~~

*Once, I was a hard sand stone
Neither had I made a tune nor a tone
I had broken after a strong shock wave
From a waterfall, I had fallen into a pothole but could not settle

After I was moving with a long stream as a rolling stone
Now I have no edge but only passing a phase
A few days ago, I discovered myself as a grain of sand
And day by day, I have been drowning beneath the ocean

~~

@ Musfiq us shaleheen

It’s true. There are things I always rethink over.
I want to talk about this life, and the numbered corners
We back into, as each one before becomes a blur
I need to find those escaped outlawed words
Those thoughts that are dreams that are life I never said
Or ever read
In the newspapers full of despair & odes to the dead

Here I am, again. Scratching my head..
Solitary confinement in the tip of my pen
I hope I can hear the rain on a tin roof again.
I want to rescue each petal of this tired rose
Been told they hate getting wet, maybe they should close
Perhaps that’s a tangent better left to the prose..

I want to discuss the melody the earth plays as it spins
One day the clocks will melt, and time then will win
I want to pick these roses, struck by a thorn or two
I’ll rescue the weakest and give them all to you

I want to speak for every part of me.
Pronouncing the syllables of my arms through my neck
Feeling that same stutter I can’t ever forget
Or enunciating the words of America
It sounds like the inflection of grief
She’ll lead you to where hearts now lay limp
As all of her feels the pain in her feet
Composed of beings accepting defeat

But I can tell you about my motherland, or the hardness of her hands
As she struggles at the top, or the bottom of the can
Can do little more without much help to survive
First world problems? How about just keeping this life.

It’s ok if you’re lost. Go ahead, misunderstand.
Don’t tell us to work harder, poverty wasn’t planned

America, my other parent, imposed many countries
But Nicaragua is in tune with my heartbeat.
Now, how many secret wars are we fighting?
Like you’re ******* Genesis, the beginning of country
Well this is not why God himself sent me.

The great immigrations to one, emigrate with frustration
Looking for a better life, not just land; a nation.
We’ve graduated, far past the burning of witches
Although love may have been present, it was absent in ditches
Dug for the masses all over the world
Tell me the numbers don’t make your toes curl.

Like the owned. the bedraggled one in the line
Each of us in some way forever confined
To the cuffs of dark pigment or hair
The accent that these tongues flick out in the air,

I wanted to talk about the sky at jet-packed speeds
The broken men and that mystery
The wonder hiding on the other side of the reef
Or how certain dogs are not dogs, but a four legged beast
We put our ideas on those who can’t even speak
Judging and pointing deflecting our peak
Of feeling internally smaller and weak.

I want to talk about the man who hit on me last week
And the secrets that I have no real reason to keep
Perhaps tally up the hours and days without sleep
Or the relative meanings of victory or defeat.

I want to talk about the boy who was shot next to me
And the eyes on the girl who got away this past week
And now these heart valves have sprung a leak

There’s a reason I passed that spelling test in 4th grade
It’s a pact that me and some other nerd made
This test for some homework was the almost real trade
But then I studied anyways, suddenly was afraid
To be a real cheater at such a young age
So I waited until I was tired and baked
To cheat off of Tee Kay in the 8th grade.

I wanted to talk about the wonders of our skies
We see breathtaking birds and flutterbys take flight
Or how about the negative connotation with night
Instead of endless wonder, it’s dark, dead and trite.
Only letting the positive notions be awarded to light.

I want to talk about the things we all know
Like when someone asks you “what did he say?” at the same time as you
Following the first line in the show

Or

Wait, I forgot what I came into this room for.
I am now in my phonebook, what now?
--Swinging door.
Falling and yelling about what was left on the floor
Forgot that fearless child with instinct to explore.

And of course what about Fidel, the betrayal, conclusion
All in all, that epic Cuban Revolution
Or how we are scared to research the real scale of pollution
Settling for ignorance, unwritten, accepted solution
(I’m not a tree hugger, I’m a writer arranging each word just to lose them.)

How about what lies from sea to shining sea
And the immigrating souls giving testimony
To those who do, and will never know me
Each sea runs through the other
Like the veins in your body
And we all sadly add to our planet earth rotting

I wanted to talk about the first moment a hand brushed my cheek
My muscles finally gave in, tense to shameless defeat
The ridiculousness of the odd days in a week
Or how every sound in my almost mute world goes to the same beat
And the hook is brought to you by the bird’s tactful beak
And the beautiful colors the sunset uses to light up the streets

I want to spill each morsel of knowledge I’ve stolen, and the little that was free
And that I’ve learned from those before the ones that came before me
Being all of natures beautiful things.
Yes, did a bell mentally ring?
If you are alive, then you are one and more of all these
Even more beautiful with those scrapes on your knees
Standing with blood down your leg forgetting the dirt and disease
Carried away with the breeze through the trees

I can tell you those unspoken unwritten words from lost poetry
But that would be like asking you in the theater to scream
At that alien’s awkwardly shiny green screen moon beam

But maybe you should go out and growatree
Johnny the Appleseed Infantry
Or something to remember the free.

Discovery: Victory is only for the relentless
Walk up to a great oak, give thanks; we are rootless
Master ignoring those who labeled you useless
You decide what you are, and there’s no need to prove this

The heart that is mine beats with the rest that are beating
Trying to prevent a few scars and stitches from bleeding
Past error and self is no new acquaintance we’re meeting
Enjoy this life on a stage, I promise good seating

Fighting to clench onto every painful recollection
Every past hopeless pothole of the moments of rejection
Letting go is the key; allow me to mention
Freedom was, is never any man’s invention.
I’ll talk about the concept of our intentions
Hopefully you have good mental retention
There is one truth, and for some no redemption

I’ll give you one more line of ADHD poetry
I can put it short, and maybe even soerty
Some say  farfetched, or insurrectionary
Holding life’s weight at times sans what was necessary
Wide eyes at my inner strength, each arm is tearing
Felt each torn ligament swollen and flaring

Yesterday someone used the word evolutionary

I always write 'I am' before 'revolutionary.'

Three thousand miles
navigating a storm
without drop of bad weather
Abacus odometer clicks
rotating forward ―  
spinning with the
world go round

Circling back down
a long and winding road;  
where unforgotten memories
were once searchingly explored,  
untrodden pathways
coursing way up north of alone
on the low highway
  
Now an aging shepherd
wonders without a compass ;
a vagabond deprived of light
from an ever blurring north star
Heart empty as a gas tank
with a broke down gauge,
running on fumes of hope
for unpromised tomorrows
Running from loneliness
just to be on the run

The gales of silence bellow
No feelings I can see ― lay me low

Wild-eyed daydreams
of Full sails billow out
through the windshield,
only hearing the unspoken
moments sigh restlessly ―    
The dull droning road rumble
re-sighs renunciatively,
a tired monotone voice
mimicking the loathe silent echo
wallowing in an
omnipresent hollow void
deriding unspoken chaos
between the passing centerlines ―

A frost heave pothole erupts,
with a leaf-spring rattling thud,
as a fleeting cloud of dust arises,
set adrift with the draught
headed off the east side
of the Alcan highway:
blown way outside the lines,  
towards the Alberta prairie

White knuckled steering wheel
held sway,  rolling down
a beckoning wilderness
          reincarnation; 
default reset button paused ― 
stuck in a moment ― until another jaw rattling
frost-heave pothole in the highway,
            jars it free

Leaving it all behind
like a sigh breathed
in a silence a heart has outgrown;
just a fleeting cloud of dissipating dust,..
         a paling whisper
the past seems to send forth
  like a fading last breath

Letting it all unfold to become what it is


     harlon rivers ... May 2018
       ... travelogue 2 of some

I almost forgot about you today
But I was switching my music on my phone
And hit that stupid pothole
The one we hit together when your coffee spilled everywhere
I never understood why it takes so long for potholes to get filled and fixed.
Instead they let other little potholes form
Until the whole road is a ******* mess.

I was looking down after my head smacked the ceiling of my car and I noticed that coffee stain, it was like a little piece of time was locked away deep in the fabric of my car seat. I wish I never hit that pothole.

I would’ve been able to slowly let you fade from my memory, until someday I’m
Gone and the only thing left is that small coffee stain on my cars seat.

Someone else will get the car and wonder what happened for this stain to get there, they will have no idea it happened on a day when a man was deeply madly in love with a girl.

They’ll wash it away
They’ll just fix that pothole

The memory will never exist

A country lane, which eats animals, earrings and experiences,
winds in spools around the oat-house and follows the broken wall.

My sister’s bottle green jeep made waves along the hedges,
she shook out her hairband and the conversations of the evening.

An owl asks on all sides, and would seem to answer himself as
the field barracuda, the vast wide eye for the minnow-mouse.

She put a pearl in the bushes, dangling spit-like,
an orb, a moon-berry, full and dead forever.
She drove faster, as the english night slowed down,
down by the where the willow covers the road sign.
She killed a badger,
as if they had both lost something here.

Sun-cooked,
crisp at the curling edges
he’s a dark patch, like a fixed pothole.
his bones tested her michelins in the morning
again, glassy eyed, stillened,
retroflective and blind to the shimmering shadow of flies
rising up through his skin like a spirit.

But both her ears are full.

Bricks and mortar, steel and boards,
Phone poles lined with power cords, on
Pothole streets, where engines roar,
'Neath smoggy skies, where jet planes soar,

Where penny merchants peddle wares,
And news reports pretend they care,
Where vagrants sleep, and children stare,
And people work for lives not theirs,

That's life in the jungle, adrift in the herd,
Where terrestrial beasts envy free flying  birds
Where the pundits stand polished, and speak empty words,
And the artists paint portraits, while posted on curbs,

Where the men push carts, full of empty cans,
And the women spend paychecks, for spray-on tans,
Where the truckers drive loads, 'cross a thousand mile span,
To appease the great gods of supply and demand,

Asphalt and tarmac, girders and glass,  
Terrarium trees in cemented sod grass,
Ripe with the stench of exhaust fumes and gas,
As the choir lines up for the 10 o'clock mass,

While the brokers all scream, at a packed stock exchange,
As the veterans in wheelchairs sit begging for change,
That's life in the jungle, it's just a big game,
But remember you're playing, lest you go insane.

I'm that used ****** under the bed that your girlfriend found.                                                                                                          I'm that last breath you take before you drown.                           I'm that raised manhole cover that give you blowouts.              I'm that pothole in the hood that the City knows about.         THEY CALL ME DRAMA.                                                                         I'm the safety on that nine that determines life or death.                                                                                                                 I'm that asthma attack you had when you couldn't catch your breath.                                                                                                          I'm that last surviving egg about to go head on with that *****.                                                                                                         I'm that ***** next door that gave your wife that ****** up perm.                                                                                                        THEY CALL DRAMA.                                                                                I'm that wooden baton when you get your *** beat by the cop.   I'm that SUV the kids jumped out of when they robbed the **** spot.                                                                                                               I'm that sweat tricklin' down your cheek like someone shot ya. 
I'm that quarter pound of **** under your seat when the cops stop ya.                                                                                                   THEY CALL ME DRAMA.                                                                         I'm that Breathalyzer test that test alcoholics.                                I'm that ******* that comes back after you flush the toilet. I'm that **** you took before you realized you ran out of tissue. 
I'm that *** stain left on blouses by government officials. 
THEY CALL DRAMA.                                                                               I'm that cold turkey when you got dope dependency.                       I'm that bottle of pills when you got suicidal tendencies.            I'm that bet your ******* made when you knew you didn't have no money.                                                           ­                                I'm that roach crawlin' cross your T.V. every time you got company.                                                                                                THEY CALL ME DRAMA.                                                                         I'm that hole in your socks when you try on new sneakers.     I'm that ****** up sound that comes out when you got busted speakers.                                                        ­                                               I'm that slippery lane when girls think they're to cute to bowl. I'm that telephone pole when young car thieves lose control.       THEY CALL ME DRAMA.                                                                             I was that dingy *** collar infested with Jeri curl juice.                  I was that crack addiction you had when you noticed your pants were too loose.                                                                  ­                 I was that closet your friend came out of when he said that he was gay.                                                                                                           I was that red spot on those blue jeans when your little girl forgot it was the 28th day.                                                                  THEY CALL ME DRAMA.                                                                          I'm that **** you take after the 3rd day of being burnt.               I'm those dingy thongs when women wear those short *** skirts.                                                                                                           I'm that government cheese that didn't melt in your baked macaroni.                                                                                                   I'm that 10year bid you did all because you didn't rat on your *****.                                                                                                          I'm that long Island ice tea that got you that DWI charge.                                                          ­                                              I'm that slippin' transmission in bank robbers getaway cars.    THEY CALL ME DRAMA.                                                                         I'm that seven you rolled every time you played craps.             I'm that burnin' sensation your girl gave you.                          
**** it. Just call me the clap.                                                            ­                                                 I'm that 300lb. Freak talkin' about "let me get on top boo'.                                                            ­                                                      I was that DNA the cops found that pointed straight to you.    I was that broken crack pipe when you had just brought an 8ball of crack.                                                                                                I was that ******* coke you brought that wouldn't come back.    I was that peanut butter and jelly sandwich after school      when there wasn't **** else to eat.                                                             ­                                                       I was that smell between your toes when you had stink feet.                                                            ­                                                       I was those socks on your hands when you couldn't afford gloves. I'm those bubbles that float up your back every time you **** in the tub. THEY CALL ME DRAMA.  c. R. Mendoza

Whenever I think of that
Stupidly good picture you
Took when you had the flu,
I smile that same smile
And put on that song,
And entertain for a second
The idiotic notion
Of being in love.

God, you're such an idiot.
I was fifteen and you had
An English accent.
I was sixteen and you
Were twenty-two.
I was seventeen and wearing
The necklace you gave me every day.
I'm eighteen and I still do.

I had to buy a new notebook
Because the last one was
Three years of your name
Written over and over again
With increasing impatience
And disintegrating vagueness.

I only write about you in black ink.

I only write about you.

What a beautiful world, so fragile and fertile
Pain filled the void when boy met girl
He’s a puppet to nature, one year later
Now so deeply and sickly in love it makes him hate her
The average romanticized American relationship
Sinks, capsized when either side becomes a slave to it
Conditioned, dependent, afraid to be alone
He needs that feeling that he can’t create all on his own
He despises the fact she has a life outside of him
It drives him crazy to think she’s not insanely consumed with him
Give her the guilt-trip and maybe she’ll quit living,
To stay behind his prison walls and lose all individualism
Well this is happiness, masochistic torture
Played by the decadent, craved of affection
The needle digs deep to push contentment through his bloodstream
And drown out hollow, the pothole of a ******
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If he could only hear her sing, he wouldn’t want to break her wings
But emptiness has such a warm, subtle sting
She makes up for what he lacks, trapped,
He can’t imagine life without someone like that

We’ve rediscovered the long-lost art of dying
Only the lonely resent angels for flying
Twisted, living off of each other’s sickness like parasites
This is paradise

We’ve rediscovered the long-lost art of dying
Only the lonely resent angels for flying
Addicted, afraid to take control of my own life
This is paradise

What a beautiful world, emotionally destroyed
her became plural when girl met boy
Between several breakups and plenty relapses
Routine bred-comfort led to serious attachment
Now every once in a while she forgets to breathe
Terrified of losing him, paradise is misery
Too much faith in the life-saving knight in shining armour
Now her knight’s noticing the scars she can’t hide any longer
But they were her story way before he was
It was gross hope to think he could heal such deep cuts
At first it felt so right but after one too many fights,
He turned out that hallway light and all the wonder turned to spite
So they sleep in the same bed with guns to each others’ heads
Dead to romance, boiling the blood that painted roses red
Suffering from post-honeymoon disease, bleached through
His whole existence, she’ll die if he decides to leave
Addicted to the way she feels when they spend time together
Detouring the now in a childish attempt to find forever
Despite the fact they hold each other heart to heart
You can’t be that close to somebody without being so far apart

Silence, the most obscure sound I’ve ever heard
Those lonely, giant spaces in between your every word
And maybe, I’m totally crazy for holding on but
Just *** I’m insane, don’t mean that I’m wrong
Now that you’re gone I can’t sleep at night
I barely even function right, my memory’s on overdrive
Too hungry and too cold to cry
Miss the companionship I once took for granted
The way you helped me manage, the partnership that vanished
But I don’t expect you to stay chained by the ankle,
There’s so much world to see so, fly free my angel
I’m dying without you, but it’s teaching me to live
Heaven ain’t something someone else can give
It’s all inside of me.

By: Eyedea - Paradise

a home, above all else,
is familiar.
it does not have to be comfortable,
nor does it have to be full.
a home is probably a favorite place to be,
or maybe it houses some of the cruelest memories.

I like homes where I can drive quick and still avoid each upcoming pothole--
ones where old neighbors and new couples hunker down for their respectful chapters of life.
I like homes where I can walk around each obstacle in the kitchen with my eyes shut tight and only bang my shins a little bit.

a home is a sense, an intuition.
it is a place where you can dance while no one is watching.
you can fling your tears and regret at the walls and let them absorb your true feelings,
hushing you with their pillows and soft sounds and views.

a home is a home anywhere you choose it to be,
but above all else,
a home is familiar,
and that is a home to me.

Kathunk:
the sweet nothing that you whisper into my ear;
the unexpected gentle reminder to slow down and look around.
I never saw you coming
but I can't help but look back on what seemed to be
a split second reunion of two stagnant entities barreling through the universe.
Will our paths cross again? Who's to say?
But I know that by the time I find a moment to return to where you reside
the gaping hole in your soul will be filled
and I will be left wondering what could have been.