a stare to get what you want
a gaze that manipulates
a seduction that will always leave you wanting more
a demon dressed as a daydream
evil disguised as elegance
Red will win everytime
it will entice you
play with you
control you
pierce your soul
you will never understand red
it will dominate you
a fire you can't help but fall into
Red bites your lips with only the eyes
a confidence you wish you had
Red will get you everytime

.
There’s an ancient duct tape patched
roller suitcase still up in the attic,
scarred by sky miles and undiscerning
indifference;  it came to rest like a final breath
exhaled at the end of the long road ―

In the dusty rafters of silent repose  
the death of an alter-ego comes to life
and jars and jogs the  sleeping dogs 
that lay benign as a pothole riddled road

Holding onto memories buried alive,
hidden away remembered ― 
      sans wings to fly away
laid bare unweighed with the weight
of everything else garnered and saved
      subsisting in a shallow grave;
hoarded and hidden away breathing
locked up with the other baggage borne
       behind tired eyes

Feeling the ache of blood stained knees
falling down sullied at the side of the road
Hindsight and a roll of duct taped memories
linger;   stuck to the  grey bandage scars,
second guessing should have thrown out
with the permanently temporary
fading plasticized luggage name-tags
back when I was still close enough to care;
too many miles to reconsider  ago

Some say: "it's the journey not the destination"                                    .
Some day when its too late we'll know
Some day it will be too late to make amends
        for everything i could not be ...


           harlon rivers ... 07  06  2018

Home is Homer.
Lovely summer aromas
of fish and salt;
visions of eagles and otters;
people who create and re-create,
forever giving more than they receive.
A city of art and style -
you'll go the extra mile
to stay in happy, hearty Homer.

I saw the sun steep
into the seascape ―
lonely as a drowning
    wave
         on still-waters

the dimming of the day
rescinding evanescent daylight                                                         ­         .
fading with the slack tide
         lost at sea ―
a gloaming moment
         let fall from
the remains of the day,
like some other passing
sea bird's molted feather
drifts away untamed

I sit silent as the driftwood
lingering at the watermark,
watching a random gust
    erase the footprints
of another recurring day, 
bearing abandoned memories
    and vacant heartbeats,
atrophied in the drifting sands

    and I see you walking
    towards the abating  
    midnight sunset ―
         but I know
    you're just a mirage;    
like the dimming afterglow
of so many waning moons
            elapsed
         
ever-changing tides grow low  
and promises made lightly  
         do ebb away
          
Scanning the distant horizon ―    
    a blindfold heart    
    mooning all at sea;
parsing a deserted shoreline,
    wondering if love
          is too late ,..
    to stem the tide ―


        harlon rivers

      30   May   2018

my mother taught me how to work the dirt,
grub it between palms, savor the smells of chickenshit, and
raw flesh. she knows that crops are grown fifty-fifty,

a little coddling, a little resentment. look at the thing
crawling out of your leaking womb, purpled with lacking.
she taught me how to heal, let my body mend itself with

time. when i was born, the salt of my mother clouded around my
eyes. they broke me to let me live, and so forth. but i have never
stopped with the needing. i became a **** in the dirt i worked.

empty, glad with unwanting. i wanted to spread my branches and show my mother the world she forgot. i remember. i remember.
but my chants fell upon deaf ears. my prose too purpled to read.

if you can bring nothing to this dirt
but another dead body,
this is not a garden for you.

white daisies
dancing in the wind
Alaska

I need to go to a burning man. I need to lose myself in the woods for a year. I need to make my threshold and enter through. I heard my call a long time ago but I just never...
   I can't stand myself any longer! I must lose who I am to find what I am to become. And I can't do that in a world where I exist in everyone around me. I need a place with none of me and plenty of else. So much that I can spread myself out to one thought thick. Finally be raw, enough to see myself clearly.

   I shouldn't worry about forevers, because forevers are simply composed of nows.

   I want quiet place to sit against the tree, look out over a lake, and read until my eyes bleed pleasure, my brain secretes knowledge, and my heart wisdom.
   A place to harbor a gentle haze of mind, a place to leave myself behind. Just and think and think some more, until and passed the point of being head sore.
   I want to place with plenty of glasses, and plenty of cracks, plenty of muses and no ways back.
   A place full of forevernows and nevermores, where people are stupid enough to cross the desert because of a recurring dream. A place of pink purple sunsets and endless shores.

   How mirrors have learned to lie I will never know, because I don't recognize the person they show. I have to turn them around because even my own eyes try to deceive me.

  If I don't I will always want to. If I do I won't enjoy every step, but I will a few.
   The hands that shaped this road are now, older.
   I don't know how I will, and a not even sure I understand why I will. All I know for certain is I MUST.

   Because I can't stay here. If I do I will fall in love with possibilities, and not realities. I will fall in making people out to be more than a person. I will lose my heart to and afterimage of a dream, and even if I do I would never have pursued it anyways. I want to leave the field, sell my flock, and start my full circle, or square.
   Wherever I go I have no plan know method know fall backs, but the beautiful hair of uncut graves. With only the Spektor inside my books to hold me.
   I want to hear the symphony of stars each night and have the wind tell me its stories of its travels that day.
   I want to sleep knowing the poppies stand guard.
  
   I know nothing, and I'm ready to listen, but first I must get out of my hand made prison, burn the map smashed of compass. Put my feet anywhere besides in front of the other that way I'm going nowhere fast and never looking back.

   I want to teach myself the song of my soul, so that I can hum every bar by heart, but I can't do that here. Not in this place of paper people and towns who live their lives never getting wet.

   It says if I can ever catch my breath, that I'm strangle lading in the stench of mold and excitement of leaving and never coming back.

   Mark here this day, as I lie awake at night as the last moment I spent outside the labyrinth. I need, no, I must leave find a place where I can listen to my heart and drink and its wisdom. But that place is not here I don't know where to, but I must start.
   Thomas Edison last words were " its very beautiful over there, I don't know where they're is, but I believe it somewhere, & I hope it's beautiful"

                                                     ­     ~Crow

there are always two sides to the same story
two voices singing the same song
maybe i was never enough
maybe i was, more than enough
sometimes i wonder if you wonder the same things

have you ever had the thought of running back
to put a semi-colon instead of
a full stop to our infinite possibilities?
do you sometimes fantasize us two
lying on paper-thin ice
in Alaska
and having no fears
because i'm holding your hand?
under the green, blue, pink, purple, yellow, red
aurora borealis
and millions of stars?
have our heads tilt toward each other
at 4:09 am
in our fluffy snow jackets and boots
and lean in for a forbidden kiss
just
one
kiss
then go back and gaze at the Milky Way
with more thoughts in our minds than there are stars reflecting in our eyes
imagine a place that is ours
it's where a wise man confused reality for dreams
it's in the middle of nowhere
in our deepest fantasies
it's where we hold on to each other
and everyone else simply doesn't exist...

at 4:09 am
i wonder
if sometimes
you wonder about me too.

after robin coste lewis*

the dogs do not have names
so you just call them
with a whistle
they bark still and still and still

they are not animals
they are just humans
that have lived out their lives
and found a new body

the dogs do not speak english
so you bark back
and they look at you,
ears raised

and mouths dry
and dumb, tongues,
rough like sandpaper
and teeth that shine like enamel pins

the dogs do not run
they move like water
muscles like leaves in
autumn

all you need is
an ocean calling
your name, the dogs
can't give you that

the dogs are all you need,
as they run and whisper to
each other
they do not speak english
so you curse each one in tsimshian