I don't want another Vietnam,
Iraq or Afghanistan

I don't want another wild fire
Flash flood
Or hurricane

I don't want another mass shooting
Famine
Drought
Or
Circumstances which are dire

I don't want to hear
All these cries
I don't want to hear
All these lies
I don't want to know
All these scams
No, I don't want to come over
And hold your hand
I don't want no stinking badge

I don't want a see a magic
Number
I don't want to wake,
come
Out of this slumber

I don't want to know
What I'm supposed to do
Supposed to see
Supposed to be

No, I don't want to
be your friend
I don't want to have to extend
No, I don't want to have this conversation

I just want silence
And the end.

Really
What then?

Blessings they come everyday
In everyway
There is beauty in the lullaby in the winds
The starlings, a river flowing
From this tree to another
The woods green in the fall sun

Which way is it going to be today?



It's going to be
What it's going to be

I don't know

I don't want to know
But it's all a blessing
So they say
Which is it going to be
Today?

Surely one more breath and to our present,
We'll keep on fighting
while we
Surrender.

When this madness first set in
It only made sense
To search out a good diagnostician
Trustingly sharing my story
With strangers with degrees
Quickly realizing no clinician  
Could fix what's alien me

I search for someone wise and trained
Instead I found myself slowly drowning
In a system of judgmental rain  
My very heart and soul an open subject
Sharing my uncommon delusions
Over and over explaining
My poetic conclusions

Yet those who have never ever lived a rhyme
Are prone to leave the unexplained behind
Who simply label you from a book
Quickly stop reading and give you that look
A book of broken soul’s
They write ya a prescription and send ya home
............................................................­...................

.
The Womb of Time
by harlon rivers

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
gathered 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 a womb of time...