The Poetical Musings of Kevin Harling

Tonight

2010-02-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

Tonight, let your substance ascend

establish my dreams with flesh

let your kisses travel distances and oceans

swallowing fresh my glances with your legs of

eucalyptus.

Cover me with your persimmon shape

collapsing my passion from behind you

bend the night like a sheet covering my eyes

with your delicate mouth.

Moist flower corrode my shoulders

with your galloping breath of roses,

break my flesh, weight my heart

with softness and ankles,

surround my swollen timbers.

Let your bosom satiate my bones

penetrating my face with flowing hair

envelop me with chins and teeth

gingerly grating my skin delicately

with hunger.

Encompass me with fragrant dampness

that tastes like a pomegranate sweating,

press against my body with mounting sighs.

O sweet night scantily clad and sheer.

Extinguish my impulses to flee and let me

embrace the night,

gather your fingers like chains thirsty.

Impale me with amorous writhing.

Enclose me like the foam is

enclosed by the sea.

Kevin Harling.

Arched

2010-02-10T11:39:00.000-08:00

Tourmaline ankles

like the wind

stretch my eyes gravity

downward.

I reach your

soft vellum

flesh of apricot toes

cradle it within my hands.

I am impressed by

the architecture

how it sways and swings

like a bridge

spanning all my horizons.

I have seen beauty

but upon the ground

it has no equal.

Kevin Harling.

Two

2010-01-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

The Remains of the Days

The wind drooped like a curtain

calling out your name

from the ashes,

embers of last summer’s eyes

still remaining in the loam.

I have baked many loaves

encrusted them with miniature

cranberry clocks.

We are all keeping time

watching from windows

and verandas.

Yesterday is a soft shoe shuffle

of all my today’s and tomorrow’s,

I can never utter the words Goodbye.

The iridescent wind

will always call out your name.

I am Human

I am a flawed caterpillar crawling on my knees

I have seventeen legs with which I see

I have blue perforated tentacles for ears

I spin webs of non truth just for kicks

I regurgitate my own laughter for amusement

I walk upside down on my hands

I am imperfection perfected

I look for love in all the wrong places

I am human after all.

Kevin Harling.

2 New Poems

2010-01-10T20:11:00.000-08:00

Nevermind

Like a stone I abandoned the sun drops

of jasmine, I chose to runaway from the rain,

my footsteps eroding like pumice, one by one.

What couldn’t you understand ?

My palms sweating like sage words spoken

gingerly.

Today feels like a getaway,

the day a lamb to be sacrificed.

It’s all eroding like a curtain falling

all around me,

this skin an abrasion of today.

Why couldn’t you understand ?

I bled blue ink in indiscriminate lines,

for what ?

I am faraway now, beyond the clouds listening eyes.

You can look for me but

I have already gone.

Kevin Harling.

Did I Hear You Correctly ?

Denial is a bench I loitered on

on the runaway at O’Hara Airport

in New Orleans,

where I was waiting for the answers

to the questions I emailed you a month ago.

It is my quandary of quicksand

in which I am sinking like

an over steeped teabag in a saucer.

I must not have been paying attention

to the prompts or something.

All through my head was a river

or rushing gigabytes of useless information.

It had to be denial I left waiting

out my eyes window sill.

Denial I couldn’t face yesterday

or today or tomorrow.

Planes are taking off beside me

and still I am,

I am waiting for the answer.

Kevin Harling.

Worthy It Is: A Second Look

2009-12-06T21:55:00.001-08:00

The Genesis

When this was born, radiant And the opening
moments when mouths immersed in the soil
wore the flesh of this place
Chlorophyll blood and seeds yellow in the loam
And the water, so beyond primordial in her slumber,
suffused pure glass sky,
beneath the cypress trees and the magnanimous
redwoods vertical
Reduced to one I stood
the planet
exhaling with a boom
My spirit cried out for a Navigator and Angel
I recall at that moment
the three African ladies
lifting their limbs in the East
Their embossed backs, and the fog they were
passing through dissipating as if it was loitering
to the west And vegetation of all shades
It was the sun, within me turning,
on fire, perfect, that was speaking And
the One I was truly, the One for this eternity,
the One steadfast in the quagmire
the One wrapped up in Heaven
I sensed the changing winds
above my crown
And his voice, like everything that was and will be,
instantly became the words of the forest, of the oceans:
"Your commandment", he uttered " is of this realm and so it is
and shall be done for you are of this realm
Learn and move onward
and battle." he said
"Each choose your tools," he commanded
And he extended his palms
an adolescent God painting hurt and
mirth at the same stroke
First the Seven Axes, wringing with power,
pulled from atop the summit of defenses,
toppled to the surface
as in the tempest
at its inception
from where the scent of a bird is formed
and starting anew
the essence was brandished fresh
and the monsters were manifesting human
So ultimately designed, the Unthinkable
Then every breath of my brethren reached too
the small lads with blown-out cheeks
and tails emerald and wide, like a manatee
and the others, elder men: comforting, aged
enamel-coated, gruff
And they cut the cloud in half, and half again
and what was left, the fragments drifted off
being followed they proceeded North
With vast pedestals and boldly, the grand Tower
walked across the lake
The spot where as far as the eyes can see winced
so identifiable, so condensed and immovable

This the opening song.

And I who I truly am, the One who for this eternity
the One steadfast in the quagmire, the One molded by God,
traced with my digits the horizon
lines
elevating at severe degrees to hills
descending below below: a soft bend
both within each other
islands and continents that caused me to notice
the odour of ground like knowing
so true it was
that the soil accompanied me willingly
blushing red in unseen areas
and elsewhere filled with minute fir pins
Then, more at ease,
the mountains, the valleys,
and after, with the fist gingerly in decline,
the meadows, the vistas,
and more, now, boulders rebellious and deserted
those of aggressive reactions
He paused a second to survey his creations
complex or grandiose:
Olympus,Taygetus were raised
"This will still be after you have gone," he stated
And he manufactured silk through the rocks
and fashioned shale from the core of the world
building elongated steps around the rise
There, by himself, he positioned
white sapphire hot springs
windmills of coral sky
small fleshy verandas
and large ventilated hummingbirds
Vanity with its four left bookends
And because he pondered at the beauty
he made love so to be embraced
the vast pools consumed with love
the herds dropped their foreheads slowly, cows and ewes
as if the world could not bribe
as if treachery had not yet been uttered
"To hold serenity you need fortitude," he said
and spinning around with hands open he made
iris, orchids, poppies
all kinds of surface delights
and etched into everyone the mark of the creator
their domination and resilience:
This clay
this glorious infinity!
But prior, the ecstasy of air melodious hung for the first time
as I ventured towards the panorama
( ascending an endless crimson yoke of sand
negating The Past with my shank )
I traversed my linens, searching but for what, this,
naive and turbulent like a winery
out of depth and innocent like a new sky
A frond of your being from this soil
Then with one word, the seas were and spoke
And I could not help but wonder in awe
At the middle, he placed little jewels familiar:
Stallions composed of crystal, full of vigor
and tranquility dawned its pillow of moss
and porpoises showing their fins
( Ios, Sikinos, Serifos, Milos )
"Every syllable a dove
gathering April in July", he said
And a multitude of orange groves
to bridle the luminescent with their hands
settling like a sheet, onto this night
and a chorus of eagles
but you can't remember that sound
and humility molts in the day
and so little water
replacing The Almighty like a commodity
and the Birch went solo and knew now who it was
without the floor that is left standing
so that its as close as skin
and you get where its from
fragile the earth you are standing on
and rooting is impossible without space
and dig further into your navel
and touch the air you encounter
remembering everywhere everything you are
THIS CLAY
this glorious infinity!

" And this sphere you must behold and take"
he said: See! And my cornea beheld the grains
out distancing even the precipitation
over a thousand untouched acres
The flint breathing in the darkness and
plumes of water out of nowhere
I was erasing the solitude to rethink
gold sprouting soothsayers and the amoebic words
The shovel still in my embrace
I witnessed the proud herbs, their silhouettes
some standing off and others mimicking
There the asparagus, there the kale
here the parsley curling
acanthus and dandelion
liatris and fennel
In secretive letters I reached for my name
" Magnificent," he said " you can read
and in time you will understand so much more
if you study the Insignificant in depth
And soon you will require assistance
Remember:
the zephyr full of dispute, the robust pomegranate
and the red hot fleeting kisses"
And his words settled like pollen
The ninth hour, partridge-like, beating into the deep heart of euphony
the houses stood in solidarity
petite and like a perfect box
arched white and entrances of blue
Beneath the lavender vines
In my mind but elsewhere
with a symphony of chirping
distant coos, twitter and tenors croaking:
There the stork and pelican
there the turtledove
there the mallard and the owl
And the mosquito was there too
and the Virgin's mare
At the banks my arms exposed to the sun
and surrounded by the seas
with one third between; groves of citrus
and the northwesterly wind being confronted
realigning the ozone's sky
Beneath the leaves
small pebbles worn smooth
and minute ears of flowers bickering
and sprouting inpatients which just are
This Clay
this glorious infinity!

Then I began to comprehend the tides and the
endless chatter of the trees
On the wharf sat three jugs painted red
and near the wood shutter
where I lay on my side
the wind from the north crowed loudly
And I saw
Breathtaking mermaids naked and soft as glass
with a touch of black nestled between the thighs
and flowing black locks that covered the shoulders
and standing upright they blew the conch
and others writing with chalk
exotic and words that convey:
ROES, ESA, ARMINA,
NUS, MIROLTAMITY, YELTIS
hyacinths and the whispering talk of birds
the many sounds of July
At the arm of eleven
five leagues deep
perch, goby, seabream
with large gills and small tails to rudder
Higher still I encountered
sponges and starfish
and thin speechless anemones gumming the words
and further up at the water's mouth
rose limpets translating the depths of blue
and mussels partially revealed and algae
" Treasured things," he said " ancient oaths
passed over by time and the gathering winds ears"
And by the wooden shutter
where I lay asleep on my side
I pulled the pillow against my body
and my eyes filled with water
I was in the sixth month of my love
and within my care a precious seed stirred
This clay
this glorious infinity!

" But first you will see the wilderness and give it your
own meaning," he said
" It will come before your heart and after it
Know this above all
whatever you retain in the lightning
will not be altered forever"
And high beyond the waves
he placed villages of stone
There the foam arrived as dust
I saw an emaciated goat tonguing the cracks
its eyes on an angle, its thin body hard as quartz
I endured the locusts and the thirst and the rough-jointed fingers
for the fixed number of years ordained by the wise
Hunched over papers and bottomless night
I went down a slender rope trying to understand
I sought whiteness to the utmost intensity
of blackness, hope to the point of tears
joy to the outer limit of despair
And help arrived when it was supposed to
and the task was allotted the rains
streams sang all day
I ran like mad
on the slopes I tore terebinth, my palm gave myrtle
freely to the breeze's bite
" This is Purity," he said
" the same on the slopes as in your guts"
And he opened his palms as would
an ancient experienced God fashioning clay
and heaviness together
He fired the mountain ranges so they were barely lit
and made the grass true green, untouched--- he
moved onto the ravines
mint, lavender, verbena
and the impressions of sheep in the dirt
or again elsewhere, descending free from the altitude
pale shards of light, frosted locks of a woman
I saw and desired
True Mother
" Glorious," he said, she is
and overcome by lust I cradled the form
Kisses lip to lip; then entangled
Riding a tempest
like a coat I stepped heavily
that the atmosphere hid in the caverns
Like a perfectly worn echo the fish
moved with grace, just below the surface
and higher, my feet for mounds and the sun as a brow
I pictured the great Ram ascending the sky
And the One I was truly, the One who for this eternity
the One steadfast in the quagmire,
the One tied to the clouds whispered when I asked
What is Good? What is Evil?
" A point A point
and with this quandary you will ascertain balance and be
and after it chaos and blackness
and before it the trumpets of angels
A point A point
and of this you can progress onward
or else, everything falls apart."
And the Standard that, with my arms spread
seemed to level the light and instinct, were
This clay
this glorious infinity!

Because minutes passed like days
with long flat purple foliage on the dial of Eden
I was the dial rolling
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
June July August
Like a thunderbolt blushing I was dumbfounded
like vinegar The young woman's insects
Faraway stirrings of the Rainbow----
" This is all the period of innocence
the time of the pups and vermilion pods
a time that precedes what is necessary," he said
And he touched boldly danger with his fingers
And he put a blackened brow on the edge of the cape
Gathered from somewhere unknown he distributed light
" So that you may behold," he said
" inside your flesh
arteries of potassium, manganese
and the calcium enriched remains
of love"
My heart could not help but stall
it was the opening air of my first breath
the night came forward shouting
perhaps advancing towards me
the signs of trauma to the body of another
going back to the world above
Past, where my spirit ends
I watched secrets passing by, whispers of
high agricultural silos On the edge, nearby castles being carried
The North star Saint Marina with the monsters
And beyond that even, further than the waves crest
on the peninsula grounded by olive groves
I thought for an instant I could see Him
He who sacrificed to make me flesh and blood
with his beautiful blood
rising the thorny path of the Saint
once again
Once again
I saw the finest light from the five villages
the smooth surfaces of Yera barely touched
Papados, Plakados, Paleokipos, Skopelos, Messagros
the hand me down jewels of my family history
" But now," he said, " your true face must come
into the light, wholly"
and before I would ever know
a holy word or instinct, to just know
he held what nobody else colud hold
and twisting
with his arms outwardly
he redeemed the abyss of earthly things
and in the form of man:
the void of Death for the Coming Infant
the void of Murder for Just Judgment
the void of sacrifice for Equal Compensation
the void of the Soul for Responsibility Toward Others
And Evening, the plum
of the oldest moon stood
worn away by looking backwards
the remnants of abandoned stone circles and the
guiltless odour of waste, nestled within my
being and altered the faces with the doubt of
shade, adjusting the varnish of my outlooks
My stiff and rigid frame anchored to man
and silence is the only sound
except bottomless thumps, and lament that seethes
and cracks of skin in the mirrors
The scion of what nonexistent race I might be.
It was then that I knew
the ideas of Others
obtuse like the surface of a pearl
sliced me straight through piercing
I witnessed invisble walls in houses
aged ladies passed by, lanterns in their fingers
worry shorn on their foreheads and on the
ceiling and other young men, unshaven, reserved
hands at the hip, ready
for eons now.
" Can you see," he said with authority " you must
acquaint yourself with all the others and not be
led astray, if you desire your legacy to be what
it is now
There will always be opposers and challengers
and many speak with forked mouths, armadillos
and there are The Crude and the Water spiders
the Bread-farers and the Leadenfaced and the Neocondors
the flock and The Rest at the intersecting cross
of the Tetracty's "
" If you think you can handle them," he said
" you will be honed to a diamond and shine,"
he said
" Man your stations and defend," he said
And the One I was truly, the One who for this eternity,
the One steadfast in the quagnire
the One wrapped up in Heaven
overtook all of my senses and, became
who I am
At three o'clock in the early morning
beyond the shantys, aloft and from afar
the cock crowed for the first time
For an instant I beheld the Columns Standing,
the Metope of Awesome Beasts and Man sharing
the God and his truth untouchable
The Sun put on its position, the archangel bound
on my right

This I then
and the glorious infinity.

Interpreted by Kevin Harling.

The Muse Conversations Pt 41

2009-11-28T08:50:00.000-08:00

All the minutes, every white road, all the blue stars everything is hedging me closer to you.All the lily linen sheets stirring your skin to speak silent embraces, all the hours asphyxiated and sweating wet heartbeats, clinging to vines like dew.Your divine lips chanting a melody in every blue note,singing of breaking waters and sandy shorelines.I feel your footsteps upon my thoughts brow,softly tracing my outline, penciling my eyes curiosity.I see you in tissue paper dreams and Styrofoam clouds,in tidy folded clothes in a closet.I hear you in the winds quiet laughter, smiling.I touch you in the meadows grass, long and slender.I retrace all the seconds, lingering in hours,loitering in days painted by your words.You are as soft as a petal, as strong as the sky.I feel you now more than ever, permeating my skin like pumice, gentle and tenderly brushing against my interior.You have become my flight, my standing still, my hesitant forward steps, my epiphany.

The Muse Conversations Pt 39 & 40

2009-11-25T09:26:00.000-08:00

39

The sky feels conch today, all the clouds like jellyfish swimming towards you, the air heavily intoxicated by your sweet breath.The hours seem like a rift, a parting if you will, a temporary layover.Life plays its own hands, sorting and sifting, hurrying and delaying, the minutes we try to contain, the seconds like sand that slips through our hands.Across my eyes expanse, you fill the horizon, thoughts of you paint the land, everywhere you reside in the shape of honey.I can fill in all the blanks but one and that is you. I can number,colour and describe, punctuate and portray the wind and the water.But you somehow elude my words, your softness settles upon my brow like dew, and waits to be spoken.I feel coral and so full of palms, words try but cannot escape me,everything is reaching towards the sun, towards you.You are osmosis, I cannot dilute your potent salt, I taste your sea water and swelling, I tread your surfs and rolling tides,I swim only to drown in your cresting ways.I am drawn to your edges, to your center, we are emerging blue and full of so much promise.

Pt 40

I want to wrap you in lavender kisses, not allowing the wind to assume anything.I want to hold you in a hyacinth hug and forget about time.I want to nestle in your shallow brook and wade like a swan,all white and full of compromise.I want to sing like a dolphin, lovely blue notes soothing the sky and wind like a lullaby.I want to lay in your meadow lily, embraced by your fragrant wishes and linger like long minutes.I want to satiate my breath with your nectar ways, establishing my own reasons for wanting to be there.I want to cradle the moons orb and imagine how milk drapes your flesh in the night.I want to subdue the tempest distance, and collar the miles,bringing you closer and closer.I want this day to be unlike all the others, speaking only of you,writing only because of you.I want to pen something original, something heartfelt and tugging like strings, perhaps an Aria.I want you and nothing more, not for now, not for yesterday, but for every tomorrow I am blessed to have with you.

The Muse Conversations Pt 34 & 35

2009-11-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

34

How could their be nothing left to say, nothing left unsaid, you stayed never abandoning the night. I hold in my thoughts parchment tears rolled up and festering like a cold wind. It sends shivers of convalescing dreams across a lifetime of skies, heading nowhere and everywhere all at once, asking me , pushing me deeper to be swallowed by the sun. I cannot run nor hide among pillow stones standing waiting watching wondering to where I will surface next.
Today across the field of pebble, today amid the wreckage of a thousand sleepless nights, my nocturnal hands reach out to you, summoning you back from your deathless blue sleep.
This day is spurning my brow, turning my outsides in, calling your name from the highest summits I can hold.
This day begs for you, it kneels its shoulders upon your embrace asking pleading for your return.
Chivalry is not dead, it has languished in the quagmire of blood soaked battlefields awaiting the white dawn of truth. It is unforgiving and will not relent.
This day like an eddy, like an ebb and flowing lock of your hair, like the lips of your sweetest grace.
I will not let the hours have the last smile, this is my stand, and like a raven word I will not retreat, I look for you in the stars twinkle, in the iridescent watering crystal laugh of the moon. I feel you my heart beating pendulum. I await your words.

35

I set you free from the ghosts you cannot see
I release the shackle black pain, the raining water tears
of hours long ago past
I relinquish my hold of the wind, my parachute sky
I set you free blackbird, fly away

I surrender the reins of ink spilled in the margins
all the lines poorly composed, the syllables I spilled like blood
I surrender the consonants drum, the thumping verbs, the words
of so many silent sentences
I set you free blackbird, soar above the oceans vast
dive beneath sheets of sunshine and surface blue

I release the thorns and brambles, I set you free blackbird
free to swim any lands, free to walk any clouds

I relinquish the hours of holding you captive, let go of the chains,
your bondage is over, I set you free blackbird,
open all the windows white and doors shutters,
fly over the moon rainbow and sing.

I set you free from the ghosts you cannot name
i release the ropes of imprisonments smile
you are free, see the sky aquamarine and taste it

I set you free blackbird

The Muse Conversations Pt 36,37 & 38

2009-11-19T11:00:00.000-08:00

36

Everything seems like it is seamed together
merging in the middle of a canvas stitch
and it took me all this time to move you
it took me all this time to find you feathers
and what is it like to be moved by you
from somewhere close to the middle of everything.

That everything tarpaulin swings and says it sways
someplace off the kilter laughing, and could you tell me
anything blue without your eyes,
that everything melody singing smiles childlike
talking around circles and mouth me lips
that everything true sunshine says very little
about the middle of just being sewn like a seesaw
horse as it is galloping nowhere the way you say it.

Everything is just happening yesterday today
the hours spelling minutes and seashells listening
to the waters wading wave on the horizons brow,
and it took me all this time just to meet you in the middle
of everything and you whispered it was nothing doors
opening and it took me this long just to tell you
and find you in the middle of everything.

37

Your lily skin ghosts that brush against my shores
calling me from my angels sleep, beckoning me nearer,
your doors my tears, my edges and fears,
I am not hiding anymore.
Your tiger flesh of magic carpet rides, your desert
oasis summoning me closer, to touch and hold,
to sink my kisses pomegranate, to stay
and embrace.
Your lily tides of flowing white garments,
your apparition of scarlet pink skin, wrapping me,
enveloping my ebbing words, waving goodbye,
and saying hello.
I am not hiding anymore, I feel your sky,
swim in your deep blue ocean, I soak in your radiant
sun, I graze in your yellow fields.
Tomorrow is a promise, today a wish
and yesterday was blissful orange, your lily white
tigers, calling me like a ghost.

38

The more I lose me, the more I find you
waiting in the lattice of the day, a trellis smile
laughing blue, a cloud of sunshine white and silver lined,
waiting upon a stars brow shining.
The more I lose me, the more I find you
watching a moonbeam manta ray swim, a wave wading
minutes sensual, a tide flowing over my flesh pink,
watching hours speak silent words.
The more I lose me, the more I find you
wondering fields green lazy hammock Sundays,
wandering white truth lines, crossing my fences,
posting kisses in the email mail boxes.
The more I lose me, the more I find you
lingering like linen, silky lace and lavender
loitering hours like laundry on a line wind blown
and happy, rejuvenated like air.
The more I lose me, the more I find you
hoping like a child, innocent and playing
like recess, skipping a heartbeat and wishing
joy and beauty, hoping that you find me to.

New

2009-11-16T17:19:00.001-08:00

Not The P-Word Again

How processional your pea pleas,
the way you divert your eyes parallelogram
into a plethora of porous non committal statements.

You would think by now the plaster on your lips would
have cracked, your proscrastinating sentences
that hit my ears posthumously, prickling the prickle
of my pears.

It seems pernicious to be honest, how you sink your teeth
into me, probing for answers with platitudes and
passing polyglots as answers, I wasn't born yesterday.

Well enough is enough, no more will you prevaricate the
conversation, undermining any truth or decency. I am
pining with pins, trembling like a tall pine, shivering like
a lone poplar.

I will adhere to your parlour games no longer,
the time for pleasantries has passed, I can taste
your pollen innuendos from a room away, and it pains me.

Take your polished veneer, your pool side tricks and
pack your bags, because this party is over.

Kevin Harling.

The Muse Conversations E-book Link

2009-11-16T12:37:00.001-08:00

http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-muse-conversations/7930496

The Muse Conversations Pt 31

2009-11-16T08:27:00.001-08:00

My need to fly has been depleted, the wind has softened its face under
this chiseled exterior, and beneath my hopes all the cracks are being exposed.
How frail this present disposition, the water seems to be muted, and everywhere I reach
is silent, even though the night still whispers your name.
How precarious this new ground, like walking in a landscape of bubble-wrap, everywhere
is another landmine waiting to be unearthed.
Wounds are like feathers flying freely, but the scars remain.
I am solitary, silent as granite and eroding eternal.
I seep and bleed ink lines, and nowhere is safe to run and hide.
In the margins all is revealed, although some remains obscured by dust.
Where to go from here I hear myself say to the sky.
This journey is like an uncharted map recently discovered,
nothing is familiar and yet somehow it feels so.
The pieces are coming together slowly, and walls crumble slowly,
and the hours pass slowly.
I have removed some of the armour, my flesh bare, my heart open,
and still you beckon.
Time is not an ally but a foe.
The past is like a window one cannot fully close, I have tried to board them over
to no avail, tried to remove them and still the air finds a way in.
I am a shell of a man, a raisin of hope, and yet you see fit to put me up on the altar
of love like some kind of dark prince.
I dream of you angel, I touch your halo and someday hopefully
the stars magic dust will make everything just fade away.
I want so many things from this time, to frequent this place with an open heart and end.
I am giving you my thoughts, my breath, my lifeblood of work,
and one day I will give you all.

The Muse Conversations Pt 30

2009-11-16T08:26:00.003-08:00

I wonder if I was cleared for take off? Whether if I botched the landing
would it matter, but from the glass blue surface of the water,
I failed to see what difference it might make.
Ripples, turbulent, askew and slightly adrift of buoyant
seemed to percolate like bubbles, beading like the dew of freshly laid ink.
These penned sentences of truth leading down a runway of no turning back,
climbing its ascent through clouds of white possibility, carelessly letting go
of the ground, and forgetting to check its bearings.
I failed to see what difference it made to get lost, letting one’s compass
spin into overdrive, somewhere west of magnetic north and still heading
eastward. Nomadic as a syllable let loose in any line, free to stir , gather and gallop
upon any Bermuda triangle it came across.
I disregarded the directions, tossed the map into the ashtray, gliding into auto-pilot,
and steering towards where the horizon looked the flattest.
Lo and behold, laying undiscovered, was an oasis of beauty, still natural and innocent, still
Edenesque and pure. The island of you, unconquered curves of unparalleled sublimity, so breathtaking, so utterly magnificent, that I became
Robinson Crusoe on purpose and never regretted a single hour.

The Muse Conversations Pt 32

2009-11-16T08:25:00.003-08:00

The Muse Conversations Pt 32

Upon this mantle trellis of interwoven lattice hope
all the tinsel stalks me, all the wayward glances keep
coming back like mirrors. The faces I look into like glass portraits, smooth and perfect china.
Where do we go from here if not forward, my porcelain chin slightly askew of yesterday and still.
Still I roam nomadic through a world of fine silver,
watching the table settings, minding my elbows and knees.
I surrender today and submit tomorrow to the wind, I release the sky blue and let go of the clouds. I spew the ocean breath in lines of diluted salt.
Where is this heading if not West of here, across plateaus of umber green fields, out to the peopled
spaces of confession.
Here I am, standing stone and eroding in all the right places, this flesh mired by its own forgiveness, wrinkled by its own need to feel love.
I am wading mirrors, walking on brittle circumstance and yet still untethered by the stars.
Onward this goes, toward the horizon, touching ankles and necks with trinkets of hope. I will never give up,
these words cannot remain silent, and the silence becomes me.

The Muse Conversations Pt 1- 29

2009-11-08T15:45:00.000-08:00

The Muse Conversations

Pt 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 summons such thoughts,
these lines a testament to my willingness to open,
I feel you my muse, 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.

Pt 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.

Pt 3

If you are to be written , then it will be by my words, it will be my pen outlining your sugary surfaces, my ink that will spell out your succulent geography, my syllables that will sound out your curvaceous outline, my consonants that will sound out your perfect angles, my verbs that will describe your exquisite shape, your beautiful periphery, your angular disposition that makes my eyes twinkle.
If you are to be written it shall be I who traces the lines of your opaque peach, I who climbs the summit of your fragile and tender eyes, the way they flicker with mystery in the shadows, it will be I who
swims your valleys oceans, drowning deep in your sweet waters.
If you are to be written, I will leave nothing to chance, I will detail every nuance, search every nook of your perfection and shed its fleshy pink beauty.
I am the author of your book, I will glean the pages with sunshine, I who sees beyond what can be seen and invests my heart in every sentence, who makes all the verses sing your virtue, you are the eloquent moon that lights up my night sky.
I am the author, the one who when all is said and done, reads every line as if it was the most precious
ever written.

Pt 4

I cannot possibly contain the stars this evening,
I cannot hold back the ocean of emotion that floods my
solitary banks. I am breached,
I tried with everything I had to sequester the wind,
but alas I fell short, and you blew a little further away,

I thought about distance and how it crowds my minds eyes,
how if I allow it, I drown in a rainfall of loneliness,
but I stopped took a deep breath, gathered hold of the reins and found sunshine, I found you
I found rainbows and tranquility dreams, I saw the sky smiling
your smile,
I descended within myself to the middle, to where everything stirs,
the place where upon my pillow heart you rest, here among the softest meadows you reside, undisturbed by miles or time, here like a morning dove
you sing to my heart so lyrically I have to stop and again catch my thoughts breath,
I feel your whispering hands upon my naked dreams, nestled upon my waist
with wild staring eyes, I lose myself in such vistas, I would sooner sleep there than be anywhere else, holding your graceful face and shielding anything away but my mouth,

I flutter amid your trembling limbs of surrender, your ruby red lips parting like the most still sea, gently I feel the surging tides of two bodies emerging, becoming the soil,
I see this place where stones sit idle, eroding to the panting breath of two who have merged into one hope, into one blissful life, entwined like the most precious yarn,

I am subdued by these thoughts, spilling like a fountain that rejuvenates my spirit with every new encounter, O such joy has never walked these paths, surely this is Heaven.

Pt 5

I listen to the sound of bluebells shimmering in the early dusk,
the way she sighs just so, crocuses and things of feather weight,
light fluffy spooned dreams, the song of a loon drifting across a
quiet blue lake.
Such places untouched by human hands, unspoiled and pristine,
the vaulted ceilings of my mind at play.
Then there is you like a lighthouse beacon in a shrouded mist,
calling me, come here, come here,
all the ocean stops rolling, the wind listens to the sirens call,
and I settle like a soft silted quilt.
You are the harbour where I seek refuge, my rejuvenating waters,
my steady rock, you make the world still.
I feel my breath in your heartbeats, in your tender sighs, in your
carefully crafted lines of liquid pumice.
I am a sponge soaking all that you let go, immersing my flesh in your supple bosom skin, I cling to your channels like a lost vessel found.
O tempest storm that brought me to your fragrant shores, I thank you,
for now this shipwrecked heart has found its sandy dunes, its coves of coral
pink eyes.
I kneel and abandon the sea, for it is your land I long to comb, your sea shell island that i want to retire to, I shiver with prayers and hands cupped in gratitude, for I am not wayward but nearer the stars than I have ever been before.
I hear your words mouth petals falling like the dew that encroaches upon the leaves, I hear because I want to listen to no other sound.

Pt 6

Like two holy temples, sacred, tenements to the faith we have both
sacrificed so much for, two red blood hearts swaying in unison,
a single wave upon an ocean sky of powder perfect blue,
together, hands held with delicate grace, sheltered, loving
and finding ways to caress anew.

This dreamland of blushing clouds, a sky that whispers sweet french kisses, the air full of tongues and fingers probing eternity,
seeking pleasure through linen lines of silk,
this haven from all that disrupts, this home of utter tranquility,
this is where you have brought me my dear.

High above the rocky turbulent world, soaring with falcons,
carefree and laughing, this language of a love that is above earthly love,
angel love, flying on wings made by Cupid himself, floating
here among the turrets of emerald towers.

I am walking on puffy white clouds, barefooted and sensing only you,
I eat your chalice of golden worship, adorned by thoughts of truth and
sincerity, nothing can sway me, no winds can take you away, you are boundless, free and walking within me.

Days meld into minutes, into hours the seconds I photograph with subtle
words, into sentences professing my enamoured heart, you are a black pearl, an elegant albatross, you rise before every dawn and set with all
my hopes, you are my pillow down, my softest hello.

Like two holy temples, eroding time with outstretched columns reaching for one another, lifting each other up with mouths that can never be satiated, with fingers that when locked cannot be torn asunder, you drift
towards me never away, edging deeper and deeper into my flesh.

This is the world you have created, your genesis, your beginning that has no end, for these words will live forever, this ethereal wonderland of longing to be closer than close, and no matter how far it is always near, for I carry you like my breath always within, my lungs announce you, my lips speak only of you, forever.

Pt 7

So many needs, I waltz on pins, my craving fingers and eyes
your tangerine flesh that sears my lust with throbbing desire,
I am lost in a wilderness of delicious naughty thoughts,
blindfolds and ropes made of flesh, my flesh,
to wrap you in my abdomen, and feel the sky shriek at the sight of your naked ankles pinned against my walls,
oh what wicked nights satin sinks my shoulders, heavy breathing and wanting sighs,
to taste your strawberry valley, slowly, with an eager zest for more,
for all, to be consumed by passionate heat that cannot be measured in farenheit,
I want you, to swallow your orbs of radiant alabaster, gnawing with a
loving playfulness, to spur you on, towards my writhing form,
to impale your legs downward and see the moon thrusting beside me,
this night you are mine, and I am yours wholly,
nothing but hot sweat running in beads, and friction

Pt 8

Snowflakes feel this breath, and as you melt so do I,
these words like plush velvet that can lull the moon to sleep, words
that when spoken silence any windy doubters. Can you feel them echo down this most unusual forever? Do you sense it, can you feel
how these words trickling like ivy, seep into all the crevices, leaving nothing unturned, I have felt your leaves falling, I have climbed your
vines of disbelief. Put such thoughts to rest now petal.
Tonight you are a fair maiden, not in need of rescue but solace,
this evening you are a fairytale princess, a one slipper-ed Cinderella,
tonight is made up of quests and rescues. But most of all tonight
is devoted to love, requited love, love that gives itself with total reckless abandon.
Tonight the stars blush like diamonds, and while they twinkle,
the air perspires, the wind takes a long deserved rest, while two figures
make the night wish it was never going to end.
Yes my beloved this is about such things, about chocolate raspberry lips
tracing one another hungrily, about tongues of sugar trying to find new ways to get in, about candy floss legs that give up their secrets and wish that the night would linger, on and on until tomorrow breaks.
This is about such things my beloved, how when i cradle your manger, you rock to the hips grinding music, holding back the sensual songs you have longed to sing, this is a night of hands that hold destiny in a kiss of teeth, about kneading bodies that long to become mesh.
This is a night of dreams.

Pt 9

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.

I would not trade my place with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland.

Pt 10

The Letter

How can I translate upon this page love's virtue, how is it possible to give a voice to
my heart that you have so fully inebriated with laurel, how when the wind whispers it is your song it warms and plants upon my lips.
My darling, the days minutes trace your outline, every centimeter of your silhouette framed like a masterpiece, the seconds like paint keenly brush stroked upon the canvas you have so gracefully decreed to my possession.
If I am to be its caretaker then I accept the honour willingly.
I feel the passion swell within me, engorging every facet of my being, my mind races in circles shaped like heartbeats, fluttering your sweet name.
My love time stands still and holds your hand, it writes each letter of your name with the most beautiful calligraphy ever handcrafted.
You are more perfect than a rose, every petal equally proportioned and imbued with divinty.
I take steps back in awe of your cherry blossom cheeks, your iridescent eyes that make me forget the minute that just swept by, and yet even there you linger.
My sweetheart our flesh is interwoven, together the tapestry sheds its silk in passionate lines, every letter belonging to this union that beams with sunshine.
You are the blue sky swimming, the leaves of autumn that bleed crimson
kisses, the winter white of every snow angel made with love.
You are love my dear, so please do not ask me to translate love's virtue,
let me just nestle upon your brow like a butterfly and soak in your radiance, let me sleep under your bedroom eyes aquamarine and dream of
nothing else.

Pt 11

Eternity is not long enough for me, my beloved picnic,
I am immersed in your pink folds, entwined in the blue buffet of you,
time ticks in the dew hours covered by our embrace,
meadow dreams and soft trickling waters, the sound of delicate wind
blowing gently against my ears, I am wrapped in the blue balloon sky,
floating somewhere above your gaze, silently admiring all that is you,
you are everything, how delectable a peach, how sweet the pulp I savour,
No eternity is not long enough for me, my thirst for you will linger
past such pebbles that time may throw our way,
my flesh craves your limbs embrace, I cling to your juicy feel,
your tangerine glow that lights my eyes with fiery passion that will not give way,
eternity is not long enough my beloved.

Pt 12

How does one touch a lily, gently of course, but how do you
handle such grace, such beauty. I hold you within these hands, delicate flower, within you I see my eyes returning to me. Such beauty to behold sways my thoughts to tall soft grasses dancing in the sunlight, innocence at play, meandering the hours and not counting. I feel the flesh on flesh play, gathering in my heart, all the world stops and all i hear is your breath. Your breathing lips summoning me, be mine, be mine.
Surely this is bliss, I feel my skin ripple seconds, minutes hours, I lose track nothing else matters, it all pales in comparison to you.
Tongues tasting plums, darting between in and out like a tango, I feel you
close in, surrounding all that is, was and will ever be. You are the hands of time, perspiring. I taste your salt, so sweet and alluring, you entrance all that I am. How do you hold a lily, just like this I hear my heart say, just like this.

Pt 13

As you awaken ,
before the day has had the chance to settle,
before the dew has fully been erased,
and the sun has not stretched fully,
May the dreams fall off you slowly,
gently rolling like feathers,
may soft rain mists touch you with my fingered words,
caressing you tenderly.
May this day be filled with the sound of my heartbeat,
like a friendly wind, embracing you,
cradling you with loving arms.
May this day shelter you in my warmth,
may it encircle you with my kisses,
so that all you see is my eyes, holding you,
this day is made of love, may it tickle you
in all the places my smile does,
may you know no worry, or feel no pain,
for we are more than two, we are one breathing wish,
one breathing whisper, we are this day.

Pt 14

When it rains purple you are the umbrella,
when the sky shades itself in gray you find the way to see it blue,
when the day feels more like night, you bring in the lightness,
when time tries to run away your hands make it walk,
whenever I am nomadic you become my oasis, my island retreat.

To you my safe haven tempest, the one who makes me shudder,
when my heart glows bright, when the smiles are inside.
Just for you,
I pen my devotion, I pledge my ink, I trace your paper eyes
with flowing tributes of kisses and when the dust settles
and sleep casts its neon, you are my anchor.

To you I surrender my soul, to you I bequeath my dream stars.
I give you every thought rendered, every syllable breathed,
every lines white cloud. I keep my eyes so I can see only you.

Pt 15

I felt the night feign and look away upon discovering your soulful words,
I heard the moon shudder, and trembling the sky dipped out of sight,
I saw the blue ocean drown itself in black water. Such things cannot
be permitted to happen my precious conch.
How can someone hold a rose and colour it anything but beautiful?
How can love be torn asunder so, it is shame that fills my heart.
Nobody should be able to take that away from one so precious.
From this moment on, not a minute will wane without my embracing
love, not an hour will pass without my tender hands holding your heart.
The time has come for the roots to take hold, today dawns a new day,
one where the power of true passionate love brings in the light and
ushers out the darkness, no more shadowy underworld.
Today my precious pebble you can blossom, cast out those
stones, for your heart will no longer be allowed to erode.
This is a brand new day, from this day forward , love speaks
not in whispers but it shouts with joy, it laughs with lips of glee.
Throw away all that was and today look in that mirror and know
that you are more than cherished my dear, you are worshiped.

The Muse Conversations Pt 16

Good Morning my darling,
Before I rise you are my sleepy dreams twinkling
My eyes breathe your peach flesh
I taste your thoughts and wishes sweet
Everywhere you mirror my heart
The autumn wind sings your name
Heaven wears your red beating garment
You are my ocean day, my sky night twinkling
I follow your moon, I crave your sun
I whisper your waves, you ripple me.

Pt 17

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.

Pt 18

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.

Pt 19

We are both castaways, adrift on an ocean of words, surrounded by a sky of fresh blue sentences,
a world where nothing else matters but the sounds of our joyous lines.
My angel breath, my apricot veil of tranquility, you subdue any gray wind and colour it sunshine, you imbue my heart with sugar embraced kisses.
I live on your island of rose petals, the fragrant mornings of bliss overcome all of my senses, filling my pen with thoughts of only you.
You are my dawn, my sunset and everything that runs between like the water that crashes against our shores,
you fill the sky with the sound of love.

Meadow pier standing still upon these footsteps, like a wave,
I cannot gallop, nor march, for sublime is how the clock ticks,
the wind ushers in its own agendas, like dignity and grace,
balance seems very much the order of the day, and yet, still
You stray outside the boundaries, hovering like an apparition of scarlet,
waiting like the night air, loitering like the sheets of any question or demand.
You hang like a perfect ornamental necklace around my throat, shimmering emerald, and my eyes were green with envy, how You and I reside there,
holding your lips in the angles of the kiss, looking out windows blue,
I remember olive groves and all the places there was only two, fields yellow
flowing like a river running out all over piers and meadows and just two.

Pt 20

I sit here upon a sky of ten thousand words
standing like a stone with blue wondering eyes
and like diamonds everything shimmers white
and levels like a plateau veranda yellow
and somewhere between the letter ankle and neck
you emerge like a rainbow arch without suggesting
I hammock here I sit upon a sky of ten thousand words
asking, answering, gathering at my knees vows

On the page that
stares at you empty,
it dares you to become you,
to create alabaster horizons,
to draw fine china skin soft,
to invent places and colours,
to see what is not there
and put it just so,
it involves no preconceptions,
no pretense
it just asks of you to
listen to your breath,
to grasp hold of the
passion that stirs and write,
bleed ink as if it was air.

Pt 21

Magnolia dove
mulberry moon
chamomile silhouette
of a rainbow
lemon

Because of you I levitate beyond the blue sky
my red balloon breaths of silk soft to your touch.

Because of you I walk water clouds of pollen
and do not question the wind beneath my feet.

Because of you rainbow rains embrace my skin
in drops of sweet myrrh , you the beads forming.

Because of you the skies smile azure and sigh
the weight of life falling away like yesterday.

Because of you night cradles my pillow sleep
and dreams not in a hurry but slowly gently.

Because of you tomorrow shines radiant cheeks
suggesting joy and laughter in the same word.

Because of you day becomes a companion true
and distance is a mere formality of twinkling stars.

Because of you Heaven is closer than the ground
and angels speak your name in silent whispering bliss.

You are the sun that bled for me
downward you beat like an angel
drop.
You the wind that caressed my skin
colouring my days like the sand
spelling my name.
You are the water living blue that
swam with me across oceans vast.
You my thought rainfall nights
that spoke to the moon with
nocturnal whispers.

You are my blessing.

Pt 22

I who looks at white and sees wonder
Me who wanders the sky’s hope
Myself whom knows the night
All of me who forgets to question

Oh magnanimous spring
Oh scarlet lighthouse of summer
Oh veiled crystalline autumn
Oh ventriloquist dew of winter

You are the alabaster moon
the ripened sun of grapes

I could fill every page
with landscapes
and the litany of ideas
and beauty.

So what am I left with beside exquisite,
besides eloquent lengths of pearl ankles
and scarlet blushes that touch Heaven,

So,

Whatever you do, leave the sky where it is
let the air fall to the sea tourmaline
and when the quiet ascends hush white
whispers and when the dawn descends its
glacial curtain don’t bother to change

it couldn’t be more perfect.

Pt 25

I can stitch together paper boulders out of cotton
whistles and still the wind utters your scent, blue
fills the water ink dress of your brow, I stall sit
wanting, waiting like a turquoise whisper, silent,
how you extract my air with eyes of emerald wonder
the days that taste like you, chins and ankles sheer,
I can weave a thread silk stocking legs your limbs
architectural heights blossoming church where I worship,
kneeling under your nape curved silhouette,

The Poet

I made the rain soft fleshy peach, do you feel the pink beads of sweat?
Can you sense how I immerse your skin in my waters, how we drown in
the same tide pools.
I made the grey delicious, mysterious full of long probing fingers,
I gave it sight and hands to touch you with, inside and out.
I feel the rain my love, I feel it trickle down your mantle of curves,
running down slender folding channels, I feel it as if it is my breath.
I am the waterfall that splashes your bosom, I am the wet sky you run to for
shelter.
We are osmosis, merging to emerge and merge again like the dew.
Let me swim in your waters, night or day, black or white.
Let me be swallowed up whole, I do not want to resurface.

i feel myself reaching for the ground, to make sure its still there
the sound conch and enveloping the stars
your eyes crystal and eroding my shells
i feel your architecture gathering around my knees and I am
falling like tiny pebbles from a cradle

The Poet

I have this desire, for all that is you
whether it be by tongue, your sweet taste,
whether it be by mind, your sexy way of thinking,
whether it be by hands, that cannot control the need to touch you,
whether it be by fingers, who want to unlock all your secret places,
i have a craving hunger to drink you up
to immerse my flesh in your flesh
to lose my way in your plush words
to embrace your lips with mine, this night and every night
forever

The Poet

I love you no matter the hurt, or pain
I place no decrees upon you, I pledge only love,
unconditional and eternal.
I love you because you are who you are,
through the bruises and bumps,
I will undress you because to me naked is what you are,
carnal, true, unflinching, and yet still supple.
I love you more each moment, I feel your indecisiveness,
I realize you feel vulnerable as do I,But I love you regardless of doubts, I place no conditions upon this love.
I love you for what you are, not are becoming

The Poet

I am here and always will be
your safe haven, your biggest pillow,
your softest sky, here I am
with a heart that bleeds yours

The Poet

I ache for you in places long since gone cold
I thirst for your breath
I hunger for your soft skin brushing beside mine
I long for your strawberry kisses, your searching lips
I crave your thoughts, your exacting words, your insatiable curiosity
I am in love with all of this and more baby

Pt 26

I accept with an open heart your softly whispered caresses,
I offer my undying love and respect in return for your most graciously
gestured gift.
I love the way you say love, full of conviction.
I woke this morning like normal to the breathing of a dove, such
simple and understated words that hold me abreast.
I adore you my radiant butterfly, your wings glisten with me.
I will soar with you to untold summits,
I will investigate any depths, with you by my side.
I love you now, as I did yesterday, as I will tomorrow.
You are my pillow cradle, in your glow I submit my sleep.
I love you my darling angel.

Pt 27

Still closer, like an advent of hearts
opening like the sun upon this new day,
reaching for the wind with fingers yearning to feel.

I cling to your alabaster shoulders of peach,
you my steadfast fruit of desire, who prolongs my destiny.

Still closer to your nearness of hearth that wades in my eyes,
your slender limbs like legs of tall grass,
that saunter into my life like the days without hours.

Still closer, still closer to that infinite grace,
your gazelle like exterior that that extracts this tourmaline,
polishing and refining these words, as if they are predestined.

I adhere to you my new moon sun, my fallen angel, my glorious
blue sky, I am the tresses under your wings, holding you aloft.

Still closer, this granite interior eroding like sand, tiny glass
pebbles, smoothed by your eloquent ways that calm my storms.

This is an advent, I am getting closer, I can hear your heart beating,
I can sense you in me, I call for your touch, to be held by your flight,
I am nearing my love.

Pt 28

A Clearing

Their you go again, opulent and fabric silk lips
speaking about interwoven tapestries and chalk
board silhouettes of the finest silver and gold
leaf mouths that wrap themselves around and pout
like sunshine tinsel paper.
I look up to sky blue and not asking anything of me
or the window pane wind that whispers about curtains
shimmering like silver dollar charms, and all I can
remember, is the way the moon shone stars in your eyes.
I follow where I have never tread, and in that place where,
only you could take me, the dawn pokes me onward,
and the light gathers in the West valley
sunset, I see swan white kisses shaped like hearts,
and the sound of your smile.
Their you go again , spinning yarn gold trinkets
for me to trip over, in the mirrors vertical stare,
take me there.

Pt 29

I will have to circumnavigate the summit of Mt Vesuvius,
raise it from its ashes and tilt it on its axis, so that
water can speaks its liquid.
I would have to topple the Eiffel Tower steel, without damaging its architectural structured lines
of ink rust, brittle red and revealing my construction, one intricate syllable at a time.
I would need to swim the deepest skies without altering a single blue cloud, and jump over the rainbows you have so precisely placed like steeplechases for me to stride over.
You bring me to such plateaus of terra cotta realization, when the sun and sky meet in one beautiful eye, when the merging of all things
crowns every beautiful hour.
You beckon this voice from its nether channels,
producing its dew of papaya fruit, and pretty black seeds, that slip from your hand like ink.
You ask me to write you, like a lotus still blooming white flower, and when the petals sing, and the dolphins sigh melodious. It is here, oh yes it is here, where the horizon sheds the day, and upon the smile is only laughter. Here where when it unwinds all that is left is the strings of silk, the strands of honey, the most succulent nectar. Here that their is only you.

The Muse Conversations Pts 26, 27, 28 and 29

2009-11-05T12:26:00.000-08:00

Pt 26

I accept with an open heart your softly whispered caresses,
I offer my undying love and respect in return for your most graciously
gestured gift.
I love the way you say love, full of conviction.
I woke this morning like normal to the breathing of a dove, such
simple and understated words that hold me abreast.
I adore you my radiant butterfly, your wings glisten with me.
I will soar with you to untold summits,
I will investigate any depths, with you by my side.
I love you now, as I did yesterday, as I will tomorrow.
You are my pillow cradle, in your glow I submit my sleep.
I love you my darling angel.

Pt 27

Still closer, like an advent of hearts
opening like the sun upon this new day,
reaching for the wind with fingers yearning to feel.

I cling to your alabaster shoulders of peach,
you my steadfast fruit of desire, who prolongs my destiny.

Still closer to your nearness of hearth that wades in my eyes,
your slender limbs like legs of tall grass,
that saunter into my life like the days without hours.

Still closer, still closer to that infinite grace,
your gazelle like exterior that that extracts this tourmaline,
polishing and refining these words, as if they are predestined.

I adhere to you my new moon sun, my fallen angel, my glorious
blue sky, I am the tresses under your wings, holding you aloft.

Still closer, this granite interior eroding like sand, tiny glass
pebbles, smoothed by your eloquent ways that calm my storms.

This is an advent, I am getting closer, I can hear your heart beating,
I can sense you in me, I call for your touch, to be held by your flight,
I am nearing my love.

Pt 28

A Clearing

Their you go again, opulent and fabric silk lips
speaking about interwoven tapestries and chalk
board silhouettes of the finest silver and gold
leaf mouths that wrap themselves around and pout
like sunshine tinsel paper.
I look up to sky blue and not asking anything of me
or the window pane wind that whispers about curtains
shimmering like silver dollar charms, and all I can
remember, is the way the moon shone stars in your eyes.
I follow where I have never tread, and in that place where,
only you could take me, the dawn pokes me onward,
and the light gathers in the West valley
sunset, I see swan white kisses shaped like hearts,
and the sound of your smile.
Their you go again , spinning yarn gold trinkets
for me to trip over, in the mirrors vertical stare,
take me there.

Pt 29

I will have to circumnavigate the summit of Mt Vesuvius,
raise it from its ashes and tilt it on its axis, so that
water can speaks its liquid.
I would have to topple the Eiffel Tower steel, without damaging its architectural structured lines
of ink rust, brittle red and revealing my construction, one intricate syllable at a time.
I would need to swim the deepest skies without altering a single blue cloud, and jump over the rainbows you have so precisely placed like steeplechases for me to stride over.
You bring me to such plateaus of terra cotta realization, when the sun and sky meet in one beautiful eye, when the merging of all things
crowns every beautiful hour.
You beckon this voice from its nether channels,
producing its dew of papaya fruit, and pretty black seeds, that slip from your hand like ink.
You ask me to write you, like a lotus still blooming white flower, and when the petals sing, and the dolphins sigh melodious. It is here, oh yes it is here, where the horizon sheds the day, and upon the smile is only laughter. Here where when it unwinds all that is left is the strings of silk, the strands of honey, the most succulent nectar. Here that their is only you.

2009-10-31T11:52:00.001-07:00

Autumn Winds, Bring Confessions

2009-10-28T12:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-27T09:49:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T17:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-21T17:34:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-21T17:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-15T11:23:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-13T13:16:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-10-12T16:08:00.001-07:00

Thanksgiving

2009-10-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-12T10:11:00.001-07:00

Horizons

2009-10-10T17:54:00.001-07:00

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

2009-10-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-08T14:42:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-07T21:26:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-02T21:57:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-01T17:25:00.000-07:00

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.

A Poets Manifesto

2009-09-26T17:15:00.000-07:00

You might ask me why write poetry, why it is that I give paper to my thoughts.
I would have no recourse but to answer you with the coral flesh that breathes in lines
of hibiscus sentiment. I must refine my speech to ink, preferring the human to the inhuman, the light to the night, the stars to the nocturnal moon. I cannot defer such questions but I must defend with tourmaline hands the beauty of such solitude, the way it traces my spine with octopus tentacles, prying with a stonemasons gentleness
the crystal granite of clarity. Here among the pebbles glass, the waters are born anew, rejuvenating the white spirit with truth untarnished. Here among the urchin waves, anguish is but a beginning breathing mist into the crimson dawn.
You might ask why I write such things, why I choose to traipse the depths of my soul, digging for ingots of pearl, why one would prefer seclusion to this world. But I must answer with elusiveness, protecting the consonants drum with a soft clenched fist. I must defend the verses with a respect for the distance, never abandoning the shadows completely.
I have chosen, no it has chosen me. I am subdued by the syllables speech, the way a conch whispers bitterly sweet nectar wading waves like a surfboard. I am drawn to the tangerine sky like a kite of doves, soaring above the senseless solicitations of this world. I am a thousand neglected struggles, a million hummingbirds crying in blue notes of atonement. I look beyond the windows view , erasing my doubts with sentences of thunder, a tempest storm on the rise.
You might ask me why I write poetry, but in the end, it writes me. I am merely a willing participant, gathering strength from the muse, seeking merely to uncover and expose the beauty of this place.

Kevin Harling.

On the Precipice

2009-09-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

I feel like a bohemian
diametric and opposed
to scales,
balancing on
uneven bars trying to
maintain some sort of footing.

Arterial winds gust
full of questioning crimson
and hibiscus doubts,
to where does the wind sail
like a nomadic thought,
never looking west or
showing its face.

Everything is coming up clover,
spilling like ants upon a crystal table,
here light turns plum and
when you decipher ink
the words are lost.

Edges fall from a window
like balloons downward
sinking like a weather vane,
the compass is ajar and teetering
on a ledge.

That time falls cannot be questioned
gravity allows no touch,
it is mute like air and swelling
like puffy cheeks.

The day is unwinding like a clockmaker
marking its margins with chimes
and mischievous laughter,
hold on to whatever you can grab,
tomorrow will not stay still.

Kevin Harling

Apparitions

2009-09-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

Longing

Evening ash adorns the windows of the spaces
you left behind, like a sash of memory that
hangs on a vacant wall.

Yellow is a fraction of the cost rendered
in forgotten dust, the fingerprints on my
pillow flesh that aches for yesterday.

I am caught like a stone coral whimper
between a shout, but the shadows silence
such chagrin.

Today numbers fall like rain, all the dates
you occupied like a freshly baked pie
occupies a sill.

I can smell the air vaguely , the traces
that fall like tepid rain upon my brow,
blowing like a train mist, hollow.

I am at a loss for the words.

Coffee permeates my skin in a hue of regret,
you dwindle like a cypress, all soft branched
and blowing like a soft westerly wind.

I call out to ghosts without response, and
like a sheet wrinkle, dismayed by my lingering
thoughts and the face I can't leave behind.

Kevin Harling.

2009-09-23T17:41:00.001-07:00

To the Poets of this World

2009-09-23T16:48:00.000-07:00

Ode to the Poet

I don't know you
and yet the soil that permeates your soul
lights my way through the phosphorescent night,
soldiers of the pen who smote gunpowder.
I have never met you and yet your eyes of emerald
torches commandeer the waves and shout to the heavens,
the ink you so bravely spill like nectar.
I see your casks seep blood red truth and not falter an inch
when sentenced, I hear your trumpet song bellow like a moon
full of nocturnal honesty.
I touch your flesh blue paper and read crisply the lines you
shed like a confessional testament to integrity.
I may not know you but I breathe the same breaths, I hunger
in a thoughts silhouette hovering like an owl
reaching for wisdom and the fortitude to stand.
I am a ghost in white muslin clinging to your bosom, hoping
that the poems melody, its magnolia roots itself deep within
this frame.
I linger poets in your granite presence seeking the stones flight,
skipping borders of boundless garments, embroidering a tapestry of
balloons so I can soar above the mantle of the sea.
I may not know you, but I am becoming you, in dreams of vermilion
stars, pierced by your pomegranate words that speak magic.
I loiter here, waiting for the diamond eclipse, shrouded by geranium dunes
and tall grasses kneaded by the turquoise sun.
I am silent, a forest of silent pines, needled by pins, wanting to
nestle in the company of your most humble and topaz tranquility.

Kevin Harling.

Tuesday September 21st/2009

2009-09-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

A Life in Question

I have submerged myself in the skies, searching for the meaning of clouds. I have allowed the sea to subdue the salt, never wondering how it tasted. I have borrowed angels wings and searched for Heaven without ever leaving the ground. I have touched honey periwinkle dreams with eyes half closed, plunging my shadow into the path of light. I have ambled and argued with significance turning indifference into a country fortified by razor wire borders. I have tossed crystalline words across valleys of amaranth, martyring the forests and barefoot hills. I have bought copper chalk hope and wrapped it in gold paper just to impress the stars. I have satiated my hunger, climbing vines of sorrow and pity, and never understood how to breathe. I have lamented loss like a stray lamb, crying out to shepherds in a minefield of tigers. I have studied defeat standing knee deep in black water and only requested a bigger umbrella. I have filled volumes of orchards with all the wrong apples, throwing mineral questions as if they were stones. I have lived a life in a night full of translucent promises, naked and full of thorns, dropping bones as if they were raisins. I have leaped when I should have stayed, wept when the tears should have smiled, departed when I should have arrived. I have lived a life full of compromise, satin to the eyes and stinging like a bumblebee. I have lived pollen excuses and removed myself to glacial retreats to ponder my very existence. I have lived indeed, facing agony with saber-tooth teeth, quivering like a lost child. I am still here today as I was yesterday and the day before that and so on and so on. The hours bleed tangerine and the skies tremble blue pins, I have looked for the answers and in the seeking have discovered an ocean of sentences painted on paper.

Kevin Harling.

Bits and Pieces

2009-09-22T08:25:00.001-07:00

A place where the power of words becomes the emphasis of how a poet views not only his life but the world at large. Here everything takes on a new meaning, the commonplace becomes uncommon, the familiar unfamiliar. Here colours change like the seasons, and words breathe song into the mundane, the beautiful, the ugly, the unbelievable and the normal. So take off your shoes, open your mind and let the words whisk you away.

Behind Today

2009-09-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

Truths a Blister

I have spent a lifetime in the rear-view mirror
chasing the wind with my sails.

I have lingered in past memories like a chalkboard
that can never be totally erased.

I have sought forgiveness like applause with a
syringe full of misplaced vanity.

I have scaled inhuman mountains hunting for
rainbows and a suitcase full of gold.

I have searched for compassion in the closet
and wondered if it was in my suit pocket.

I have longed for love in all the wrong faces
and even now am not sure what it is.

I have exercised caution with a blindfold
to scared to reach out and touch.

I have kept the world at a distance, feigning
affection behind locked doors.

I have bargained away freedoms for the sake
of a few more dollars and still been broke.

I have defended bias opinions to be in the
"in crowd" like a court jester.

I have wrestled with angels in a sky filled
with mud and still not believed in miracles.

I have told lies to lies and wondered what
colour truth is.

I have stolen sleep during the twilight
throwing stars like little pebbles.

I have breathed air as if it was not precious
and dressed my hours like a clown.

Kevin Harling.

September 22nd The First Day of Fall

2009-09-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

Waiting For Sleep

My patience has been tested by pillows
which may seem an odd way to look at things
horizontal and staring up at the floor.
The clock moves like mercury, liquid
and spilling, scurrying slowly as if
to mock these nocturnal thoughts.
I am an octopus with galloping arms,
struggling with sheets made of oak
satin skin, fidgeting with the hours
like a perforating wind.
Everything is seeping through my windows
eyes of coal, dreams of alabaster china
dolls and green doors filled with sheer
black stockings.
Sleep has become the moonlight lagoon
to which I cannot fathom, its depths of
deep blue wishes and naked bottoms in chaps.
Perfume percolates like coffee, sweet and
naked as a perfect belly exposed to my
touch.
I feel like sand being lapped by the sea,
the salt of my flesh like a joyous wound,
relished with a sensual savvy.
I am nocturnal like a loon, summoned by
insomnia to endure with a smile this
most long and arduously tender night.

Kevin Harling.

Autumn Evenings

2009-09-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

Ode to Autumn

Ethereal ingots of crimson
spilt from heavens hands cover
the ground like maple petals,
blessings like prayers answered,
jewels of red precious honey
to be tasted and treasured.

My memory of fall and the shoulders
so willingly displayed in glorious
tunes that feel like a warm October
wind.

I weep like a poets lantern
rooted in smiling tranquility
lost in the grasp of wheat,
holding on like a clinging vine,
singing incantations of a sobering
kiss.

Life is a season unlike this
for here beneath my feet the
ground crackles like a violin
soothing with quiet notes of umber.

I remember the rains of turquoise laughter,
jumping into mounds of musty mystery
never quite sure what lay at the bottom.

I remember colours of a rainbow wish
uttering childhood days when time
was a companion, I recall in vivid
silhouettes the dawn mornings,
crisp and invigorating.

Autumn my eternal comrade
walking hand and hand through my hours
like a faithful puppy
who sighs in bright red eyes.

Kevin Harling.

Monday September 21st

2009-09-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

A Lament

Summer feels like a gypsy
vagabond erasing the spring
with empty thorns, quivering
like Medusa with a thousand eyes,
her stone leaves like absent
syllables making knots
and tormenting we the travelers.

I feel forced to understand
the silent gestures of her language,
her shadowy disposition that funnels
my thoughts to her lips,
touching albeit briefly
the nectar of her eyes.

I await patiently like a drunk forest
her ivy caresses that cling and climb
melancholic, the way she
dusts everything with perfume
like a downpour of swans.

She parades in like a lightning bolt
nomadic and drifting like a
solemn wind, dancing on ancient
myths as if she had not a care
in the world.

Summer feels like a necklace of
pebbles galloping,
like a vertical Pegasus stammering,
like a shoeless God trembling,
and yet in a whisk she can
blanket the earth with a blanket of
golden myrrh.

I linger in the fragrance of her rose
awakened by the brow of her nocturnal
daylight, and when I think I know her secret,
she extends her talons and penetrates my twilight.

Summer is eternal, mineral and suggestive,
she is doves and amethyst smiles,
she is a solo violin, amber and refusing to be held,
she has wings of tourmaline feathers.

Summer my lamented crown of shimmering
words, lost in a solitary sea of white.

Kevin Harling.

Sunday September 20th

2009-09-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

A Taste of Melancholy

Sage fingers
trace the lines
where the wind
rushes in
hoping
to bestow magic,
searching for
the reasons
to escape.

Yesterday
breathed goodbye
like a citadel
smoothed by stones
awaiting the return
of a single
green branch.

Turquoise skies
sigh overhead
peering into
tomorrow
like a phantom
wish,
plush and subterranean,
motionless and beckoning
the way a heart
beckons.

A river of doves
call out familiar names
that don't exist
like a column
of wounded
absence.

In these hills
lemon water
spills
like silent tears,
pleading with the wind
like a lonely
pelican.

Distance is not abstract
it defines life,
like an island undiscovered,
and yet when the day
withers and night
reveals its fissures,
eternity
drops its petals
condemning the moon
to be mute.

Shadows of bone
shape this place,
a place where everything
is devoured, eaten
by its own teeth,
regretting yesterdays smile
and frowning upon
the dreamers hand.

Kevin Harling.

Ode to The Country

2009-09-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

The Dance

Across borders
these thoughts spill
like air thick
with anticipation,
the wind whispers
green eyes
and smiles.

Across continents
the words fall
like autumn,
merging like
two bodies
hungering
to be one.

Across divides
that separate
only lonely
hours
we reach for the
stars and dream
of tomorrow.

Across plains
and waterfalls
where tears
speak about
love.

Across the road
when eyes meet
and hands
touch the
moments flesh.

Across the dance
floor with
the lights
dimmed
and my sweat runs
to meet you,
and when
together
embraced by
the music,
we sway
like trees
in a lullaby.

The dance
of this dream
that falls
like a rainbow
upon my pillow
and the wind sings
a love song
and dances
right beside
me.

Kevin Harling.

Dreams Should be Made of This

2009-09-19T00:03:00.000-07:00

Night Time Wishes

Pillows made of
raspberry sleep,
the way that sounds
familiar
rolling off the
tongue
like a cherry.

From here beyond
the above, blue
stars yawn
happy and
contented by
a day of white
laughter.

From her the words
over look
the veranda
on a hammock
swinging like
the wind
pondering
rainbows and
leprechauns.

From here the questions
never need answers
like jello
they just jiggle
joyous.

From here tomorrow
sounds like a vacation
at Disneyland
where you get to be
Mickey Mouse
floating down a river
of milk chocolate.

Pillows made of cinnamon
hope and full of
yes.

I could spend everyday
here among the
stars of liquid
honey.

Couldn't you?

Kevin Harling.

Stars fill these Skies

2009-09-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Magical

Stars tumble
in a pantomime
of tangerine yellow
giggling
like school children
in a playground.

Laughter fills
the sky with
watermelon
moons.

Joy comes to heart
in a rush of
candy cane wishes
and
this late hour
cannot subdue
the feeling
of tumbling dice
spilling
jelly beans
all over the
seas.

I jumped over clouds
made of marshmallow
and slapped
my knees
till they tickled
and blushed
shyly.

I am a lark
a pied piper
a court jester
of clowns.

Laughter is all I can
see
and blue licorice
voices
of pillows
talk to me about
coming to sleep.

Kevin Harling.

Today Smiles Goodbye to Tomorrow

2009-09-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Today as Tomorrow was Yesterday

Brown paper sentiments
fill the aisles of
this heart
like corrugated smiles
and laughter
chuckling like
wind filled
balloon ashes
of white.

I can sense your disapproval
weighing in already
and I am only
half finished
so I guess i will continue,
anyway
I saw the bus windows
glancing as they
rushed by heading
straight south.

Armadillos
stuffed
sat on the ledge
of the taxidermists
store looking bored
with their
current position,
and I couldn't help
but notice how
puffed up
all their hopes
must be.

But I don't want to meander
like a lazy river
bending plastic
sentences,
so,
anyway,
walking like an umbrella
slightly aloof
I paced the hallway
of the page
with fine print
collecting adjectives
because they were on sale.

I grabbed a hold of
some adhesive,
and began sticking
them to my thoughts,
hoping to remain coherent,
trying to stay economic and
debonair.

I wonder if you'll
get but never mind
that now.

I took the bag
full of sentiments
determined to
to make the day
whimsical and
full of smiles
and laughter.

Kevin Harling.

Autumn Approaching

2009-09-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

Traces

Crimson air fills the sky
with promises full of
sterile eyes
flickering like
stardust
across the pages
of some old
yellow dusted
book.

On the table in the kitchen
enamel tipped forks
argue
about when the sun will set
tapping the brittle
porcelain plates
trying to attract
attention.

Bystanders passing by
stop and stare
at the candles
flickering like eyelashes
in the window
partially open.

The moon bids goodnight
to the heavens
bowing its lapels
below the shoulders
of this day.

You have to wonder
where the hours went
as you sit
like silverware
all dressed up
deciding
who is going to do
the dishes.

Fingerprints cover
the table,
silhouettes
and reminders
of movements
and plans
gone a wry,
while the laundry
hung in the hallway
almost dry.

What was left of the
conversation
that tasted like
stale bread
mixed with
cold black coffee,
nothing but faceless
traces
and a whole lot of
dust.

Kevin Harling.

Questions

2009-09-18T21:17:00.001-07:00

I Am Not

I am not defined by my yesterdays, I do not linger in passing memories, I am not a ghostly apparition. I am not the minutes that slip by unnoticed. I am not subject to definition, I am not that easily defined. I cannot be easily explained, my character is still becoming. I am not something that is easily forgotten. It takes time to unlock my secrets, and that is only if I let you. I am not a pushover. I am not very easy to find. I am in many layers. I am simply not that easily defined. I am still evolving, the lines of my life not yet revealed. I am still discovering. I never stop learning. I am unwinding the pages of this story are still not written. My chapters are undisclosed, I am just unfolding. I am not very easily defined. I am up in coming. I was slow to start. I am on my way to becoming. Perhaps one day I will be defined.

Kevin Harling

When the Lights Recede

2009-09-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

Below the Sky and Sea

Sleepless mauve ribbons descend
the night one stair at a time.

The sky shimmering with blue painted clouds
beyond the fingers of hopelessness.

Footsteps of angel wings bounce
and whip gathering wind yellow.

The hues of loss sounded by conch
flying butterflies whispering hello.

Here below the sea regret waves green
whistles and tolls tomorrow.

Seahorse congregate and plan processions
of retribution mounted on steeds of neon
red.

This battle of banners wages on waves
ascending foam tides in charging armies.

Words lost in a shuffle of innuendo
propagate and stir the murkiness of victory.

Here among the titans nothing is wagered
entirely, no anemone souls, no starfish wishes,
nothing of any real value.

Everything is a pantomime played out in
real time beneath the sky and the sea.
Everything is collusion.

Kevin Harling

Ocean

Like pearl leaves crawling to the sea
driven by the desire for salt
the
brine like the colour of my thoughts
on a shoal made of coral
and the urchin
who held classes for English
preached about proper usages
of pronouns
and the blackboard
was erased by anemone
purple and kind of evasive,
the waves tried to wash everything away
as if it was fleeting
and time spoke like sand
in glass whispers,
and I could not help but think
that whirpools can cause you
to drown and be swallowed
by what the professor said
and the blue sky
was clearly visible although
somewhat blurry
and the clouds just acted nonchalant
after all it was only Thursday.

Kevin Harling

A Secret World

Between the lines decomposing light
in the spaces secrets that linger
faces and traces of dust stall
in the lulls where I vault ink
places I sit and think twinkling
star and foam of sea clouds.
Between the valley and grove
mist meadow dove and silence
the sheets and lace satin tear
like a pomegranate flower tree.
In this river bending meander
here amongst now and what was then
between air and sound whispering
the rain and traces of pen I sit
thinking moon sand and dunes I
who bleeds ink blue and red flesh.

Kevin Harling

Hold On

Hold onto this as if it was a thunderbolt
sent from above the sea sky sun
and wish to feel its breath upon your flesh
cheek skin
hold onto the soft rain blood and whisper
wind.

Grab hold of the minutes passing flow
and scroll sound wave and goodbye
touch chins and fall down grounded
by heaven bliss and love balloons.

Hold onto such air breathe ice and
upon cold show cheeks and grace
soak in the joy and remember
always remember to hold on.

Kevin Harling

Falling Into You

In whispers that inoculate the silence,
the brevity of these words mired,
by their own undoing, the wisps
that exist somewhere between,
caught among my breath and heart.

The things I really want to say,
that I usher away with a trivial flippancy.
I am treading my mind,
struggling to make sense of things I so easily dismiss,
the everyday stuff we overlook.

I have to stop myself, catch my words,
and take a deep breath, and
let myself fall into you.

Kevin Harling

2009-09-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight Beloved

Tonight, oh let your substance ascend
establishing my dreams with flesh plum
succulent to the senses,
let your kisses travel ocean distances
swallowing fresh my glances with your
eucalyptus legs.

Cover me with your persistent shape persimmon
collapsing my passion, from behind you.
Bend the night into one moon covering my eyes
with your delicate fig mouth.

O moist flower, corrode my shoulders
with galloping breath teach my fingers to read.
Weight my heart with the softest dew
and without interruption encompass this night.

Let your bosom saturate my skin like nectar
flowing like the sun's rays into unexplored valleys.
Embrace my face with lips of honeydew
pressing against the hours with loving teeth.

Extinguish my impulses and while your hands gather
impale my heart with ankles that defy gravity.
O beloved I could surrender this sweet night forever,

Kevin Harling

A Surreal Love Poem

Pawned by the absence
My hands that touch enamel
The color of my thoughts
extracted like tourmaline
Do I have the space I need
These incompatible shoals
like sheets
Our kite shaped hearts
that avalanche on sunbeams
In supple liquids
that upset everything
In this house filled by eclipses
within the measured shadows
This distance marked by throats
by asphyxiation, by paralysis
withdrawing in the dusk
In violet lagging heartbeats
that freckle time with seconds,
seconds of orange and hunger,
seconds without escorts or indexes
Summoned seconds effused by dissidence
this descending skin
your nubile murmurings, disquieting
and breath exhausted by brambles
On the threshold of submission
this trace of vapor, this venial breadth
this mourning of our arms
enveloped and escalating
like bread that suffocates the contours
the valley of your skin like mortar
your phantom forehead familiar
your undulating surfaces
This voluptuous suicide reverberates
silk stockings and snakeskin laughter
this mutilated nightfall of ivy
that pecks at infidelity with thistles
this caged tedium of copper anchors
like a resuscitated hurricane of kisses
your eyes of anthracite windows
the scent of moss that echoes of a covey
of dawns
I am not sure of myself
nor anything else anymore.

Kevin Harling

Margaret Atwood Are you Here?

2009-09-18T21:11:00.000-07:00

Table for Two

Pt One

And just let it be spoken, spilled and whispered,
this place in which it is born, beginning without
adjectives, spectacles or spurned by salt, or whatever.
The dust located and unflattering, bats and counselors, the crowd.
Because we minus, dismiss, disregard, dockets and red tape, voices mouthed through a Dictaphone.
Minute, hours, days, designed to go, in the absence of shirts and sockets, and evidence as loud as neon, glass, light that creeps through a green tinted window.
The sound of stones moving in a row, like chattel bickering and a bakers dozen of six fresh brown eggs, what agility!
Sometimes, you and I, no more you, like a halo all lit up with candles, so full of wax obscenities, small and:
I stand up to the mirror, my head and eyes full of milk white laughter, this life, treetops and mango cheeks, the Muse, grief that criss-crosses, peaches and, peach stockings, toes. What's the point?
I can make amends, ssh let me whistle in your eye, fences,
hearts and curtains, closing down.
But! Is their really any point anyway?
I could go naked, unctuous and more kinda ordinary.
Is their a difference?
I should have been a mortician.

Pt Two

Here we are again, my dear prudence, if only it could have been different, but whatever! You thought we could rename the world?
By hiding the real meaning like a kiss off stab in the handshake behind closed doors, us, ages ago, yesterday, I see your eyes, those alabaster orbs of
indecision, regrets and, parachutes made to not open, and sky and lies that confuse the clouds, and sentences that drag on and on.
Your mouth full of too much annunciation, sniveling, carnivore promises, and bifocals breathing like a father's one last hope.
I cannot resuscitate the dead, they're gone in a procession of a several million others, millipedes, footsteps.
What's the point? Why all this attention?
Paint the sky true blue and the moon red, rub it with olive oil on paper like pebbles, that line the shore, on an almost empty day across furniture, and let's get back to the ability, for what hope have any of us truly got, and;
How can the moon light up the night?
Maybe we could settle this debate over a night cap coffee, after all its been two years since we left the trenches, trashed the fences that stood in front of the ceiling wall chandelier right behind the moat of our precious defenses.
Do you want the truth?
Or have you heard just about enough already?

Pt Three

Go ahead tell me about convenience, midnight, perhaps I am listening, like a bee you leak pollen paper, but the audience is less than honest, silhouette that swims with apologies like a loose stamp fin.
Fledgling nature, wing, tail. So what!
Do you sigh as you kneel at the base, foot of the bed
as brittle as china, cupboard, all flustered and trying to cover up with dusty pronouns and places
you might have frequented.
In a vacant interval, do you hear it?
The silence that looms and shatters the sound like a veil, immodest.
I wonder can you remember?
December almost tragedy snow white blue petal
flakes falling, and, hands raise high in the air, snow angels on the ceiling and, the fan muttering on the floor.
Halo, and for an instance, we're both still here. Shameful!
Did you actually shoot someone? I think of you like
bones in the wind rolling across the plain sidewalk cinema by the lake cobblestone road as dull as a neon lamppost
and atoms.
It's five years on now, where should we start to unravel, unpack, everything is becoming everything else, yellow, carnation, earth, I could stroll, ungrateful and refusing to cry out or, so full of prattle, symmetry and punctuation, clever, quietly questioning the windows.
Can you really change me? you must be kidding, are you just bureaucratic and unfamiliar, let me escape this place.

Pt Four

And so what has become, begotten like a promise, a whisper of doves, square Vatican cathedrals, white robes and red crosses emblazoned with false vows,
When you knelt in a row of altars upon a rainbow and mahogany pews, like a double agent sent to conspire with angels, pidgeons and rain, clouds like soup choke; and chiseled chins and blurry recollections.
When you prayed to the moon outside your window god, reaching stars in the night sky, and what was it you wanted to say in the silence without confessing, your invisble muted gestures of lips, a mute song playing on the radio in the windowsill of the topaz coloured kitchen tile surface.
But in any case this is almost-holy. white sacrament, feathers, truth and shadows, stiletto aria that blesses in the name of red roses.
And I will listen to the owl and the pussycat argue, the smell of dandelions and a scroll unrolling like an evisceration of tongues, wagging, yelling wild obscenities from a pink gondola that rises through the terraces like treetops;
And millions of squirrels like wings, and,
Do I really need to repeat myself?

Pt Five

To all good women and men who happen upon this shore with a bundle full of hope, bells and whistles, thistles, cannonballs and cake.
To all those who have served pie in slices, slabs, grovelling for seconds, and all that civility, high society, etiquette and strings attached.
Bling like a violin cello, one gold ring, fellowship, span and scope.
To you few who think you have been chosen, you cannot be elected by veto, you are dismissed because of resignation.
So sign here on the dotted line and don't read the fine print.
To you the selected by Canadian American Idol, you may have made the grade after the commercial break, this is all about ratings, right now we are slightly above par, but very close to being level. Let's just cruise on automatic like a robot controlled by remote signals from across the room.
To the survivors, the brave ones who braved the elements and portaged the pill boxes, tubes, boobs and drug filled skies with red eyes, red flat lined like a lost passenger on platform thirteen.
You in the margin, in the silhouette, high lite reel, celebrity, the face we all want to see when we look in the botox mirror.
You are, you almost on empty, where is your personality? Show me some spunk its only mid June.

Pt Six

So this is the way life is, autumn has come and rested its crimson residue upon the ashes of yesterday's brow.
What remains honestly?
After oblivion that exposes itself in blemishes,
Just like a hammock on a flat hilltop that stretches time, a riddle that sits like rush hour somewhere in the middle of a stop and look sign. Stop and look but please do not touch.
Wait, yes wait to be licked by someone else, or dragged by a world full of slogans and instruction manuals printed in Spanish.
Is anyone listening besides you?
I could say that I have no regrets and flatter the wind with lustrous lies full of blush to try and console even the lowliest beggar. But by who's decree?
We are on the precipice, the verge of truly knowing ourselves, even from such a short distance, honey!
This has nothing to do with permission, fore go the dandelions and roses, the ungracious tide sea that lashes my brow.
I feel like my skin has been rubbed raw by pewter spoons, that their is indeed no reason to celebrate the sawdust, baby!
I can think only of you, the way the moon falls apart like asiago, like old bones clanging when held under your gaze of toxic powdered intensity, your telescopic vanity that establishes sandbars fro fish to swim on.
We may still have the sun made up of corrugated Styrofoam cups painted orange
and yellow but and yes I mean but, everything is leaking collusion, sulfuric acid tears of lead, like a river corroding it's own banks and crippling its desire to sing.

On the Road

2009-09-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

To You

I could run like an envelope
shortcut through
the windy plains
but I am not
sure I could
make it
soon enough
I need to run
closer to you.

I could shoot like an arrow
diving over rainbows
of gold dust
dodging sagebrush
and dolphins
but I am not
sure
I could make it
soon enough
to you.

I could swim
the Grand Canyon
like a kite
hurdling
eagles and
boulders
but I am not
sure
I could make it
because i need you
here with me
now.

I could travel a
million minutes
in a boxcar
like a hobo
along rusty rails
but I am not
sure
I could make it
even though
the road is wide open.
I need you now.

I could run like an envelope
shortcut through
the windy plains
I need to run
get closer to you.

Kevin Harling

Evening

2009-09-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Weathervane Words

Today
the elastic wind
sang a love song,
swallows swam
on auto pilot,
drifting
across the
ocean sky,
humming soft
somethings
to the wind.

Today
the memory of flesh
spoke to me about
yesterday like a
pin cushion
with short sharp
jabs,

asking me to remember
ghosts,
faces that have
long since faded
into the dust,
like so many other things
we find it easier to bury
on shelves
in dark closets.

Today the sky wept
like a child
lost in its own
house,
tears rolled down the clouds
like lace love letters
undelivered,

today whispers
like the rain showers
weathered by their own puddles,
weathered by wrinkles
and regret
indigo
and coming undone,

today feels like a gust
of cold arctic air
warm to the touch
of these bitter
hands,

today is like a blister
bleeding and bruised
by hours that have
forgotten how
to sing,
the words tainted
by the weathered
intentions
and what was really
meant to be said.

Weathervane you sit
stoic and silent
never faltering
not bothered by
what is going on
all around you.

I wish I could be
a weathervane.

Kevin Harling

2009-09-18T15:37:00.000-07:00

Ode to Farewell

Mahogany
covers not only the interior
but the exterior,
lichen and steeped
with thoughts,
so many thoughts
unpronounced
and yet like moss
clutching and clinging
to the vine
of this place.

I bid you adieu
my wind and sun,
my ocean pearl,
my coral and
blue sky.

I wade as a peacock wades
turning time upon
its own
hands
suggesting,
painting
and dancing
in the shadows.

I say goodbye to
complicated knots
and grooves
like a smooth panel
of dust that
sheds its
fingerprints
like a ghost.

I remain as I have
always remained
in lines not
confined to a page
but to the air
like a butterfly
painted vermilion
soaring lofty
above the clouds
angelic.

I decree this end
without tears
for I cannot
show my remorse,
nor can a child
who loses his
way in the
night
overrun
by pillows.

Grooved mahogany
hangs from this
window,
the panes of what I
have written
like the ledger of a
soul searching,
reaching not for the end
but the beginning.

I wave like the ocean
in cresting blue sighs
with a sadness
that tickles
my bosom,
this heart that has
bled ink
yellow and red
at the same time,

Goodbye
my companions of
stone and ivory,
I breath a farewell
tainted not by rust,
but by the heart,
a heart that beats
like a melancholy
of whispers,
and dreams
of tomorrow.

Farewell
as the door
closes its eyes
and releases its grip
upon the ashes
hand,
there is nothing
left but to
depart.

Kevin Harling.

Oak

In limbo like
the elephant sunlight
lingering cloud blue
your posture elevated
and aloof, full of tusks
and brackish branches
of ivory.

How mighty you stand
holding back the wind
with your fingers
of gold leaves,
gathering breath
as if you were catching
dreams.

Today dawns like
your eyelashes
indigo light
and fluttering
like the somber hopes
of birds who nest
within your girth.

I touch the bark
wrinkled skin
and imagine a world
where you no longer
stand wishing wind
away like a fan
that scatters and scurries
looking always for
the promise of
tomorrow.

Kevin Harling.

Auburn

I see faces red hair and curling
downward towards
the sun
silhouetted by
light that percolates
and froths
at the neck.

I see the way the air
sighs invisble
barely caressing
your attitude as it smiles
secretly.

I see the ghost of yesterday
reflected in the sunlight
demanding to be heard
as if it was mute,
the sound deafens my outlook
and abates my mood
with silent whispers
of joy.

I see the way red cheeks
puff with laughter
and exhale
in a boom
of teeth,
enamel and
suggesting things,
things I dare not utter
in public,

I see behind today
like a rainbow of
delicate compassion,
shy and yet
somehow
the hours speak
not in minutes
but in seconds
of sheer delight.

I see crimson skies
highlighted
like a firefly
highlights the road
that lies ahead,
optimism brims
over my cup
like a clear blue
wish,
and when I stop and still
my heart
I see auburn.

Kevin Harling.

Human Directions

West of here to the north
mouth
of the sky,
fingers point
east,
trying to reckon with
the sand that spills
like water from
a collander.

Tomorrow dawns
queasy
like a hiccup
jostling
with the white
satin sheets,
stalling like the air
full
of circumstances
beyond anyone's
control.

The road
leads everywhere
but nowhere
and still
the concrete day
vaults forward
like the answer to some
dainty question
proposed in jest
about the economy,
thta seems to be
chasing its own tail.

You have to wonder about
maps and grids
formulated
in miles
the eyes cannot see
and the heart and mind
struggle to recall
even vaguely.

It is easy to get lost
in a wilderness of streets
intersecting,
peopled by vehicles
that run on propane
air, by
depopluated forests
that look for excuses
for thier nakedness,
by the sky that cries
not a blue cloud
and then
politicians argue about
zoning by-laws
for rich tycoons
who dismiss
the environment
like a menu item.

It is all about heading
somewhere else
leaving the safety of
the familiar and putting
yourself
out there in the great blue beyond
searching for tissue
souvenirs and
polyester photographs
to serve as vacant
reminders.

It is about caring
for the weak
and less fortunate
not by force
but by choice,
about issues that span
every horizon
where borders cease to exist,
about humility
and questioning motives
not how much money
can be made.

Directions
that fill the expanse
painting the horizon
white and not grey,
for within the murkiness
everything gets lost
in a fog.

Kevin Harling.

2009-09-18T15:31:00.001-07:00

A Poets Journey

It would be easy to sit on the perimeter untouched by life, but the sky decrees that the poet immerse himself in the perfume of the clouds.
Nocturnal light cannot shroud the tears of existence, the dead vegetation will not remain buried for long, walls were never constructed to withstand the bittersweet sting of truthful observation.
It is imperative to wade above the knees in the murky atmosphere, extracting with eyes wider than open, revealing every nuance no matter how subtle or subdued, showing its colour regardless of how beautiful or ugly. Every story has a right to be told.
It is necessary that the inhuman becomes human, that when the hands touch the pain, the ink does not belittle the suffering or the joy. It should never be diluted or bleached.
Integrity demands no compromise, it is not the time to shrink or begrudge the responsible duty to which one finds themselves a part of.
It is to such places that a poet is drawn, rendering the significance with tourmaline fingers, savouring the dew and soaking in the petals of life, like a bird of flight that is not afraid to land and stay awhile.

You are the Light

I light a candle to silence my heart
when night becomes a pillow of sorrow
when in the wind I catch your whispers
when the sun heats my soul with you,
but I cannot touch you.

I light a candle to celebrate the days
that you drifted like a feather of air,
soft and tender.

I light a candle today my breath of sea
that nestled deep within my coral flesh
and held my wishes like a precious stone.

I light a candle because you never flickered
you nourished my life with dreams and love.

I light a candle for tomorrow so I dare not
forget, your face of graceful white.

You who adorned my eyes windows with joy,
who held onto my hopes and fed them,
who always said goodbye as if it was hello,
who when it rained subdued it with rainbows.

I light this candle for promises and vows,
for the mourning light that I look for,
for the yearning that never fades.

I look for you in the hallways shadow,
wishing to see ghosts, and when a smile
crosses my brow, I taste your words.

I light a candle for you, for you live
in everyday I endure without you.

You are my light, my candle.

The Poet

I once wallowed between living, assuaged by a love imprudent. I kept an inconsequential leaf of crystallized silica to cleave my eyes to life.
I acquired favour, I was in the store of longing,
I breathed desires most foul waters, the barbarous warfare of disguises and aliases, I lived in a world where the flower was composed of seaweed, the lily,
devoured me like fire in a flaming quiver, and wherever I walked my spirit slipped toward the teeth of the gulf.
This was how my poetry sprang to life, hardly released from the thorns, held aloft and disciplined like isolation, or its most well kept flower secluded in the garden of shamefulness until it was committed to the ground.
And so alone like the brackish water that resides in its furthest reaches, I fled from palm to palm, to every person's station, to daily hatred.
I knew that was how they survived, showing only what was necessary, like fish from the most bizarre depths, and in the unfavourable regions I found death. Death opening windows and ways. Death dragging its cold fingers along the walls.

Today

I went for a walk before the sun had a chance to rise, so I put it in my pocket.
The sky was looking down with worry, cheeks full of puffy clouds, pouting.
I had to chuckle to myself, in a whisper really as I
wanted my secret to remain just that.
I felt the heat in my palm as the sun stretched its
legs, relaxed by the security of my skin.
I debated on how I could have done such a selfish thing, and when reason surfaced, I knew what had to be done.
So I took it out of my pocket, and making a wish, cast it high into the heavens.
As I pondered this morning, I got a chuckle and the sun smiled at me.

Ancient mists speak about destiny whisking the wind to faraway places.
Hills cannot hide from the sky, nor can a man being pulled by his land of calling.
I never chose the path it chose me and once held it would not let go.
Breath white and full of mystery suspends the passage of time, and for the briefest of moments
love held my hand.
It is the only thing worth living or dying for.

A Witness for the Prosecution

Like a larvae I have spun
my web of intriguing thoughts
purple and indifferent to
how the sun felt about
the moon.

I administered guile
with a syringe and injected
oranges with gelatin,
disregarding the instructions
printed in Spanish.

I discovered hope
in brown paper bags
at the grocery store,
of all the places,
they could not hold a lot!

I witnessed loneliness in
a Koi's eyes peering
at the sky from
its glass blue depths,
questioning its
opaque bubbles.

I saw rain delivered
by the postman
deviating from his
usual route, oblivious
to the way the water
was speaking.

I found peace in a
discarded trumpet in
a dumpster just
off Main St. and I
wondered what it was
like to make no sound.

I have witnessed love
in a myriad of colours
and shapes that looked
more like bandages,
and yet when properly
administered the sores
eventually healed.

What If

Zirconium skies swim in the clouds hope
asking unsuspecting questions
about how angels
talk,
foraging for answers
in the breaths exhaled
by whales.
Pods of people scurry about
in the rain exchanging
gossip like umbrellas,
architecture stands silent
looking on the way ghosts do.
Days meld into each other
like a loons song melts into the lake,
rippling like a cold chill
that warms the bone.
What if all of this was true,
what if armadillos sold
real estate on the savannas
smoking fat Cuban cigars.
What if the psalms were
actually recipes
for making stardust
and religion was actually
something made of plastic
recycled from myths.
What if water was actually
dried paper that was dehydrated
waiting for the touch
of something wet.
What if time was
going backwards
on a trampoline,
like a clown
who had forgotten
to put on his makeup,
lost and bewildered
by all the lights.
What if...

Once

I once held the plight
of a mockingbird
in my palms,
saw its face
bruised by kiwis
that looked
maroon.

I once cradled a crocodile
in my bosom of blue
twisting all his shame
with my tongue,
the words covered
by the sky's moss
light green.

I once gathered bees
in a jar full of spleens
and the tangerine yellow
seeped out of the lid
and the buzzing
went silent within.

I once tasted a frogs regret
all croaked and sullen
like pulling pollen
from a dark lake,
and the fish stood
idly by chattering
with gills.

I once saw the moon laugh
at the night
spooning adjectives
and snickering.

I wondered what was so
funny.

Once I spoke Hebrew
to a cluck of dolphins
and got no response,
should I have been
surprised?

Handcuff my eyes still blue and speaking calm
let the clock go mute and the water whisper silent
wind of my mind listen to solitude sky and when
everything seems perfect rest in the beauty of
sand....

I took the eyes out of the blue door yesterday
and opened another closet of dust, its settling
behind me in the corner like a mussel dream, I
am deciphering my next move, so please give me
a minute....

A Heart After a Long, Drawn Out Ending

Sides, we both took sides opposite one another,
setting up shop in corners, on the periphery, as
if closer was something that only happened on
shelves, where the dust is allowed to settle.

How could we expect a different outcome? Set up
like the sun for failure at the outset. Choosing
allies like cheap commercials, so quick to oppose
any sort of compromise, loosing our way in the
fields behind fences.

It was draining trying to keep up with the Jones,
in their picture perfect castle with the uni-block
driveway and California shutters made of pearls.
As if what the outside looked like made any real
difference, a competition of sticker prices and
Suv's made by Mercedes.

It was long and drawn out, the ways we waged war,
behind phone sets that had no cords. In secret,
plotting to out due each other at the BBQ with the
best cut of meat.

That's the way the heart feels,
winded and charbroiled,
totally out of breath and not sure
of anything anymore.

Melancholy

Words fall from the ceiling like stucco snowflakes
the red ochre miracles that were more like footprints
coming from your mouth.

Elephants are more quiet walking in high heels than
the drivel you spit out over supper.

Opinions that taste like rust served between two stale
slices of bread are swallowed reluctantly,
while you go on and on about the laundry left in the dryer.

Why doesn't the sound of your lips drown in its own innuendo,
weighed down by the anchored stones you throw around like kites.
I long for melancholy, how it sits waiting to be asked questions,
how it never demands anything.

Random Thoughts

Is it really Penguins dressed in candy cane
pajamas sitting having cafe au lait around the
Christmas tree in June?
No it can't be... HeHeHe

Take my hand and we will walk the water like
the wind, carefree and taking solace in the white
words we only need whisper, hello my friend
days of blissful smiling sea. Take my hand....

Sky aquamarine conch from here I see your face
smiling like today hours spent wondering
through glass pearl eyes longing to be free
fly away little bird....

All written by Kevin Harling

The World As Seen With A Pen

2009-09-18T12:52:00.000-07:00

Complete Me

Write on my heart in italics
in bold fonts of your choosing
fill my empty spaces with color
scar me with your hands of calligraphy
tattoo my skin with your lips
soften me with your touch
fill my thoughts with your words
with the sound of your fingers
steal my breath with your mouth
uncover my depths and drape me
unfold my dreams and stain me
with the ink of your eyes
fill my pages with your stories
trace my flesh and bone
with the dye of you and only you.

Kevin Harling

Falling Down

It is all
descending
like the sky
sticking to my
lungs like
marmalade
and thumb
tacks.
Descending
like stairways
and thoughts
trickling
like sand
in bars
of erosion.
Coming closer
and nearer
to the coral,
my shoals
breached
by linen
white
lily
and lotus
breath
that feels
like
crayon.
It is all
descending
like time
black and blue
with passing
aged by truth
and blistering cold
that agitates
nostalgia.
Its all falling down
like a drape
a final curtain
one last bow
upon the
chin.

Kevin Harling

Clarity in a Glass

Opaque truth, maritime
arriving like an angel, transparent
tempered by whistling mouths
fall over me like perfume
dowse my nocturnal hours
scuplturing time with finite purpose
cradle my heart with prophetic kisses
touch me with truth in sheets
pure white and accessible
wrap me with delicious comparisons
pomegranate, with insights like a comet
conquer the stars and night without arrogance
fill the spaces with abandoned hours
of nothing but truth like glass.

Kevin Harling

Loam

Impervious
acrylic
memory
stood
in the
mirror
windows,
somewhere
close to dawn,

dusk showed its
face
auburn
and standing
like a silhouette,

shrouded by
shadows
of light
moving
towards noon,
and

the moonbeam
glass
that dissolved
into nothing
turned its cheek
like pollen
quietly whispering,

honey,
golden strands,
sand and moss
and leaves,

spoke,

everything is
falling down
like gravity
undressed by
satin,

meeting the
loam in a handshake
of grass,
bones
green with
envy eroding
this mantle,
wishing that
it had become
an island,

the margins
exist
and preclude
assumptions
or contracts,
everything is
disclosed like
the sunshine,

water, random
beads and,
drops its
hopes
on the faces
of those
etched
by stone,

like monoliths
chanting
sky and stars
and ceremonies
that go in the
garden, eden,
lily afternoon
hands,
that look like
they are praying,

everything is kneeling,
crumbling
like stale bread
but never
submitting defeat.

Impervious.

Kevin Harling

Oh Enchantress

Oh enchantress, twilight,
trembling miracle of light
shaped by fragrant beauty
the smell of flowering rain
touch me in the dark spaces
with small light-blue eyes
study my phantom frame.

But leave my poetry alone
do not disturb its tender ashes
its tendons and cheeks, its gasps,
its perforated palpitating breath.

Oh enchantress, invisible,
like a glistening hemisphere of night
tentative and unnerved by laughter
listen to the orange lament.

Oh absentminded kisses
distant and divided into two
teeming with the stillness of necks
turn the glacial solitude upside down
shatter this pollen waist
undress these phosphorescent hours
with udders of sleep.

But leave my poetry alone
its laurel towers, its germinating flour,
its wooden girth and abandoned merchandise.

Let its scarlet surface take shape
let it pour down fertile
broken apart by the earth
giving a voice to the sulfur emptiness
dissolving like a rain of reconstructed syllables
like songs of wheat, winter, oats
like a landslide, let it topple over
let it transform the ground with umbrellas
in intervals, like a pause of cold air
like a ghosts breath, let it whisper.

Oh enchantress, bedroom,
entangled vegetation
lagoon of skin and sky
sleek silky sweat mountains.

These words must not perish
for they are beyond silence
untouchable balconies
innocent bystanders of dew
topaz flashes of light, adolescent.

Leave my poetry alone
its patient leaves of crimson
its secret islands
its volcanic petals
its violet underground
its hurricane voices
its consonants of floating flesh
timid.

Leave it alone.

Kevin Harling

Opus

Precipitation
thats what this feels like
colloquial and bunching
around the edges,

rendered,

like a knot of olive trees,
the diffidence of the wind
ancient and worn smooth
by its own air,

imprudent chairs
and pregnant windows
like the light
that is rooted
in apples,
domesticate
the sky
with tendrils undisclosed,

rewritten,

like a veranda,
the immensity
of foam
magenta in its vigil
touching the
echoing pink-pebbles
with jasmine
degrees of silence,
the mulberry face
of time
made of domiciles
of chocolate
where jelly fish and geckos
gargle iodine
in uninhabitable
chapels and mosques.

I feel the chamomile
envelope of the generations,
isolated like the pansies
in late november,

I feel the chestnut
embrace of the sea,
like a chrysalis of lemons,
like the aroma of crickets,
like the rhombus
that finds itself
in a very difficult position,

I see the porcelain veil of
translucency that is
spoken in yellow decrees
like a buzz of erasers
pivoting on a delicate
gold wind.

Kevin Harling

Ode To The Poet

Are you only flesh?
Are your limbs made of verse?
Are you an aviator of love and beautiful things?

I wonder what your words unlock
within your mantle of imprisoned night.
Whether your days are filled with starfish skies.
If your petals like hands can elude the dew.

Are your bones composed of pollen?
Are your legs more like a conflict of earthly virtue?
Are you populated by flowers?

I reach for your ancient strings,
to touch your fragrant solitude.
To imagine your distance with verbs
full of light.
I try to reconstruct your feathers,
taste your solitary wine,
to feel your sulfur chains.

Are you a stone dove?
A stiff sea or a wind full of moons?
Are you a sentinel of salt?

I am looking to chisel your joy,
to hammer your statue mouth,
to crawl inside your threshed skin
like a hummingbird searching for nectar.

My poet,
time sculptures your footsteps.
We walk towards your autumn,
extracting your theatres.
We spend hours in your trembling dawn,
waiting.
Waiting for your resurrected roses,
your porcelain visions.

Are you without a voice?
Are you between the earth and the sky?
Are you without wings?

Kevin Harling

The Geography of Being Human

By way of osmosis
the light disolves
assimilating my olive
skin.

The leaves of my pain,
coral chemistry, lofty and
undiscovered in recent excavations.

Be very careful with
the contours of my fleshy geography,
my cenotaph and monuments
of tarnished bronze.

Logic should dictate and disclose
the inscriptions,
the lines I scribbled in the sandy
darkness,
the maps I coloured in for
passing tourists.

Be very careful
not to dislodge the boulders
for I wear my stones like wreaths.

I am antiquity in a book
with fragile bone white pages,
hidden in papyrus caves.

Be careful how you rescue
these shapeless elements,
the architecture of my singed heart
hears and whispers without distinction.

I have crossed the barren wilderness,
exposed my geometry with uncivilized lines,
the tentacles of truth pulling like a mirror.

I am not demanding , I am waiting
once these words are spoken where do they go?

Kevin Harling

Painting The Truth

Let me paint the truth
filling the canvas of honesty
with each word
layering one upon the other
with an uncompromising faith.

Let me portray the landscape
with an abstract uncertainity
holding true to it's form and function
let me describe in exquisite detail
everything I see there,
never wavering in my purpose
to accurately colour
the blank and empty space.

Let me with every line
brush stroke with my palette
blending and mixing,
let me sketch freely and roughly
drawing out what lies underneath.

And above what is really there
let me with a realism carve out
some meaning from what it
is that I survey.

Let me do it deliberately
without distraction.
Let me find the art
the beauty and the brilliance,
...and let it radiate outward
from within.

Kevin Harling

If Neruda Spoke

I am colorless, the sorrowful
words that whip by in winds,
the iridescent things that
whisper, the etched brittle
emotions that take form in
shadows. One minute bleeds
into the next, the meddle
is welded as sparks cry.
Your diamond resilience,
this seagull sky. I am
whittling the now in
intricate lines. My
eroding charcoal mask,
fades. I stall, seconds
galloping to nowhere fast,
ships tossed about on an
ocean half mast. My trans-
lucent colors, your opaque
gaze I cannot see through.
This vast expansion of a
page, these sublime details
charmed by time. My granite
heart clearly entrenched,
the wings of grace that fall
like an avalanche of glass.
All is lead. A molten river of
lead. I can sift but i cannot
sort it out.

Kevin Harling

A Poets Conundrum

By what standard can a Poet be measured?

Is it by a heel of light they judge?
By a prenatal deployment of paper and ink?
By sacrificed teeth graciously removed?

Do lifeless stones have feet, or clashing buffaloes
wings?
I ask you

Do stars cry with a despair that even black space
cannot ignore?
Does a scream of laughter arrive uninhabited by lips,
or does a river suffocate with air?

I ask you

When dawn transfers its fingers to night,
like a song palpitating westward among
a celestial flock of birds, does the day
precarious in its travels weep in its
ending?

I ask you
By what standards can a Poet be measured?

I ask you?

Kevin Harling

Words of Derision

Words like an abacus
calculating thoughts into figures
words that abandon numbers
words that abate like thoughts full of fodder
words that abdicate just by definition
aberrant words that assassinate character
words with hands covered by blood
like a red sheet full of lies
words abandoned by meaning
words that will not abide
defying words
words used to abstain
words that abstract
that we use to take away from
absurd words like fingers that rust
corroding what is said
to the ways we express how we feel
like acid rain
words like breaths of asbestos
words full of chagrin
words like a cesspool
words without creed
that we use to collate
words that crease thoughts
twisting and bending them to our own ends
turning them upon themselves
in the name of vanity
in the name of bribes like teeth
biting remarks full of disdain
the gesturing tones we trample with
with absolute disregard
words full of pompous mouths
like a shower of poisonous arrows
words that argue like bondage
words without flesh
crucified by sin
by not accepting our crosses
words that impale like a bed of nails
like coercing bones
words that gut
the way we dissect another's feelings
corrosive like stale air
words full of pyre
meant to set hearts ablaze
this world is filled by such words
renegade and confrontational
syllables and consonants of derision
meant to subjugate to enslave.

Kevin Harling

From the Waterfront, Toronto Summer 2009

2009-09-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

Two Bamboo Sandals

Two
bamboo sandals
abandoned
and left
homeless,
it seems an odd
place to start,
I will freely
admit at the outset
I have no degrees
or certifications,
no diplomas
adorm my walls.
Their are no ribbons
or medals
for valour,
no accolades.
I am a hush a whisper
mostly silent
and unbecoming,
unpronounced
and unfamiliar,
Yet that clanging
still resounds
and is reflected
back upon its face,
the mirrored
ceiling
that looks at the floor
meditating about
ochre and cappucino.
Ice fills the gaps
of cubes of porcupine
blue and lime
soothes the air
like carbon.
I see you walking
in like an apron
terra-cotta vase,
complacent
and oozing water
that
gushes like dew
somehow.
The wind says its
name, chiming
bells and knoll
like the window
lake of fingers
that cannot help
but probe.
Did you see me?
wandering like a lost
sandbar,
lamenting the horizon
and the empty chairs
on the deck like a lost
humpback whale.
The patio for two
reservations of red
roses and bordeaux satin
kisses slightly chilled
and a tall glass and,
stir me but don't shake me
ajar, the table
you
tapped your nails and pins
upon like a chorus, demanding
water.
The rainbow wrinkles with
regrets and solitude.
I will take the latter.

Kevin Harling

Sherbourne

I have heard
every obscenity
spit out, uttered and spoken,
pronounced with accents
from I am not sure where,
heard it drawl and troll as if
shipwrecked in mid sentence.

It calls from the street
that seems to move
with its chatter
gossiping as if
it rollingly walked,
collecting things,
memories.

I have indeed breathed
its whisper, often
contemplating not the sky
that ebbs only,
but why the red
flows like a river of slander?
bleeding like autumn.

Indian summer sighs its
heavy burden
weighed down by leaves and the
rustng of open wounds and libel.

I have indeed heard every obscenity
the days are embossed with such wasteful
words,
It makes you wonder why all the
grumbling?

Kevin Harling

Looking for Depth

I have tried with repeated attempts
to comprehend the distance,

tried to circumnavigate its jasmine boom,
to correlate its brow and horizons,

but to no return, somehow,

its breadth eluded me like an
inexplicable shoulder,

feigning any touch and resisting all
embraces.

I tried to make a consort
of the sky,

its hue of inconsolable blue
that perfumes the air with lavendar,

tried to ponder the winds mouth,
how it kisses the earth with
immaculate lips,

but such things defy and are far
to lofty.

I have tried to domesticate water,
swallowed oceans of salt,
lamenting its loss, but

the anenome deter such collusion
like tides,
they abhor their breath
being rewritten.

I have raised the anchor
of sorrow
setting sail to places
painted by peacocks,

endured the vortex of understanding
in the form of a whirlpool,

searching for archipelagos
of lemon and bamboo.

And yet, still
I dare not forego the journey,

these trepid steps
into the dew, the loam,

advancing forward,
foregoing the stubborness
of diamonds,

and instead seeing the beauty
in porcelain.

In the end it is the words
that are preserved
like gelatin,

a few lines that translate
the dimensions and
shades of these thoughts,

and nothing else.

Kevin Harling

Looking Around With Eyes Wide Shut

2009-09-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

In Coloured Words

Are these words that fall from a sky filled
with umber silhouettes
these pebbles I cast on a sea of crimson
and orange and yellow
these whispers I release in clouds of grey
still somehow fondly recalled

in joyous wisps and cloud
these blue breaths of days not long ago

the black hours when you don't want to let go
the faces of ghosts all white and full of light
the smiles you never fully show
the red ways we hide, and we glow
the stones we turn over
in forests of green fields
and valleys and moats,
words of umber and a vast sky full of blue breaths.

Kevin Harling

Obsidian Falls

Upon a mantle of tresses
upon a lattice grooved by hands
upon the sound of black silence
obsidian the texture of salt
ingrained and worn smooth by hands of rain
coiled and patient like a church
with granite pews and a nave filled by shadows
with stone hands resurrected
in the sound obsidian makes
in the absolution of erosion and prayer
like water spilled upon the altar
obsidian
obsidian and the sound it makes
kneeling in opposition
in the coveted distance
condemned by dreams spilled in vain
or night of vanity
condemed in the foliage
of nameless sins
condemned in the midst of
ashes mourning
in the the shape of the igneous
obsidian gathering
in stones
obsidian
in a steady stream of circumstances
under the breast of heaven congealing
obsidian falls in columns
metaphorical and withering
between the pallid absence galloping
tears of obsidian
white
obsidian falling in stone waterfalls
like an apse filled by ghosts
obsidian.

Kevin Harling

A Thought

Blue plumbed lines sift
through the window
lit up by the notion
that everything is
just white.
Tomorrow blinks
like the ashtray by the window
asking for forgiveness
and one more
breath.

Kevin Harling

Canvas

Watercolour words
drip
like paper
foraging
for ash and birch
wading like a
train of bees,

pollen
butterfly
sentences forgive
the dawn
its subtle grace,

white
veiled
truth peers
out from
the minutes
exposing the ghosts.

In blurry
blue dots
the syllables
bleed,
haunted not so much
by night
but by the nocturnal
passing of time.

The owl
sifts the light
in flight
fleeing
the dew
tasting eternity
in the lulls
that vault
between
here and now,
between
yesterday
and today.

Everything has been painted.

Kevin Harling

Opulent Wishes

Aegean eyes of emerald blue
satiate the wind
caressing its spanning breath
with whispers.
From the shores
across waves that wonder
the questions pervade my senses
like the heart that knows
no rest.
I cannot correlate
or let alone fathom
how far the miles that separate
the stars from the moon.
I feel you kiss the beach
your fingers tracing
my mouth with salt.

The conch cringe,
the urchin lust,
this crawling flesh of timbers
shivering to be touched
by the distance of oceans.

How vast the duplicity
of reality
nothing can coerce such things.

Salmon flesh aches
the soul is fired by dreams
the night is young
and one day all will
be revealed.

Kevin Harling

Spherical

Elastic hues of orange
and
precipitous vegetation
surround the nape
of this shoal.

Everywhere stars
are teeming with
luminescent virtue,
twinkling
lights of yellow
that blister the night.

Guile becomes
a cloak,
indigo,
and becoming
more white.

The truth exists
in the soil
permeating
the feet.

Vague is not an option,
nor does
water reveal its depths
quickly.

In circles
we navigate
the breaches
of skin,
searching for the flesh
pink and swelling.

The apple has been bitten
its core exposed by
teeth,
Eden pangs the
heart,
drawning me deeper
swallowing the air
and soul
in a rush of wind.

Kevin Harling

Beyond Above

From the veranda
above the sea
blue
piers and wharfs
neglect the tide,

suggestions
that creep
like rain
into the horizon,

coral
and abated by
the cool lavendar winds.

This vantage point
slips its knots
slowly
meandering in an ebb
of flowing sky,
crimson and untouched
by fingers that
reach upward
iridescent.

Dreams surface
like a mirage
mirrored by flaws
and circumstances
like ankles
hidden from the sun.

Unity exists
beyond the above
between the
earth and heaven.

It is a direction
a destination
and a home.

Kevin Harling

As For Excuses

As for excuses and excesses, and
after certain philisophical reflections
meditating with a choking sensation
of melancholy, parting in the middle
with eternal complaints, banished and
distracted, speaking without inter-
uptions and silent immolation thinning
out,
the sentiments indossolubly bound by an
exquisite candor stooped over and bordered
by pavement and cafes, framed by balconies
and jasmine, narcissi and roses,
this homage of wheedling benignity,
reverberating under the lofty vaults,
Andalusian and committing sacrilege,
descending with sudden resolution,
in the stillness of a church, in a perfect
representation of annihilation, in the
gossip of indifference, in kneeling prayers,
into a chapel full of balustrades, like
painted breath punctuated, like an irresist-
ible argument, demoralised and weeping with
fatigue, cowardly and docile, climbing up to
the window, decanted in infusions, and elab-
orated by hands of irreverence and caustic
purpose.

With an azure infinity, adulterous and compromising
swaying overhead, in scales of resin and turpentine
filling funnels slowly undressed by patience,
palpitating like immense black waves embarassed,
turning to rancor, subjugated and tempered,
tempered by heartache.

Kevin Harling

Now or Never

Trill of light
Smell of stars
Black eyes of the sea
Ancient wind.

Inaugurate the motionless,
show destiny its time,
distinguish its heart,
with perpetual beats.
Pacify fear and its hands.
Comfort like night,
with a sky full of nocturnal birds.

Chirp of life
Languid earth
Salt of dawn
Whispering willow.

Expand the cistern of the air,
teach its roots,
with memories alive.
Wipe away the stain of transparency.
Swaddle the day with soft touches,
with unabridged breath and lives.

Hammer of reason
Shoulder of sky
Sliver of ashes
Haunting moon.

Dress the disenfranchised,
show distance its limits,
measure its span and circumference
with multiplying spring waters.
Open paths downstream.
Inhabit the minutes
with an ebb and flow of stones.

Unyielding thorn of love.
Comprehend the foliage,
mill together hazelnut and complaining.
Combine ankles and sawdust,
recognize bread and lament,
drown these grumbling footsteps.

Begin to show yourself,
like an estuary of eyelashes
transfixed by threads passing.
Like a tower of receding doors
silent as a rainfall of scissors.
Open up your entangled vines
your precipitous black metaphors.

Begin to show yourself.

Kevin Harling

Sound

Orange
orchid moon
sings at the
level
of baritone,
reciting
psalms and
recollections
of dust
with mossy
interiors.

Mitigation
seats itself
firmly at the
table
guarded by
padded chairs
and silhouettes
of bats.

I think
Catwoman
walks
on tightropes
made of nylon
tied together
like white
promises
and lust.

I get lost
in the dimensions
falling out
of the margins
and spilling
my ink
with hands
trembling
from the touch
of cold water.

Everything is wind and chatter
it echoes in corridors
and sentences
that have forgotten
how to speak.

Kevin Harling

Inspired By Elytis

2009-09-18T12:46:00.000-07:00

Ode To "The Monogram"

Are you listening?
when epiphany molts like blood
upon the sleeves of fate
like the face of fury and handles,

Are you listening?
to sound that wades like night
these ivy lips call out to Zeus
like a lion reborn in the stars,

Are you listening?
you who made my mouth salt
acrid and barren, tempest
you who laughs with my heart,

Are you listening?
can you fathom my words of silk
my loss that scoffs emerging
soured by leaving, by departures
by eulogies that mock this parting
can you taste this like all our yesterdays
that haunt the moonlit seas,

Are you listening?
the one who soothed and impaled my sorrow
with your timid and tepid goodbyes
can you feel my limbs gasp
in breathless strokes and sheets
can you?

Are you listening?
my bitterness,
sweet love who holds my wishes
in days sailing like a windy gale
who sank my ocean with depths of kisses
and embraces that taint my walls with satin,

Are you listening my beloved?
you sold the stars like ashes
broke my knees with cold black stares
like ice to my eyes I wince laughing
can you hear me?
can you tear what is left of tomorrow
from inside my heart and ears,

Are you listening?
i am torn by your interiors
chained by the sweat of your galloping fingers
plagued by your nails on my skin
at a loss for memory and the sound of the sea
for the lashing of entwined legs
that gather around waists

my ancient love, my somber goodbye
Hello

Kevin Harling

Searching the Skin for Answers

2009-09-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

Thus Far

Everything that is
is and the same time
is not.

Like the wind that fills
my breath
with the sound of conch,
I feel the axle of earth
grind like a millstone.

I cannot fathom Heaven,
neither can I touch Eros
for the dawn and dusk
bleong to doves.

I hera the sound of topsoil,
the nondescript summer winds,
the undulating jib of water,
my hopes take refuge there.

I cannot grieve liberty
nor shall I confess to the moon
for my memory is full of excuses
to not speak, immobile and mute.

Who wrote the script of air,
where sleep deprived swans enchant?

I see mauve relaxing its colourless green
removing its apron and consecrating the
ground with her nocturnal mouth.

I am a descendant of futile prayers
whispering immutable lamentations
that fall upon the deaf ears of the escarpment.

I cannot taste the earth's flesh
for the bllod of self separates us.

Everything that is
is and at the same time
is not.

I am merely a man, searching for himself.

Kevin Harling

Vertigo

Words full of vertigo
crawl from the
bridge of my
mouth,
and as
thoughts wind
and spill
like the
sensation
of falling,
vertigo green panic
unglues the sky
clouds scrammble
for cover
the colour is sheer
blue murder and,
I remember being
afraid to whisper
in the dark,
I hid under my bed
shaking the wait.
Vertigo tears fell
on the panelled floor
of pine in pools.
It was vertigo words
that lashed out my way,
words full of vertigo
and I lost my balance.

Kevin Harling

Meandering

Uncommon steel lilies
floated in the sky
diaphonous
and
revealing nothing
but stale wind,

worshipping
that sounded
peculiar like
breaths made
up of aluminum.
I could touch

touch
the marble interiors
of my thoughts
being whisked
away
to some faraway
place
vagrant and responding
to atoms as if they
spoke.

Here among the venom
all vanity is displaced
like water
shedding its transparent
blue face,
here ruin is a fabric
that transforms the
landscape
making it fit
for human habitation.

Tissue comes to mind
delicate and interwoven
like arteries
of white blood cells
and skin.

Sauntering,
time dwindles
like a pin,
hours turn
into leaves
of crimson and gold
and
footsteps of ink
fade with the tides
ebb and flow.

Kevin Harling

Rambling into the Wind

2009-09-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Under

From the basement picture shingle
this floor we are standing upon in
the solitude moonlight window sill
and seeping water grass yellow blue
the greening effect of residues and
what sits beside you corner shade of
the issues pressed glass and veneer
shellac and forest vine root do you
become delicate in the light shadow
face pink and discreet do you know
from beneath the stairs door and tomorrow
is just a door we can walk through.

Kevin Harling

Evening Songs

Raven thigh night sheer black
crawling like my skin, seconds
echo like sand ceiling sky and
blushing palms congregate land
valleys of light and arching sun
the moons shadowed face and mirror
looking for the sins and, hands
entwined secrets touch and sssh.

Kevin Harling

Above The Clouds

Seconds aloof trampled just like the paper
fingers and hands that spill on the table
dice rolling clouds and how to hold them,
the
losses translated not by degrees shades green
tourmaline trampoline and the gondolas view
from the terrace of tuscany and bartered by,

appointments missed vanishing like ghosts days
hours windows the debates you chose the wrong side,
and what you missed eyes black and confused,

sitting waiting blue sky moving the hills you
just can't seem to rise above pastures moss
and all the lichen gathering winds and storm,

I profess no stars or oceans demise but wonder
outward peering eagle and soaring high above
water, wind fire and earth all the way to Heaven.

Kevin Harling

Chemistry

Titanium curtains
adorn the window
wall sitting vertical
in a horizontal
sort of way,
the day falls
like the leaves
outside the shuttered
view of my glasses
of sun,
a cup brimming
with sunlight spills
over the sides
and everywhere
red blots the lines
covering the trellis,
I ponder the rain
that feels like tin
against my ankles,
I ponder the hours
of salt that taste
like brine
eroding my complexion
of the place,
I ponder the shadows
light in the mirror
on the ceiling
the way it adjusts
the perspective angle
and,
I
admire the sparkles.

Kevin Harling

Etchings of the Real

2009-09-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

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

Grieve

Black and white bone chin I grieve for them
and in the interim second daylight sun now
you have to move along and on, but don't look
back shadow spilling rain and clouds of gray
on your knees this pain horizontal, I shudder
for you and remember yesterdays smiling halo
life is scurrying through night and blood red
opinions and how do we let go of ourselves?
Black and white flesh and inbetween doors
we just cannot get past, what is it you believe
dream and eyes that blink to see layers milk
white and saturated by truth window soul I see
its not all black and white when we grieve.

Kevin Harling

Tomorrow

Ivory towers scrape the sky looking for excuses
trying to peer into the future,
the clouds are arrested by the premise that
today will be any different than yesterday.
Seashells sound the tides muted roar begging
for forgiveness, bowing down on watery knees.
The earth prays in solitude whispering to God.

Everything is about questions that have no
clear answers, no easy endings.
I cannot see the air nor can I touch its flesh
such things seem to elude me, but
one day perhaps, tomorrow's matters may become
more lucid,
perhaps what once seemed impossible will be
possible.

Kevin Harling

Tracing the Truth

By the holiest of decrees
like the wind of heaven's breath,
this finds its way to birth,
crimson October mornings only suggest
tracing days life with solemn honesty,
disregarding not just the possibility
but also the vanity of such thoughts.
I will not profess to hold the key
to any secrets but I will pursue
truth with white as my saber,
angels to the left and right
and glory filling the sky.
Harmony just like a child
spreads its charm like sunshine
and the rays to which
this owes its promise
adorn not only these words
but also the future to where
they will spend eternity.

Kevin Harling

Walking Away

I see you wading water walking towards the horizon
apparition on your eyes sparkling blue
and in the residual mists,

I stand watching from a distance
silhouette of a thought
ghost fingered and reaching for your brow,

sky and the sunsets in my mind
tuesday and
washing away like the linen and,

the effects still linger
river bending around the window
shutter point of view drifting,

like ash and the embers still burn
spinning around fire and warm breeze
wednesday afternoon and you say I,

haunt the days like a vagrant attitude
only an hour ago tomorrow green and envied
without regrets and so on it goes

like a shadow highlighted by the light
we seem to shine upon it and when its all said
and done another week has gone by goodbye.

Kevin Harling

Embrace Me

Watercress hues
of green
colour the
sky of
these feelings
orange,

revealing like satin
sheer and sensible
the insensitivity
and
forgotten like
the picnic
lunch
due to the
afalfa and cranberry
cocktail
made of mostly
vodka,

and the maid polished
the silver
to make it look
uniform,

and when the sun shone
through the window
pastel and
uneven all
the cracks appeared
on your chin,

mantle of pink
and all the flesh
became tangerine yellow,

and the song was
playing over and over again
skipping like a rope
I tripped over only two hours ago,

so embrace me
not because I am here
but cause you want to
hold me cause it feels just so
and when my eyes speak
don't try to find the stars
I am right her
so embrace me.

Kevin Harling

Dream

I want to sound
every syllable
taste its flesh
in my mouth,

grant it its due nature not secondhand
but firstly grasping fleshy peach
and imagine its distance blossom
search the shadowy silhouette song
and within the melody stand like
a redwood cypress hands held high
and reaching towards the blue
establish the ground firmly
fresh and whisper nothing and everything
at the same time and hold the silence
within my voice and colour the waters
green and weaving threads gold sigh
the sky clouds and wind and besides
when it all comes to rest be the night.

Kevin Harling

Permafrost

Lichen fog
like yesterdays moss
foliage green
and unresponding to your dream
of what the kitchen would
or really should
look like in granite
or polished titanium.

Everything has been grazed over
like a receipt from dinner
and you said or so you say
that the text would have confirmed
the reservation
at the trendiest nightclub
on saturday,

sends chills down my spiny column
just to think about it
hugo boss suit and the credit card
maxed out to the limit and then
the cocaine door
your nose walks through
in the 2 storey bathroom
and what do you remember anyway
hungover sunday champagne breakfast
you could not get up for.

Cold steel blue is what I feel
and you change the sun to rain
sill ledges and veneered shutters
vertical my perspective
is way out of whack.

Kevin Harling

Tracing the Interiors

Infinite flower born to dawn,
I sit beneath your crevice
of scarlet,
trying to decipher the heights.

Orange childhood and petals
like mouths bequeath the dew,
and settling like soft manners,
voices and bells
angels
and,
wind that dare not speak,
this dawn is ascending.

Unquencahble eucalyptus
and rosy red paraffin cheeks
ask so many questions,
trying not to disclose a
blush.

Ivy that smells like a winery
of vines that cannot find the sky
through all the blue:
talking about pomegranates
and the procession of time.

It has to be about distance
the way it excludes the colour yellow
and starfish stranded on beaches,
its about sandbars.

The way the hours spill like
grains of sand.

Because I have the desire to cast ink
like pollen volatile.

Two oblong smoke stacks
sing in the distance
smeared by the sun's haze,
like a triangle
waiting to be completed.

I could draw upon the alphabet
with stars and fluttering leaves
trying to have a conversation, and

somehow the clouds become an ocean
all fluffy and blue, and like a chorus,

as if you were an angel, lofty
and walking above the ceiling, white words
and,
and sheer, I remember

Guiness falling from the taps
like waterfalls waiting
to glisten upon the rim of
some stained tall glass, and
I see the whispers, and
Is anyone listening?

It feels like a blanket
of Kryptonite descending
upon my brow, your navel
like the light
switch
being turned on.

Faraway and yet becoming nearer
the eyes turning into mirrors,
suggestions, becoming clearer.

Kryptonite like clarity
finally had some cheeks,
pink and swollen, full of agendas

and, propositions, imposing,

Were they just passing comments?,
and,
pretending not to impose upon
the lashes mascara
and smiles

as if the pendulum actually
had a dial,
and it was spinning out
of contorl like the other, and

Wasn't it always about the distance?
Trying to enclose the hours, days,
weeks and, when somebody else
tried to emulate,
brought the bag full of bones
and, china the way it crinkles
the closet shelves.

It was about your focus
the way it perforates the bottle
about the crocus and the crocodiles.

I feel it echo like an, like a
inquistion on the radio,
at the bar at 3am.

It all tastes like granite
smooth, not touched by feet,
and,
cold,
very cold,
peopled and,
sterile like a
syringe.

The breeze alters the horizon
and planters wither away,
everything is being whittled
like the sound of erosion
and a bike.

Kevin Harling

Thoughts

2009-09-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

Black Syllables

One more word, let me say one more thing
before I crash on the shore of my existence
let me spell how I feel, let your mouth say the words
softly and gently spilled with emotions I have to let go
i need for you to know, the touch of my hands
the pulse of my fingers, the sound of my heart
as it beats with yours, from a distance
just one more thought, filled with black syllables
trembling and shuddering with a different kind of pain
someway I can hold you, even if not in my arms
just one more word, that falls from my eyes
in black syllables filled with a different kind of pain,
a pain I enjoy, pain contained in words that linger.

Kevin Harling

Following You Into the Mystery

Let me comb the seashell pearl beach
of my existence brush it in sand and
in the briefest of intermissions
starfish aquamarine and floating air
water eyes that see beyond waves day
and in the night time mystery pillow
let the dreams unravel like a shroud
light white veil and in the silver
reflected by its own sound stepping
space vase lily lotus wading sky and
then in the balance the innocence I
sing.

Kevin Harling

Enigma

I acquaint the stars with the moon
the sea with skin porcelain and white.

I hear eternity in your whispers
they shatter my thoughts fingers.

I abandon epiphany sheer and becoming
tracing my world in your breath.

I touch music in your sky transparent
hollowed and blemished by red lips.

I acquaint the space between us in union
for that we are one can never be denied.

Kevin Harling

Over This , Over You

I surrender my
red seas to your blue
cheek sky,
I give my winds
of autumn to the stars
of yesterdays losses
and I
bargain the margins
of seconds I cannot forgive,
and I
save my best for first
instead of last
passing over and not under,
and I
trust white truth
skipping past the grey
and I
hand you my wishes
like a parcel
and I
pass you the tears of
my kisses to hold
onto.

Kevin Harling

Ghosts

If I told you
what was missing
this matrix of letters
could never dispel
nor acquaint themselves
with any real meaning,

silent ambition
declares the dusk
like a deserted beach
sending clowns
instead of angels
to do the dirty work.

What was missing
had nothing to do with pieces
nothing to do with
subtraction
of taking away from.

Silhouettes of liquid
cold lines
spill from my lungs
weighed down by this earth,
by the moons sighing look
ghosts in transition
faces of a past
fastly approaching
mantles and pawns
coming and going.

If I told you what was missing
the veil would smile
like a halo.
If I told you...

Kevin Harling

As If I Could

It feels like I have been sent to uncover,
I the discoverer of islands and things,
who steps virgin upon blue sky and oceans,
who walks without a whisper of, to decipher,
I the piper and the pen, wayward glens,
ventured red moons and sun, the
valley and creeks, things to be spoken,

I feel as if I am a messenger, sent,
from somewhere closer to Heaven, but
I must repent, relent, let it go,
I feel as if I can touch, clouds,
air and sea, like I can be free,
I feel as if I see, me and stars,
earth , soil, fire and birth.
I feel like I can stand, above,
clouds and wings, the many things,
that try to distract.

I feel like I can fly, further than the sky
these words this sky and song blue
bluer than blue can be high
much higher than you can see the sky

As if I could reach, touch, feel,
the sky.

Kevin Harling

Grace

Transfered in silence, the fleeting fall from grace,
the trace of dew on the leaves, footsteps across a meadow.
Seconds slip, a river bends around hollow precincts,
the curving lines that seem to meander, taking their time.
I am stalling in green pastures, the knotted grasses of my mind
coming undone, turning over stones, unlocking secrets.
These spilled words like pearls in a necklace, the polished
sentences that fall between the lines.
I am unassuming my presence, patiently looming in valleys
and over the hills.
I am looking at blue skies, floating above Why
I am talking with angels, soaring in the clouds,
nowhere is too high.
I am patiently waiting for one more look in your eyes
I am unassuming.
Way above the reason Why.

Kevin Harling

A Whisper

I am lost in the dust
forgotten like the whisper
you just let go of,

mirrors mock the sea
with a quiet confidence
the hours wincing white light
and how a

rainbow disturbs the sky
with fradulent lashes
long ago was the dawn
tears are never far
from the cheek
when they fall.

It crawls like the opium
furniture that adorns
the shoals of that place.

The dust beckons the night
subdued by the crowns and
brambles of chins
admonishing the dusk.

I am forgotten by the ghosts
shipwrecked by vigils
and moors that call
out to me
here I am
here.

Kevin Harling

Water Under The Bridge

Amphibious pelicans
correspond with jellyfish
via email over tea
talking about revelations
as if it was news
everything undulated
crystal blue
bottled water waves
and the sun shone
like it was waving
and
the sky was made of plastic
paper wrap like parchment
and you recycled the newspapers
every tuesday night as the dawn rose
blush , you couldn't hide your discontent
of the rent with brine nor salt
that filled the harbours light,
take a breath and breathe
your disbelief tasted like a spring onion.

The minutes were augmented by
seaweed
and I suppose it was more about
the fault and the absence of any
green leaflets that fall on the floor
pavement, pride or envy,
the shades of things,
contours
that make up the geography
lines and maps you cross off
with X's and,
somehow the circle
became angular and full of
radii like sparks,
and

Isoceles comes to mind
like paint
drops that blotch
only certain things,thighs
like a triangular circumstance
drawn by someone elses hands.

Touch the sky austere and tap
into the water,
the water by the bay left
of some country beach chalet
tucked neatly under the table
and dreaming of the
black forest by the grove.

Arcs and lines debate
with the stars about Christmas
in july on some island peninsula
of teal blue green between seas
unfolding just like a blanket
made up of marshmallows and
the crickets talked
about cadence
as if it was silent
with cicadas
and balloons,
and "Walden Pond" sprang to mind
like a chorus of bullfrogs
croaking out of tune
and the baboons
congreagted in the courtyard
of the plaza hotel on the strip
somewhere around midnight,
sipping margaritas and recalling
two paper blunts.

But lets get back to the pelicans
railing on about the flight
and while fleeing at the lips
pattern runway around the corner
lighthouse retreat
something had leaked out,
and streets nameless
architects faceless
crowds,
and in-between
in the middle of the road
laneway alley hamlet
the colour of cobblestone
and upon the landing
somewhere over here.

I listened to starfish
deciphering the TSX
on the 6 O'Clock news,
and
everything was surface
covered by normal
informal and pre-empted
by adverts blue
and full of subliminal intentions.

What did the email say
about revelations and,
What about all the plastic
you bubblewrap the truth with?

Here among the jellyfish
pelicans put on the suits,
the algae ascends like sunday
and amphibious is a day
of the week.

Kevin Harling

Poetry in the Key of Life

2009-09-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Halo

Walls that fall
from the windows
face like
stone glass
making a gathering sound
somewhere around
the knees.
I fall down
chipped away
by the sky
that erodes my chin.
Hollowed air
breathes
like a lifeless
remorse, atonal
and searching for that
one answer.
The light shines
below the sea,
urchin and escaping
the sand
slipping through my
fingers of bone
like rust.
I cannot forego
the waves flow
nor can I correlate
the distance
but I am getting
closer.

Kevin Harling

Love

The questions
never preclude the dawn
wings like hope
and eyelids that
are all a flutter
cannot ease my chin.

All that is desire
and the way lust
permeates my flesh,

with hands and smiles
all a glow, to touch
bliss and heavenly limbs,
that satisfy divinity
with napes and necks
that deny being defined.

O how can this be
embraces, traces and rust
cannot molt or decipher
such lofty ideals.

I adore and look for
you with eyes that
refuse to not see
the union and unity,

To behold and be held
of such delights
even the stars and moon
bequeath their breath.

To love I toast
the wine of its tender song.

Kevin Harling

Neruda Resurrected

Dress your tresses in white ash
resurrect the idylls with resplendent velocity
resurrect every leaf with crimson charity
resurrect the bees with a sobbing sword of blood
let the earth ripple like a river of lightning

touch the moon with a nocturnal melancholy
filling the void of space with voices
drown my hands with ciphers and poppies
wrap my memory in marrow, in veins of cellophane
in sighs replete with oxygen

look at me horizontally in a baptism of knees
open your heart to retreat
with pale words that escape crime
dowse me with soft caresses, with legs and ears
kiss me with needles and black mirrors

roll me in a symmetry of marmalade
in alabaster eyelashes and fingers
mold me in waves and raindrops
stimulate my rooms with blankets and ruffled black stockings
blister my heart in an ocean of sweat

with a thicket of sickles
with a smack of muffled bones
let my memories merge like a jellyfish.

Kevin Harling

I Never Knew You and Still

With deciphered bitterness I long
I never knew you and still
the doors of solitude will not close
your voluptuous geography opaque
my ardent eyes like coal
my steeled hands softened by wind.

This topography shrinks in heartbeats
the textures of resolve falling away
the voracious touch of sweat eroding
in salt like topaz kneeling in worship.

How I remember when and how
in silent abandon the night lingered
the hyacinth whispers echoed and chimed
in soft caresses of silver rain.

I never knew you and yet
the taste of loss loiters in bedrooms, and
hallways, and traces of familiar kisses,
and the scent of lavender flesh, upon
the brow of this remembrance fading
it fades in eyelashes, in flowing hair,
in long soft legs spooning.

Kevin Harling

Let Me Try to Explain

I keep the world at a distance
navigating it's underbelly of silk with
copious steps like a starfish
trying not to tread to hard on anything.

I see the sky glimmering with blue faces
looking at the way it's transparent landscape
is blemished by clouds.

I trace the land terra-cotta, like a snake
traversing its length, shedding my flesh with words,
slithering verbs that coerce its nature and meaning.

Trying to explain the salt and sand, delving into
the interior of water and grass to sense it's
fears.

I look at the surface of things, the way the hands
are worn smooth by hours that grate the exterior,
the way opinions of how to use time differ.

The dusty minutes that transfer fingerprints
upon the hours with an opaque smirk.

Nothing resolves or revolves that way it
appears it should, everything is running
around chasing itself, the wind, the rain,
the sea.

The air is askew jarred by panting breath,
the water trembles with waving handshakes,
informal and hesitant to make contact.

No wonder the day separates from night
and black obscures the white, why wrong
most times wins over right.

I try to see myself in glass pictures,
to feel myself in the music of the trees
chattering in the breeze, to hear myself
in a conch shell sunbathing on a beach
alone, to listen to it's conversation
with God.

I cannot fathom the depths, the angles,
the miles nor for that matter what drifts
in-between.

I am a nomad lost in a street, in an unfamiliar
world, on a planet in the middle of a galaxy
spinning.

So many things are undetected, so much is nonsense,
so many things I abhor and still innately a small
voice asks me to laugh, to comment, to observe.

Life is opaque, it is ambiguous, it is joyous
and jaded by shades and shadows of light.

I am an observer.

Kevin Harling

Favourites

2009-09-18T12:30:00.000-07:00

For You

I wait for you even now that you have gone.

I wait for you like the stars twinkling
with the distant hope in the vastness of space.

I wait for you still like a lighthouse
a silent sentinel, a beacon in the immense
blue sea.

I wait for you today as I did yesterday
pacing the hours with an empty heart.

I wait my love everywhere I am.

I hold you in my blood captive, in the air
I mouth your name in night abandoned.

I wait for you my beloved,
time is all that still holds my hand.

I wait with the patience of carnations,
stoic and petrified by loss, by departures,
by doors that close but remain ajar,
by your sunlit thighs that advance and retreat.

I wait for dawn to cast its penance,
for the day to burn a hole in my eyes.

I wait love without decline,
with an urgency that drowns the sea.

I wait with the hallmark of hours,
pecked by minutes and seconds full of teeth.

I wait for night to disappear,
suspended by your hallucinated presence.

So tell me please how shall I measure this life?
by single drops of breath
by gasps of shivering light
by the nocturnal drone of sleep,
Tell me please.

Kevin Harling

Ode to Distance

If I could stand on a glass watery surface,
calibrating its depths with heartbeats,
fathoming its leagues with metaphors,
that smell like poppies.
Taste the salt of its winds with opaque lips.

Would I be any closer?

If I could hold back tides with melancholies knees
portaging its breadth with measured sighs,
lamenting its scope in a swell of eyes,
traverse its blue with vigorous buoyant breaths,
calculating with reflection its cold waving spine.

What would I gain to that end?
Would I be any closer?

Does an urchin forget about yesterday?

Everything is castaway drifting towards the sky,
evaporating like blue waves, scurrying,
ascending and descending in tensions
that defy land, defiling the Heavens,
demonstarting with soluble fingers full of
circumstance.

The miles of separation seem like midnight,
cresting with a neverending persistence
against a night full of sky.

The air is swallowed by sanctions,
drowned by unconviction, by mouths,
by its bleached tresses,
by sand that spans day and night
with wicked tongues.

Everything is expanding, surging and rolling,
confined by the silence to which it resides.

Does an urchin remember yesterday?

Kevin Harling

Eternal Are These Thoughts

You cannot abandon me by distance
for miles are beyond the reach
beyond the grasp of these eyes
beyond the scope of finite fingers
beyond the taste of flesh.
You cannot abandon me with horizons
nor oceans overflowing with salt.
You cannot abandon me with skies
nor knees like a sunrise.
You cannot abandon my dreams
nor the touch of willingness
the apprehensive sighs or days.
You can never translate the minutes
or the transgressions of thought.
You will never understand the depths
nor relate the hours of daydreaming.
Such things can never be erased
they are beyond these earthly bonds.
This can never be abandoned by ignoring
by the colour of forgetting.
Such things exist, because they have to
because hearts have eyes and hands
because words touch with softness
with liquid fingers and traces
like the dust of stars.

Kevin Harling

Essence

Neon padded stars envelop
the sky with glances
that gather around dusk,

the silhouette of dawn
showing its supple cheek
upon the day that outstretches.

Wind chimes its airy bell
like a modicum of silence
embracing and cheering the day,

from time indigo blue drops
bead dew and bread nectarine
zesty to the touch like lemon,

and sometimes that seem few
what is left dwindling like a flash
is not the shadow but the essence.

Kevin Harling

Eve

Show me addiction
light
wrap me in night
nocturnal
sheet
of black
show me the addiction
and ground me
beneath the light
night evening
spoon of moon
wading loon
lotus
show me the addiction
write its words
nocturnal.

Kevin Harling

Athena

Does your compassion lack wings?

Dare you not fly with emotion
flowing beneath your beautiful white veils.

Has the winds of war diluted your grace?

I think not my Goddess, you hyacinth hair
and perfect porcelain gaze of blue.

Oh Deity that bewitches the earth and stars
belittle my armour and heart.

Endow me owl of the night with strength of
mind and rational thoughts.

I bow to you angel of light and sands that spill
radiant wonder and beyond that glory.

O Athena the air sings your song forever.

Kevin Harling

Word Maker

Submissive hands fall like grace had a face
subdued and dawning like the magenta sun
I kneel with opinions and seas of salt
with worship played out in the stars
with words I cannot comprehend like sand
oh lyrical granite finite and true
speak to me in whispers like air
like I am swallowed by sound, behold me
your kisses of stone eroding my flesh in gazes
oh succumb these coal limbs utopian
embellish my thoughts with galaxies
eradicate my nights with merging daylight streams
and surround my heart with blue blue water.

Kevin Harling

Pondering Life

2009-09-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

The Pen

Am I speaking calculus?
my many sided personality
like a mathematical theorem
based on chalk,
or so you think.

When my thoughts unwind
I lose the translation
traveling distances beyond infinite,
only to return confounded by the journey.

Do others who pen the world feel similar
I wonder.

I get caught up in the mystery
time turns transparent
and when it seems beyond description
day settles into night
the pen becomes silt,
layered and deeply thought through,
and settling like sediment.

Kevin Harling

Eternal

Whatever you do, leave the sky where it is
let the air fall to the sea tourmaline
and when the quiet ascends hush white
whispers and when the dawn descends its
glacial curtain don't bother to change.

Whatever you do between the day and night
rise like a butterfly angel cloud and sit
upon the mantle of destiny and do not budge,
survey and gather options of the sea and when
the salt tastes liquid hold on to your breath
and whatever you do be nothing but yourself.

Kevin Harling

Shale

Slate gray
murmuring
pines,
gypsies
and the
jasmine
silhouette
of a
pumpkin
with chocolate
shoulders,
and
the buzz of
erasers
hovering
like skeletons
in somebody elses
closet,

it felt like chalk
had invaded the air.

You said
you couldn't
find, hear
the symmetry
of pages
rewritten and,
because the ink
was diluted
you deduced and
thrust in
like a trowel
and,
suggested
strawberries
would be better.

Shortcake
crumbles like
the legs of
a poorly constructed
table of Oak,
minus a few
sturdy chairs,
and I was reminded
how infrequently
we meet in the
middle,
crumbs and
residues
patched together
into a make-shift
relationship,
like two ships
missing in the night
adrift and
stranded by the
absence of any wind.

In a stall of weather
when the lake stops
chirping
the loon calls skyward
the melancholy moon
suspended by the lyrical
thrush.

What remains
is more than embers
of ash white coal,
the smell of charcoal
pungent to the touch,
everything lingers
but outside the collusion,
Shale sits waiting,
waiting for an adequate
response,
patient like
calcium.

Kevin Harling

The Message

I saw the sky fall out the window
it fell 26 floors to the sea,
not even the salt could stop its fall.
The sun shone topaz and slithered
like an eel trying to escape.
I wondered about God and how he grieves?
Whether in his haste he missed all the
warning signs.
But when the stars went black, as black as
sleep, you could not help but doubt creation.
The day turned green and hazy like
chlorophyll
and my bones felt like rust.
The messenger wore a flowing red robe
and the clouds speculated about the descent
into the middle of everywhere.
This was a be all and end all like a switch
that finishes the light.
The message was simple, Armageddon was
coming today.

Kevin Harling

The Weaver

Magenta threads of silk
woven like a parachute
falling from the sky like
sheep asking about sleep
and the mysterious parish
that rested on the hill
across from the cemetery
cafe in a red illusion.

The sky periwinkle shone
radiant and everywhere the
clouds doubted blue and
when the day cast its hand
umber only the causes remained
like mist and the water felt
like tears heavy and drooping
to the ground like dirt in
wet clumps that spoke in a deep
monotone voice that bellowed.

The shades of purple that sank
to mauve at the turn of a page
and the letters showed their red
blushing surfaces with cheek, and
so condensation seems to say
all the wrong things in the end.

These minutes translated in
muted ink compromised by the
intention to be ambiguous and
somehow it all falls down like
a lightning bolt of brass hammers,
and then straight out of nowhere
four horseman rode in covered in
black petals and carrying gold sickles
that sparkled like diamonds against
the night sky blackbird.

Kevin Harling

More Poetry

2009-09-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

Tones and Hues

Avocado tones of blue surround the well
swirling like a rainbow, my eyes
like myrrh and complacent.
You wind of my window pane who
shuns detection and when everything
and nothing grinds to a halt.
We stop and stand looking at one another
wrong looks more like right and then
tangerine clouds float by laughing,
laughing about yesterday.
I stutter with my pen and the words
sound all the same on the page as you
read them to yourself.
How does ordinary feel from the
ledge of the ceiling sill you planted
in the garden?
But as always yellow questions hide
your insincerity like the promises
of ghosts.
The hue of today and tones of tomorrow
take center stage and the curtain falls
right on cue.
So what is left to reminisce about?
The avocado is silent, locked away in its
black peel, and You and I, well...

That's another story.

Cellophane Hearts

Cellophane is the colour of your eyes sky
and misty mountain river flows like an
iceberg across the blue vastness, here
silence staples the mouths of the muted
and all around freedom seems to say no.

Why all this plastic paper feeling? Tell
me how to undo the already done and then
when everything seems penguin and undeclared
the water drags me down and juggling my heart
like a rainbow I need validation like a parking
ticket.

Wrapped in this day of white promises and sun
that feels black against my skin of nails, you
who procure the wind with lashes and stall
like a wave,

You who when nothing could go wrong turn everything
asunder thunderstorm rising on the horizon close
and when I throw in the towel choosing not to
argue, bait the ending you desire.

I am unforgiven and you who never forgives
justify the clouds with bantering and false
smiles.

Tell me why its cellophane?

Accounting

It has everything to do with departures
trains, planes and automobiles, about
wheels lifting off the ground and arriving
somewhere else.

Its about silent gestures and footsteps
knocking like windows,
faces that touch like hands
secretly hoping
that the dust hasn't been
disturbed.

Its about anonymity and invisible
barely traceable smudges
and pacing like an arrow down
long shadowy corridors,
about columns unnoticed
like the air all white and
puffy.

Its about empty announcements,
abandoned buildings and disappointment
that cannot be hidden by veils and,
contracts and obligations that force
the quickest settlement or stalemate.

Its about pawns and being pawned
like cheap and tawdry chattel, about
bartering with white lies and scraped
knuckles in the alley saloon chalet.

It has everything to do with the price,
value for the coupon half off sold
restaurant on the top floor tower
and the company you are presently keeping.

It WAS ABOUT BEING BOUGHT escort
villa in the Alps for the weekend
champagne breakfast strawberry
you dipped in chocolate
night cap on the balcony, remember?

The numbers don't all add up, the sheets
cheques and balancing mattress posts
and the canopy tent candlelight fund-
raising event that you forgot to attend
like a maid french merlot late afternoon
tea and some ancient Druid ceremony,
Polo match plaid skirts and eye glasses
manicured hands and Margarita's with
freshly crushed mint lips of ice and toes
on the ledge of the mantle cherry on top
martini and another night cap!

Do you remember?

Me, Myself and I

I who looks at white and sees wonder
Me who wanders the sky's hope
Myself whom knows the night
All of me who forgets to question
Not the what for or how comes
But the endgames we all play.
I look at Me in the mirror and
see I, myself staring back at me.
I am everyone and everyone is me,
all by myself and I.

Looking for Anybody in Particular?

Look in the furrow of hands
between the wrinkled molts
of things said and rust,

look in the corners of light
where the shadows fall
becoming night, a night of lines
look for me in dust and in
yearning, the yearning of fingers,
outstretched limbs touching distances,

look for me in silhouettes of addition
and, the duplicity of taking away

look for me in the confession of hours
in the things you want to account for,

look for me in translations of mouths,
in the utility of the necks nape,
in the pauses and edit of dinner conversation,
in the sidewalks of memory, in a bookstore,
and,
look for me in passing, while in transit
from one thought to the next, think of me,
and most of all see me when you look for me.

If and When I Say I Love You

And if I said that I loved you
I would feel myself begin to bleed
Haunted by words I don't want to say
And what emerges between the sheets
The way my heart would flutter
Like a puddle, spilled and spilling
And if I said that I love you
I would pale in lips, in nakedness
Exposed like nails, the sadness of stones
Bittersweet like bread sacrificing
The closing of eyes, the thighs of dawn
The breaths of lust tasting the salt
Of flesh worn smooth by beading
And when I say I love you
It is with blue contention
Self-devouring and absolute
Supple and divided by layers of formica
Sedimentary and murmuring with diction
At the threshold of touches.

Ode To Poetry

Poetry my cornea of dawn
the heart winged by crowning daylight
the unrecognizable bittersweet plantations
of night
remote and copper to the touch
defended by banners like a song
of the Heavens.

Poetry is the air tourmaline
the sands opaque smile
the fire brimstone and
ember, wrought by passions hand
the watery surfaces of grace that ink
gingerly walks upon.

Oh magnanimous spring
Oh scarlet lighthouse of summer
Oh veiled crystalline autumn
Oh ventriloquist dew of winter.

Poetry my refuge
my succinct haven
my transparent shelter
my forest of steel reserve
blue and whispering in the winds.

You are the alabaster moon
the ripened sun of grapes.

Oh poetry.

Ecology

I could quote the moon
with railways
full of opinions
and drudgery.

Recount the earth
with stars
shooting with arrows
and regret.

I could refill the oceans
full of pronouns
and juxtapositions
and fresh water.

I could fill every page
with landscapes
and the litany of ideas
and beauty.

The Chant

Touch the hand world God
of my space air moss
and when in this you become
I above the soil lake moon
touch the beat heart mine
and mind the wind sky water
touch and hold let go you
and I who watches waits
sun and then how why what
I and you two and one in
union hand skin flesh go.

Ode to Beauty

I cannot decipher whispering mouths
that try to label such delights,
it seems beyond the eyes sight,
beyond the feel of fleshy peach,
beyond the taste of pomegranate knees,
beyond the realm of words breath.

So what am I left with beside exquisite,
besides eloquent lengths of pearl ankles
and scarlett blushes that touch Heaven.

I cannot aptly portray alabaster limbed
divinity and all its grace.
All i can do is sigh smiling with stars
in my eyes

Poetical Musings

2009-09-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

Please

Embrace me not with your touch
but with your hands.
Touch me not with your eyes
but with your heart.
Hear me not with your words
but with mine.
Love me not for who i will be
but for who i am now.
Listen to me not because you can
but because you want to.
Be near me not because you have to
but because you need to.
Trust me not because you want to
but because it feels right.
See me for what i am becoming
not for what i once was.
Kiss me like there is no tomorrow.
My passion never wanes.

Kevin Harling

Indigo

I feel like I should
bite into the pomegranate
ink as if I was a sword
day hour night
that upon evening
declares not the minutes
but seconds of sound
and earth pollen whisper,

I feel like I should
breath utter wish but not hope
hold reach strive for pavement
and sand beach patch of sky
and touch the flesh that is you,

I feel like I should
with joy and buoyant heart
forever gasps shout and not
be afraid to cry water tear blue
and smiles like laughter has
a real voice and I could go on

and on into the sunset setting moon
and stars your eyes and Heaven
so much bliss and footsteps
silent footsteps washing away.

Kevin Harling

Divinity

Love has not seen fit to imprint its hands
upon me
no peach impressions have adorned my topaz
flesh
and yet my eyes twinkle at the notion of its
unyielding promise.

Heaven's vow shines its luminescent veil upon
my brow,
I whisper when night blankets my soul,
my heart beating melodious the songs
of divine truth.

So to what can I defer these soft sentiments
if not above,
To where can I send this bliss if not into
the blue beyond.

I may not have tasted earthly love, but our
Fathers love has never waned,
it cannot be diminished, or divided.
It is purer than white, boundless and
all encompassing.

Love may not have seen fit to lay its
bosom upon me,
But when silence becomes a dove, I
take flight into the stars, this earthly
body freed,
and when I awake and kneel my will,
All the skies pray in union
and declare their hands all over me.

Kevin Harling

Returning

Spaces
merge and extend
the white silences
of emptiness.

From behind your hands
the wind contains the sea
the sun erodes the days
shape.

I walk learning to hold fire,
surviving the answers.

Words like sadness ripple the page,
the afternoon a marsh where I graze
silently.

Do I need your approval to continue?

I feel cauterized, I am renouncing
the past tense and
studying the insignificant at length.

I am always returning.

Kevin Harling

Please

Embrace me not with your touch
but with your hands.
Touch me not with your eyes
but with your heart.
Hear me not with your words
but with mine.
Love me not for who i will be
but for who i am now.
Listen to me not because you can
but because you want to.
Be near me not because you have to
but because you need to.
Trust me not because you want to
but because it feels right.
See me for what i am becoming
not for what i once was.
Kiss me like there is no tomorrow.
My passion never wanes.

Indigo

I feel like I should
bite into the pomegranate
ink as if I was a sword
day hour night
that upon evening
declares not the minutes
but seconds of sound
and earth pollen whisper,

I feel like I should
breath utter wish but not hope
hold reach strive for pavement
and sand beach patch of sky
and touch the flesh that is you,

I feel like I should
with joy and buoyant heart
forever gasps shout and not
be afraid to cry water tear blue
and smiles like laughter has
a real voice and I could go on

and on into the sunset setting moon
and stars your eyes and Heaven
so much bliss and footsteps
silent footsteps washing away.

Divinity

Love has not seen fit to imprint its hands
upon me
no peach impressions have adorned my topaz
flesh
and yet my eyes twinkle at the notion of its
unyielding promise.

Heaven's vow shines its luminescent veil upon
my brow,
I whisper when night blankets my soul,
my heart beating melodious the songs
of divine truth.

So to what can I defer these soft sentiments
if not above,
To where can I send this bliss if not into
the blue beyond.

I may not have tasted earthly love, but our
Fathers love has never waned,
it cannot be diminished, or divided.
It is purer than white, boundless and
all encompassing.

Love may not have seen fit to lay its
bosom upon me,
But when silence becomes a dove, I
take flight into the stars, this earthly
body freed,
and when I awake and kneel my will,
All the skies pray in union
and declare their hands all over me.

Kevin Harling

Returning

Spaces
merge and extend
the white silences
of emptiness.

From behind your hands
the wind contains the sea
the sun erodes the days
shape.

I walk learning to hold fire,
surviving the answers.

Words like sadness ripple the page,
the afternoon a marsh where I graze
silently.

Do I need your approval to continue?

I feel cauterized, I am renouncing
the past tense and
studying the insignificant at length.

I am always returning.

Kevin Harling

Poetry Summer 09

2009-09-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

Where is the Truth: A Satire

Elijah the porcupine could synchronize time
while speaking in hieroglyphs standing on two feet
blindfolded,
which would seem rather ornery if you were a God.
But lie detectors seldom tell the truth nowadays.

A basket of marzipan angels waded down the river
Thames on its way to Jerusalem, Ohio
in the United States of it never existed until
yesterday.

The night sky is no longer inhabited by stars
but cut out cardboard comets painted neon pink
so they look pretty convincing to outsiders.

You see nobody lives down here anymore except
Bullfrogs and SUV'S.

God sat in his high chair revising Genesis
watching television on his diamond Rolex Rolodex
in black and white HD.

The Teletubbies wore transparent latex and talked
to mirrors made of plexiglass asking questions
they already knew the answers to.

Milky white raindrops made of licorice bounced
off the pavement, it was Day One.

Their was no "Big Bang", it was more like a soft
shuffle of slippers and the switch was flicked to on. The vacuum lights started dancing like a disco
strobe light.

Of course there was light, primordial albeit but the darkness had been erased just like that.

Elijah thought he was dreaming as he looked into the sky which was cobalt blue and cloudless. The figure
he saw descending down the escalator which seemed to
go on forever, looked smaller than an ant and upside down with a beard made of white candy floss.

The descent to the ooze took 23 hours and 47 minutes,
at least that is what the Three Wise Owls said speaking
in some sort of gibberish that sounded more like
"Revolution 9" played backwards on a turntable.

It was Day Two. God looked upon the flowing horizon of maple syrup and pondered, with a flick of his wand and the words Abracadabra, day became night
and night day, hmmm he said "I like that", and now lets turn the ooze into a land of snakes and ladders,
and presto it was so.

The cappucino maker percolated over filling the air
with the smell of Chamomile Mint coffee and God made
Styrofoam cups. "Time for a break", he uttered to himself.

On the morning of Day Three while reading "Heaven's Standard", Elijah contemplated how sand could become glass while eating green ham and eggs whipped up by Chef Suess. It was horrendously delicious.

Suddenly out of nowhere skyscrapers appeared made of
porcelain with doors where the windows should have been. Briars, brambles and thickets covered the streets and were lit up with fiber optics so
everywhere looked like Christmas minus the snow.

God looked outward from his hammock which resembled
the San Francisco Bridge although it was purple instead of red. "This is good, I need a nap", he said. Day Four is tomorrow, cool!

Elijah thought he was in Wonderland, which is odd
if you are a porcupine with an IQ of 437.

God awoke and set to work. In the morning he drew
beaches made of blood oranges, the dunes composed of kiwi, bright vermilion. It was a magic brush of course. The canvas was invisible to the naked eye but
could be seen with a kaleidoscope.

We need to people this place called Eden and so with a flick of his wrist,
snowmen made of sponge toffee dressed in suits made of fig leaves, began walking around in wonder.

"This paradise is magnificent", Elijah overheard
them say in Morse code.

It was the Fifth Day and sprinkling fairy dust,
God created I robots and Panda Bears that knew Ju Jit Su. He gifted the I robots with sign language
and the ability to recharge without electricity
because he had no need for power plants or pollution. He looked out upon

his creation and said, "This is better than good."

On the Seventh Day he rested lounging around in his pajamas, drinking Pina Colada's with the Panda's who became loud and obnoxious. So he had them evicted from the garden and sent to Africa because it was hot and had a big desert.

It was 7pm and so God returned to whence he had come, very pleased with himself. The escalator
retracted like an accordion which seemed to go on
forever.

Elijah heard him say, " do not worry for I shall return one day, you will see it live on CNN, so make sure you pay your cable bills."

Elijah watched him disappear in a show of amazing
pyrotechnics which would put any KISS show to shame,
and he wondered, where is the truth in all of this.

Kevin Harling

Poetry 2009

2009-09-18T12:08:00.000-07:00

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