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, 

The Winter Still

photo by:   H A Rivers

The Winter Still
              by harlon rivers



Only the silence of the rain
casts its cleansing balm ,
redressing the gray mood
with the memory of a fickle sun’s
tawny winter hues

A plethora of awakenings ..,
croaking mutters spellbind
enlivened by heavens touch ,
painting hope a greener pasture ,
adorning other fallow
winterscape meadows
far and wide

A colorless midwinter gravity
envelops nature’s endowing OM
with a mystical ribbitting mantra ,
the hidden multitudes’ echoing
their ardent supplications ;
enlightening pleas resound
the call of the wild ,
beckoning spring
come by here and now

Cleansing rain arousing
the quiescent emerald moss ,
where it thickly grasps
its unseen confluence
hushed beneath
its breathless clasp

Dormancy refreshed
by the cleansing rain ;
the calmness strove
to charily assuage
an uninvited aloneness
bequeathed by
the wintertime resonance

And suddenly...,
           it is
the winter still

authors note:

The thrumming cadences of a zillion frogs abound this stormy wintertime Eden … just felt the urge to try to tell somebody

#life #hope #winter #thoughts #melancholy #spring #seasonschange

Someone said a poet died ...

Someone said a poet died
a lamentable natural disaster
no one really ever understood
the uncomfortable loneliness they read,
left unsaid, in the silence between the lines

Gathered words often revealed
an awkward vulnerability
life tethered by an in-severable frayed thread
unable to shed the skin that enfolds
the dauntingly misunderstood laments

Suspended at friendless crossroads
melancholy days of indifference wept
mused many a sleepless night
"accepting an unfinished life"
evanescent as the faltering light

It’s as if there was always some wordless reason
to never feel good enough
unworthy to discover elusive love unknown
cleave a labyrinth out of the darkness
okay to just let go

It’s not a weakness to be human
"Tears are the heart’s traces" … he once wrote
"only eyes cleansed by teardrops see clearly"
heaven's rain unconditionally enlightened
by love and light.

Someone said a poet died
trying to make sense
out of all he thought he'd given
a word at a time was left behind
only abandoned words remain in the torn of silence

harlon rivers © 2016

#poetry #poets #crossroads