I hope this is the last set of letters
Because I am so tired
Of hanging onto these things that
Happened so long ago now
And allowing other people
To have this type of control over me
I love myself now and
That really is an amazing thing
I didn't even like myself back then
I couldn't even comprehend the idea
That I could care about myself this way
And that's exactly the reason
Why all of these past occurrences
Suffocate my thoughts so much
Because I cannot fathom how
People who claimed they loved me
Could treat me the way they did
How I could let them
Use me and
Abuse me and
Manipulate me to such a degree
Where I stayed in those conditions
For much longer than I should have
The reason I haven't let go yet
Has nothing to do with my exes
It has to do with the ways in which
I allowed important people
Those who I shared love and a life with
To hurt me so deeply
It is not about the people
It is not about their names
It is not even about the individual love
It is solely about me and
The love I carry for myself now
And my own inability to comprehend
How I could hurt myself so much
By letting other people
Actively hurt me so much

2-[[4-[(7-Chloro-4-quinolyl)amino]pentyl]ethylamino] ethanol sulfate

Sulfate- dry collision with salty white plaster, plaster walls, my plaster teeth in the palm of my plaster hand, the same palm you touched nervously with your fingertips, when your translucent skin showed we have the same blue veins, you with no love line. I’ve ran into walls, trees, dead ends, bursts of hail, but worst of all– you

Ethanol- black liquid gas,a nozzle in my car engine, fracked through my exhaust(ion) burn my esophagus like sweet ginger ale gin, double chin. I’m drunk, so I’m seeing double. Re/frac/tion.

Ethylamino- alcohol: a drizzle in a rainstorm, i can’t contain myself, exploding inside a glass bottle. a defective windshield wiper, reprocessing my words: “ethyl and coke tastes like cough syrup”, I say. either or, neither will help me.   ethyl as fuel is not safe to drink
ethyl as alcohol is not safe either. swirled away in a plastic whirl.

Pentyl- discovered in a collision of ultra violet light with argon, noble gas. overdose symptoms include convulsions (check), drowsiness (check), headache (check), difficulty breathing (check), vision problems, (check). But not for the reasons, or for the causes, I’ve listed.

Amino- building blocks to a withered corn husk of my body. 9 essential amino acids. Find them in your grocery store: egg whites, lysine in sunfish, cod, dolphinfish but please, no mercury. Maybe I have 1 left, maybe 2, after each labored breath entrapped by porcelain walls, cool on my forehead, warm on my hands, dampened dew on fingertips with pressure on my skin, sewer raindrops on my nose, now i’m so good (to you) I can upheave my 7 other amino acids on demand. No more dew on this fluorescent skin, I've always been too artificial to be compared to nature

Quinolyl- you are created by the removal of one hydrogen atom. I am created by the induction of two. This is how we are similar: exposed to light, we change. Your ancestry proceeds you, impurity in a chemical science, derivative of quinoline, which is a derivative of coal tar. you are an dye, a resin, parasites feed on your smell. I lust on your parts, **** out your solubility, desecrate your elements. I own you, don’t think you own me.

4- one milligram less than what disintegrates on the tongue's bitter perception, each night

Chloro- back stroke, breast stroke, my favorite is dead man’s float. inflamed skin, cracked elbows, an allergy

7- years since you’ve been with me, although I own you, you do not own me.

4- exponent of the previous, the total sum of pop art pills by night’s end. sometimes I forget.

2**- the number of techno-colored candies in the morning

A body is made up of chemicals

hours drip slowly
onto a taunting empty page
the soul’s depictions brushed simply

a palette of whispered words
dry as if it were thoughts painted
onto a tightly stretched canvas

it's been said so many times before
                   similes,...
     form clots at the tip of the quill
                    words,...
finally surrendering to gravity’s flow
as the ink scribes the paltry ruminations;
flooding the same stifled notions
another way into another moment

metaphorical sleights of hand
incarnate onto the absolving
       sheet of parchment;
traces of past now’s ensconced
       in considered words

        miles of silent reverie,
                     spun,...
        like a spider reprocessing,
        carefully savoring
        each fine silk thread of web,

        spinning the womb of time...

© H.A.  Rivers 2012 … All Rights Reserved

Plenty of sleep, no more tv, the wars in the Middle East
are resource wars, disguised as religious debates.
So Dad would say.

A beautiful winter day, hunting
season. A Gun In Every Home, in light of U.S. mass shootings
seems an irresponsible poem. 10K clicks

most popular poem on line, NRA enthusiasts and conservative
talk show hosts quoting it. Not really, no worries, poetry
makes nothing happen. Which is something, magic.

               *                     *                     *

I wonder if I'll have to someday defend that poem,
as in a Russian or Chinese show trial, Salem witch trial,
McCarthy anti-American committee or a college
political correctness safety hearing. Oh well.

What does it mean? Doc Wiseman says that's not how we decide
things in this country, lynching and chasing people with dogs.
You'd think twice about bombing Iran if Iran had the bomb.
Assume a defensive posture.

I've been reading Walzer's
Just and Unjust Wars, much like explaining how to tie your shoes,
or teaching an artificial intelligence to walk, talk
and think about God.

               *                     *                     *

The citizenry doesn't need weaponry sufficient to win a war,
just enough to give pause during its normal pursuit of pleasure
(hunting deer on a beautiful, clear winter morning).

Hunting and gathering and agriculture, local and small
or these almonds I'm eating from California's Imperial
Valley and all the water it took to grow 'em.

Slowly
          drip irrigation
                               takes hold.

Technologies
such as the Anasazi and other aborigines used are uploaded
for sustainable survival.

Much good goes with the bad,
school shootings with school science shows, art shows and
      Shakespeare's plays.
How to stop the unhappiness of ISIS

those lonesome souls from interfering with the evolution
of the species? With love. What did Christ mean
(and what did Wallace Stevens mean by imagination)?

               *                     *                     *

Accept (but contain).
Trust (but verify). Ha ha! Reagan was a pretty funny guy.
It must bother a president, a regular fellow who'll pack his suitcase and
      go back
to Iowa when his term is up, to know he's ordered the death
of a janitor on the night shift at a nuclear reprocessing plant
in a proportional response to a mullah's anger. Jurors

in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev
have sentenced him to death. For his role in killing four people
and wounding hundreds more. There was no visible reaction
from Tsarnaev, 21, in the quiet courtroom.
Justice. In his own words "an eye for an eye."
Survivor Jared Clowery said he was happy not to have had to make the
      choice between life and death himself but he stands behind the jury's
      decision.

"There's nothing happy about having to take someone's life."
Good people without guilt or gloating. Yet
my thought was now we must forego the possibility of knowing
this young man's mind. There's still time to ask him questions
as in Dead Man Walking. To understand is to love
requiring the patience of the scientific method.

               *                     *                     *

Yesterday's single greatest joy
was solving the equation
T = 2π(r3/GMe)½
for Haley's comet orbiting
the sun.

And sitting in the sun
on a winter day.

I wrote to Santa last year
to tell him what I wanted.

Instead of the mountain bike
I was expecting, he brought

me a large canvas bag full
of refuse for reprocessing.