What Am I Here and Now?

A couple of weeks ago a new writer asked me “who are you?” I didn’t answer then, albeit a narcissistic answer now, there doesn’t seem any other way to answer without over using “ I ”…  My introduction...  I am an Empath...

What Am I Here and Now? 

Humanity is flesh and bones, living mortals,

loving, human form by no means born to live alone

I am red, brown and white, a half breed

caught in-between an age old racist fight



This man was once a families’ baby child

That child is now a man

A man was born and children raised,

once abused and abandoned

back in the good ol’ dim lit happy days



I am a survivor, no longer black and blue

Just a lasting scared vanished memory

remembrances hidden from seekers view

We’ve been mistreated, we’ve felt disgraced

I just keep on trying to find amazing grace



I’ve been a loser who suffered

through intense emotional plight

Never even remotely understanding

when the time was true to come in

out of the rain, or how to lose

the haunting blues darkest nights



I’ve been a prince, never wanting to be a king

Now a pauper disappearing without a printable trace

I am mister. I’m a slave. These eyes have cried

for enlightened pathways and eternal peaceful ways,

waiting here in blindness for kindness to shine the guiding light



I am naked truth, a clothed advocate for humanity lost

An organic gardener, who grows more than what he needs,

to be able give away food of life. I've been bought then sold

to the lowest bidder, for little value,

but I got caught up in such a high cost



I’ve been lost and I’ve been found

Looking over my shoulder, never really knowing

whether, when, why, how or even if I turned out wrong

I’ve been forgiven, wrongly blamed,

feeling so much misguided guilt

for my innocence actually being stole



I have been a lover, cutting deep like a knife to the bone

A shooter of arrows straight through a cold heart of stone

I have shared passion’s goose bumps of lust

I’ve been a fool, forsaking all trust in me

I’ve been caught in the crossfire

when evil triumphed over love



I was called bipolar, I’ve been called insane

I’ve been too damn ashamed to reveal my given name

I was once invisible but now I stand tall,

with a humble hope to help see you through it all.

I’ve been the Rock of Gibraltar; I’ve been the philosopher’s stone,

with the key to the highway yet a locker of the cage



I’ve been pushed back by a pusher, a puller of teeth,

a singer of love songs eradicating a breaker of sacred hearts

Keep your secrets to yourself

Once forsaken by the road not chosen

I became my invasive shadow

from the cradle to the grave



I am a dream believer, all things must pass,

a whisperer to the ancient voices

of the gentle wind’s  song  past 

Not a word of it really matters now...


"Who am I?"


I’m just the simple heart and soul of a poet

Trying to live life in balance

through words found

here and now…


© 2012 Harlon Rivers

Standing Barefoot on Rocky Ground

Come walk with me a mile...

Walk on without our burden’s weighty shoes,

warily trudging over the long rocky

pathway of a lifetime in my soul,

a final traumatic voyage to freedom.

The winds of change are blowing briskly

as we walk charily over the long

rock-strewn passageway.

I shed these boots and skin, no longer fitting

my scared, blistered and callused soles.

As time has slowly passed

the pebbly passage has evolved from two ways

into one-way jagged forage…

Standing barefooted and naked on rocky ground,

dark sunken sleepless eyes scan

the rolling vista view as the wind blows 

dust from the halo around the sun

blurring the delicate wispy cirrus clouds.  

The sun’s radiance paints frozen ice crystals

into a vivid aura of prisms’ glittering corona

of rainbows around the closest of solar stars.

There's something in the ethereal air

that leaves my soul unsettled,

grasping for an evocative

stability that eludes me...

The pain and suffering has vanished 

as if the body and soul have separated, 

numbness from severed nerves

sharp reflection on serrated edges,

deadened useless flesh cut to the bone

by misjudged obstacles once too often.  

The barefooted soul travels on, suffused

in the solar rainbow dust

yearning, longing to saunter

above and beyond the feathery pillows

of cumulus clouds finally resting at peace. 

Dipping the numbed toes and heart’s lesions

into a healing bath of stardust...

An unfinished life

of an open ended dream

reluctantly waking to take the last and final

steps timidly taken alone.

A long and winding rocky journey’s end draws near

as the halo around the moon

illuminates understanding 

of pending imminent soulful rain.

The shower of tears that shall mourn

the loss of body as the soul lives on,

eternally, barefooted, naked and free

like the dust in the wind

at last... 

© 2012 Harlon Rivers