The distant hollow of the high mountain pass
swallows the setting sun as it steals away southbound
behind the coastal mountain's tangerine sunset hued silhouettes
Mulberry plashed shadows pointing northward
across the evergreens outstretched dimming,
beneath the waning fade of each fleeting eventide

Sundown ebbing asunder the wafting daylight,
each gloaming of the day, helplessly a moment sooner past,
transfixed further south beyond yesterday's passing azure
The lazy days of summer escape unbounded,
nomadic as the sea I've seen sail away before;
evanescent as the beauty of the bloom summer days beheld
and the memory of the fragrance they exhale

The nebulous weight of the gravity is consciously denied
by the truths a human heart beholds
A moment’s epiphany afflicts like a rogue wave in a calm sea;
the only thing my heart ever wanted remains out of reach

Everything my heart needs consciously surrendering
to the poignant passing moment's beauty,
the falling sun at distance sets more suddenly now
Lost in the undeniable certainty
life's imminent season's change

Eyes drawn stubbornly from presence to a sky so far away,
knowing there'll be no restitution for the welling sense of loss...
A bitter sweet song mummers in the silence of the absorbing spell,
summer's sun stained pages of watermarked soul scribbles,
time tattooed reparation for the indelible ache
of a harsh grey winter loneliness

Perhaps too familiar, this whelming Déjà vu
that tears my soul;     that tugs at these roots
but cannot sever their sacred grasp
But for now, eyes fixed to the sun's
inevitable tightening tether hence —
to wear weary each fraying thread's  impending break

Each sunset leans a deeper angle southward
as it slips down through the firwood shadows;
illuminating other faraway latitudes
far beyond the distant horizon skies

The preordained continuum unfolding what will be ...


someone you used to know ... September 11, 2017 ... 7:30 PM

Penned on watermarked cotton paper
Cursive letters script the words
of a surrendering rhythmic rhyme.
The ardent sonata was written
by the light of a Blue Moon’s shine.

The blood red ink bled through
the white wrinkled cotton pages;
musical notes dried by the warmth
of glowing Moon Beams radiance
in the subtle pollination breeze...

The maestro Coyote’s howl cried out!

Instinctively rousing the stillness of the night;
       a feral essence echoed
       through the eerie silence
       of the distant horizon,
bringing helpless lovers to their knees.

The words to the Cabernet Sauvignon
       stained midnight  lullaby,
       were emotions quilled,
       blending an aura accenting
       organic warmth of tones...

       The native maple trees'
flowering canopies of Spring
released a dusty yellow pollen
onto the watermarked cotton sheets.

In a moment of rapturous intimacy,
       an elixir of intoxicating bliss
illumined the achingly euphoric moments.
A natural untamed wildness was exhaled;
       savored ecstasy released
       into a passionate song of love …

That poignant melody forever lingers,
       like hieroglyphics on the walls
of some long lost abandoned cave.

Engraved, etched, brushed and stroked
       onto the brattice canvas
       of a musical Minstrel’s
            melodic montage ...

       Watch the artiste’s fingers
       prancing graceful ballet
       Worn down catgut strings

                                *moan
          
     ­                  weep

              purr**

       crying out lustfully.
     as if it were
    enraptured lovers'
  breathless sighs

  the rhythm’s cadence
whispers a masterpiece
       in an infinite
       harmonious time...

       The tempo’s lines
                Phrasing…

                 ...hush...!

             ♪♫♪ ~ ♫  ♪♪

        Listen to the pictures flow...
Listen to the weeping guitar strings
      of the passionate troubadour
stroking the metaphorical canvas scene.

       The ebb and flow
       of the musical rhythm's throb
arouse the Blue Moon’s hypnotic  allure,
    throwing incandescent shadows
    that dance around Moonbeams.

Joyfully twirling, blissfully embracing
in the blossoming Forget-me-not fields;
            Bluebonnet Lupine
               swirl and tango
       with the moonlit breeze.

       Lilacs fragrant aroma drifts
with spring’s churning romantic haze;
rekindling this fleeting memories recital.
The Minstrel and the Minstrel’s song
         now yearn to be set free ~

      Timbre without reverberation …
The twilight serenade was never penned
  to be hidden from the Nightingale

A romantic moment’s sorrowful lament
to be abandoned like a broken dream;
   fading unnoticed into forevermore ―
      Unsung,  unsaid, unreleased,
                     unrequited
                through eternity…

              The maestro Coyote
       is a wilderness troubadour
       illumined under the gloaming
               full moon’s spell.

                Howling soulfully...
               wailing impulsively ~
              ... crying hopefully
             pleading mournfully
                     lamenting
the Minstrel’s breathless cadenza ...

A bitter sweet musical embryo of love
                 found and lost
                       below
           the full Blue Moon’s
               glistening light…



©  H.  Rivers ... 2012, 2013
           all rights reserved

I want crazy, I want cranky
Let me be that old woman who gets mad easily
Let this misogynistic society grow so great it will never be over oh no
Crush me, objectify me
Romanticize the way I dehumanize myself
Discriminate me
I am the stigmas, don't free them from me
I will drink your *** and be happy
Break me, let me crumble
I am a lump of inedible meat
Make a bet on my rushing blood
Don't lose, don't lose oh you will win for sure
Just say it and ***** on my mouth
Don't let me have worth without you
I am lesser than a slave, don't let me stare at your eyes
Play with my broken bones, cut my veins as you please
Make me beg, step on me
I am watermarked and it says your name
And yes this heart beats for you to stop
It can start again if you say so
You are the God, just do everything you want, just do everything you want
I can't not take it
I am inanimate
I am inanimate
I am inanimate

Good on You (a love poem),
this one, is, good, on you.  

phrase uttered, measured, apace,
each comma,
a paused breath of:

admiration, enveloped by
a secret pleasure coating,
saucier prepared,
the base, the pleasured secret in this
mans minds eye unseen.

each comma,
precisely the carbon copy of the
comma curve of dark hair that
falls from a forehead down to the chin,
in a museum quality photograph,
as if it was intended to hold, contain,
your sly blunt moody,
and full plated whimsy,
when that half-smile poesy is in place.

good on you,
slow please,
not
goodonyou.

did you think, I did not have, a special bottle,
a Grand Cru,
a pinot noir, in the reserve,
inside the locked cellar of me,
to be used to anoint mine own
English Duchess of Burgundy?

well and proper aged,
but unlabelled,
till you provided
the appelation, the domaine,
good, on, you.  

the bottle dusty, the feelings, not.
if we never meet, matters not,
the gentility, tous les bons mots,
good in you,
hid in in all of the
astounding incredible poems
I well-addicted need,
those archeological mounds of a life,
I excavate and well heed,
going from one to the next,
me, the bumbling bee,
pollenating, following the path of the
watermarked tracks of
the King's Cross,
alas, they do not offer a couchette,
from Terminal 4 to London Bridge

unlike a teenager
happy to confess,
I am even younger,
an old fool, a geezer,
in love with a museum quality smile,
as he totters down to the Tottenham Hale station,
to catch the blue colored line, to the station after Vauxhall)
(oh dear, what's it called again?)
walking 10 to 2, saying ta to all
who assist his
two hands on an old man's bent feet,
steering the wheelhouse heart through its tubes

this is an undedicated poem,
retuned and returned,
addressee unknown, yet I know
by the greening dew droplets decorating faces,
that come so easy,
not a one wrung out,
you know
the who's of the true ownership,
the clarification,
in the bread crumbs,
fully disclosed,
left by me,
but for me,
in order to retrace my steps,
to find the railing,
when the steady on need arises

some Tuesday next,
will disembark from a riverboat,
at the old Tate,
spending my afternoon,
staring at an imaginary museum quality photograph,
till the guard surly reminds the pesky Yank,
its past closing time,
the man who will not be moved,
for already he, past overcome,
so why be thinking on why leaving,
for he will only be back again tomorrow.

so different.

mine, simple declarative sentences,
typically matter of fact,
so **** presumptuous,
those ill mannered,
know it all Ameddicans.

yours, lace doilles,
in a pub, with Hilda and Bill,
drinking pale ale,
from a porcelain cup,
and I am laughing,
Why?

It is all,
Good on Us,
a, love, poem,
indeed,
no kidding kid.

we are a love letter;
our initials watermarked,
on top of the page,
in permanent markers.
your laughs embedded,
on to my jagged lines.

      we are a love letter;
      forever, you are mine.
      inked memories stay here.
      bits and pieces of everything,
      accidental splotches of that,
      morning tea.
      your cologne wafting on to,
      my papery-naked skin.

            we are a love letter;
            strings tugging within.
            our fingerprints resting,
            on every angle,
            tracing constant patterns,
            drawing battles we endured.
            slipped in a crimson envelope,
            taste of the glue that binds us,
            coating our DNA together,
            in wax seals forever.

                                   we will always be a love letter.

There is a false face behind a false breast
That beats out a tune that was never its own
And the thrum of the notes in the din of the night
Is a scourge to the dreams it is shown.

Wherefore sits he so melancholy? By
baked glass lines of chairs, all written up for
the task which he cannot but perform. Waits
with a cruel mouth; a crueler waist that
hoists him from the waste with watermarked wells
beneath his eyes, his staring eyes. Up there,
how many faces press against him? In
the well of his neck, the silver skin holds
back the mouth for all it might be worth,
to be seen by His appreciative teeth.

There is a false stage where stands a false man
That speaks with a passion that never was known
And the beck and the cry that is elsewhere not heard
Is a tear for the man that has flown.

Laughing
in the street,

Sodden
head to toe,

The storm
drains are flowing,

We have
nowhere to go.



Lovers
in the rain,

Wetness
purifies,

Watermarked
memories,

Forever
*in­ our minds.

If only he'd called last orders
Even though the sun still threw its summer blanket over my lazy shoulders
And burned my reflection into the black screen of your glasses
A reflection of who I was
No premonition of who I would become
While the last cigarette still lingered on my tongue
Leaving the taste of nostalgia and bitter familiarity in my breath
And daring excitement and rebellion on yours
As your words twinkled and danced around an undeniable truth
And I
In innocence half feigned
Half in hope
Half in dream
Took one step forward
Edging towards your tango of inevitable wounds and tears.
If only they'd rung the bell
And we'd knocked down the last of that lukewarm wine
From watermarked glasses that threw distorted shadows on the table before us
As the dusk swept in like a curtain
Smothering our small talk
Leaving only an enduring flame built of history and kindled with confessions
Around which we huddled, as night fell,
Singing songs no strangers have a place to sing.
If only we'd walked our separate ways
Instead of throwing our liquored words along the train tracks
Loud enough for only us to hear
But a deafening scream in our heads
As they hurtled over an invisible line
And plummeted down a cliff face of caged emotion from which there was no return.
If only I'd never let you into my head
With nothing left to do but flush you out
With the same sickly wine that put you there
To drown the hole i feel growing in my stomach
Gnawing at my inside
Before I lose myself to anger or to pain.
Before I admit I miss you.
Before he calls last orders.

my manifesto is shining w/
                          torn pages full of watermarked memories
                                                      watercolour poetries written late at night
                                                      barely sleeping dreams slowly seeping in

& freedom found me once again
free them from their sheltered grinning eyes
I lay so many nights mesmerized at
            the beaten thoughts
             my beating heart threw them all out on stranger streets than yesterday

                                                   driving down tomorrow’s permanent
                                                   highways we’ll always be left w/
                                                   another memory to steal from the
unjust
            banks
                        in our own
                                           backward backyards slowly etching out our brains
from plagued moments of “fame” protect the
fathers from their nameless namesakes left forgotten under the stars

                            abandon all hopelessness,
                            abandon all scars..

Books upon books stacked on
the few bookshelves in my bedroom
I haven't read any
Watermarked ceiling
Hazy mellow lighting lures the shadows
Full ashtray
Chamomile tea
Two honey

I will not mime
for the sake of belonging.

Moon albino, gives
a piercing cry. Why did you
look like solar eclipse?

When you intend to borrow
love, in parenthesis, I will
go mad.

Light filters from
the chips of your armor.
Essence was nearly invisible.

An insane encounter,
took place once. A red tailed parrot
landed on the pretty pomes.

A face lost in crowd,
floats again in my poems.

Don't you open the blank
pages, where your name
was watermarked.

The steam that rises from the shell
Mists up the scope lens
A steady hand etches a heart
Through which the other bleeds

A tattered pass absorbs the flood
Inches from the silent hand
That reached beneath his thread bare coat
A white flag not received

The towel-head becomes another scratch
A tally of the toll
A line on the barrel of a hired gun
No space for numbers here

A dog-eared girl
Watermarked in red
Stares up from the inner cover of the pass…
… daddy won’t be coming home tonight

Dear Lover,
                  I knew the moment I felt everything. My friend was telling me of her moment, and I was taken back to my moment. My moment where everything  was clear and I felt everything. It was when the orange glow warmed my skin and you showed yourself to me. You showed me when you laid on top of me and hugged me with your lips. I felt it when you showed me your thoughts and I read through them all like a thick novel printed in watermarked tears. I felt it when we saw everything through our haze of ***** and ****, but it was alright because I knew that I had today and it was beautiful.
                    I was excited for the night but you lived in your head and not in your heart. You resided in the dust, eternally wondering if the telephone lines were merely telephone lines or if your parents were trapping you into an infinite existence, making you turn to ash on your yellowed colored couch with the voices telling you to put the gun in your mouth. I felt it when you pulled from me like sweatshirt strings that are too long on one side and vanishing on the other. You pulled me away and cast me aside, under the unused springs for your bed and under the empty plastic bags where your coherent thoughts now lay.
                 I felt it when you taught me what the world was. I felt it as I traveled to you while the sun chased my shadows and the moon welcomed my embrace on the steps of your front door. I felt it. Because it's everything. I felt it when you finally left me, like I always said you would. Because I know you have succumbed to your voices and they have won. I know that you are living, eternally still. A dweller in the dust. And I won't say I miss you because it's everything. I know I will never find you now, because you have disappeared when I have so much to say, but you can't hear me with all the silence rushing in your ears.
Silence that is too loud.
                   It smells like death and sounds like relief because I am free from a silence I never knew was there. I have loved you and have hated you. I have lost you and found you. And now I wish to lose you again, because I am tired. I am tired of feeling everything, and I am tired of everything being clear. I want to be blind again. I want to smoke without wondering if I'll see your reflection in the smoke. I want to drink without wondering if I'll hear your voice residing under my ear. I want to write without wondering if you'll ever read it and feel the same way. I'm tired of wondering. So tired.

Remember even though I didn't give you my password, I still let you consume and destroy me.

A monster and his beauty with her body in a bed of thorns.

boomersooner

                                                 ­         Me

an accumulation of
the not-so-distant insofar as
a whelm of cafard..

it is something that my hands
have seen with their drones,
something that bloviates
with intermittent speech,
a reaching-for-and-out hauling
of tempests as these

shadows renegade the dark
and join necessities of clarity
to combobulate their hue
into white without any trace of remembering, whatsoever.

yet in this scraping perimeter,
everything is within reach
yet unmoving - teeth do not gnash
anymore to grit their cadences,
mouths are swollen with something. a name perhaps? or a random memory of something we chortled about?
or were they bitten off by the fangs and their unrelenting incise,
suturing the lesions and removing the scabs of these wounds?

something that is purulent in laughter is just as crimson as in pain - these photographs watermarked by an effloresce of blood from which has lived once
in this world full in movement and in flesh now gone.

The lights that were infinite,
dance across time and space, but they didn't also.
because when all you are is unconscious consciousness. Matter without form. Energy without inertia, time and space are not things that you can comprehend so you just are, and then you decided that you were apart from other things and so bodies happened, and well... here we all are...


And now a different body is in her freshman year of high school . She is not unlike the many other bodies that attend high school or have attended high school since high school existed so we shall not compare her to you or I or anyone else. Or romanticize her inner turmoil so that she is special and heroic. She is human. But we will feel what she feels. Because though it seems now she is separate, she is merely the pinky on the universe of unity and the strand of hair on the giant goddess that is all of existence. But I digress...

These souls have bodies now. And they line the halls like ghosts in purgatory. Some lucky ones have adorned themselves in precious things, and walk with bold and bouncing steps. Most of them however let their necks drop, their shoulders hunch, they drag their feet toward the next place to sit and let time die for an hour. Eyes dart nervously or stare off into distances that from the faces expression of mild distain is a distance of people that are neither interesting or pleasant.

And our little friend is lost. Lost in the trappings of an unnatural place. The need to be excepted, the fear of being rejected.
The pain of being in a place that doesn't value your gifts, but trains you to adapt your own thinking to please someone who doesn't care.

Sometimes our little friend is kind, and sometimes she is cruel. But she doesn't know what she wants. She knows that people send her videos on her phone saying she is ugly and taunt her even though they used to be friends. She talks about the friends she has behind their backs. They are boring she says.

The never have anything to say.

We are all thoses pieces of pain. Every decision is watermarked.

Balast and bait.

For every painful moment we nurse well into our 40's,
we cut a thousand bitter words into another.

Our quiet thoughts breed hate and envy.

Our callus hearts beat with the blood of our ancestors.

My ancestors are the oppressors and the oppressed.

Haunted chased Jews of Europe,
Haunting hunting Afrikaaners,
after black blood.

How do we grow, will it make a difference?

Of course it will.

Pull open the blinds and let in the light.

Smash down the doors, rip holes through the roof.

Shut off the grid and see the stars reflect in every surface...

Or just forget that you are apart from anything else,
take in the darkness, and the lights that were infinite.

Deon doesn’t let me go out much.
I hear friendly laughter beyond my door,
but when I twist the ****,
he presses ice to my chest
and tugs the cords on my guts down, down,
into my toes
and they get too heavy to move forward.
Somehow retreating is simple.

Deon soured my music.
I sang once,
poorly but proud,
but now, even when I just mutter,
he wrinkles and screws his face in contempt,
disgust,
and I interrupt myself,
get shepherd’s crooked off the stage of my mind.
I hear my shortcomings in the melodies of others as well.
“This is something I would sing,”
I’d think.
“This would displease Deon.”
I pluck those notes out of the air,
mash them into a black polka dot ***,
and swallow it,
and I feel it sitting in my esophagus,
unmoving, undigesting.

Deon doctors my photographs, imposes his face onto them.
My memories have his scowl watermarked behind every frame.
In the most radiant dusk he hides in the sun,
and when it dips below the horizon,
he lodges on the moon.
When my youth’s mistakes surface in my reflection,
he is the one below the tide,
pushing my guilt and shame upward to breach
and drowning forgiveness and redemption in the depths beneath.

He is everything I fear in the darkness.
He is the darkness.
In place of monsters and grabbing claws and plotting intruders
-that which I feared in younger days-
he is the haranguing of my heart beating mad,
and the disappointment of those I love.
My worth
in everything,
in myself,
are a light, he assures,
because he knows the dark is all I see.

He is the sound of an indifferent ocean when I dream;
a yawning, watery chasm hungry for me,
no dignity to even chew and savor my flavor,
sure to be salty from brine and tears,
tender from bruises from the beating of my own fists,
slightly sweet from a stubborn refusal to succumb to bitterness,
and bitter from that failure.

His body sometimes becomes mine in the poses I assume.
I am become Deon when my knees press to my chest,
when I am prostrate staring in my bed,
the uncertain scratching of my temple,
when I freeze seated at my computer typing words like these.
I am free from Deon at 4 AM,
when he sleeps,
when my concerned subconscious escapes the watch of my conscious warden
And desperately scribbles a memento reminder
that I am,
and am not him.
Alas,
the sirens blare and I am apprehended once more.

Living with Deon is hard.
His trials do not ultimately make me stronger.
They are cardiovascular atrophy removed from physical form
and given more destructive shape.

His knife is the one in my hand.
But the decision to use his knife as a knife,
or a carver’s tool,
or a paintbrush,
or a pen,
is mine,
no matter how firmly he grips my wrist.

The worst thing about him is that
he doesn’t want me living with him either.

Invocation

Your incandescence emerges from cyclic play of labyrinthine colours,
An alternating spectre in this overbearing world of ours.
Your time-immune face flames, resolves in swirling coalescence.
You speak. I kneel. I give absolute acquiescence.
Mental walls made transparent to the love light of your eyes
Are breached and I offer no defence to the disarming smile
You give to reveal your knowledge of what within me lies.
I cannot feel where I am or know what this implies.

You leave me to watch in wonder when you weave into the wind.
You grant my spirit a mirror for your gentle face,
And now alone, I am cloaked again by the silence of this place,
Clinging to thoughts watermarked by your ethereal grace.