No road home ...

No road home ...

No one passes through here ever stays for long

i can't even seem to catch sight of my own road home

The body hanging at the end of my own line i don't recognize

waiting for a change ― that never comes around

Fleeting through the primrose path crossroads in a blur,...

right now i'm standin' here like a brainless scarecrow all alone 

Just another familiar frost heave pothole barely shunt

swerved around like an unmarked bump

on this frozen lonesome road

i let you see it and you told me what it was ,..

but the shadow in the rear-view mirror reflects the ground 

Looking for the Black Box to unearth the cause of the crash

somewhere underneath a black and white rainbow i can't find

If you see a wayfaring stranger that abides undone

don't even stop to feel the ache that trickles down 

Just hit the gas and hold sway the wheels go round,

look off---- the dead raccoon lay sullied at the side of the road

No one passes through here ever stays for long

i can't even seem to catch sight of my own road home

The body hanging at the end of my own line i don't recognize

waiting for a change ― that never comes around

note:
"it's only water" was a moment, a concept which measured an untamed wilderness river's flow; a fleeting life chapter came and went, a not so simple soul's pseudonym for an enigmatic being trying to just let go ,.. yes, i too always dreamed of being someone else that found 

freedom from unhappiness, 

a life well lived,

because it's a long road 

tough times change,

bedevil,

undo, 

melt down ―

••• redux •••

written by: h.a. rivers ... 11 .13 .2017

writing happens ―

... put it on a piece of paper

... put it on a piece of paper

     T he clouds pulled down 

       the blinds of winter
     dimming the paling light 

          of autumn skies

       I put the lonely night 

        on a piece of paper
  the whispering wind came up 

       and blew it into dawn

With the daybreak sky painted black 

     as the writhing questions
      and the clouds as raven 

       as the night lay bare

     Now the falling rain erodes 

      the answer's simple truth
that surreally somersault through 

  the grey silence within a prayer

 A soul's writhing blood and clay 

       fight gravity's despair
     hearing the trees whisper 
        with limbs to the sky

           love has no pride

 While autumn leaves swallow 
            the wind gust 

          thence letting go ――
         wreathing upwards 

     still having the strength 

              to fly away

Like a colour from another pallet 

      blowin' in the wind
   pushed out of somewhere 

      it was never really in ...


i n the morning ... 11/09/2017

Author's Notes:

... write it on a piece of paper in the night
to see what rises from the sheets of another day,
        in the morning...

   written by: h.a. rivers ©

The Snow Hangs Heavy ―

The snow hangs heavy

With snow up to my ass and a relentless bitter cold
that penetrates the snow-bound crust to the earthen marrow
This frozen moment crawls naked , coursing knee deep
through overwhelming sparseness of shivery barebones

Disheveled subterranean depths sleep like the decadence
a heart long forgotten ,  arrest in its own neglected silence

Winterlude  and a newly befallen atrophy
takes this desolate hillside to an uncommon abyss
Benumbing aloneness bespeaks in onomatopoeia ;
the only voices heard in eons are the birds  chirrups
and coyote's urgent appeal
                        for life sustaining needs

            The brumal words of apathetic pleads
                        tersely thaw the moment,...
                    murmurs unto the heavens echo, 
                     splintering the probing silence :

                      " You who are my home ―  My salvation lies in your love "

                                         The melancholy air thickens ―

                                    The fleeting birds startlingly scatter
                                  like the rising cloud of spoken breath
                 that wisps across these raw cracked and chapped lips
                                                unsettling the silence
            
                      Overwearied, alone again in a biting polar darkness
                       Sunlit hues of snowbound white on white echo off
                                  the wasted time I’m living frozen in ―


Moonset  ricochets a gut wrenching Déjà vu ,
an abhorred circle repeats as I can’t even remember
the last time I saw bare pavement ,
              nor when the dreams wearyingly stopped ―

                               The hidden reasons
        too loathe to remember  ―  too loathe to forget

I can’t even remember that last time at the end of the road ;
or was it the beginning or another circle's blurred lines 

                                   of fleeting time ?

             It's a long and twisted road I've been walking on ―
        the unfathomable map, but a wadded up paper dream

The fir boughs hang down , propped up by the wintry ground ,
      entombed by the heavy burden of gravity, snow and ice

                     My tongue  frozen to these raw unspoken words ...
             Ink pen like a chalice of ice-cold stifled heart filled with algid ink ,
                       unable to rise up as reflected light so bright echoes
                                     in blinding uncharted lumens .

                          When twilight illuminates the frigid tundra ,
                the snow hangs heavy 
      like the weight of burden’s despair.

Such primordial enchantment , a facade to the chattering teeth
    of elemental misery ;  the grasping , clasping choke hold
of single digit desolation , a contradiction of the harsh realities
  a fickle infatuation with the beauty of an affecting moment


harlon rivers ... January 15th, 2017

Diary of the Falling Dominoes ..." Who will look after us ? "

" Who will look after us ? "    1. 11. 2017

    Its getting too dark               Too dark see ―

There abides a fog that entombs a lonely silence

like the peace on a shoreline that will never be 

Genetic seeds sown, unweeded cancer grown tears ―

An unpicked mango sized tumor, to be reaped like tears of grief

The kind of hidden misery losing love breeds

Like a bullet to a lonely heart that only wanted to be

an unthrown stone within an unknown mazy blackness

that has grown into a mountain too steep to climb

My head is heavy and heart empty bleeds

A river of teardrops coursing beyond this deliverance

a twisted line to some predestined nebulous black seas

Where is the love ?           Is this amazing grace ?

A heart broken no longer runs after love

like  a thirsty  deer to the reflective mirror pool

The silence of this blinding snowfall

embalms the ground of this garden

I’ll leave behind in the parting wake


A bitter sweet symphony unchained

an unsung song released 

adrift in the indifferent breeze

An elusive peace  like  a  crystalline deep river 

will never flow close to me ―

Harlon Rivers … 1. 11. 2017

When a tree falls in the forest ... will anybody hear ?  1. 11. 2017

 note: 1st line nod to Bob Dylan    

from: Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Where is the strength to be strong ?

Where is the strength to be strong ?

For strength is not a passing season ;
it does not come and go lightly,
by and by
The true nature of stalwart love " is " ,..
an enduring friendship cannot pass alone ―

Strength knows not colour
nor measure of dark or light
The creed of its roots ;
the plea of its strife,
within misery becomes belief

Yet is the sorrow felt a contradiction ?
Our own vision's
day by day devise
to bear diminishing life ?

Where is the strength to be strong ?

The doubt in faith that ebbs and flows ;
lost in gravity of deepest oceans'
blackened push and pull ?
No matter the despair embraced
that which makes the broken feel whole

Where is the spirit to be strong ?
The verve that emboldens strength ?

A Life is driven by a Will to BE ― is ―

Manifesting transformation ,..

Rise up the hidden fountain springs within
where all spirit waters begin

Sturdy strength ― Resilient and strong
"Never enough" belies love’s urgent calling

"Never enough" is of enslaving device
a fleeting moment
ne'r  a candle burnt out

The Will to BE
  is always enough!
    to BE ―

© Harlon Rivers ... January 6th, 2017

note:   written for a struggling friend,
and for anyone who can relate to the 

side affects of life's waning wintertide ... 

thank you for reading

A lonely bird without a song ...

A lonely bird without a song

He squeezed his voice out of the throat
an old Dreadnought guitar
He bared his soul to anyone
who would listen to his psalms;
purging the torn an anxious silence within,
surrendering an unspoken heart in a song

Some days you feel
like you live too long
Watching the recurrent tides
recede and grow low
This life, such an unplanned journey,
given to lose what’s been lost once more

How many times
must a heart be broken?
To realize a heart heavy
won’t stop beating strong
Steal away the broken inside these flesh forsaken walls;
breathe one’s last bated breath in the peace of a song

Sometimes life falls
waaayyyy short of expectations
Though passing time
may assuage evanescent dreams,
there is a stillness that floods the moment
awakening the  motherless child in his soul

Fate befallen a wordless silence
in the aftermath of finally letting go
Fingertips no longer calloused
Dreadnought wood dusty gone cold
Melancholy madness echoes unrequited
A lonely bird without a song

Harlon Rivers ... September 2016

a moment changes everything

Peace...Rivers

authors note:                                                                                                          

I've been unable to find a place to share my creativity 

that feels like I belong, so I'm in the process of reopening 

my creative writing blog chapters..  at least here 

I can be comfortably numb; where indifference is not taken personally, but my normal, because of the constraints of the system,