'I want to eat you,' he said with his eyes closed.
'Why?' Still, even though she was afraid-unfathomably afraid, she was infatuated with him; this creature so terrifyingly comely that she was sometimes scared of it-she could not then help peering into his bright face; its exquisite whiteness was dauntingly mysterious, but again full of indecipherable words-just like a dangerously emotionless sea; which could but turn tempestuous in the course of just one shadowy second.
'You're simply too tempting to me,' he replied after what seemingly very careful thinking; this time with his lips coming nearer to hers, until his breath she could see emanate in bold wreaths of white, pearly bits; bits of ice-lifeless, and tender whilst in handfuls, but at times heartless with their cold souls.
She reflected on the answer for a while, then slowly formed a thoughtful smile around her lips. 'Then where would I be, if you ate me?'
'Within my soul, my blood, and all the length, mirth, and the very crown of my heart,' he uttered the last two words confidently, before further lurching straightly forward to bestow a playful kiss on her trembling lips.
'Ah, but still it won't be the same, my love,' she cupped his cheeks with her cold hands and whispered to him quietly, when they finally pulled away. 'I would no longer be here by your side. And as you have but stated before, you surely like having me here alive better than dead, don't you?' She let out a deep breath, and showed a flirtatious grin so captivating that he wanted to kiss her once more. And possibly mesmerize her. Startle her. Eat her. Partake of her. Consume her. Conquer her. Possess her. Tear her. Tear her apart. Tear all her senses apart. Break her up. Break her body up. Break it up into nothingness. Until she was nothing. Entirely nothing. No more of anything of herself but what he had. Nothing but what he owned. And secretly desired. And had always longed for. Nothing but he possessed; and treasured within his very body; and its very own capricious cells. But still eventually, be her everything; or simply, be everything to her. Be everything she ever wanted. Everything she desired. Everything she wished. Everything she, with all her human weaknesses, ever eagerly wanted him to be. Or to do.
'Don't worry, still it will be the same,' he caressed her hair with his free right hand and kissed it. And when she became puzzled by this tauntingly obscure remark, he explained, 'It will still indeed be the same, and will forever be the same, because you will dwell within me, and thus within my heart will be carved your name. So that you're the sole torch that keeps my flame. And the mere lamp that lights my soul. The medicine that heals my wounds. The very deeds of my desires. All the merriment of my days. And the very light that is thrown onto my ways.' He stopped and sighed for a while, before continuing, 'Thus, on top of all that, you will still own the same brand of addiction-to which my entire being is addicted to. Really addicted to. Incurably addicted to-as I will never be able to continue to live without it. I will prefer death, and cherishing a gruesome life among the dead, to having you not within my being-just like I will be if I ever consume you not. So within me,' he took her hand and pressed it against his chest, 'there shall be nothing but satisfaction,'-he stepped closer into where she was standing, 'with having you within me; so your soul shall blend, and merge but perfectly into mine, querida. And such is an occurrence I shall never regret; even if I eventually have to eat you.' Having proposed these last two words, he closed his eyes again; before launching his body right onto hers, and this time missing not planting his fangs onto her shoulder.

You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth
and the world at your feet
always taunting me
dauntingly
you held out the spoon
dripping in your spit
I held out my tongue
and prayed for rain
to soothe the pain
of thirst
but never tasted it

And your tongue tasted more like iron
and your touch felt like steel
and so sharp and cold
against the dry of my skin
my sin
you loved to hold
and stole
away from me
the overprotective mother
of a child you *****
and praised

You told me we'd dance
but it felt more like pulling
like swinging
like violently orbiting 'round
the sun you're too well aware you are
you are
bound to burn out before too long

bathe me, cleanse me, shave me
make me
everything you want to take me
touch me
beat me
anything
any kind of embrace will do
will you?

The soft whirling hum of a fan works its way from one corner of the room to the next. I succumb, defeated, deflated, shoulders slouched over, to passing wafts of air that briefly foam over the drooped skin of my emotionless face. Its touch invigorates the senses, momentarily reminding me to take in a breath of the foul and arid air that lingers lifelessly in this second story bedroom. As a sliver of light makes its way slowly up my chest and falls back to its original place, a muffled sound of pain boils over slowly softly searing through my torpid ears. Meanwhile, transparent tendrilous hands of memories begin to curl through my mind appearing and quickly vanishing like steam before I can grasp the true gravity of their presence.
        It must be ninety seven degrees in here. A drop falls from my face onto the back of my clenched hand and for a moment the fan is at it again pulling my head with it from side to side. Oscillating, it dictates a hypnotic lullaby, an ***** riddled rhythm sanding away at my rigid thoughts. Another drop falls toward my wrists driving me away from the blissful moment. Then losing its grip a metallic clang reverberates throughout the room as the object leaves my hand and finds the old wooden floor. Looking back at my hand I see where the two drops had fallen, now glistening in the dimly lit room. Were those tears? When I direct my sight down to meet with whatever had fallen a rush of blinding pain jaggedly inhibits my vision with a flaming wall of white instinctively calling my eyelashes into the backs of my eyelids painfully. My voice cracks and I hear the same singe of grief from earlier reflect ballistically throughout the room and into the hallway where ghosts gargle back an echo of my anguished voice. Am I hurt?
        Afraid now of what I may have done,I cautiously work my foot away from the chair and navigate it across the floor until it hits the handle of something sending it spinning around. Reaching down, the once trance like hum of the fan falls deaf and gives way to a steady beat of drips that are accompanied by an ever increasing tightening of my chest. When I reunite with the object I had dropped the image of blood and steel mesh a murderous hue onto my fingers as I fumble to recover it. Realizing what has happened my mind fizzles and pops with panic and I begin to beg for respite, for a chance to revisit the moment before I had slit open both wrists. Cold anguish flushes the heat from the room and out into the hall as the dam of reality breaks and in with it a torrent of emotions and images of the blood peppered hardwood floor that now seeps dauntingly with the new life it is drinking. In desperation my eyes fire off in every direction, finding an open journal perched on a coffee table. The pages are in a fretful fury revealing pages dotted with smudges and smears of bloodied ink and teary paragraphs. Confused, I begin to search the room again and there beneath the window blinds lies the woman I have loved for eleven years lifeless in a pool of blood. Lorraine.
        My head lashes violently backward as if to howl toward the moon of time in an attempt to beckon the falling grains of sand to return to me what had once been mine. A sobering clarity strikes me and I begin to recall the events that led up to this moment. Beginning with a distressed phone call from Lorraine. I came,I told you I would come. And then I recall the strange feeling that scaled through my body slithering down my arm until it coiled its nervous grip around my fingertips as they bit into the **** of our bedroom door. As it creaked open, I had thought, I'm here baby, but you were already gone. Lorraine. It took what felt like hours to reach the part of the journal where you had confessed your infidelity that resulted from the tangles of promises I never kept, from the things I hadn't done, and should have said. Oh Lorraine why didn't you tell me. I would have changed, would have done anything for you. I'm so sorry,I forgot, I hadn't noticed. After seven years I thought you knew, but I will show you now. I will give you my life as you had given yours. I would have forgiven you ******, they were only kisses that meant nothing. Lorraine...and then nothingness.
        A grey shadow in a once enraged Congo of colors and emotions in an otherwise empty room now fill my eyes until I'm choking on its thick smoke and drowning in tears. When one of those tears fall, this time on my bloodied wrists I'm called back to the present moment. Once more the fan catches my sight directing me toward your lifeless body, and then a warm hand from the deepest recesses of my mind begins to cradle my shoulder. Lorraine. My eyes flutter open and find you placing a kiss on my forehead as you say something sweetly into the soft embrace of night. The scent of your hair bristles around my cheek and ears while you caress the short hairs along the ridges of my neck. All I can manage in the moment is to pull you in closer as I whisper "I'm sorry Lorraine. I love you. I can show you." A tear catches a lock of your hair as you kiss my lips and with your love I am drawn back into our bed and out away into sleep.

******.
     Dauntingly so.
Haunting light.
     Emits,
From hazy heads.

It is vice versus virtue, in vindictive victories,  laden in vanity, as venial villainy, intervenes in the memes of the idolatry, that dauntingly hangs from branch-less trees, vetted out, and stripped by thieves, as only on our knees we breathe, in peace.

... a lamentable natural disaster ―
no one really ever understood
the uncomfortable loneliness they read,
left unsaid,  in the silence between the lines

Gathered words often revealed
an awkward vulnerability
a life tethering by a frayed thread
unable to shed the skin that enfolds
the dauntingly misunderstood laments

Suspended at friendless crossroads
melancholy days of malignant indifference
stifle the whispered thoughts,
"accepting an unfinished life"
evanescent as the faltering light,
musing many a sleepless night

It’s as if there was always some wordless reason
to never feel "good enough" to just be,
unworthy to discover elusive love,
cleave a labyrinth out of the darkness,
okay to just let go

It’s not a weakness to be human
"Tears are the heart’s traces" … he once wrote
"only eyes cleansed by teardrops see clearly"
heaven's rain unconditionally enlightened
by love and light.

Someone said a poet died
trying to make sense
out of all he thought he'd given
a word at a time was left behind
only abandoned words remain
                             orphaned in the drowning silence


                                      harlon rivers ©

Story after story
Displayed on stories upon stories
Of multiple library floors
In large spacious rooms

Levels of fiction
Nonfiction
Mystery
Poetry

On and on they go
Lined on shelves dauntingly high
Or Child-level low
Artful as featured works in museums

We congregate with hushed voices in examination
Yet we can touch them
We are invited to
We can reach out and remove a piece of history

From the ancient days of scrolls
To the modern pages
We pull them from their places
To discover the wonders within

Sharing in the joy that emanates
From the joining of imaginations
A connection so powerful
It unites the hearts of strangers

We lose ourselves for hours
In our favorite chapters
With our beloved characters
Whom we come to love as precious friends

Reading ignites the imaginative powers of the self
And it all begins by pulling a book off of a shelf

Its nefarious arrogance, that's scaring grandparents, but its in the air and I'm airing it, as we are seeing all the signs, but just staring at them.

Somehow there is safety as an arian, where we are safely alien to  Americans made in sapient sanitariums, shooting you first for glaring at em.

So what if i'm Dolling up my delirium for a serum to cure them all.

I am awol, from my call to duty, recreating movies, for serial groupies, suiting up to slither a delivery of a soothing sour piece.

I am stalling to clean the secretions from hostel sheets from the screamers being eaten, by Cretans, with beaten dogs at bay, staring blank at the fanfare from a cage.

Im burning white sage, under pages of poetry anointed by a stoical spleen, tuning out the dreams, of lesser beings, until complete.

A zoo within a zoo within a zoo, i barely know you now

Barely know how, to know you as a model citizen with baller trimmins, fixins, and a life with others wives, in the rough diamonds of the bluff, before the door opens just enough, to look through and confirm what you already knew.

Love is the stuff dreams are made of.

And through you..

Im through.

Pleading, to seed the need for repentance and with reduced sentences, bleeding the demands on stances of chance, in costly cants.

I am convulsing in the congruence, in which I am influenced, by my afflictions of depictions in my head

I might be addicted to the dread of previously said decor, in my adorable horror show afloat, deplorably denoting the nopes of logic, and the slippery slopes of khangi, that spring off me when i'm coughing on my green tea.

You are wrong to stop me in my dislogic, dodging the narcotic mocking of toxic strong arming, in proxy alarms, setting barns ablaze.

I praise the poetry pushed on me, dauntingly haunting me with savant like ambiance, from the have nots, having things as far as the eyes can see.

If I could but learn to discard a wounded piece of self
If I could part with the beautiful symmetry
Of the cogs, driving forth the machinations,
Churning with their white noise, that
Turn to shape maiming thoughts
Then I might one night close my eyes,
Not to images of words bound by self-deriding connotation,
Comprised of typos and back-strokes
But to a peaceful blackness

Yes, I might lie down, close my eyes
Out of a will for rest, not contrived
But organic and my own
And so I know this as my waking dream
Relegated to wake for the night has been
Deemed the world of painful perfection
A place where protection is offered
With a backward hand, carefully made
Patron to the lovely polished mental instruments
Used to bludgeon simplicity and idiosyncrasy
Used to leverage pressure on the scales of the heart
So to tip downward the side of known cyclic indifference
And lift upward toward heightened neglect
The side of pleasure, the side of silenced retrospect

I grow, each sleepless evening, more fearful
That the ugly, backward hand might never forgo its leverage
And, if life is a wellspring of knowledge
Feeding into a stream of lessons
Then my strife stems from reading of the
Same page in the same chapter of the same textbook
A book filled with words bound by self-deriding connotation,
Comprised of typos and back-strokes

On this page, one learns a fundamental formula
It derives the relative weights of who we are
And the happiness we might find
Through some convoluted tale of misfortune
My page was written by an ugly, backward man
So, through unsagely studies, I’ve concluded
That the art of well defined reprimanding thought
Does outweigh in its beauty, the unseen hope
Of a future left to whim and bliss, or perhaps
The simple elegance of chance, goodness unsought

So, for the first time in my life, I seek to unlearn
I seek to roll back the defining lines that once flowed
From the pen in a backward hand that yearned to sow structure
But the vaulted walls that hold the scales of one’s will
Are so dauntingly difficult to unbuild or puncture

This, truly, is the weight that each sleepless night
Bares down upon my sleepless heart, so heavy
If I cannot pull exacting, formulaic pages from my sight
I fear the only peaceful blackness I will find
Is one against no patron hand can levy.