~Many people rely on the convenient, easy ways of living in this age of fast food, plastic packaging and rapid development. Most people do not care to see why they live the way they do or what it takes to live in such a way. Toxic pollutants leaching into our earth and water should not be worth the convenience! Third world women working in dusty, cramped factories to make designer purses for fifteen year old girls. Garbage is America’s biggest export and it ends up in China, on the coast of Somalia... anywhere that American citizens won’t be bothered to see it.

~What does it mean to buy a pack of plastic razors? Some metal, some chemicals, some plastic, more plastic for packaging. Use a razor a few times and toss it in the garbage. Somewhere, maybe at La Chureca, someone will pull the rusted metal and plastic from the landfill. They might make one US dollar per day collecting scraps of aluminum, glass, plastic and other scrap metals. What does it mean to wear deodorant? The plastic stick isn’t reusable. The ingredients are highly toxic. Aluminum-based antiperspirants have been linked to Alzheimer's and cancer. Soap comes in plastic bottles, coffee makers made of plastic, water bottles made of plastic… hell, my plastic shower curtain came wrapped in plastic packaging.

~Americans are lucky. Indoor plumbing with quality water. Green lawns and exotic flower beds. Buy and use, throw away and repeat. Big corporations pay off politicians to pollute. Industrial waste, land erosion, low air quality, pesticides. Why are we so quick to trust an artificial sweetener being promoted by a company that makes poison? They call you a hippy, a conspiracy theorist. They tell you that you only live once and to stop being so worried about it all. I ask them, how can you look away? Deforestation and destruction are all around. Those that profit are not concerned with what happens to the land after the loggers and miners have left the ground scarred and desolate.

~Modern living is a hoax. Yeah, you get around quick in your car but at what cost? Carbon dioxide, greenhouse gasses choking us and everything alive that lives with us and cannot speak. Can’t you walk to the corner store? Can’t you grow a few things in the garden or in the windowsill? When was the last time you saw a sunset and didn’t take a picture of it? Dairy cows packed together so tight they can’t turn around for your glass of milk. The disconnect is everywhere. Overpopulation. Overconsumption. People don’t care.

~They can choose. They can choose paper over plastic. They can buy a water filter instead of 20 plastic bottles. They can bike to work. Anyone can lessen their impact, anyone can think more deeply and live more sustainably. But we’ve made it so easy to be lazy. We’ve become so dependent that we’re forgetting to use technological gains to make the way we do things better. We’ve come so far that we’re forgetting what brought us here.

~

‘We are slaves in the sense that we depend for our daily survival upon an expand-or-expire agro-industrial empire – a crackpot machine – that the specialists cannot comprehend and the managers cannot manage. Which is, furthermore, devouring world resources at an exponential rate.’ Edward Abbey

‘In the developing world, the problem of population is seen less as a matter of human numbers than of western overconsumption. Yet within the development community, the only solution to the problems of the developing world is to export the same unsustainable economic model fuelling the overconsumption of the West.’ Kavita Ramdas

‘Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.’ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

‘Globalisation, which attempts to amalgamate every local, regional, and national economy into a single world system, requires homogenising locally adapted forms of agriculture, replacing them with an industrial system – centrally managed, pesticide-intensive, one-crop production for export – designed to deliver a narrow range of transportable foods to the world market.’Helena Norberg-Hodge

‘Throughout history human exploitation of the earth has produced this progression: colonise-destroy-move on.’ Garrett Hardin

...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

I am an artist of love
and I am painting
a canvas over a canvas,
A colour over a colour,
A vision over a vision
And a scenery over a scenery
Thinking...
That maybe someday
I paint a perfect picture
But every time I tried
A colour merged with another
A knife scrapped a brush stroke
A vision embedded in another
And the scenery lost its form
'Twasn't the one I had erased
Nor the one I had planned
Neither the hues of the past
Nor the ones coveted by tomorrows
But somewhere in the middle
A blend of all.
With the fragrance of fresh and old paint,
A scenery with the meadows in hues of the sea
A morning sky painted like a blue-black starry sky
And somewhere in between the leaching colours
Was my bleeding heart!
Somewhere between the layers
I was standing still in love.

(c) Dr. Prerna Singla.

The blood vats
Stirring clotting goo
A tepid sticky stew
Crimson mess
Spilt on the floor
The hungry goblins
Gulping the pulpy gore
Plasma swimming
In spider web veins
The dripping fluid
Sticking to you
Soaking through
The stained washcloth
Swirling in the warm bath
Cloudy dispersion
Smoky mass
Dark diluting
And disappearing
Through time
And loss
So here we are
Generations of
Vampire blood
Leaching the life force
Spreading the plague
And bleeding
Life from one generation
To the next

Gnashing of teeth,
Tearing of vestments
Crematory waste
Smeared upon my face.
Angst

God has died,
A wanton suicide
Her ******* children
Now run this place.
Angst

***** stained covers
Adulterous lovers,
Depart smiling,
Not hiding their Faces.
Angst

Wounded skies bleed
On terra infirma indeed
It’s poison leaching  
Into bubbling brooks.
Angst

Bonita Muerte
Erasing the pain
Setting the corpses
On the pyres again
Angst



AD

I dreamed
there was a evil man
searching for wealth
beyond all riches
hidden in the hardened
sculpture of a woman
there was a hero too
I could not see his face
he journeyed to a sacred cave
to guard the precious treasure

he climbed inside
the statue's hollow center
and held the treasure to his chest
where it radiated
with such intensity
he had to close his eyes
it gently pulsed in his hands
calming the anxiousness
leaching sour
in his throat

the villain
shrouded black
entered the cave
a belligerent pirate
yelling obscenities
where are you *****?
when I find you, you'll be sorry
you think you can hide from me?
no one will ever love you
the way that I do

his craven hunger upon seeing
the lost prize glowing heavenly
beneath sapphire stalactites
left this dreamer cold
he began to tear
at the sculpture's *******
with hands encased in forged steel
spiked fingernails slicing
until shimmering gold bloomed
in the statue's chest

zealously the villain tore deeper
molten yellow dripped
from his over-eager fingers
when suddenly from the center
came a flash of scorching fire
the villain dissolved to ash
without a single sound
the hero too transformed
into a luminous bird
not unlike a phoenix

he shook fresh wings
flexed honed talons
raised his crested head
and from hooked beak
there came a sound
like a choir of voices singing
the hero flapped three times
and soared out of the cavern
into the bluest sky
I'd ever seen

Dear  School,

I hope you’re doing well even though you made me absolutely hate myself and made me feel like if I didn’t get good grades that I wasn’t worth any of your time or attention. We’ve had so many memories together, none of which I want to relive, all of which reduce me to tears. My favourite part was when you’d ask me for my opinion and if my opinion wasn’t the same as yours then you best believe I’d either get shut down or punished.

When I first met you, you told me you’d love me with all your heart. You even talked to my parents and promised them that you wouldn’t disappoint. You sold yourself to my parents and they looked at you like you were worth exactly five hundred thousand bucks (not including all the “romantic” trips you made me pay for). The fact that you promised me more than you could afford should have been a warning signal but I couldn’t see past your charming demeanour. Our relationship was always ups and downs, but lately, it’s gotten a lot worse, and by lately I mean the past two years.

I gave you solutions but you ended up just giving me more problems. Our relationship was a lot of give and take, except the only thing you were giving me, was bad food and mental breakdowns. And the only thing you’d do that was remotely close to taking something from me was leaching off of my successes and money for your benefit.  

I would wander into your bathroom stalls on the verge of a panic attack, time and time again, and even if you noticed, you were really good at ignoring it. You got what you wanted because of my hard work, but I’m still the one who ended up getting more depressed. Isn’t it funny how I’m supposed to miss you, yet everyone that’s left you is so much happier without you? You never listened to my problems, you never cared about my mental health, and you never wanted anything good for me (and if you did, your actions never showed it), you were like the toxic boyfriend I never asked for.

You were so good at showing us off to the public which is probably why I still stayed with you, you put me in newspapers when I did well and your empty eyes danced with lies and a smile crept across your face when you met my parents. My parents loved you so much. My parents would praise you and I let them because how could I tell them that I hated you, that I didn’t want to be with you anymore when you deceived them with all your manipulative tricks. You weaved a web of deception and trapped more and more victims, but you were never satisfied you always wanted more.

I cried to my parents, one day, telling them that I couldn’t get myself out of bed to go to you again, that every minute I spent with you took a toll on my mental health. That I couldn’t be with you no matter how much I tried, but of course the blame came back on me. They would ask me how I couldn’t appreciate you when you took such good care of me. They asked me how I couldn’t appreciate you when you displayed my name across a wall, with numbers scribbled beside name as if I was a barcode number for a new product on the market. Before my parents could confront you, you had already called them and told them that you were concerned about me, that you were just trying to save me from myself, that you loved me. Then why didn’t I feel loved, if you loved me so much then why didn’t you do anything when you saw that I was struggling, why did you ignore all my cries for help, why did you turn me against my own parents.

I wish I could leave you but I’m tied to you with these invisible strings that have cut deep into my ankles and wrists, I will never really get rid of you, the scars will always stay. I can’t leave you, a part of me doesn’t even want to because you’ve brought so many amazing people into my life, and I reminisce about the first years of our relationship when we were madly in love. I remind myself of the times you took me on trips, surprised me with ice cream, and all your spontaneous outbursts of speeches that left me more in love with you even when I was mad. My friends say I don’t give people enough second chances, well, this time I’m giving you 228 more, so please don’t make me regret it.

I will still love you no matter how many times you make me feel worthless because how can I ever stop loving someone I’ve spent seven years with.

Thanks for everything,

sad gal

Man is  born unto the  rainbow of opportunity.
The dazzling palate before him as he draws his  first infant breath.
Perfect and untainted, this tiny being as he  enters this vast world.
His only purpose being his very existence.
The sheer wonder of this colourful land in which he finds himself.
A world of moments, of sounds.
Of touch and scents.
Of visual exploration through those eyes that have yet seen no horror.
Skin that has yet to feel physical pain.
Soft and unspoilt as he nurses close to his mother.
Skin not yet a fortress behind which he will hide many ills.
A skin that will learn to shrivel in shame.
Harden in the face of fear, like armour.
And wilt  in the absence of love.
Bloom  turning from rosy red to sepia.
For though man is born unto the rainbow.
The horror of humanity is diligent on his heel.
It’s hulking cape of  blackness, angst and despair.
As man destroys all he has been given in nature.
Turning his hand then against his fellow species.
Born into a roiling sea of corruption, control  and greed.
Where the myriad of healing greens,
Of mysterious purples and creative oranges,  lost forever.
Their brilliance fading like an aged tapestry in sunlight.
Turning to browns and greys.
Leaching their beauty through a lifetime.
Until there becomes only  blackness.
Until his is the dark heart of despair.
Bleached and brittle like driftwood on a desolate beach.
Washed up and empty.
The human condition and its agonies too much to bear.

I'm not the oldest, the middle, the second, or the only child
I'm the lonely child
The child by itself
No friends, no love
I'm a prisoner in my own body
In my own mind
1 and 2
Look at you
By yourself
Feel pity for you
Not the oldest, but the youngest
This is for time
Climbing bridges
Climbing your own life
Staircase sinks underneath
No one comes for you
Sirens in the distance
Sirens run past
Parents screeching
Emotion leaching
Preachers preaching
And here I stand
In the empty land
In my head
Falling instead

tea leaves sit soggy, sad
forgotten  at the bottom

of the cup

leaching, bitter tannins
now, forgetting the life they led

no one willing to read their fortune
no spilling of the secrets
they never truly had

just detrius now
from dust to dustbin
the cycle of a tea leaf
long or brief,
happy or sad
a parable, in hot water

once green and lush in colour
in essence, verdent's liquid fame
once used and now just *******
every life has limit, every limit claimed
as we sup, we suffer the race of time
running through our fingers

clamouring at our mind

one day we too,
will be *******
waiting for the dust,
one day we too
shall leach our liquids
in the unforgiving  dust