Cupid's Broken Arrow

Some things we learn so slowly... Some things we never learn... Some things we learn the hard way... The only way to survive a broken heart is to leave Cupid's broken arrow and hope it heals with a scar before it drips and drains all remaining life from your heart...

The spell was cast by memory

With the wanderlust of a rolling stone

Traces of broken dream’s dust and ashes

Fell like love cast out with a claustrophobic moan

A broken heart could not convince me

Every heart has not a home

 A lonely sailor, banished, cast out for the final voyage

Into a world without an island to feel a tranquil peace

Born of mother earth, into a race where faded memories were erased

Journeying out into an unknown raging sea, before learning to walk the land

Dreams of some lost abandoned safe haven, an illusion

Welcoming shorelines were never discovered by this soulful man

A world where what’s lost is rarely found

Where square pegs never fit the round 

When the die is cast from molten life

It cools and forms flesh and bone

Insignificance, abandoned, left feeling like a heart without a home

In the end the faded memory is chiseled and scribed on some forgotten mossy stone.

In a distance I hear the eerie silence

The ship's final soul has sailed on a windless sea

Drifting infinite fathoms, the icon of a loveless being, another random lifetime lived, 
like a lonely sunken ship of treasures, lost in the darkness undersea.

I’ll walk another endless mile always knowing,

there will never be a home for my heart in the world ahead of me.

Reborn into a world where every passing thought becomes a fading dream

Love may be the last gasping breath left unbreathed

Belonging is a walking contradiction of my self esteem

Oh! heart and soul be set free...

Exhausted and weary of struggles, forsaken by gravity

No longer resisting the absolute surrender, the final choice that sets your soul free...

© 2012 Harlon Rivers… September 27th, 2012

Final Sunday Silence

Final Sunday Silence

As I search for the light

In this too familiar room

The darkness won't let me

Find the switch I assumed

I feel for the walls

That confine this lurid space

They seem so distant

Too often I feel misplaced

Where is that cracked door

Where the light gets in?

I know I have found it here before

Lurking in the shadows naively veiled by sin

As darkness consumes me

I feel for my soul

Am I back here again?

In the darkest of holes?

The room is so chilling here

As a candle’s flicker dims

It’s wick so very short now

That all wax is consumed

This once was a sanctuary

With people who cared

A refuge for the hopeless

Who willingly shared

The stench of haunting silence

Now deafens my mind

A journey’s full circle now,

As a faded memory preys on what’s left behind…

Where once there was love

Darkness and eerie silence fills the air

A stone cold feeling overwhelms me

Knowing love can vanish without warning…

Disappearing… into thin air~

Harlon Rivers…Sunday, February 13th, 2011

Cleansing Rain

...waiting for the pending winds of change to blow the storm clouds past... 

A long awaited metamorphosis... from the author of 

Word Whisperer...

Look up and breathe as the crying sky explodes

Inhale natures’ showering unblemished symphony

The oppressive black cloud hanging overhead lingers

Emotions ebb and flow with the moment’s immanent spirit of light

A freeing sensation excites anticipation

of the sky’s pending fated purposeful release

Heavens… flood down in a drenching act of baptism

by a merciful drowning in the river of celestial tears

Torrential rains wash over me like a cleansing rain

Cleanse the dust and ashes of the abandoned frozen traces

What once was a blossoming presence,

Evolved into a foggy cold winter season

Now all that remains is but a shadow of what once was,

Life was nearly eroded away by the years of fallen tears

Rinse away unrequited love’s stagnant inversion

Washing away the invisible chains that bind

To the loathsome heavy ball

Of an unforgiving past

Know the cleansing rain is the spirit of love

Washing over an exhausted heart of soul 

Left exposed and naked to the world

Look out with thoughtful eyes into the universe

Never stop believing the dream is eternal

Envision the clouds in the dark sky parting

As all that awakening light comes shining through

Renewing the promise that surrendering to love, 
shall be destiny’s purpose...

Harlon Rivers...December 10th, 2012

John Lennon ...Stand by me

Destiny or Merciful Surrender

This piece is a tribute to a life lived that could no longer be saved… It has taken a few years to write something about someone I did not know until our fated intersection, that day at the river…A cathartic attempt to walk a mile in another’s shoes.  Sometimes our life changes so quickly we don’t really even comprehend how drastically a moment changes everything.

...a free form narrative prose poem by Harlon Rivers

Destiny or Merciful Surrender

Standing on the edge of a cliff,
Dark circled eyes span the distant horizon
Visible signs of an unsettled agony
trembles from within the skin's surface
Racing thoughts suffer in search
for glimmers of hope’s shining light,
All the while trying to gain focus
through the distracting fog and haze
of the inevitable price to be paid.
Thoughts of waiting here forever wane
as this haunting loneliness, won’t leave me alone

Struggling for balance,
Teetering on the brink of gracious surrender.
Notions of ever belonging faded
with the final concluding memories;
That fated moment when the last rumination
of physical human touch vanished
like a smoldering wick without wax
Smoke rings rising to dissipate,
disappearing into an untouchable dream...

Never really understanding
whether destiny carved the pathway
of the long and twisting road
leading to this defining crossroad
Or is it the preordained instant of forgiving surrender,
Doomed from the very beginning…
There were many rivers to cross
since the age of innocence
Jumping off cliffs with the faith to fly like a bird,
soaring into the great abyss.

 
Now frozen in an awkward moment
of confused trepidation
Daunting indecision overwhelms distorted perception
Essence… praying to the spirits of the universe
for the strength to understand the  nebulous lines
between destiny and merciful surrender.
Asking for the strength to accept
that which cannot be changed

At the cusp, high above
a waiting river too wide to cross…
Rolling out to sea…
on the way back to where I started
Physically too tired to reach
for another unknown distant shoreline.
Love is a river of tears
better crossed when you’re young…
“Its only water, I want it washing over me,
Washing over me”…