Autumn Winds, Bring Confessions

For you I will ascend the mountain republics
climb the scales of any height, I will forage in the rain soaked dirt,
I will swim any water-falling ocean, I will move any stone blockade,
open any door of thorns, nothing can deter this spirit now.

You have cleared all the bramble, diluted all the brine,
exhausted all my excuses, for to you I am an open book,
all my pages sheer and revealed, I cannot hide for the sky
would surely embrace your call.

I feel the weight of your presence surrounding me, your
eyelash substances, your fingernail manicured lips pouting
just so, how in a flicker I come undone, my heart racing like a
galloping mollusk towards your shores.

I am silk to your touch, my cheeks like reddened grapes,
my hands meeting this earth that is you.

How immaculate the sensations you arouse, how utterly
transparent my guise of feigning your kiss, how foolish a
man can be, I lose sight of my face in your face, I am
glass and you are crystal, shimmering diamonds and still.

I have tasted the roses blood in you, felt their petals tremble,
seen my heart flicker in the shadow of your lips of gossamer,
I am drowning in a sea of love, in a bliss so deep I can't tell
where the sky ends and the water begins.

But please don't save me.

How solemnly bliss are these moments of flickering light,
how serene these nocturnal breaths like tides sweeping the sky,
sweeping in unpronounced and yet with such clarity of vision,
this is
a sky undone by your gaze, by your uncomplicated ways,
like a dove you hover in my light, speaking soft delights,
ushering in each new day, like a feather air bound and wistful.

How beauty shows its peach in each refined word you polish,
the way your lips wrap themselves around each letter and utter
them tenderly, naturally, the way they were meant to be spoken.

How can I follow such magnificent lines, flowing like a spring brook
shedding its winter retreat, cascading like blue waterfall, elegantly
falling from your tender pomegranate mouth into my reservoir.

I am fondling the dew here among a field of stars, sauntering like
a bumblebee, happy and gay, not a care in this world or any other,
your words take me away, whisked like a magic carpet to some
magical plateau high above any clouds known to man.

I hope that my words don't fall short, that I don't fumble or
falter, for you deserve perfect crafted honeydew syllables,
you deserve to be swept into the heavens on a chariot made of gold
kisses with arms that embrace you so tenderly that it makes a mother
weep with contented joy.

Forgive me if you hear my heart patter, I am feeling overwhelmed,
you have intoxicated my world with wine and song, made every hour
seem like it could not be outmatched, stretched the ocean with
strands of pure silk, made the nights taste like satin, and all I
can do is dream about your aquamarine distance, how miles apart
you inhabit every minute like time.

Like a marble block you have chiseled away the excess,
your noble hands extracting my sculpture, slowly
and with such attention to detail, refining,
bringing to blossom my once granite features.

I stood watching your delicate trillium fingers,
delving deeper into my skin, molding and
furrowing to the roots, such delicacy the way
you accentuated these features, carving my flesh
like earth.

I could not help but ponder why? Why you would invest
so much time and effort into this lifeless figure?
And yet beneath this cold stone exterior, I felt my
heart stir like violin strings, the adagio you were
composing with each beautiful chip.

My armour has been exposed, you the butterfly who
gave me wings, wings to fly further than the sky,
to soar where air breathes life.

To where can I send my gratitude if not to the stars
that twinkle within your eyes, where do I announce my
thankfulness for your dexterity, your graceful touch
that sheds all my pasts, you gave me the light, you
ushered away all the darkness.

You are my temple, you are a pillar of soft white kisses, I am pierced eternally by your jasmine presence that builds and lifts me up like a column
of scented dew.

I am enamoured by you my architect, my darling
luminous cloud of silver linings, to you there is no end but only beginnings.

Ars Poetica

Between dark and the void, between virgins and garrisons,
with my singular heart and my mournful conceits
for my portion, my forehead despoiled, overtaken by pallors,
a grief-maddened widower bereft of a lifetime;
for every invisible drop that I taste in a stupor, alas,
for each intonation I concentrate, shuddering,
I keep the identical thirst of an absence, the identical chill
of a fever; sounds, coming to be; a devious anguish
as of thieves and chimeras approaching;
so, in the shell of extension, profound and unaltering,
demeaned as a kitchen-drudge, like a bell sounding
hoarsely,
like a tarnishing mirror, or the smell of a house's abandon-
ment
where the guests stagger homeward, blind drunk, in the
night,
and the reek of their clothes rises out of the floor, an absence
of flowers-
could it be differently put, a little less ruefully, possibly?-
All the truth blurted out: wind strikes at my breast like a
blow,
the ineffable body of night, fallen into my bedroom,
the roar of a morning ablaze with some sacrifice,
that begs my prophetical utterance, mournfully;
an impact of objects that call and encounter no answer,
unrest without respite, an anomalous name.

Pablo Neruda translated by Ben Belitt

Untitled

Atoning The Hours

This finds its way through the twilight window
where gumption holds its throat,clearing,
these are not feckless words searching for
a harbour to rest upon like a shipwreck,
this is a migration of stones full of unction,
castaway like an anchor, setting sail skyward.

This finds its way within the erotic pulp of
plums, yielding fragrant glass kisses,
shedding its flesh like pollen in a kneeling gesture,
exposing its collar eucalyptus, and stripping the
night with degrees of atonement.

This is summoned from the horizontal dew,
between blankets and galloping sweat like a
stampede of doves, encircling ecstasy, bridging
heaven and earth with the sound of ruffled sheets,
asking not for answers but a voice.

This is a penance placed before immodesty's garden,
colouring Eden with satin and lace, traversing the
visceral kiss with immortal lips, rendering with
teeth the peach to which the heart succumbs, and
holding aloft this pinnacle of the sweetest honey.

Kevin Harling.

Conversations with Her Part 2

my eyes are wide shut, holding you locked with their amber gaze
here upon a mantle a gargoyle silently watching,
sitting pondering your beautiful lips that speak such perfume,
stones calm within this place,
you are the only sound I hear,
yours the only voice that feels like the softest warm drizzle,

here I am my most precious princess, waiting
time could stop or flee and here I will remain,
a guardian floating above the city clouds,
I am here with my chivalrous heart, waiting

I feel your footsteps from a thousand miles away
tenderly hovering above my brow, subtle dew,
you are a meadow harbour, a sunlit beam of radiant bliss,
you are euphoria, dreams are not made of such things,

I am here and here I shall be, gracing the hours with mindful play,
splashing in a puddle of love, O to caress your arches and sing,
to converge upon your slender limbs of elegance and delay the minutes,
your flesh tangerine glow that sends shock waves down my core,

I am here my angel, watching over the pendulum swings of moonlight,
transfixed by your ambient tones, your mellow avenues,
here I am, holding you like a diamond, your translucent prisms sparkling,
I see you, I am in you, I taste your almond butter sonnets,

Kevin Harling.

Conversations with Her Part 1

what have I done to deserve so beautiful a posture,
so gracefully your words spoon my mind like a swan,
how fragile the moons glance I see flickering,
outward I sense my heart fluttering, pining all that is you,
groping in this shadowy space to hold your eyes fast,
i feel needles poking my skin, asking things I want,
you the flower of morning who succumbs such thoughts,
these lines a testament to my willingness to open,
I feel you Lilyann, every peach drop of juice you spill,
your words like sunlight warming this spirit

serenely: but with a zest, I walk water for you,
gliding without moving I glisten with your dew,
I am melting like the hours looking for you,

I palm the consonants as if your body, stroking each one
as if it is the sweetest myrrh, drinking more than my cup full,
you the blossoming light who extracts such blue wonder,

angels feign in your glowing circumstance, the way
you exalt such lofty ideals of what true love is,
pinpricks resound these lines, echoing the ground to shake,
egging mountains to move themselves, you erode all my defenses,
I am chalk white hollow bliss, surrendering the wind and sea,

I edge further crawling over broken glass and feeling no pain,
to you I would endure every hardship, any compromise,

tickling keys talk, chattering joyful sounds, swimming
rivers with hands who will not rest, I am getting closer,
I touch your apple skin, tasting the core with a foraging hunger,
to sweet cool beading lust that builds feverishly,

I denounce any worldly happiness, discarding any meaningless fancy,
for this abounds with truth, it asks nothing, demands nothing but
to be heard, to be read as if it lives, and it does live,
it grows like the fire you ignite, like the salt of my skin
you have tasted, I am nearing, hedging closer still

Kevin Harling.

A Poet at Play

Looking Back In Spades


I saw the afternoon crowd my horizon like a pillow case
shutting out the light like a tawdry window,
I felt the air as if it was a razor, jabbing with short
dull jabs into my midriff,
I wondered how come 1 and 1 never gets you 2,
I let the shutters spill like sugar all over my chin
and when the minutes fell like rain, I sat
pondering your useless minutes of pandering,
I stalked the orchards looking for fences to topple
and discovered cedar holdouts,
I am angered by the waste, by the fruitlessness of all
the commotion, your mouthed insensibility,
I am frustrated by the hours you wore like a slipknot,
by your disregard for commitments, and
the way you blow dried your own agenda,
how you sabotaged even the laughter with
your contrived blue smiling ingratitude,
I wished away so many evenings in a state of sleep,
you stole my daydreams,
I am jostling the balance of javelins on a whisper,
I am passed the hurt but not the lingering residue
of your charcoal impressions,
you haunt me like ash.

Kevin Harling.

♅


Something's are best left unsaid

It's true that somethings are best left unspoken
so the poet in me will not utter a sound
but the ink on the paper will reveal how your eyes
make my sky bluer than blue, how your smile
makes the dawn blush with powdery pink cheeks,
how your hair highlights yellow and turns it into
glittering diamonds, how when you sigh the wind
is silenced becoming still and watching in wonder,
how when you blush the ground trembles softly
whispering sweet nothings with envy.
I will not utter a single syllable, for you are
beyond the scope of the most beautiful words.
You are lighter than light, more truthful than
any known truth, more genuine than the sun's radiant
rays.
Something's are better left unsaid,
but you could never be more perfect.

Kevin Harling.

Thoughts of Edgar Allan Poe

A Night With Poe

and so it goes like the syringe deep into the woods vein
carving a delicate swath into the never-ending night
ravens eyes copulate and gather around the bend
waiting like vultures for this parched frail figurine
to abandon what little hope their is left,
dusk spits black powdered rain upon these thoughts
spilling like an eviscerated tongue upon the forest floor,

I took a wrong turn left a half mile back or so
approaching a light vague in the distance, hoping
hoping for what I have no ______ idea,
abysmal my attempts to deduce anything by reason
my compass has veered north magnetic, lost
these are nomadic thoughts, full of decaying foliage
rusting and seething like over steeped black tea,

you would be right if you said it sounds dreary,
the pulse faint and barely breathing, chilled by a cold
blue wind, howling like some deranged banshee,
it is nocturnal, blood letters tracing the night,
searching for some sort of respite oasis in the shadows,

everything is coming down like crumpled mercury drops
leaking collusion like a bad transmission, stalling and when
it couldn't get any worse, lightning boomed announcing its
bitter arrival, Poe would be in his glory tonight, dancing
on tombstones with bones as calcified drumsticks,
chanting some mystic voodoo song in a language
fit for pygmy dwarfs crossed with Orcs,

I could feel the soil grabbing my tired ankles
pulling me closer like gravity had hands,
this was a night from hell alright, spinning a web
all its own and waiting for the end with a sarcastic
vampire laughter, Poe would be in his glory,
dressed in a bright red cape on his throne, calling
come closer you are almost here.

Kevin Harling.


Rant

You tried to peddle your pieces but they don't fit anymore
your disengaged fingernails, your disclaiming eyeballs,
you minion, as motionless as the flowers.

You left me like carry on luggage, waiting for your arrival
like a disheveled waistcoat thrown on the ground in a heap,
I grind my teeth like a tambourine, spitting ulcers instead
of bullets.

Its over, your feet are invisible now, you are a scallop
lost in your own greatness.

Kevin Harling.

Laying it Out in the Open

Soul Bleeding: A Song For You

Somersaulting depths I have traversed oceans drifting further from the source, You,
I have swam channels of thickets looking for, You,
I have transcribed every constellation dreaming of, You,
and still I could not see the Lighthouse, You,
I have felt you call through the mists of a thousand sleepless tears
and still turned the other cheek,
I have languished ink until the pen screamed stop, hoping for, You,
I the fool who refused the sky its breath, who sold the seas salt,
lost in a wilderness of crumbling lines, waiting for, you.

Where, when, how does this happen like wind, the petals that fall
like a stubborn rain upon this weathered brow.
I cannot make anymore excuses nor run anywhere but closer, closer to still
to where your true heart roams.

It is You, the flower who taught the sky what it means to believe in blue,
who sought only to be acknowledged with whispers,
It is You, the beating heart of every letter I have discovered,
the rhyme of all the sentenced reason I have let erode.

Today dawns anew, these hands softened by You, these eyes that can no longer deny the earth its wings, it is You.

I sing with the dolphins, soar with cormorants, these palm wings sweating and lucid to touch, You.


I am tormented by this oblivion that casts its anchor like a tempest
the trembling pins that shake at my core announcing your departing,
how solemn this breath, black and cold,
your eyes window has shuddered my light into night,
I dare not slumber for insomnia is far better a prison sentence.
I have held the wind, felt its blazing anguish and still I need more.
This is oblivion, rank and in a state of dismay is their any repair?
to where must one turn when the sun is not permitted to smile,
I ache with knives and cold steel courses like a river through my core.
I will not silence my rebuttal against eternity, I will vanquish any storm, endure any hell, for this cannot be.
Oh vow of impoverished absence, is this death for I no longer breathe air,
I am a trampoline heartbeat of strings shivering in a world where one is not enough.
How can this be.

now as always you transfigure the letters, twist the words lips into truth, the light shines neon bright and holding fast,
entwined syllables that would rather melt than be torn apart,
I hear you heart, beating wind that sighs happily,
so be it, and yet, even in the silence it is still you,
will always be you, love does not fear distance, it treads bold,
you are the morning silhouette, the shadow creek spilling like a melody,
the chattering poplar tones of yellow,
when you dance I follow and lead, embraced by the honey,
nothing can tear asunder this bliss, we were never apart,
two rose petals molded by Cupid, destined to sing together
within the lines in each others beings

and so it ends, like today's ghost, haunted by the moonlight chant
tomorrow reigns on the horizon,
and forward is all that I see, behind is but a glimpse into a mirror
that has revealed its silver cracks,
be true to yourself my emerald pebble

Kevin Harling.

Seeking Solitude Standing

Poetry

You have become the dawn alabaster, the pearl cheeks of my breath, you are the wide open vista of dusk, crimson and recoiling about my waist, you are the blue wandering rays of sunshine I set off into. O poetry my solace, the hand I reach for, your simple
lines of flesh, peach and succulent. I wear your cloth of satin, feeling it cling like the sun, bathing me in tourmaline radiance, holding me like a swan. In your reeds I wade the waters, lingering like a firefly, your brow my mantle, the place where love hovers and surrounds time like a vestment. I return to your hours of patient solitude,meandering like a dove who needs no wings, for you are flight. O poetry, my enchanting tall sycamore grasses that sing lullaby's, you are the soft gentle wind, the Heaven to which I sink my teeth, I kneel in your bosom, a child in safe haven.
Cover me with your orange verses, swaddle my chin with the perfumed nectar of myrrh, speak to me as if
you are all I ever need to hear.

Kevin Harling.

Thanksgiving

Dreams

A pomegranate sky
shoulders my eyes today,
stars of crystal wishes
fill my mind with
the smell of vanilla,
teddy bear hopes transmit
my message to
wayward pelicans
loitering
within my peripheral vision.

This day autumn crisp
shines like a
pumpkin
hardly able to
contain its grin,
the hours I forget
time has no place
here.

Dreams white and fluttering
like angel wings sing,
a chorus of gummy bear
notes,
hummingbirds hum along
in perfectly synchronized
beats.

This heart is speaking
mambo jumbo
lost in the blue blue yonder
discovering laughter
and joy all around.

May the dreams we hold inside
smile forever.






Kevin Harling.

Horizons

Changing Seas


Iguana twilight lit up the sky weaving chalk
like a monastic javelin and
somewhere around morning the margins
became opaque.

One could feel the skies armour gathering
like a green shield.

I thought the water seemed to slither like
a giant anaconda coiling and percolating
with hungry eyes,
shedding its blue skin like
a jaguar sheds its feathers.

I was looking in the mirror of change,
glass, nondescript and speaking mute pebbles,
laughing at my nervousness.

Inside the fear felt like a knife, full of
sharp pins, but I knew in my heart that
tomorrow was really no different than yesterday.

Kevin Harling.

Autumn Relections

Just Thinking Out Loud


I drew lines delicate llama trying to widen my gaze upon the bluest of horizons. I sketched my heart like a lily sky, treading clouds with soft shuffled taps. I needled the air like a pine butterfly, flying amid the copious dawn light. I gathered the sea in my pocket, feeling the ebb and flow against my salt skin. I hovered in the tall grass plains like a mountain solitude questioning the sunrise's knees. I longed for sleep with satin wrapped hopes, and wished today would just kneel in violet prayers. I stood like stone upon the phosphorous ground speaking about the vastness of what it means to be alive. I ventured into the wilderness of solitude with tears for a sleeping bag. I made suggestions to the Heavens and waited for a reply, but all I got was cobblestone distances that mocked me with nocturnal laughter. I took brine to heart with invisible gestures, the dizzying scarlet whirl of movement undoing before my eyes. I imagined numbers in immense equations, but always ended up at one. I denied the doors their right to open, preferring the anonymity of shadows, a morning ghost seeking to find autumn.

Kevin Harling.

Rainy Days

Just Like Still Water ( it ripples )

Like a sycamore, you come swimming with telegrams,
your disposition of magnolia,
you walk in flying clouds for shoulders
extracting vinegar like the wind.

Like the moon that moves snail hovering,
hovering beyond the wines night,
you come vaulting in like a rainbow braid,
uncoupled by the anise sky of blue.

Like the dawning of a tear white,
you linger smoke red eyes like a lost mariner,
lamenting the gradual decay of wooden hopes
like a sailboat of ears listening.

Like the flint of water you dissolve,
hemmed in by whistling bells and morning,
you loiter like charcoal in the dusk's hands
trying to measure your skin with laughter.

What lies dormant between us inhabiting the sea
like an umbrella, nameless and choking like wings
of a blind dove, you could fly away to where?

Like the inconsolable tomorrow that asks no questions
you leverage forgetfulness like an anchor,
choosing stubbornness as a colour to wear
throwing stones as if skipping across a lake.

All of this seems close to faraway, today
sinks like a leaf of mute ivy, harrowed by
hipbones and ankles of displeasure, these
ambushed lips violet and fretting like the waves.

Kevin Harling.



Metamorphosis

Mother-of-pearl butterfly tunneling through the light
whip lashed by the perfume of nocturnal slumber
awaken this night of eyelashes,
your butterfly feet of nipples that crackle
like the movement of dawn in cathedrals,
show me silver distances and lips made of wings,
show me your uncertain cupola of bells,
chiming like a stones skin,
whisper to me with black notes of blood
descending like a sheer stocking,
tell me about your reincarnated thong, how it
sounds when it sings in the mist of morning,
Mother-of-pearl butterfly land upon my silence,
furrow in my savannas, rest aroused in my
vines of peach metals, engorged by the delicate
weathers here, and change.

Kevin Harling.

October 8th of the year 2009

Coming Clean

I remember the way your juniper fingers crawled
across my floors flesh, seeking to answer
my dawn.

I recall with eyes fondly the dusk of your scent
like lily brush strokes, questioning the hours
need to go far away.

I dream of the minutes satin veneer, how translucent
were the mollusks we collected on the
cedar patio deck.

I divulge this to you with no clear pearl motives,
merely giving voice to nostalgia with a blue sky.

I feather this ink and let it fan my heart,
gathering solitude like a perfect rose petal,
refined not by memory but by the passing
and still I want it to linger.

If when this ends, the ocean becomes the night sky,
may the stars twinkle blueberry and the wind
whisper only your name.

Kevin Harling.


Ode

O peach destiny like a chorus of longing
cover me with petals of leather shoes
where you once walked,
let me unburden the hours with sweet sounds
of your clumsy footsteps,
hold me in the panels of your scented grains,
let me discover the roots of me in you.

Kevin Harling.


Written

In bold letters of perfection,
scalloped and surging like ink tides
upon your vestige,
lines drawn from a green-eyed kiss,
formatted with a fleshy precision
upon your evening brow.

You the paper that drenches my hands
with the need to examine
the sentences sheen, to uncover
the satin peach of meaning
in the hours beading sound.

I write you, on your geography,
the subtle details of valleys lush
and places where I ache to moor.

You are strawberry canvas in the midst
of my solitude, beckoning me like a siren,
O to touch the threads of your ankles
pinned against my sky.

Kevin Harling.

October 7th/09

From Here, Now

Like an advent of scarlet,
the successions I give into, like brine
that washes over me,
autumn resurrected in your smiling attitude,
the gardens of your flesh
where I nestle cocooned by your eyes,
little by little your gushing lips
that swell with nectar,
your loving windows where I sit,
overflowing with comforting drops of crimson.

The plumb of your measure that is unequaled,
the sound of your breath when it nears me,
your silhouette of safety like truth,
untarnished and steady,
your rocks and crevices like islands
of paradise, blue and sprawling like Heaven.

From here, now
eternally vowed and promised
all my tomorrows with love
that not the sky nor the sea
can ever diminish.

Kevin Harling.


Flesh

Like a taut javelin thrust upward lunging,
words that feel as if they fell off a trampoline,
misjudging the distances between you,
red-toothed and phosphorous hunger
crawling like my skin towards you.

The air is crisp and replete with your scent
drenching my continent, your alcoholic fingers,
stumbling to coerce like an anaconda.

I feel my breath narrowing like erosion,
moving underground, uttering musky syllables,
half disclosed and surrendered ,willingly at first,
enchantress who breaks stone with roses,
I must succumb to your moist petals.

Pink soft and tender crevices fill my silhouette,
I cannot dismiss your dawn, nor scale your skies,
for to do so , is to surely end up lost forever.

Kevin Harling.


Sounds like Music

Thoughts that feel more like
clay spilling into blue air,
when day follows the day into night,
and the sound of starfish surrounds
me,
thoughts of pearl sunshine and rain
fall from my window
like an umbrella opening
and
conch
swimming in my kitchen
sing about love as if it was a wave,
crashing against humped chairs
in a perfect chorus.

Thoughts of gingerly placed silverware
tapping fingers
on a beach of white sand
where emptiness is all you can see,
thoughts of misplaced picnics
and carousels without horses
and fuzzy glass pebbles
that whisper ocean songs.

Thoughts that spin like whiplash,
distant drums gathering like
daylight does to a ventriloquist
without a puppet.

Thoughts of music...

Kevin Harling.


Here


Meet me where the willow speaks softly to the sky,
where the day steps lightly upon my dreams.

Meet me where white is not a muted colour but
the light that sprinkles the air with love.

Meet me when night blankets the hours with stars
twinkling like precious diamonds and smiling.

Meet me where the roads converge upon us
when two hands embracing means everything that matters.

Meet me today and tomorrow in the rain and
lets share umbrella lips and sigh like a gentle wind.

Meet me in the hours when dust settles the minutes
when our silences are the best sound in the world.

Meet me my friend, my lover, my life, meet me
here, there or wherever it is we can be one.

Kevin Harling.


Erosion

Everything is eroding like glass windows
my eyes evolving into pebbles watching
time spill sand across the sea.

Everything is coming undone in minutes
of skin, fluttering winged butterfly
speaking to the sky with colour.

Everything is balancing on a thread of gold
thimbles, asking nondescript questions,
looking for answers in rainbows.

It all sounds so familiar, blue sky and
madrigal, voices humming eternal chants,
deciphering the clouds with smiling eyes.

When do the moon and sun meet?
When does the salt become sugar?
Why do day and night never rendezvous?

It gnaws at the marrow of being, light knees
bowing to the air in prayers, seeking redemption
and reassurance that everything will be okay.

Kevin Harling.


Distant

On tiptoes with words I can barely
get my lips to say,
the way
falling leaves
spill out and over
the sides of today.

From there you smile
awkwardly,
blue laughter gathering
around my knees,
the way you always looked
down when speaking.

On tiptoes gathering like
a timid blush of pink,
the fleshy things you forgot
like yesterday.

Miles becoming minutes
stalling like the sentences
you could barely whisper,
it feels very distant.

Kevin Harling.


Because the Poet Should Never Remain Silent

I thought about the tissue that makes
up the clouds yawn,
how the air cradles the sky with fleshy
peach fingers.

I thought about why thunder always waltzes
around shouting,
throwing its weight around with a
disregard for quiet.

I thought about how pillows never have anything
to say about dreams,
just silently watching the stars, oblivious.

I thought about what makes the sea so blue,
why it swells and struts like a manatee,
stretching its arms and clapping.

I thought about me and you, us and them,
about colours and tones of truth.

I thought about hours as if they didn't sleep
like a lost soul wondering the night.

I thought about poetry and where it gets it will,
why it never forgets how to speak.






Kevin Harling.

Oct 4th/2009

In the Woods of Contemplation


Glacial illusions sing about passion
drifting like snowflake eyes
from this place to that,
between knowing and voices
that sound like hollow bells.

Time becomes symmetrical,
eucalyptus and sprawling like
rainbows across my horizon,
galloping into night like
a nocturnal steed.

It feels like perdition dawned a
coat, maudlin and professing grief,
struggling with the years wear.

The language is tangible, displaying a
tenure of stamina, floating in the air
full of muslin repose.

Here among the vines, syllables intersect
and collide with thumping consonants
that feel like thunder.

Here water trickles like mercury smiling
with puffy cheeks, even the punctuation
takes on colour, all the foliage
turns to crimson demanding to be heard.

The sky is full of branches, chattering like
chipmunks in long drawn out sentences,
asking for chestnuts instead of hope.

Everything is becoming nothing
the way a ghost is forgotten, swallowed by hours
of dust and fingerprints
that can no longer trace the chalk
green forest.

Kevin Harling.

October 2/09

Strange Lands

I have been accused by the stars
of trying to colour them anything but true,
they're twinkling dissatisfaction more than obvious.

I have been admonished by the sky for doubting
the grey clouds, whiplashed with a smirky blue
arrogance.

I have been misunderstood by the seas
with cresting waves of
disrespect clanging against my coasts.

I thought about the reasons with a crayon heart,
the tones of vermilion green regret and sorrow
filling every sense and then some.

I struggled to find the banks safety, grabbing onto
tall grasses who turned their backs to me.

I tripped around unbalanced by the air's breath,
cold and razor to my alabaster flesh peeling
and feeling like sponge.

I found shelter under a canopy of trees, listening
to whispering winds searching to blame, grasping on
to collusion like a final curtain.

I argued with myself, debating the space between
what is and should be, pondering why the colours
bled onto the paper like a tangerine.

On the horizon stones standing distant
talked about silence
in muted syllables of derision plotting
to overthrow and rout.

I ran like a kite soaring with doves, flapping my tongue
wings in panic, afraid of the grounds hands reaching for
my ankles to imprison my pens fingers.

I am lost in a wilderness of white and black consonants
gathering my mind in verses like a ghost.

Somebody help me decipher this conundrum, I am sinking
in a quagmire of deceitful envy, defending my positions in
sentences beyond my control.

I asked the moon about the nights cheeks, and when he
responded gently, caressing the twilight with smiles.

I realized everything has a price, what is wagered
is not the cost, but what is lost is the only thing
that can help you find your way.

Kevin Harling.

Faraway

Its in the distance that I can be approached
your muted wings of flight closing in.
Here among the autumn foliage of colour
where things dissipate like decay.
I am falling like a rainbow wish,
swallowed by breath and water,
spilled like an ashtray of yesterday.
It is distant the web I am trying to
decipher, crimson cheeks enveloped
by so many miles.

Kevin Harling.

Sleep Walking

I thought I heard you talking in your sleep,
like milk white petals spilling down my chin
scurrying towards the night like a pillow.
I heard you whispering dreams to the window
light that stood watching like a veranda,
and somehow the words made perfect sense.
I watched as you turned over the sheets
and wrestled the folding flesh of me
closer, the silent abstraction becoming
even quieter.
I thought I heard but perhaps I was just
sleep walking in the stars of your brow.

Kevin Harling.