Tearing up I-75 like bats outta Hell
The radio jacked up to MAX
to be heard to the roaring of the wind,
Seeing as the top is off of the jeep

Zeppelin and The Who
Van Fleet and The White Stipes
Generations of rock
Shared by the elder and the young
Different problems faced
Yet shared circumstances

The pace is rapidly set
Like invaders they ride
Or gunslinger of the old west
Buying into the legends of their own immortality
Like a final ride  before closing that part of the past for good

Even some of that Seattle sound trickles in
A much younger and angrier Pearl Jam
Sometimes even the garage rock get a turn in the spotlight
Their pace exponentionally increases like a runaway train
It's end destined to be in a glorious and terrible wreck

The road trip is on
These rockers of all ages are on the warpath to a good time

God help us all

Once again I'm lost
     Big Billboard  Ronald McDonald
tells me to embrace summer but how
          
           with the air con in its death throes + baking tar breath.

              In the back with heat stroke + around
                             thoughts
                     mixed

                       **** your seatbelt I'm decomposing

             Read too much Burroughs
             Read too much Fear and        
             Loathing
+ all I can think about are mistakes and exes

Your voice is the perfect song to listen to on a road trip.
To view all the things that remind me of you.
Miles away from the stress of work.
Your voice, the open road.
Someone I can love, no traffic jam in sight.
The goosebumps from the air on full blast.
To feel love when no love is felt.
A broken down car with someone to help when something is wrong.
The air tastes different, miles away from the city.
A euphoric high.
Your voice a beautiful path.
My phone thrown somewhere in the backseat traveling a scenic road I've never been.
No track of time.
The thing about disease is that you never know until its too late.
It spreads. Becoming infectious.
You've become my relief, my cure.
Your voice like the breeze flowing through my hand.
Your voice the only other sound that could be heard outside of the car and the road.
I've kissed the air a thousand times over.
Driving pass my destination.
Listening to the sound of your voice.
I don't want to move from behind the steering wheel.
What's a couple hundred more miles.
You guiding me pass every exit sign.
Enjoying the ride

The hollow wind funneled the voice
of the distant night-train crossings,
awakening  a  familiar  silence
hanging from the vast wilderness sky
A restless heart hearkening the echoes,
imagining  a  runaway  Pullman
flew away off the rails,    airborne
on the winged wind headed north

Winter  pausing  for a moment
in  the  shadows  of  familiarity,
as if parsing the unspoken breathings
in an  echoless  surrendered sigh;
uncertain if tacit words set free
could ever allow a heart broken
        to feel whole again

There  is  no  absolving  voice
that whispers in a solemner tone :
        Death  has  no  mercy  ―  
love remains marooned in the wake ,..
and it feels like the world’s gone mad
letting time be the arbiter of perpetuity

The fading dream of a motherless child;
a wish to be held maternally
fell to the ground with a thud,
        breaking the silence,
dissipating formless as the shape of water

Muted cold lips so full of questions
morphing into fugitive sighs
come the unsettled night;
when shadows disappear like frail memories
that  passed  too  soon  to  grasp,
thickly palpable as the warm breath
a winter bird alone on frosty branch

There’s no fear in braving the darkness
in the  winter wilderness of life borne alone
There’s no way of knowing what you’ll find
down that long empty road back home
Life just flashes by silently before your eyes
        through the windshield
    of countless miles and miles

And there’s nothing you can do about it ―
It’s like hearing the moment of truth in a lie
when all I was looking for
was  how I got here in this now,.. yesterday

only finding a hopeless poet
scribbling  slightly stained pages,
spilling  a  bitter  sweet  dream ...


        harlon rivers ... February 2018


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there’s a safe space with birds peeking through mandalas and trees erupting from skies next to a fireplace that reeks of cigarettes and gasoline, it rattles like hearts do when they realize just how much they miss home, with two thrones behind tapestries that hide malarkey while sunlight sits in the driver’s seat as we track miles like tally marks with bleeding ears

We've seen lone souls walking desert highways of New Mexico, barefoot hitchhikers along burnt out main drags and closed down drive-ins.
We bought moonshine and turquoise on the Navajo Trail and drank in the dusty neon ghost towns of Route 66.
We went over the Rocky Mountains and found kids singing Woody Guthrie in old gold rush towns of Colorado.
We walked along railroad tracks in the shade of date palms, listened as westward bound freight trains rumbled into the red evenings. A country as mercurial as our very moods.

Let's take a roadtrip to the ocean
and drown in the memories we make