Poetry 2009

Behold This Day

Behold the mystery of the foliage that folds
itself upon this day.
The silent agriculture that listens cypress
without comment.
The wind is awakened turquoise, velvet breaths
establishing bliss in minutes, motionless.
I look back weighed down by bread and song
forgetting how to sing.
I am dazzled by books filled with psalms,
by hands that reach for me from Heaven.

I hear every note as if it was intrinsic,
calibrating every nuance, touching clouds and sky.

This day is a tremor of orange
a vista of sparkling champagne waves
a monument to dawn uncomplicated.

Behold the gold stars of dreams
the pearls diamond solitude
and coral wishes.

Behold the sea's faithful eyelashes
the way her lips seek to touch the shore.

Behold the rose adorning the rain's brow.
How the dusk red trembles on knees of light
consumed by a scarlet thirst of love.

Behold how bones unwind like wind,
how the rainbow arches graceful
and sighs with such coloured delight.

I am no longer divided, this day is ordained
it's naked presence lifting everything to the sky.

Behold this day, it's clarity of white truth,
its humble heart blue as an apple.

How all it asks is to be acknowledged.

Kevin Harling

Ode To Neruda,Lorca and Paz

Like a mollusk of pearl light
black to the touch
slithering green and smirking
cobalt chagrin,
You breathed life into the placenta.

Like giant dwarfs of legible print
you vanquished the oceans of salt,
turned head over heels vernacular
and deposited ore where once
existed a void.

Like a plague pacified blue
with a pitchfork made of
chlorophyll,
you conquered the placid
with night.

You challenged hedgehogs
and bells transforming the
sound of air into hieroglyphs
of drool the colour of gold.

The sky bowed like a rabid dog
afraid of how you would colour
it's clouds,
your words like chlorine, pungent
like the perfect perfume.

You barged in like a Chinook
heading east, eliminating fractions
and borders, setting up shop
in remote outposts.

You textured the horizons with
the sound of chocolate snapping,
drew grass dandelion yellow and
when that was not enough, gathered
enemies like choreographers.

You made the accordion choral
and while it wept established
law and order in Europe.

And we who remain, wish to join
your select fraternity, riddled by
your descriptions of flight, wingless
and never leaving the ground.

We listen to your chorus of chowder
syllables and conjugate in smoke
filled stalls like penguins, congenial
and longing to be accepted.

You definitely breathed life, brought
beauty and dignity to peasants and
became Poets.

Kevin Harling

Insomnia

I wear insomnia like a necklace
my delirious residence of suffering breaths
augmented by the sentinels
this raucous night rebelling
in the tedium of the hours.

In the fat and the skinny
in the clanking chime of monotony that tolls
in the unchained murmur of disenchantment
in the black spaces of solituide.

In the tyranny of minutes
that spill like mercury
in the liquid acid tears of rust
at the root of my soul
in the indifference.

I ingest insomnia
digesting minutes by the second
the steady diet of time cold and wrinkled
existing and ceasing to be
in heartbeats
the woven words
the black syllables
the throbbing circulation of thoughts.

Kevin Harling


Sonnet

Touch the magenta brow of my yesterday
and sail away to the islands of promise
utter the whisper of willows blowing and
when you finally settle like the shore
sing blue notes of sky and winds that
take you dreaming and after all the pillows
stop talking and the silence waves its hand
remember the stars twinkling eyes and your
loss for words about sheep and wonder how
everything happens the way it should and
why night follows the day with no sun
and reach for the moons dolphin smile
and sleep.

Kevin Harling

The Letter

Inside my heart smiled but you couldn't see that
butterflies fluttering with every word, I held
my heart suspended in the kneeling position but
once again how could you know that, I see yellow
today the sun laughing along like a love struck
puppy but I didn't care. I was floating in the blue
winds of your soft caresses, drawn to your lines
my eyes sparkling radiant, held by your embrace.
I clung to the letter as if it was you, softly,
tenderly pressing my fingers into its skin, hoping
that it would not end. I read it more than twice,
but who was counting, I put the day on hold, you
were with me paper and pen, I was holding the
letter in my heart.

Kevin Harling


Nostalgia's Realm

In the wrinkles of time
That seep in-between
The lost seconds
Of nostalgia's realm
The places we haven't forgotten
Just misplaced temporarily
The lines of character
The faces we have been
Right there between
What is and what seems
Unnoticed and dreamed
In the depths of between
The caverns of time
That are revealed in the wrinkles
The lines on the faces we've been
Seeping in the lost seconds
Of nostalgia's realm.

Kevin Harling

Why

You can complicate the moon with excuses
undo the sea with your compromising eyes
bribe the stars with opulent words, but
the sky knows your pretense.

You could navigate the world with half-truths
seduce the clay with false promises
translate everything and present it out of context
but, the earth knows your schemes.

You scoff with lips of teeth simulating the truth
steal wishes and laughter with whispers, ungrateful.
You announce epiphany as if saying goodbye, but
the wind tastes your bittersweet mockery.

When will your eyes listen to your heart?
When will not enough be enough?

Salvation is not a bargaining chip
Heaven needs not justify itself,
you can never barter tomorrow.

Kevin Harling

Without Reservation

I give myself to you wholly and without
reservation. I do it willingly and deliberately
with absolute conviction. I relinquish my
heart to you, without demand for compensation.
I give you my breath, my dreams and aspirations,
the hours of my days, the blood that rushes like
a river through my being. I ask not a thing in return.
I hand my will over to you, my every thought, my every
heartbeat, my every wish, my fears and hopes, my
memories and my blunders. I forsake myself, admitting
my flawed nature, confessing my sins, coming to grips
with my brokenness. I do this purposefully, because
I know that it is right. I kneel and lift my hands in
prayer, I surrender. I peer outward from within
asking for your forgiveness, for your mercy, for
your understanding, for your undying love. I
submit my life to you, the one who separated
day from night, the one who placed every star
in the night sky. the one who wraps himself in
light. I succumb to you, to you will for me, I
will trust no other, I give you this heart with
no conditions. I ask for nothing in return.

Kevin Harling

Beyond Blue

Of all that endures beyond blue
above all waters that trickle dust
beyond the white of disposals
you might find truth untarnished
when hands no longer cradle night
and eyes see without blemishes
if you stand still like a lotus
and listen to the wind.
It will not be hearts of stone
eroding that seize the heavens
it will not be arms defeated by touch
grasping and clinging to life
it will be whispered in words
translucent and stirring the air
where the voice white calls
calls out in earnest pleas
handcuffing the earth by right.
Here love waits impatient
to hold kisses and embraces
with wings to soar free.
It waits for us, impatient...

Kevin Harling


Show Me

Show me forbidden and allow me to enter its gates
holly and while the vines of ivy cling like wrought
iron
show me the secret doorways key and let me
traverse its parameter with peripheries,
with language and stones,
let me spill ink as if it could speak an entirely new
language,
without adjectives trying to be objective.
Let me caress the panorama embroidering mercury
with syntax covering the geography undulating,
let me undo the coves and island peninsula with
rectangular angles and spheres of unimaginable colours.
Let the ink course like a river of blue
bleeding the page like the growth of something new
molten phoenix fire,
etching a landscape of mango groves and tall grass.
Let the stars survive the seas urchin gaze and
when night falls like a fleece blanket,
then let me suggest how black feels and
the chills upon my brittle skin.

Kevin Harling