"muting" poems
if i believe
in death be sure
of this
it is
because you have loved me,
moon and sunset
stars and flowers
gold crescendo and silver muting
of seatides
i trusted not,
one night
when in my fingers
drooped your shining body
when my heart
sang between your perfect
*******
darkness and beauty of stars
was on my mouth petals danced
against my eyes
and down
the singing reaches of
my soul
spoke
the green-
greeting pale-
departing irrevocable
sea
i knew thee death.
and when
i have offered up each fragrant
night,when all my days
shall have before a certain
face become
white
perfume
only,
from the ashes
then
thou wilt rise and thou
wilt come to her and brush
the mischief from her eyes and fold
her
mouth the new
flower with
thy unimaginable
wings,where dwells the breath
of all persisting stars
121k
...a diary of the falling dominoes chapter
invisibly dying from the inside out
no one is looking into unseen eyes
no one can hear a muted voice fading
no one is close enough to be near
the deafening thrums echo
anxieties’ racing heartbeat
within morphing flesh shell ,
gasping for new breath
in a hovering stale silence
from a distance
the broken mirror ricochets a subdued light ;
much closer the reflection reveals
someone I once knew by heart
now an unrecognizable mask
enshrouds a terminal emptiness
inconspicuous at a fleeting glance ,
impossible to discern what storms rage
from the inside out ,... unnoticed
an uncontained wildfire
smoldering within, lies in wait
for the imminent winds of change
to fan the flames into the final
eternal silent ashes
a poet reaches out demurely
offering a candid look
into the window
of the imperfect human soul
there is no poetry
met by indifference
just gathered unread words scribbled,
squandered time
dripped slowly on an empty page ;
moments turn into days
days turned into years
invisibly dying from the inside out
an unfinished life trickles out
like seeping blood evanescing
from a bottomless puncture
wounding ... penetrating the heart,
leaching out the slow death of a poet
for poetry is only words unless they touch someone ...
befallen to indifference is poetic death
by salted paper cuts ...
a muting suffocation
that hiddenly erodes away,
silencing the passion
of a musing soul
one unread word at a time ...
© harlon rivers ... all rights reserved
Jan 18, 2017
Jan 18, 2017 at 12:16 PM UTC
Here, I do not need to coax the sound—
No more tremulous plucks, bated breath,
Muting my voice as it slips from my throat
Here,
It falls as a gift, freely given
Resonant as thunder in the mountains
Bold and beautiful.
How brightly I burn
When I do not have to ask
To be heard.
Aug 8, 2022
Aug 8, 2022 at 8:42 PM UTC
The roar of the wheels upon solid concrete.
Suppressed by the music blaring in my ears.
Vibrations running through the wood and to my feet.
This feeling is unreal.
There's no time for thinking.
The music muting all thoughts.
Eyes staring, quickly blinking
Into the night, on the road ahead.
No destination in mind
Nowhere specific to go
Never looking behind
Only moving forward, deeper into the dark.
For a moment it is quiet
An intersection and a choice
Within my mind, a slowly building riot.
As I debate between left and right.
I give up on the decision.
Now only feeling my way
My heart leads my fate
And I continue out into the night.
Dec 7, 2012
Dec 7, 2012 at 1:05 AM UTC
There’s not much left to write about
Happiness and sadness are gone
Instead, I’ve traversed the subjects
And they all left me fighting a scream.
Anxiety’s clutched at my heartstrings
Dampening, muting their song
But now I’m going to break free
And dive into life headlong.
I’ll play videogames and write some poems
And do all the things that I miss
For while once this was time-wasting, never
Shall I waste a day anxious for this.
I guess anxiety’s got its perks, but
The one thing it gets me to do
Is work ‘till I have no more work, but
I had nothing to do at all, so I’m blue.
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 9:44 PM UTC
Today there is a veil upon my world:
A gauzy muting of sound,
A mist that’s permeated the corners of thought.
I know there is a crisp clarity outside:
a pounding passion in the sunlit world,
A million hues to roll in and embrace.
My tingly thought centers all recede:
Rejecting stimuli like adventurous taste buds
Recovering from exciting, scalding tea burns.
I just have to remember and accept:
Sometime there are going to be days like this.
Lazy, hazy.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 1:21 AM UTC
I am deaf, blind, and mute
Though that's untrue, physically speaking
I still feel it deep within me
Blinding my eyes from truth
From reality
Deafening my ears from hearing others' encouraging words
And their feelings of warmth and love
Muting my replies and true thoughts
From ever springing up
To prevent me from prying my fingers off the cusp of this palpable insanity
Ah, this addiction is overwhelming
I need a moment
Just one second
Of truth to burst in and scream into my ears
Crying and begging me to come to my senses
Reminding me of the past failures
And how I said this time would be different
Just one moment of honest truth
But, you see, I'm deaf
I can't hear anything
Edging on this addiction
Knowing I'll fall
And have to start all over
I just need a moment...
A brief time of clarity
To open my eyes
So I can see clearly
That all the excuses I'm spewing out are lies
A memory I can view
Something that jogs my memory
And reminds me of why I wanted to stop in the first place
But you see...
I'm blind
I can't see even this truth that lies right in front me
The addiction is winning
Knocked me out so hard
My head is spinning
I need to convince myself to escape this battle
Its power is so terrifying
And I can't even speak
I choke out pleas
But they are unintelligible
The addiction hears nothing
And nor do I
But I need just a moment...
Of someone's words to recite
To clear my mind
And be who I was before I commited this sin
Please, I beg of you, Me
Speak, speak, speak!
But I am mute
I can't say a single thing...
...
Oh, what a tragedy
To be deaf, blind, and mute
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 12:02 PM UTC
When my sister played Clair de Lune
I’d go into her room and sit on the floor
with my ear to the side of the piano
so close that the sound would fill my mind
with the image of the long, coiled strings
vibrating, glowing golden in the darkened box.
I could hear my sister’s feet dampening
and undampening the pedals, muting the
strings, then letting them ring, resonating,
one note overlaying another, could hear
the creak of her piano stool and smell the
smell of wood dust, like old sheet music,
and my ear would pulse, almost hurting
from the sound of the hammers striking steel.
And I would begin to imagine things,
different things each time:
my aunt in a blue flowered house dress
standing in her kitchen holding a jar
of homemade pickles, her thin white hair
always in tight pin curls.
Or I’d be alone, in a long, softly lit hallway,
the walls covered with wainscotting and
lavender striped wall paper yellowing
near the ceiling. At the far end of the hallway,
a solarium, and beyond that a balcony
glimmering in sunlight.
Or I’d be in a field with small, white flowers
bowing with the weeds rhythmically
and sensing that I was
loved by someone.
And it would be that my sister’s
fingers were pounding deep into
my chest, and always, always
by the end of the piece
I’d ask her to play it one more time.
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 12:17 PM UTC
I found some grammer of the universe:
Not easy to catch, but easy to find,
as it is simply everywhere.
In the navel and in the fridge.
In a teacup and in a dream.
In a memory and in a grain of dust
as much as in a withering biography.
Sometimes I mix up prepositions,
so that I my beloved feels demagnified.
But I will take the effort to spell lovable meaning in that language.
And it happens that I use wrong keys
- and I don't get the meaning of sentences
that couchsurf my mind - but it's all furnished
with such a beautiful mess. Oh dear,
let me play on you(r) combinations.
And embed the failure in the long run of light.
I know, everything is meant to glow.
Furthermore there is the challenge of silence,
t h e a b s o l u t e l y s u p e r c o n n e c t i v e
muting the noisy pain of opposition.
Let us meditate on that.
Oct 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013 at 7:57 AM UTC
I am a child of truth
one not blinded by belief or whim
my vision is luminous with veracity
I am a daughter of science
the proven
there is pride in this
the authenticity of my perception
I see the world in all colors
not the black and white of sin and virtue
I judge the world on the confirmed and validated
my value is in the clarity of possibilities
and the assessment of the affirmed
but for however meritorious I may grant this view to be
is such sight of pure moral?
it burdens to recognize I am the only control in my world
there are none in my eyes with ultimate or immortal reign
the only fate I view is individual and collective ends
I wish I could have faith
perhaps the pain would ease
at the thought of another with power in control
knowing my actions are not my work
but the results of a larger set of hands
but how hideous is it of me to say such filth
to long to believe
but be supposedly unable to feel gods
I consider it disrespectful to those who do
so I keep to my facts
my deafening, blinding, muting visual certainties
but what if I am wrong?
after all, there are more colors in the universe
than those of which we see
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
2:30am, felt the hollows hands of death again.
Fingers wrapped like a noose around my neck.
Woke up distress in sweat.
With tongue tied knots made of fear and frustrating attempts.
I called out to mother but
I felt 1,000 pounds of pressure standing upon my chest.
Muting me into speech impediments and sinking me into the depths of what seem to feel like hell for a couple minutes.
Body felt like dancing sharp needles in the air.
As someone's eerie finger
Sailed across the maps of my skin.
Causing frantic earthquakes through out what seemed like my living corpse.
I felt like discords, statics, and lost signal tv channels.
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 2:05 AM UTC
Eyelids heavy
So hard to breathe
Struggling to stay awake
Darkness closes in
Body limp and lifeless
Everything is grey
Disconnected from reality
Numb from the drugs
Tears streaming down
Past years catch up
Succumb to the pain
Muting the sound
Flashing red and blue
People everywhere
Screaming and crying
So sad and tragic
Drugs take her away
As she lays dying
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 11:54 AM UTC
Among the more irritating minor ideas
Of Mr. Homburg during his visits home
To Concord, at the edge of things, was this:
To think away the grass, the trees, the clouds,
Not to transform them into other things,
Is only what the sun does every day,
Until we say to ourselves that there may be
A pensive nature, a mechanical
And slightly detestable operandum, free
From man's ghost, larger and yet a little like,
Without his literature and without his gods . . .
No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air,
In an element that does not do for us,
so well, that which we do for ourselves, too big,
A thing not planned for imagery or belief,
Not one of the masculine myths we used to make,
A transparency through which the swallow weaves,
Without any form or any sense of form,
What we know in what we see, what we feel in what
We hear, what we are, beyond mystic disputation,
In the tumult of integrations out of the sky,
And what we think, a breathing like the wind,
A moving part of a motion, a discovery
Part of a discovery, a change part of a change,
A sharing of color and being part of it.
The afternoon is visibly a source,
Too wide, too irised, to be more than calm,
Too much like thinking to be less than thought,
Obscurest parent, obscurest patriarch,
A daily majesty of meditation,
That comes and goes in silences of its own.
We think, then as the sun shines or does not.
We think as wind skitters on a pond in a field
Or we put mantles on our words because
The same wind, rising and rising, makes a sound
Like the last muting of winter as it ends.
A new scholar replacing an older one reflects
A moment on this fantasia. He seeks
For a human that can be accounted for.
The spirit comes from the body of the world,
Or so Mr. Homburg thought: the body of a world
Whose blunt laws make an affectation of mind,
The mannerism of nature caught in a glass
And there become a spirit's mannerism,
A glass aswarm with things going as far as they can.
1.6k
words deprived of meaning
thoughts stranded in translation
feelings imprisoned without sentencing
a stroke of life...un coup de vie
an existence brutally stricken
incapable of verbal expression
communication frustration...no relief
nuances from mundane to sublime
lost in an endless syntax maze
and sure, some actions speak louder
but unspoken words of love and support
fall like an acid rain of futility on the heart
Sad enough when inflicted by fate
tragic as a self-induced metaphor
The muting of squandered opportunities
will keep you disconnected and haunt your future
Aphasics have no say in this matter
What's your excuse?
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 12:25 AM UTC
The empty, the deserted, the lonely
Behind the frosted mountains
Comes another day, another bright morning
The broken dream, the unfulfilled promise
Of childhood years seeming ever so dear
“We will run away there,
in a place where no one can find us
where no one can see us,
I pinky promise.”
O, whatever happened to that precious pinky
Did it break? Did it fall apart?
Wishing that pinky was the only damaged good…
Seeing that last breadth
The beating heart muting into an eternal silence
The rosy cheeks paling into a sheet of thin ice
The eyes ... o the eyes
Once filled with life and love, with wit and humor
At times, with tears brimming on the edge,
All looks out as a glassy ball of sea green
Then closing those lids framed by coal black lashes
Only to know that they will never open ever again
All takes about eternity and a half
O the empty, the deserted, the lonely
O, on that hill where no one can find us
Where no one can see us
Waking up to another bright morning
Without anyone to hold
Except those childhood years seeming ever so dear.
Apr 27, 2013
Apr 27, 2013 at 11:08 PM UTC
A holy day it was
When the dark skinned gathered there
Under open skies unowned
On the land of their forebears
They met to offer forth their prayers
They entered the walled space
Through gated entrances five
Mixed mass of gender, age and creed
Unarmed they gathered, unarmed strived
Ruled by white Lords, to keep culture alive
From a raised bank, he watched
Fair general and his native troop
When the time was right, dropped his arm
Unleashing bullets on endless loop
Laying waste to unwary group
Swarming mass in open tomb
Clamour to protect all life and love
Mother crouched encasing child so soft
A man holding his wife, a flapping dove
None spared from cold end reigned from above
Hot metal darts indiscriminate
Sliced through humid burdened air
Muting wails of the sentenced helpless
Piercing flesh of the souls stripped bear
Earth wept with weight of blood spilled there
Thus ebbed the day of the massacre
Beaded sweat trickles down Generals brow
Blood and meat lay heaped at exits five
Shrouded in questions of the why and how
That such slaughter could one man and his arm allow.
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 6:38 AM UTC
You stepped in my soundtrack
Bought out the baton
You laughed at my lyrics
Rewrote verses wrong
You chewed on my chorus
And spat it back out
Cracking my key notes
And muting my loud
You revised my rhythm
Swallowed my rhyme scheme
You mashed up the melody
Now I want a new theme
Oct 7, 2012
Oct 7, 2012 at 10:53 AM UTC
we drove through snowbanks today;
one for the first time behind the wheel
-- one with his eyes fixed on the road
and me, just another passenger along
for the ride.
it was still lacing over the
world with white, like nature pulling
up her comforter and settling herself in
for the season -- heavy down muting even
the quietest quiets; we followed suit, put
on the smiths and sent our tumultuous
evening back to bed to curl up with a
blanket or two, swap stories with tucked-
in and tuckered out madam nature until
we realize we're still alive -- and at this
juncture (both figurative and literal)
during the supposed shift in energy,
spiritual awakening, consciousness, etc,
we embraced the contradictory side
of our cynical teenage bodies and
sent our thoughts back to sleep with
the current of his lilting voice and the
subsequent waterfall of grieving
piano notes, tinkling and sending
splinters of icy shivers down each
of our spines as we drove on through
the gently imposed quiet of a cold
down comforter.
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 4:42 AM UTC
,
Kasama ka sa aking mga muting panalangin
Sa aking isip, minu-minuto ay ika'y aking dadalhin
Aking pagibig ay iyo lamang, lalo pang paiigtingin
Lahat nalang ay gagawin, upang manatili sakin ang iyong pagtingin
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 1:39 PM UTC
Once upon a time, son,
they used to laugh with their hearts
and laugh with their eyes:
but now they only laugh with their teeth,
while their ice-block-cold eyes
search behind my shadow.
There was a time indeed
they used to shake hands with their hearts:
but that’s gone, son.
Now they shake hands without hearts
while their left hands search
my empty pockets.
‘Feel at home!’ ‘Come again’:
they say, and when I come
again and feel
at home, once, twice,
there will be no thrice-
for then I find doors shut on me.
So I have learned many things, son.
I have learned to wear many faces
like dresses – homeface,
officeface, streetface, hostface,
cocktailface, with all their conforming smiles
like a fixed portrait smile.
And I have learned too
to laugh with only my teeth
and shake hands without my heart.
I have also learned to say,’Goodbye’,
when I mean ‘Good-riddance’:
to say ‘Glad to meet you’,
without being glad; and to say ‘It’s been
nice talking to you’, after being bored.
But believe me, son.
I want to be what I used to be
when I was like you. I want
to unlearn all these muting things.
Most of all, I want to relearn
how to laugh, for my laugh in the mirror
shows only my teeth like a snake’s bare fangs!
So show me, son,
how to laugh; show me how
I used to laugh and smile
once upon a time when I was like you.
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 11:30 PM UTC
waiting for a connection that never comes hard
you remember that sleep is just like forgetting
and not even the tenderest hearts keep hurting
once they stop their wide awake circles
morning won't dawn when it comes today
even light has regrets placid and useless
and morning always always comes
muted muting snow grey to abide
here, in this place, in this light,
in this laden love
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 4:35 AM UTC
I heard a frog ribbit
And decided to **** it
That's when I filled it
With my drill bit
And it turned into a dead prince
I regretfully winced
My hands I rinsed
And moved on
There's a mass grave in my backyard
Like an *******
I never thought it would go this far
It's a hassle
This giant hole
From acting cold
It's filled with princes and thieves alike
In this pit there is no light
No wrong or right
Only useless fights
And sleepless nights
As the bodies start stacking
My suitcase I start packing
But ambition to leave I'm lacking
So it's the wall I'm smacking
As the hole behind me gets bigger
My finger is on the trigger
Shooting at the deceased
Like they have a zombie disease
That restricts righteous release
This grave is swallowing my house
Yet I just keep wallowing around
Muting the surrounding sounds
That remind me of hell hounds
Barking from below
Regret they bestow
When they could've been golden retrievers
Instead they flung their molten cleaver
Their searing liquid knife
Causes my insipid strife
When the droplets stab holes in my skin
And then start burning me from within
Their weapon may not be solid
It doesn't matter what you call it
It hurts me all the same
So I try to forget their name
I dug my own grave
Now I must lie in it
But when everybody lies
That doesn't seem like such a big deal
When in this world it's hard to tell what's real
Especially the emotions people make me feel
When I have things they're looking to steal
So I **** them in my mind
But they take pieces of me
I'm running out of time
Which definitely isn't free
It's the main commodity
They seek to take off of me
That's why I must bitterly bury them
But my conscience continues to carry them
Dec 6, 2017
Dec 6, 2017 at 4:50 AM UTC
The rain is coming down like an ocean unravelling,
just like my heart once did for you
-- a tsunami,
a whirlwind of emotion.
Come drown me again,
Come wash me with your voice.
There's a flood
and I think
I think
I may have been in love.
There's a flood
outside.
There's a flood
in my mind.
Your words
raindrops
muting
my thoughts.
There's a flood
and suddenly,
everything is you.
-lf-
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC