Magazines, newspapers, letters strewn across
every table.
Flowerpots, paperweights, nick-knacks atop
every remaining empty surface.
"Tacky" was the word that first came to mind.
Ledges, counters, and all but one chair are drowned in the mess.
The last chair is the womans.  She used to keep a few other chairs vacant in case of company, but
as she continued to grow slower she couldn't make the effort

and an extra chair was never needed anyway.

I just wanted to go out and play I would say
I just wanted to have fun
I never meant to cry wolf
I thought I was one
I thought we were all friends

Life was testing me
I was younger, full of heart
But the world left me hungry
And soon I was ravenous, wild
I flew the coop
Let's scatter

And Victoria was on the row
our faces were in the snow
you don't know me, no
it was all just a part of the show
just for show
you wouldn't know, no
you had to be there

We were 19 and on fire,
He said he felt inspired
My eyelashes tickled his neck one time and he lost himself in love, said let's go higher
Once I started I kept going until consciousness left me
A liability, it's not pretty
You should have just crashed your car, you thought

my fur was violet
I was always fighting with myself alone and howling at the moon


I faked it all to live
I'm a doll, I said
I modelled, I kissed you after the party after you told me about that tree, you said you almost died hanging on
I fell right then
I cried that day
It was your fake chemicals we ate
You tricked my heart

We ripped in the bitty,
Need a pack of cigarettes, no, butts
Need to go out and get that grass
Let's get lit. Let's go.
I'm writing a book, I insisted.
After this is all said and done.

After that was all said and done.

"You're too much" he said.
So I left, and I made a house of cards so tall and delicate
I drank, put on my ballet slippers
You tried, I yelped
Nice try!

Took acid that night, with Maxxie
He knocked at the door and I barked like a dog
Bathed in pastels and I was skin and bone
I felt so alone, I was just skin and bone
Powder in my teacups
Red hieroglyphics on my skin
I cut off some fur
Bleached it here, and there
And I ran scared

No one scared me like I scared myself.
My heart, I took it out and stuck it on the shelf.

December 20th 2013
"D-Day", I whispered
Mom unlocked her door
Made me Mac and cheese.
I showed up at Heather's office in Hello kitty footy pajamas after my first nap in days
Succombing to the vanity, I threw on a dress and got into character
I was very small
I felt so very small
I wasn't there at all

I was like, Doctor, let me catch you up
But she cut me off, yeah
She cut me right off and got on her phone cause she heard the yelps, the howls
underneath the barks
She could smell the forest fires
She said I was mad, no I wasn't bad.
"But we have to put you away."

So that day, I got put away

Again

The ambulance came and I laughed in hysterics and said you better just take these now
Here's the candy...

The Show must go on
Please don't put me down

Yeah, they put me down alright

BLUE VOICE
I am nothing but a boat its wing has a very bewitching tales I can't tell you their secrets. When the blue voice showed me its intangible soul, all the deep whispers dissolved in my dream as a sleepy blue rose. I can tell you another mystic glance; there are fogy seas of the blue voice, and you can feel their fingers touch your depth with calm astonishment. No, I am not a sorcerer, but I am just a passenger has drowned totally in the blue.

SLIVERY VOICE
I was not a chanter, but I could not sit on our tree bough when my grandfather had used to talk about the bright birds and the lucent horses of the sliver voice. There were cities of veiled winds their whispers touch our window with a delightful smile, penetrate our depth without delay and invade our souls with a deep salute. I was just a young child, and you can't expect to find in my pocket silvery fairies but our land is the daughter of the silver voice so you always find my daily chant; "oh the sliver voice, get my whishes on your wings and shelter my dream in the delicious midday. I am just a totally compliant and smooth southern child sits on that bough with sliver chants in his pocket."

PINK VOICE
I am not platonic, but I didn't smell the sleepy flowers of the pink voice. Do you see the colored vociferous wedding? Its naked soul is a fragrance of the coquette eyelids of the pink voice. When your eyes see the momentary waves of the pink voice, at that time, you will remember my words, and you will feel hardly the remote carnivalesque lands of my dispersed corners. Yes, I didn't smell the sleepy flowers of the pink voice, but I am a southern farmer knows everything about its dreamy smiles and hidden wishes.

(a travelogue)

He stared down through
the unbroken silence
lapping the shoreline
Water skippers dart around
the rocks and windfall driftwood
settled juxtaposed in cattail reeds
and emerging broadleaf sprouts

A petrified heartwood timber
lie fallow waiting bare barked,
hushed like a pining lover’s
     timeworn love seat,
     rubbed smooth as
     the crystalline waters
     of  half-moon lake

Lingering for a while  ―  
like a hidden stalker,
a perched wildcat waiting
for the full moon’s  
swooning spell to saturate
the thickening dusk quietude;
     arousing the urgent
     call of the wild —
exhaled from the held breath
of the wilderness nocturne
    on half-moon lake

The stillness was scattered
with the soft downy hairs
of the sleeping cattails,  and
the newly shed catkins
a spring gust bestrewed
from a tall resin birch tree
nigh the Sitka willows

     He  sat  quietly ...
     time out of mind ―

tossing his eyes up into the sky;
taking the time to read the stars ―
catching  them  each  again
as they fell into his gentle hands,
to show him who he was

Seeing their sparkly tracers  
trail-out above the cattails,
     from a distance
they resembled falling stars
unable to perceive their own renaissance ―
plashing lightly upon the still-water
     on half-moon lake

A lone shadow glides stealthily
near mid-tarn,.. swimming  
enchantingly with the grace
     of a blackswan
Appearing to glance shoreward
at the glowing low stars
rise and fall, as his eyes
twinkled skyward over
     the moonlit lagoon ―
heavenward of its moonlit ballet;
the lone sleek dark shadow
     slipping through
     a faint circular ripple
stirring the smooth as glass waters ―  
disappearing like a fleeting moment
     waning deep aneath
     a subtle silent wake.

When all the clear lines blurred,
he knew it had been so long ...

     but hearken !
… an interceding
     long drawn out wail  
     echoed  a feral ache
     across the stillness,
     breaking the silence ―

as the shadow reappeared;
     his tears surrendered
to the undulating call of the wild;
he felt the spirit of the sole Loon,
     as black and white
     as the moonlit night,
stir deeply in his wanting heart ―
     lay bare the silence
in lengthy yodeled psalms
to the god of the moon

Diving down deep yet again,
keeping the light he’d been given,
vanishing into the lifespring
sanctuary of half-moon lake


harlon rivers ... May 2018
travelogue: 4 of some more

Three thousand miles
navigating a storm
without drop of bad weather
Abacus odometer clicks
rotating forward ―  
spinning with the
world go round

Circling back down
a long and winding road;  
where unforgotten memories
were once searchingly explored,  
untrodden pathways
coursing way up north of alone
on the low highway
  
Now an aging shepherd
wonders without a compass ;
a vagabond deprived of light
from an ever blurring north star
Heart empty as a gas tank
with a broke down gauge,
running on fumes of hope
for unpromised tomorrows
Running from loneliness
just to be on the run

The gales of silence bellow
No feelings I can see ― lay me low

Wild-eyed daydreams
of Full sails billow out
through the windshield,
only hearing the unspoken
moments sigh restlessly ―    
The dull droning road rumble
re-sighs renunciatively,
a tired monotone voice
mimicking the loathe silent echo
wallowing in an
omnipresent hollow void
deriding unspoken chaos
between the passing centerlines ―

A frost heave pothole erupts,
with a leaf-spring rattling thud,
as a fleeting cloud of dust arises,
set adrift with the draught
headed off the east side
of the Alcan highway:
blown way outside the lines,  
towards the Alberta prairie

White knuckled steering wheel
held sway,  rolling down
a beckoning wilderness
          reincarnation; 
default reset button paused ― 
stuck in a moment ― until another jaw rattling
frost-heave pothole in the highway,
            jars it free

Leaving it all behind
like a sigh breathed
in a silence a heart has outgrown;
just a fleeting cloud of dissipating dust,..
         a paling whisper
the past seems to send forth
  like a fading last breath

Letting it all unfold to become what it is


     harlon rivers ... May 2018
       ... travelogue 2 of some

i.
you wonder if somewhere there's a voodoo doll with your face stitched on
(and if it's covered in pins since god knows that would be the logical explanation)
who goes away in winter? he'd laughed and laughed
-- and in spite of yourself, you let him

you very patiently explain that with european winters
'the sun's still out but it's no cancer risk
and the air's still hot at night but it doesn't try to choke you
and what's more cathartic than a spanish caravan park where you're serenaded by crickets?'
playing it off as a quirk, not an excuse to be anywhere else

he'll never know the comfort in being
little more than a passing stranger
a face on a street or in a window or a car
transient, fleeting; the short-term memory lasts roughly thirty seconds
so you're a stranger in a yellow polo and then you're nobody:
it's the circle of life, but compact and mildly less terrifying

ii.
unexplored streets and brains are bigger than home:
you can only be your true self when you are not at home
eyerolling, rotting from air pollution and complaining about first-world problems
you're hardly ill at mind but you're jaded and sad and sufficiently middle-class
so when in doubt, you pack a bag and think nothing else of it

you buy the guardian and a kitkat from a sullen newsagent
whose hands look like your grandmother's
(why do you notice this stuff?)
the poor guy's only middle-aged surely - he can keep the change
counting coins is weird and confusing anyway

happy flying says the hostess with a ribbon around her neck
she means it and you know exactly why she'd taken the job on:
fixed addresses are awfully limiting
and the swarms of crying babies are probably worth it
to get to go everywhere EVERYWHERE

iii.
package holiday dj digs out his usual and plays 'come on eileen' for an aging crowd
your eyes are upturned to a foreign sky and you breathe warmth
the stars are out and you are floating quite carelessly at the top of a swimming pool

happy birthday