Alive,
is a little overrated in my head.
Yes I'm still breathing, my heart is pumping but alive isn't the word- for what I am.
I'm still here in existence, physical form but certainly not alive.
Why not? Well you see,
you and I have separate definitions of alive. To be alive is something you can feel, coursing through your veins, every curve and line.
Pulsing through your brain buzzing with intensity.
Pushing in and out of your body, one way in and one way out.
This is what being alive should feel like.
It doesn't feel that way for me.
Not today, not any day really.
Unless I go to the place where I'm numb the place I may never come back from,
who knows where I'll end up.

We both exposed ourselves in one way or another.
Except I opened myself up
You didn’t, you just revealed the surface
I showed what was inside
My heart
My mind
My soul
But you,
You never cut that deep.

A storm is raging on the frothy sea
Mountainous waves toss the vessel all around
The ravaging gales impale with a deafening blow
Raucous sheets of salty spray
soak and pelter             to and fro

A bucket bails the raged sloop
She moans and groans as she’s flung about
A sailor sails ― A sailor endlessly bails
Engulfed alone in the perfect storm

Two oars are manned on the stormy seas
The halyard torn and ripped from mast
To row and bail is an impossible feat
It’s hard to tell when you've sprung a fateful leak

The captain mans the forlorn skiff
There'll be No white flag of surrender flown ;
   " I will go down with my ship! "
  A furious soul             laments life’s toil
As violent waves crash the gunnels hold

He screamed out loud,    
         " My time has come ! "
                  " My ship is sinking!!! "
" Her broken pieces ne'er to be found ..."

The rampart boat, well fortified yet built to fail
Plummets from hills of oceans pitifully tall

Cracks are leaking where the lurid light gets in
But so does the briny water, will drowning soon begin?
Lost hope floats the helpless, fearless one man crew
His soul now guides the ether voyage ―


A vessel drifts lifeless on the empty calming sea
Nothing but it can be seen for miles of skies
The free board is deep the salty water high
Two apathetic oars lay silent, is a lost soul inside?


                     ©  Harlon Rivers

I look at you
you glance up
I look away

I glance up
you're looking at me
I glace away

This little dance,
Our peeks and glances
It continues on

I hope you
are braver
than me.

Gaelic
winds of change
swing
back and forth
crescendo into the sky
for
it
is written
in
the
eyes of the storm

It's okay,
It's alright,
You have yourself,
Just like you do
every night.

You're at your worst?
Well so be it...
They didn't see
that your hearts unfit?
Then
so
be
it.

You hold that heart,
and you tuck yourself,
Command your breaths
To fall into context,
The world will be there tomorrow,
And the day will fall
fom your hardened grip,
The landslide will come to curve,
The drought will leave
no tears to shed.

Even if you have to be the ocean,
The sun, the moon and the land,
To walk yourself to the last shore,
You've got yourself to understand.

You can be that push of courage,
You can be the one to soothe,
Nothing in this world matters,
Not even this heavy weight of blues.
You wanna bet?

You're at your worst?
Then so be it..

Before I close my eyes ... Before I drift away ...
      fallow as the evanescent tide grows low;
      before the falling sun echoes
      upon shown waves of estranged sandbars

Before I draw this life’s ending breath ...
      as beclouding skies ache like a windswept shoreline
      kissed by a bitter sweet gale of love and misery
      beget a chilling spell cast of invisible winds of change

Before you no longer remember ...
      the way the song a gentle wind's caress
      swirls and sweeps away bare feet
      set free to soar beyond the reach of your eyes
      
Before these eyes see the final sunset tiptoe down the sky ...
      even the sun feels the dimming in its wake ;
      unrequited footprints in the sand course straightaway,
      never turning around to look back whence they came

Before another tide floods a deserted oceanside ...
      erasing the traces of where we danced naked as the dark
      glimpsing the diminishing horizon ― 

                              and I let go .........
      as the tears steal away the last glint of the sea

           The way you took your love from me ...



                 © harlon rivers ... May15th, 2017