How was I supposed to know,
that killing would come so hard,
and last so long,
and do what it did to my soul?
Why was the part of living death,
the thing that hangs on deep
clawing it's way into our hearts,
left out of the preparations of war?
How was I to know the cost,
of pulling a trigger,
or wielding a knife,
not to the person killed,
but to me?
Nobody told me ever,
not even once,
or hinted,
at the destruction to self of war.
How was I to know?
I was young,
and a boy,
and dependent on them,
on the soldiers who taught me how.
I set my traps,
I was taught.
I moved like a cat,
I was taught.
I could live in the wild,
I was taught.
I could best them all,
no matter the game,
I was taught.
Nobody taught me to live,
afterwards,
or to forget,
afterwards,
or to feel again,
afterwards.
How was I to know?
They never told me those things.

It was a walk to the largest tree,
deep into the woods that ran along the brook,
where it shadowed the rocks that surely God had made,
just for sitting under it’s limbs, out of the sun.
Was the walk always this long, he wondered?
No, probably not, when play and mystery lay at the end,
not memories of  all that’s gone.
The sound of the water singing through the stones,
filling the pool cut through the shale,
was the same, but more so,
without the screaming of children swinging from the rope,
it seemed so much higher then.
Bobby swung the furthest, always…
He was the first to go, and not return.
And Lenny, god he could run,
before he sat in a chair for the rest of his life.
And what made Jimmy, who always swam,
“like a fish” we said,
place the hose in the window, start the car,
to die in his garage, alone, with a note,
a note that just said “goodbye, I’m sorry”?
And here I am, looking at the tree, once again,
where we all truly lived for the one and only time,
before the world found us.
But the tree still stood, almost waiting,
its roots deeper than my life.
I looked where the rope used to be,
could still see the worn ring around the bark,
and fondled the rope in my hand…
thinking maybe one last swing to the pool,
before one last swing.
The breeze whispered through its limbs,
And the shadows ran along the banks of the creek
where children used to play.
                                                     JC 2009

In MY sleep,
not yours,
I travel places,
black,
with their blood
and dying.
You don't know,
you can't know,
and you'll never
join me.
They're as real
as the light
in the daytime,
to me,
at least,
and that's
all
that
counts
you know.
I go there
I see it,
painted on
the inside
of my eyes.
For the rest
of my
life,
in MY sleep,
I travel.

the boy enters when he knows
others will not be there
in prayer--their silent entreaties
to a god he is not sure
listens or cares

morning after mass is best;
the bouquets are fresh
he can smell them once
the scent of the early
worshipers fades:

the pipe smoke from the old man's
coat
the widow's perfume which lingers longer than the ammonia stench
of the holy homeless who is there
every day

Christ watches over this:
a white marble man bolted
to a cross, witnessing
this spectacle for millennia

long before this cold statue
was placed in this cathedral,
he was there, the slaughtered lamb
cursed to die again and again

that is how the boy sees it;
not a promised life eternal,
but the same death anon,
anon

the pounding of the stakes,
the blood offering: the old man, the woman, the mendicant
all crucifying him again with
each plaintive prayer

once their odors fade,
the funeral sprays, the bouquets
remain--cut, dying flowers,
a fragrant impermanence
with no expectation for life
beyond their time in the
vase--no imploring a godhead
for forgiveness

no demand for blood
and perpetual death

only a little water for their brief journey
in fragile glass

... 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 ©

I’m lost in my thoughts, utterly alone,
staring at those huge peaks clawing at the heavens.
This little homestead dwarfed by those mountains.
I feel small here, this country is vast
and there’s no one here, another planet
victorious in making a more beautiful Earth
without vile creatures poisoning it.
The air is fresh and smells of primroses
and ozone from a distant thunderstorm
behind me across the plains.
This must be a dream, I think to myself,
but I’m too afraid to pinch my arm,
just in case I’m right.

At the Jenny Lake overlook, the mountains looming
as I sit by the water so still,
reflecting the mountains so well
that I can’t tell up from down.
The smell of the pines overwhelms me
and I wade into that cool water
as an eagle whistles into a valley,
the mountains whistling back
and I whistle too, caught in the moment.
The others on the shore whistle too,
and I swear the dozen of us were infinite.

"If enlightenment
is what you wish to attain
you must give away happy
an replace it with pain"

Ma Cherie © 2017