Hollow

Static, memories

emanating, separating

the postcard-perfect

still life of home

from it’s storied past.

Invisible, to drift

among

the florid aphorisms,

ending in

deleterious debris,

aftermath of

the inevitable.

Empty room, echo hollow

tabula rasa -

carpet clean, return

to callow.

Pregnant with obsession,

inside an idea,

a question,

the what -

against the narrow

scarcity,

and fatigue of should.

Tender, malleable

his youth,

betrayed;

assumed decorum -

residue of truth,

flattening of emotion

and misplaced

affirmation,

buried pathologies

in architecture.

Harboring apathy

and lunacy,

the pious

pedigree,

Smuggling

fetters of

doubt and indecision

into virgin

cognizance,

fallow energies;

fumes of decay,

the human stain.

Social edifice, inoculated

heirs of neurosis;

palpable, sensual pain

and transience, though

tacit remain

haunted history,

The blind hyperbole,

maudlin

forbearance, this haven,

the portrait

of immaculate condition,

nurtured with precision

and sterling pretense.

Suburban domicile -

house beautiful,

savage irony -

unseen treasure

ubiquitous innocence,

faces, tiny creations;

compliant vessels

wounded,

while

modernism murmurs

it’s promise -

Brave New World,

four walls to

Dwell,

the misunderstood

speak louder -

Consumerism,

unvarnished ambition,

never could

repair the brokenness within…

©2011 W.S. Warner

Elucidation

The sound of your voice,

linguistic forte,

digital portrait combined

reads lyrical, like Joyce,

the use of imagery -

elevating the plebeian,

resplendent

the imposition sublime.

Pellucid prose, tête-à-tête

immersed in esoteric allusion

spoken with au fait.

Liberating my pedestrian

inhibition,
premise of surrender -
adrift, desultory,

delicious ambiguity.

Seduction begins in

the mind,

assets of imagination,

intellectual property;

side by side: lying supine

didactic invitation,

in assertions of diversion;
a chance to find

euphoria within our reach.

Linear alliteration;

fulgent flowing Fumé
Blanc,

fire and wine

private beach,

rhymes of elucidation

two bodies align,

I will learn if you teach.

Sensual epistemology,

curvaceous

figure of speech,

the Orphic; woeful
lover's plight,

a porous song recite

art professor, verse confessor

tutor me tonight.

©2010 & 2011 W.S Warner

The Beautiful Thirst

My heart - delicate,
And malleable
Undulates
Within two poles,
Seamlessly juxtaposed -
Beauty and affliction;
Capricious container -
Truth and fiction;
The sheer surfeit
Of choice
Reverberates with
Imperious diversion,
Settled invitation-
Loud and shiny things.

Hard to breathe,
I'm in exile
Slave to my emotions,
Obsequious and servile
Barren, cold and mute
Existence - the brute;
Tilted reminiscence,
Scars of loss
Contrive frames
Around moments -
Footprints,
Interminable -
Being and time.

Infinite diety,
Triune polyphony
Artist of sublimity
Smearing shades
Of lonliness,
Vestiges of faith,
To retrieve
Hues of meaning;
Oddly convivial
Prophets
Of reprieve.

Orpheus lost Eurydice
Palpable discordancy
Suffused in time,
Could not resolve
Without verse
Decidedly sonorous,
Canvas, showered pain;
Splashed
Jackson Pollack stain
Love - onerous,
Deep beneath
The veneer,
It's mercy severe.

Fiction from the first,
Eden's fatal gift,
Lucidity cursed,
Altered cosmos murmuring;
Parlance of
Disordered elegance;
Effusive language,
Phrasing art nouveau
Tacit script,
Ensconced within
the fabric;
Create a thirst -
Torment, visceral
And immediate.

Ardor and innocence
Once quenched,
Render
Pathos in proportion
To the pleasure,
Conveyance of beatitude,
The past absorbed
Into the treasure,
Inscrutable heart -
Devotion and turpitude;
Desire, loathing and paucity,
Affinity in abundance,
Fear and doubt
Inhabit certitude.

©2009 & 2011 W.S. Warner

The Scandal of Particularity

Verdant eyes, translucent pearls
speak in silent witness,
wounds unfurl
meaning revealed,
interrupted girl.
Safe in solidarity
prolific in eccentricity,
the scandal of particularity.
Pouting mouth
grief - filled lips
alluring, set sail a thousand ships;
tempt me to leave harbor.

Arousing euphoria as such,
resistance, amity and distance
amour sans touch
her sense of humor transcends,
appeasing my mind’s thirst
a vogue sultana,
seasoned swagger
hair resplendent flame,
alternating cool, black
asymmetrical coiffeur;
nonconforming demure
the renegade metaphor -
singular for sure, no cure.

Muted vanity, bathos piercing
the jaded circumference of banality;
pale protagonist in servitude
the sapient palaver of the urbane,
covered patina of pretense,
induced coercion,
the commodity self
appearing abased
wearing lesions of lassitude.
Artistic chattel - eminent domain
preempting genius,
subsidiary of consuming narcissism
external locus of control;
surrender to the tentative,
fettered pendant, Venus in chains
arrested visionary bane
sterile savant, edifice of pain.

The soubrette, dubious incarnation
gravid ingénue of prevarication
imperceptible venue -
theatre of the absurd;
withdrawn siren,
solitude of necessity -
skin - slender veil of shame,
nearness loitering redemption;
moments envisage
the appointment with the soul;
ambiguity eschews clarity
awareness; ineluctable anxiety,
imago - centric confession
sacred pardon, seraphic venation
intravenous textures presume,
the tactile margins of liberty.

Therapeutic retrieval,
Sanguine,
beneath the portico of
individuation;
Your smile I hear,
recovered autonomy
blessed emancipation,
The scandal of particularity;
peculiar treasure
ironically captured
film, canvas,
prose profundity.

Ciphering as an ambling book,
I peruse you,
rendered captive
hypnotic avant-garde fiction,
spectator of denuded opacity
analogous reflection, I Mirror you.
A modest proposal - pontificate the imperative,
forgo the disposal, adapt your narrative,
the scandal of particularity -
resonate the echo, cogitate our propinquity
Love, imagination and destiny.

©2008 & 2011 W.S Warner

The Humiliation of the Word

The pierced ego sees
through an opaque lens;
a vestige of hope,
humor and
intellectual solidarity.
Effigies of forgotten ethos,
the culmination of a
fated dream;
unrequited ardor, abandons
identity to an irreducible
fervor,
subtext of tension,
enduring sexual privation;
etude of a paramour
ending torture,
tasting mystical polarity.

The wounded heart
once intruded,
bleeds effusive;
the ornament of humility.
Flattened collateral
damage,
primal search,
proves illusive;
portals of hurt, slivers
of pride,
assembled fragments of
thereness
absorb the loss
of my English muse.

Poetry and devotion
punctuated murmurs
of piety,
depth perception
virtue unfound;
expectation - access
to suffering,
disinterested love
present,
desultory carnage
of rescission,
absurdity personified;
euphemism
of adieu,
the sound of no sound.

The discarded image
finds no favor,
the salt lost it's savor
unquenched thirst;
desire of
diminished purview,
the saporus stream
deferred;
vision eclipsed;
saturated self
hidden in the text.

Poverty asks the
question,
absence summons
ethereal substance
merged into
the immanent frame;
integrating,
in solitude signifying,
mediating - logos
contested,
the humiliation of
the word.

Lyrical enigma,
where did I go?
provisional
personality
scorned,
renouncing nostrums
of the prosaic,
surrenders to the
the realm interior
sovereignty
assumed in
provenience,
native
horizon of the next.

©2008 & 2011 W.S. Warner

The Precarious Vision

Against the saturated
Horizon of dawn,
Loitering in the dark timbre,
Emerging consciousness -
The dissipating somnolence
Preemptive despair,
Tacitly adumbrate the
Yawning abyss.
Chastened by the cunning and
Lubricious nihilism,
Igniting fermented provocations,
Silent subterfuge; death,
By mirth - the inane;
Lament of the mundane.

Fallow paradigms, accretions of
The last gasp -
Evaporating empty liturgies
Of suspicion;
Charity and equanimity -
Lost in confinement,
Triumphant avarice bearing
Descendants
Of intransigence;
Wielding imperious
Schemes of orthodoxy.

These pollard fragments,
Silken tapestry,
Miasma draped depression
Abridging;
Conversely,
Permuted flurries of anxiety
Dislodge
The vestiges of meaning
That abide
In brazen equivocation.

Tributaries of dogma reach
Their confluence,
Watershed moment,
Numinous effusion
Streams naked epiphany,
The precarious vision -
A gesture of providence,
Certainty and contingency;
Gratuitously derivative, life
Equals choice.

Verdant branches of intention;
And opportunity the vine,
Live forward -
The pen, my voice,
Piquant conduit pouring,
Exuberant wine.

Footprints found in givenness
Underline,
Penumbrae of my soul;
Mirrored silhouettes,
Thoughts and words engender;
Adorned in verse,

Fecund soil, Line after line,
The cosmos altered,
Continuum of permanence -
Artist’s art articulating
Essence of my imagination,
I proliferate, I design
Phrases unique,
Participation mystique.

Words creating world,
The apparatus of infinity
Heidegger, ontologically precise,
Language -
The house of Being,
Ineffable, Promethean
Literary devise -
Envisioning possibility,
And abundance to allow.
I occur, inhabit and
Manifest
A garden,
Future phenomena
Experienced as now.

©2008 & ©2011 W.S. Warner

The Long Ride Home

The Long Ride Home
RIP~ Ron Warner….
June 11, 2011

Today is Ron Warner’s funeral, he died last week, I found out last Sunday morning while I was in Tahoe. The long ride home gave me pause, I had some time to reflect on my cousin. I wish I had taken the time to know him better. I was deeply saddened, knowing that he had endured numerous sincere and ongoing hardships and that he died alone (heart failure)- my deepest hope is that he was happy - perhaps he had a chance to talk with one of his kids, or maybe he had found some moments of internal peace in this often cold and dark world.

Given my limited insight into his situation, I wondered if he found it exhausting to live in a world where we are constantly being measured and reminded of how we are judged by our actions? worse yet, distilled down to “we are our actions”? Such facile simplifications display an abysmal ignorance of the ordered complexity, the ineffability of life on this blue-green planet suggesting that the appraisal of a human life can be encapsulated by various results mediated through rational, scientific metrics. We have gifts, dreams, intentions, and potentials. Our hearts are porous and malleable with an inscrutability that transcends the presumed world of criteria and certitude.

Is there a place where we are loved and accepted as we are, with the knowledge that we have a destiny- not merely to be reduced to our performance? it would require the capacity(imagination) to do so, found within an alliance that values the slowness of affinity. It will cost us to appropriate the gift of KNOWING another; the displacement of, in favor of the deadening ubiquity of culture is to languish and becomes the privation of ourselves; to attend to a soul is to not be efficient.

I saw Ron on very few occasions during our lives and sadly, we lived merely 20 miles apart, I’m told he was a good man who loved his family and an excellent father who was doing what he knew to do to engage in and navigate through his politically tenuous terrain. Perhaps he was able to draw from a numinous interior space; a place where joy can reside in the flicker of the smallest of flames. As he is in eternity, so he is in my heart- affirmed, accepted and whole.

The Night Becomes You

The night becomes you -
hair coiffed in fashion
illuminated eyes reveal attraction
the scent of body oil
pervasive,
ambient music evolves
persuasive
savory rhetoric,
cabernet erodes my inhibition
no contrition, turn the ignition.

The night becomes you -
you wear it well
an amalgam,
ardor and insouciance -
redefining glamour,
ephemeral moments
dial down the sunlight,
I am slain - voice and accent
weave their spell;
black dust coat, white hat,
a pair of posh boots
they live to tell.

The night becomes you
rhyme scheme - lyrical poetry
sophisticated venue, table for two
ensconced in leather lounge,
similitude within difference;
undulation - cadences of
counterpoint -
poise and peril of duality
we inhabit the floor.
Postprandial, conversation
extempore;
machinations of
intoxicating discourse,
I could drink your words -
artistic milieu- beguiling imagery,
sonant susurrations
penetrate my being.

The night becomes you -
theoretical locutions
phrasing depth and humor,
undiluted amour, tensions resolve
frame by frame,
solidify the affair and validate the rumor
subsumed in sequence, pulsating,
igniting the sapid interior flame
silver screen ending,
effusive reviews
two hearts collide and form one;
the cherub's arrow finds its aim.

©2008 & 2011 W.S. Warner