"impinged" poems
There must have been a million raindrops falling down hard
Loud drops plummeting from the place where the sky overflows
The seemingly infinite pitter patter painfully counted one by one
Noir moments impinged beyond a rainy night:
Splashes splatter, showers flood torrentially,
Shards of water blind the befogged windowpanes,
Catching the candle light’s dull flicker
Upon the sway to the heartwood of the rain sodden trees
But underneath it all, there's this heart
Nobody really knows ― unborn and alone
Waves of silent reverie seize firmly a fragile heart,
Only learning to grasp the soul’s most poignant sensibilities
Wrought fifty shades of melancholy blue
Dreaming with eyes wide open
to see you tiptoeing around me
Bereft of touching as we reach for love
As if it were a moment we could hold
But I'll reach to you from where time just can't go
In that beloved moment leading the way back
into my dreams
Broken silence roused the moment's ache
With a boisterous sigh, the daunting fading murmurs
Of unspoken breath cogently exhaled
Hallmarks of a secret place no one else can go,..
One drop at a time…
© harlon rivers ... all rights reserved
Feb 26, 2017
Feb 26, 2017 at 11:42 AM UTC
dark leaps when
there is the frothing light
beaming a sizable aureole
on your face
this evening
and its palpable brigade.
dark is having your
inwoven dress free
from swaying
pressed against raucous
facelessness of things
rogue and renegade.
and when i have you
not, shining the light
and its intone,
wind felt like
stabs or
i in attendance
of a crazed vaudeville—
trapeze is the hinge
of the void
afloat, upstream, space-hovering;
a display of love
and not so much
is shown of the vertigo
trapped in a square,
a face
impinged in the seamlessness
of this fabulation
when you've gone
quickly fading out;
light is my remember,
o, dark my
forgetling.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 7:15 AM UTC
A hollow point bullet , fired , rifled through barrel , targeting steel resolve , fragmenting , striking ten combatants with one fatal shot ! A wood canoe with confident oarsman , fighting thirty foot ocean swells , hurricane winds and storm surge ! Swan dive over Horseshoe Falls , disappearing within the rocks , returned to the surface laughing , emboldened and unharmed ! Pressure cooker explosives , detonated beside large crowds with zero injuries , homicidal schizophrenic empties his magazine in a theater with no casualties ! Random killing in the name of religion with just cause , fundamental rationality ! Convincing people to try compassion , tolerance and moderation ! Forgetful , carefree , unharmed , thankful citizens impinged , ***** by the three percent , courtesy of Wall Street !
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 4:19 PM UTC
Delicate ogres kiss shimmering necks.
One by one they take their turn to dip into the lake of lust.
Brothers bound by their need to feed -
Inhale dark vapors you beasts,
and strangle your throat.
The opposing advertisement differs: For your throats sake smoke.
They gorge on fruitful delights
and devilishly entwine fingers
in an attempt to ensnare innocence back to their lair.
Run rabbit. Run.
The streets enclose around them, and she knows no escape.
Yet these webs are carved into their backs.
They're taking this sacrificial lamb.
To pull the tender meat apart and leave nothing but a mind impinged with woe.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 9:10 AM UTC
Claudia knows Potslam
fancies her. She knows
he would like to. She
knows other men watch
her pass. Knows they’d like
to touch her *** Claudia
wants just to be loved.
Wants the kind of love in
those magazines she reads.
Potslam says he loves her
but it’s all cheap talk. His
eyes and mouth say otherwise.
She sees it in his eyes. That
first date as she waited
other men wolf whistled.
Eyed her. If eyes could undress
he’d be **** catching the cold
air standing there. Mother
said men were all the same.
Father misunderstood the
essence of woman. His history
of failures hammered and
impinged on bone and skin.
Claudia sits and lights her smoke.
Potslam talks and relates a joke.
She eyes him. Takes in his pitted
skin. Wants another to love not
**** her. Needs the loving arms
and warm caresses. The gentle
kisses placed on lips or cheek.
She watches Potslam smoke
and exhale. Sees his thick lips
give birth to smoke. His yellowed
fingers hold the cigarette. He
smiles that smile. Shallow as
a puddle. He moves in and out
of shadow. If only love were there
she says inwardly noting him ****
She feels no love or such no aching
or piercing of her delicate heart.
Apr 17, 2012
Apr 17, 2012 at 9:29 AM UTC
there are so many of them
and there is only less
of me —
gondola in Venice,
H-bomb
and the knife of Bach;
a steady collision in Q. Ave
as the fizz of the afternoon mirage
settles with the ides,
the torn elephants of
Chiang Mai
the red blood of Golden Gates
the froth of the repeated wave
at the lip of the ocean,
city buoys lacerating
the skyscape
and your coming in here
ransacking all;
appeasements and
trivialities — there are so many
of your photographs here
and only less of me,
looking at all of you
and weeping it
later. sounds like these sounds
hanging by the edge of the bed
reducing woes to a hair-trigger.
i look outside and there
are women, cat-called by peddlers,
stopped by cabs, inside and outside
of cars with sometimes lovers
hot legs and all that,
simmering in the highway
glancing at them now
lamenting them later,
what's a dull boy to do in a dull town
with clothes dull wielding the
dull word?
meanwhile, there's so many of you
and there is only very scant of me left.
light voyeurs through the interstices
of the huddled masses,
panic screeches through the maddened
streets of Vito Cruz.
the night is all black and stark
and the heavy behemoth of existence
prods underneath where
rats, rodents and vermin run
plodding the highway with sleek varmint
demeanor. a lady passes by with a
string of fragrance dangling upon
her shoulder-blades.
what's a dull boy got to do in a dull city
with a dull heart?
there are so many of them for my
territorial hands cannot name
and there's only one of me:
unheroic
impinged
small
half-drunk and
half-believing
that there's something
a dull boy ought to do
in this dull city
with dull words but it comes
with an exorbitant outlay.
dog-leashes are expensive,
moonless hoots through opened
windows hefty with price.
moon-blooms again and again,
missing all hurt trying to repair
the ravaged — i look at young
girls, old women, fine and complete
and this thing of being me
on the market marked: sun-stifled.
there's so many of them
there's only a sum of me
that's often small and burgeoned
bringing the question
what's a dull boy to do in a dull city underneath a dull moon
within a dull crowd?
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 12:44 AM UTC
The power responsible for our existence will never
ever be questionable, the prestige the creator is
smitten by has not yet hit the mankind's
conscience to wake him up from the obvilion
induced by misgiving that satan has impinged
upon man's psychology, the closest a human
kind can get with his God is through a prayer,
approbation every morning and evening is worth
it since life is a continuous miracle that happens
to the lucky ones.
Oct 19, 2013
Oct 19, 2013 at 7:04 AM UTC
Last night, after I had lain down, I lied.
I sat, saturnine, basking in incandescent rays
Which impinged upon the back of my eyelids
Like the warmth of her smile.
I lay in the miry blankets and in myself,
Allowing the weight of my mind to wisp away
With slender traces of white smoke.
The room dissolved around me with the bar beneath my tongue.
I laughed.
Three years had passed since the last time I was truly happy,
But, still, I laughed. If only for a moment,
I had found a place where quotidian pressures couldn’t follow.
Unfortunately, it was only a moment before a thought occurred:
None of this is real.
Or, perhaps, this was the only part of my life that was real,
That is real.
Maybe the scripted days spent toiling away
Behind the particle-board walls of my cubicle are the dream—
A recurring nightmare.
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 2:45 AM UTC
All bleached. Sweating a spindrift. Senses dumb like a blunt arrowhead.
It is time again when liquor cuts like paper. I have weak means,
weaker skin. Wanting to strip home of stucco. Fails to, is white like clinic.
My measures to fret an end: books unopened, left yellowed. Some old cigarettes
my mother keeps a keen eye on, does not hurl in the trash, permits me
accepted death, the body taking a toll in this house. An empty wine bottle
corked to contain the drone of this animal. Pills I do not understand, only
touch the symmetry like a wife. My own shattered histories throbbing,
operating in the hollow dome of this
some words when fated, do not reach their fathers. I have
many sons by this. My laugh bends like metal. Celan bellows trust the tearstain.
Body curled to a note impinged by conductions of this electric music. Listening
to myself confess as walls watch my back.
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 9:41 AM UTC
The place she has in my heart is indelible, as if it were tattooed with permanent ink from that of a pen. The terms of endearment used and the way I would always smile just being around her, was my solace. She made my world, that was often viewed as black and white; polychromatic, infused with vibrant colors. Anytime I was with her, there was an aura of tranquility, and she was always there to alleviate any stress. But then, she no longer cared for me, which impinged upon my new-found optimism. As quick as she was to bestow upon me this great source of joyfulness, she was also swift to retract it.
The diversity of colors now vanished, no longer vibrant but instead dull. And I began to understand the concepts of love that viewed it to be evil. But her previous words of affection still reverberated in my head, as a way to haunt me.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 9:30 PM UTC
all quiet this afternoon, the sky
pulses in its unprepossessing limit
surveyed the intersections with the wane
of tired eyes. in this side of town, yours
the gray-faced pavement, mine the stones left
unturned, pillaged by the children of suspicion,
thrown and must have hurt something,
a bird hurtling in its pace, or a mangled body of a cloud,
wingstalked, stifled to the brim of impinged labor,
depth of sleep is measured by the weight of dream.
all quiet this afternoon, the naked body
of the sky is blue, spun around in penetrating tone.
quick is the flat motion of the quaintest of feet,
this afternoon in Poblacion, heavily veiled and demurred
the vertical climb of morning past the cranes, the monoliths
screaming broken litanies – strange skies are insipid now
thick with the froth and rekindled petrichor,
you told me you had a view of every inch of world
from the 31st floor and now I circled to cut corners
and fold my love for cold fronts, monsoons, storms.
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 5:59 AM UTC
Hope flies out the window fast
Bottom empty no repast,
Moment born of cancers’ child
Status hangs unreconciled
Woe be they who lay it thin
Who stalk these dark nights, plundering.
Woe be they who keep their guard
Abreast, and lo behold, ******
That which causes heart to sing
Despite the hurt imbued within.
Solitary, lonely way
Through this enigmatic day.
When, in truth, potentials lie
Through yonder, bright magenta sky,
Through reams of iridescent verse
Orated daily, unrehearsed,
Bowls of olives, black, in oil
Turkish loaf, foccascia foil
laughing girls in skimpy skirts
Raucous till he belly hurts….
But futile in this state of woe
As bitter bile now sours the show.
Towering in halls of cloud
Mouthing ,hard, jawbone aloud
Struggling to hold intact
Counterpoints to interact,
Damning inconsistencies,
Weak deniability’s
Betrayal slides In cuts of time
Agonising back teeth grind
Quivering in searing pain
Every good, undone again.
Stalking hard to places thin
Solitude… eviscerating,
Emptiness imbues the light
Shatters soul in shoals of fright,
Delve hopelessly to hopeless ways
Scream as light refracts in waves,
Wallowing to places thin
Wavering to lost within.
Weakness in the cold half light
Shattered prospects drenched in fright,
Rabid eyes withdrawn in face
Incarcerate hot hatred’s trace.
Better now in light of day
Sunshine beaming in to play,
***** count resumes its gain
Flocculant reduces pain
Shame slides in the door ajar
Embarrasment impinged afar.
Amazing how a cup of tea
Resurects the life in me.
M.
14 April 2019
Apr 25, 2019
Apr 25, 2019 at 12:23 AM UTC
Remembering war
visiting the past
why
all that comes is heartache
the loss of the lives
on both sides
the cost of war
ever at the door
leaving behind
broken families
wives without husbands
children without fathers
for what
political differences
religion
the cost is too high
the freedom of a people
should not be impinged upon
Edwin Star
“war, good God
what is it good for
absolutely nuthin'”
a simple lesson
that we have not yet learned
remembering war
has not made it vanish
war still goes on
our young men continue to die
I hate these wars
I love these young men
they will live again in our hearts
it is they who deserve to be remembered.
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 11:06 AM UTC