and disregard that i actually have good talent after all. crazy 8s. thought i'd never compromise. thought i'd never make a sport out of tantalizing the shopkeeper's parakeet. yeah, they're playing that game everyone calls a bore cuz it is one. why not roast a marshmallow then find a salamander caught between the chocolate and the *******. and we can't have them crackers anyways cuz there's got gluten in them. can we take a walk, i have something to tell you? i have to tell you about my personal life. i don't care if you're bored. darwin was never bored, fyi. i don't want to hear your juvenile complaints anymore. you're always telling me your problems but you never let me talk. but why would you care? and no way am i gonna share? not there. still. you're still not coming around cuz you're crying and i can't take it anymore. stop the tears, i already told you just take another pill and you'll relax. your life can stop in a heartbeat because some freak told you to stop ******* with the power outlet and make an attempt on making it right. how am i gonna make it right? seems good to me to get up and go and never return. seems right to let it all hang lose and think of excuses as a way to win some money. i'm not the principle breadwinner around here, but i'd bake enough bread to feed an army if i had to. a whole cohort of emotional bigots who don't care anything about their stupid, money-******* societies. it's leveled to the drain again, yeah i know you don't understand. i'm done asking. please? do it for me? don't you know i'm hurting myself because... i'm not listening. don't you want to know i'm cutting my flesh because... i have to water the garden. oh dear what was that? whew! almost another collision with a bee. whew--another close one. what about the spiders in the cabbage bed? what why didn't you tell me? yeah, the cabbage patch has produced more memories than heads, and no not those types of heads. a mashup of what i hate most and what i hate least scourged outta me in a whirl. she's going to take a walk. the radio's on and it's hot in here. those maudy days of summer, but i love every shred of them like i do a coat in the winter. the radio's playing my song: doomsday magnificat! i like leather and metal combinations that are sold in a 60s oz town. you can tie and whip me if you conscience can, but not now. it's another adage gone to the birds. oh no the shopkeeper's parrot is out again and i didn't do it! how come i'm blamed for things i don't do? get over it. another fact of life. another testimonial head my way. dodge! that was a flying saucer that almost razed your head. you wouldn't care though because enough has happened today to make your head spin even faster than it already is. and they're real-live which makes me keeping fumbling my too-short curls disintegrated by sheer chauvinism and belated princeness. that's alright. i know how you feel. i know how the world feels because i am the world. and the world is my canvas. and i may dictate what you are allowed and i may waver onto what laws of principalities are shooting up everywhere, but it's okay 'cause there's a lot more to shoot than good time. and those wacked people can form an alliance and take down the stronghold because in reality, you know that you are wacked yourself to say that. i'm sorry you did. the world will keep spinning, snipers will keep killing, conservatives will keep protesting, parents will keep levitating, children will keep withholding, the days will keep heating, the pool will be more refreshing, and yeah mrs. renttib is still coming over. the world is new. and i am young. but we will all stay safe and good in this empyrean. because and i created it. and i established the surveillance cameras, which are everywhere, but don't feel pressed. yes, i'll forever watch your every move, and even though you've done good, i'll still send you to hell. because you belong there. you may begin now. make your tread strong yet gentle. it's not my expense, the water is cooler out here,
                                                                ­                             anyways.
i've had a rotten day, but i wasn't involved, rather- others force it upon me, for condolence's sake.

ah, you've got plenty to be thankful about so why bother complaining? i often try to analyze this, because my life isn't perfect and i'm often ****** into an uncomfortable state, even when i had nothing to do with it. this was written during (+ after) a family argument about help and those who shouldn't help us, and telling others first, and letting everyone know. i think it's better to keep it to yourself or see a psychologist than starting a whole mess like this again. i know people hate that i don't like opening up and sharing but i'm doing it for the good of everyone. i'm the breadwinner of myself; others will only make me file more tax returns, it seems! so i'm upset and nervous and kind of scared. i want to explore it in a different angle and if i have to be crass and confrontational to do it, i say "full speed ahead!"
phil roberts Sep 2015
He was mesmerized and she was scandalized
She was vexed and he perplexed
Somehow
Something happened then
In warm climates or somewhere
If he offers a change of address you can bear it
If he offers a new dress you can wear it
If he smiles you can count his teeth and look for gold
But it may be a lie
For nothing is real
Not really real

You must know this is a fact
It eases the pain
And sharpens perception
Incredible dreams
And this alone is true
So take pictures in your room
Capture an instant in the air
There may well be a reason for this
But it is not really real
Like words on the paper
A short-fall on truth
Nothing but pieces of vocabulary

Just count his teeth if he smiles
The bite marks would be jagged crescents
Can you stand that?
Perhaps we shall see
A rush job to the blood bank maybe
Deposit or withdrawal, sir or madam
Fearfully white and clean we say again
"Nothing is really real"
They laugh, all unbelieving
What do they know of jagged crescents?
Only nightmares trouble their truth

He will be bad and she will be sad
But I'm never sure of these things

                                           By Phil Roberts
Given its ethnikos factor and contribution towards a common origin of multiethnic and languages, in values and traditions, its morphological factors of Verthian sub-mythology, are provided with content, traits, colors, and neutrality, focused towards a biosphere ecosystem, where the air conditioning, flora-fauna will make Sub-mythological Biodiversity, where the beings that inhabit it and will be in the range of evolution of mythological living beings, in whose diversity of genetic seizure, they will adopt natural and compound patterns, but always predominant in the pattern biological and organic. Wandering around the world in desert places, in alloys and compounds of classified plants, emptying their species through the hollow of the atmosphere and through the green shoots of grasslands in the reviving surviving evolution of organisms and species that for the first time take a look as a biotype among rocks and plantations, reciprocally among themselves and extemporaneously generating heritages of mythological genetics.  Considering millions of years in evolution with explosions of multicellular and fossilized species extinct in massive and occlusive memories. Inert matter and geological strata will make millions of years converted into microseconds in the Verthian Biodiversity of the Duoverse, in a Psychic and spiritual Universe, emerging in all macroscopic perspectives and parapsychological regressions. Impact They will cause in the maturity of all the diversity of externality and sensations in new topologies of anonymous universes and species of biodiversity, under a pillar of culture based on the Sub-Mythological biosphere process, encompassing all mythological species where the hope of Life and Super life. Transforming systems of functionality under the protection of spontaneous generation and in a matter that is availably underlined in the mountainous tissues of the mechanics of the subset of the air mass, water, climatic biospheres, and biogeochemistry, that in the unreal juncture of and interprocedural reality of carbon, factor the species key and specimen disclosure, in the collection and in sinks, water drains but without carbon.

Hyperdisis, the galaxy connected to the Duoverso, in its biotic diversity, reinsert thick clumps of Nothofagus Obliqua forests, in waste processes, to domesticate the Leiak ethno-forest species, as balance nutrients and repair of the disgraceful disgrace of unnatural toxicity and fragile of the agrosystem, maturing cultures and preventive pollination in succulent transfers for purposes of food webs and the environment. Making the appearance of species more effective and perceptible, reunited in community chains of coherence, to amortize low-resource needs and distance economic-political impacts, in view of new base resources and the sustainability of balance of allopathic crops, for the good of driving extinction of plagues or flagrant excesses not reconverted, for compliance with the exercise of light beings as a parallel systematic contribution and ******-transmission of applicable inputs of quality of life and deflation of risk of biological cyclical deterioration.

Hyperdisis, has a mass of inert matter that creates accesses of resilience, for salinity, rainfall, and human adaptive mythological innovation, given its versatile opening of complement and generation of substances, for the convenience of living beings and No.  Having adopted in the context of mythological Galaxy, related to beings of light comparable to distant elements, by means of Psychic Trisomies and teleportation, for energy sources and soil and water mechanics with Leiak, constituting molecules for the simplification of phenomena of exacerbation of chronic and endogenous diseases. Forests and parks of Hyperdisis in the open and symbiotic, for more airs in microbiological space, in the intimate portion from highest to lowest challenge of proprietary elements and antinomies of hieratic human bioculturation in a showcase of communities with interest in technologies and empirical usability and renewable, each part doing its scientific and biodiversity role in the portico of its home. As a hieratic quality, presenting amendments that are glimpsed and more existent, although it passes before our eyes without the Carbon Footprint, figuring logical mathematics by sponsoring its count more than a shadowy synthetic body, anticipating super valuation measures, averaging them in tiny theological portions, with varied and dissimilar levels of genetic habitats and alleles or heterozygous in the taxonomic functionality of reproductive and biological approval elements. The richness and abundance of this item is delegated to Leiak, in all the revolutionary processes of the oak forests and of the high mountains, where Vernarth directs him and is condescending of his dynamics, from countless temporary revolutions of other species.

Within the gasifications of Cinnabar, there was Carbon in its Life cycle, being Zefián; the curator of the Duoverse, destined for a lifetime, under Universal and intergalactic effects.  Claiming innocent living beings with higher attributes of predation survival in the ecological chain, with the mix of Tsambika and Theoskepatis, granting multidirectional dynamic residual matter for green energy emissions. The feedback quantifies carbon circulation offset options, offsetting the multipurpose CO₂ inventory. At night Zefián and Vernarth roamed the streets of Rhodes, in Tsambika, looking for the distilled portions of the carbon and sulfur emanated by Cinnabar. In the same way Etréstles in Theoskepatis initiating with the Archpriest by virtue of the honors and the rubies of accumulations of water mass and of sulfur and carbonated air, which hung over the low sky of Rhodes and Kimolos. They were going to the Necropolis of Hellenika, when the gnostic rampages were glimpsed in the surrounding slab, minting half of the gold bars for the great goldsmith who erects the conventionality of having the physis imperturbably established, as a matter of patriarchal character. They entered Hellenika and the souls that were hanging around were ringed under the encrusted crescents, lavishing the independence of the night in the hands of Borker, which was reflected in the capitals of a mausoleum. Borker is consistent in saying that he is free in Hellenika, in the myth of the woodworm of the dustbin of the frieze where Etréstles perched next to the strap that Zefián, who would manipulate the gold and alabaster chain, to pull it and its ruby ascetics approaching a final night in the astronomical autumn, in the last parapsychological regression of the god Vertumnus, which would embody the expiration of the Hellenika friezes by Kashmar branches decayed from vegetation and the tears of the Etruscan god Vertumnus. Making the branches of the Kashmar the epithet of heraldry in the noble metals and woods of the autumn and mountainous temple of the one that follows the equinox in the meridian of seven days to the southern and northern hemisphere.

They enter the Hellenika Necropolis, through the upper and lower trays, cordoned off by obelisks in series of petrified ebels, in the square sections of the convergent ones and the linearity of the central pyramid, where they sponsored all the sectors of the stones of the prismatic geometric body, next to some piloneos that flanked the third of those that were in the figurative memory of funerary monuments of Vernarth. In harmony with the radiosities of the Cinnabar, they purged the carbon emanations in the intrabodies of petrified breaths, expanding in the segments of trepidating life of the behavior of the inert matter, crushed by the organic, polishing the degrading character of the excavated prayers, under a superfluous shadow. It was already dawn; Etréstles and the Archpriest were breaking the loaves to deposit them in the bowl of the Day, stretched out in the arms of heaven under the gargle of the god Vertumnus that he forged from the materiality of Jupiter. Vernarth nodded his head to the movement of the winds that cut the profile of a Yawning Citarist in the frieze that raises all the crowns of the princes of the living-dead, making them part of the royal occasion, preparing petty spaces and tyrannies for devouring vassals in Hellenika, Diogenes of Sinope is seen coming out from the lair of his rib, splitting with his doctrinal staff all the isthmic paroxysms, which declared the cell of his life as Diogiversity.

"There were murmurs of astonishment at the surprising response of the wise man because no one dared to speak like that to the king. Alexander asked: "Why do they call you Diogenes, the dog?", To which Diogenes replied: "Because I praise those who give me, I bark at those who don't give me and I bite the bad guys." Again, more murmurs, but Alejandro was undaunted by those responses and said: "Ask me what you want." So Diogenes, undeterred, replied: "Get away from where you are, you cover the sun for me" ..., Vernarth replied: "Look for him in the bones of those who refused to die and fear beyond expiration who rejoices in the cold of the dean skeleton seed, without heat or memory here in Corinth and its Diogiversity ”. Everyone is silent and fear takes hold of everyone in the sybarite contemplation of Alexander the Great ..., expropriating his speed more than a contempt for the cranium that is advocated for Vernarth "
Ethno-spirit and Biodiversity (Diogiversity) / part 14
L.
drenched in blue moonlight 
I admired her through
the sheet of smoke
in the gap between us

Carefully I
swayed and our arms
greeted with a gentle graze


"I tend to see the glass as half empty–
sometimes completely."

Sudden words drew me
like water from a well

A cigarette pinched by
the uneven crescents of her lips
pulsated, her sallow face
awash in a delicious red glow

"Either way, it's a beautiful glass,
isn't it?"

time nonexistent
She fumbled another
to a faintly open mouth
I lit it in silence
harlon rivers Jun 2018
.
Red sky at morning ...  sailors take warning !!!
First dawn's light steals away over the towering Cascade Head.
A heavy autumn dew dripped from the Whaler's bow rails
as sun rays  flashed like beacons from rain-forest  headlands on high;
where Pacific Northwest rivers September equinox dawning ebb
pushed us mercifully unto the chilling stiff autumn sea breeze.
Dappled sun reigning through the pinkish purple morning sky,
patchy fog adorning the awakening inshore headlands atop the bay,
shining from the pearly gate’s mission bells higher ground ,
beckoning another fisherman lost and found at sea come home...

Heaven’s lighthouse alerts the celestial sky
of the impending eminent soul journey,
highlighting the distant horizon’s breaking swells
capped of white meringue  sea foam.
Sea gulls escort precious cargo's final voyage,
gliding gracefully in the shadows of the firmament,
our lungs filled , revitalized with the salty air's poignant elixir
Pelican vanguard's white light reflection guiding our vessel seaward ,
alone in a perfect storm...

Northwest gales standing up the ebbing tide’s uprising crescents,
waves pounding in rhythmic flow;
calling all angels!   ― my ruminating mantra and plead
The Clatsop Spit’s dangerous song resounds the stark reminder,
life's raucous changing seasons, prevailing winds beckon
with the allure of siren’s call,
that now is nearly here ...

The countenance of flowing salty tears liberating release ,  
vast ocean's raw sheets of saltwater spray would not hide .
He just sat and stared at the seaward horizon
while the telltale tears flowed,  perhaps an unspoken dream
of a merciful final surrender with eyes wide open,
love steering our vessel west where sun shines to set ;
now far beyond the visible ache,  for mine own eyes blur
trepidation teardrops rained as sheets of frothing sea.

The wordless conversation known,  the compass full circle drawn  
like the sacred salmon's cycle ends to nourish back ancient sage
unto its own mandala ―  forever beginning life,  eternally drawn
through river estuaries ― stirred by ebbing infinite tidal pull ...

There is an oppressive weight found within paternal understanding,
and yet,  as certain as the dawn promises the inevitable setting sun ;
all things must pass as sure as all things begin ,
someone you love most,  longest in short life ,
has come forth to break bread at sea as the torch is passed ,
sharing life for the last time comes too soon ― with little warning ...

There was an emotional unidentifiable hollow pang brooding ,
as if letting go gradually,  yet potentially instantly,
that drains every last drop of a breaking heart ache ;
waning strength swallows down hard ― stifled sighs ― lumps in throats, words better left unsaid ― only cleansing tears flow, knowing when they start to purge,  they might not want to stop again.

This moment's final autumn’s changing season’s waning ebb
That final riptide will forevermore change all other rivers’ flow
where oceans set mother earth's rivers free until the end of time ...

My father ― a man's man who seemed to find a peaceful Zen ;
an unfinished life was reborn that day to see it through
as my hands grasped the wheel , compass held steady.
The son to carry on the weight of love and compassionate understanding ;
love born in the blood inspired the fortitude to carry on.
As a life flashed before my eyes on that final raging Pacific sea,
instincts mused by ancient Tyees’ souls stirred drawning sun's
radiant rays of perception ;  accepting this life on earth
would never be the same but would just simply be ,
knowing this light's shine will never glow quite the same again ,
yet radiate a more deeply vivid luminosity...

We melded into that first day of Autumn,
falling silent , and yet our heads held high
There was nothing left to be done but pray with eyes wide open

“spirits of all oceans of mother earth …
show the sacred salmon's tragic heroism, the way back home to peaceful waters”

Few words were spoken as everything was silently said.

"To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose,
under Heaven"

The Outrage cleaved the surging Pacific's heave, knuckles white,
the wheel held sway,  climbing mountainous long ocean swells
breaching the south jetty's giant boulder walls ;
there rolls the mighty Columbia jaws,
where all Rivers suffuse with vast oceans, eternally free ...


.... Harlon Rivers    .... September 22nd . 2013
Post Script:
With fondest loving memories of my father's life and times shared~
So much of this day's memory is deeply repressed and each year I try to free a little bit more but each year passed has been privately circle filed, yet I try again to be set free..   Purging emotions so intense that they are nearly blacked out... I did not realize the basis of depth until later private moments... It was in fact the day of the Autumn Equinox a few years ago,  a final birthday celebration of sorts combined with bringing the Boston Whaler Outrage, home.   Dad passed 1 week later after this trip from Pancreatic cancer ...we spend the final 72 hours alone together at Hospice after his birthday..."Crossing Over"

Not unlike myself, there was an inherent restlessness to my father. We found a peace, unlike any other ― one with nature. He used to like to say he felt at home on the ocean. He went out as many as 30-40 miles alone on the rare occasion the Tuna came that close to the NW Oregon ― SW Washington coast...That may not seem like much in land miles, but you cannot see land from that distance and the Columbia River's confluence with the Pacific Ocean is known as one of the most dangerous bar crossings in the world. I thought Dad's life would have a very different ending...this one never crossed my mind, letting go is far more difficult than hanging on ― rivers


June 18th, 2017   Fragments of the Sea
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1954243/fragments-of-the-sea/

June 12th, 2012:  Memories of My Father's Traces...
A tribute to my father ...  
https://hellopoetry.com/poem/1995383/traces-of-youa-fathers-tribute/

Thank you for reading ― have a great summer :)
vy  Sep 2013
crescents.
vy Sep 2013
how many stars will have to die
because I have wished them all away so
I can experience the darkness and agony you feel
inside whenever I look up at the night sky .

And I am so sorry to you.
To the nights you spend with your hands
clasped tight around your ears because you cannot
stand the sound of my voice trying to get through to
you so you can see me as your lover.

Puffy eyelids and a red nose that have developed
due to your allergy to pollen since you are forced to
stand outside our apartment day
after day scared to come inside to me because you
feel indebted I am sorry,
as well.

For it is not your fault that you don’t remember me
like I remember you and
you forgetting how that tiny scar behind your knee formed
and it bothers you so much now that you have invested
precious dollars into various cosmetics to have it hidden
then faded away. When you used to cherish
that scar and trace it when looking at mine.
Mine.

The scar that is identical to yours
on the tip of my index finger you don’t
remember it’s history so how could I
expect you to recognize me.

How could I expect things to
go back as it was and for us to love
like we did I shouldn't expect much.
But I do.
Mitchell Sep 2012
Careening moonlight
You show me what I once
Thought was right
I drink now for the sake of mankind
The bullet casings reflect the
Sun as the wine in my cup
Sloshes from right to left and
My own life is not my own -
A price to pay for theft

I love you
You make me
The way I am
And I press my mind
To these keys
And realize everything and
Nothing in the end will
Be alright

In solitude
I pray to creation
Seeing that life is merely
A bottle
And when its empty
It ain't worth a ****

Tasting the stars in their
Brilliance of absence
I recollect my own upbringing
And remember my hallow mother
Singing her nightly hymns

But to begin with memories are
To step in the backgrounds of
Imaginations personal horrors, own borrows,
The lonely tunnels of a city long since dead
That instead of exhaling we try
Inhaling; pressing Death right back

I am young
I am old
I am a story
That has already
Been told

Yet I
Live on

I smile

I smell the scents
Of a world gone and
Past and taste at last

The current of the river
The wind of the crass

A life that has
Already ended

But has no ambition  

To Pass

Self held in my own vices
The upstate prices of page to brain
Makes me shutter as the gutter
Winces in its realizations of the brandishing
Blade of the horses with their war

My existence presses Her finger upon
The broken page of the unstoppable cops
Where I stop to think where then my
Life - though good - has spoiled quite abrupt

Oh to obey in sun struck love
Where the only thing that is real is above
But anything I recall I forget
A smile that says to me "not yet"

I once thought I was close
But see now
I am so far away
If asked to stay
I don't know what I'd say

Each countless pride
Has its side
Just like the ocean in Her majesty
And unseen tides

Again

I slip into a smile
A false breathe
As I take my body back
In high stealth

Asking myself
*What exactly

Is the matter?
"Everyone wants to be a little anorexic" she says

"You know, like, in a glamorous way, like fashion friendly anorexic"

I bite my cheek and nod, pretend to agree

All I can think of is waking up to stars dancing on the ceiling

Pale skin with bruises of unknown origins

And battered feet on and off the scale

Almonds in Ziploc baggies

Bite marks on fingers

Hair down the drain

Measuring crunches by the marks they leave on your spine

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough water to turn organs into boats

Eating an apple with a fork and knife

Desperate hands grasping for ribs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Standing and the world going dark

Coughing around shots of apple cider vinegar

Carrying an emergency rice cake for weak spells

And battered feet on and off the scale

Enough green tea to drown organs

Sugar free gum to mask the smell of decaying organs

Whatever nail polish covers yellow and purple

And battered feet on and off the scale

How many calories are in toothpaste

Thinspo blogs

Pillows squeezed between thighs

And battered feet on and off the scale

Is today the day my heart gives out

Waking every day in a new body

Fingers clasped around wrists

And battered feet on and off the scale

Notebooks filled with numbers

Purple crescents under eyes

Fingers clasped around forearms

And battered feet on and off the scale

Elbows knocking into hipbones

Being scared of your own reflection

Lies to get out of dinner

And battered feet on and off the scale

The stench of *****

Oxygen that tastes of Splenda

Fingers clasped around biceps

And bleeding feet on and off the scale

 

If this is your idea of glamour

Then you can have it
Trigger Warning

— The End —