In the Lavender Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Secretly bending glimpses,
my eyes and desire align
in tortuous agreement –
reflections of you
are not enough
Drew Barrie;
to insulate my heart
from the cleft between us.
Perennials, the color of
periwinkle,
the smell of rain
and crayons
return you to me,
lend presence, a vestige,
to remember
the gift of you,
and fortify my resolve
to one day reunite.

Numbness and ache,
lavish tears set
against the
unimpeachable light,
the dream in your eyes
unequivocally green
each blink evokes faith,
found in
the blushing smile -
little one,
I observe in quiet
andoration, admid
our segregation,
ardor undiminished,
prayers give permanence
uttered in a pause
with each
drawn breath
ephemeral visions, alive,
like ballads and rhyme
Memories aflame, occupy
a sacred place,
my interior; profoundly
savored
never to erase.

Searching for treasure,
collecting prized sand
and stone,
your pockets, heavy
with plunder.

Somber tones fill
the gaps of our history
finds new contrast,
certain hues
oscillating shades of gray
stirring cues
and dearth of winter blue.
Trees, bare and lonely,
in the crisp boreal air
of February
moisture, absent
like a father’s words
laconic, after
her irreducible gaze,
in the
opaque imagination.

Oddly, the arid season,
of aloof precipitation,
the will of the wind
indefatigable,
euphony – sound unfiltered,
allowing me to grieve,
another year – gone.
Nervous Squirrels, sedentary
and quiet,
as if to mourn with me,
I miss my daughter.

The spring equinox,
poised with
symmetry, warmth,
elucidating,
the approaching day
of your birth.

Collateral emptiness,
accompanied
penurious notions of
grandeur
compared to
the day you
infiltrated our sphere.
Stunning you were,
your prominent
entry into creation,
tiny noises,
nestled and snug.
You are here,
equipped with an
absorbing mind,
wrapped,
perfectly
designed, in a petite
fashioned frame.

Emotions, elastic -
diffuse and Compress,
in distance, friction
attenuates,
time and eternity
extend to the periphery,
agony
absorbed into Zoe.
Grace and peace wash
ashore, rinsing
as poetry;
cleansing with surprise
and vigor
recall the loftiest
of tokens.

I too
encountered,
an esteemed rock
smooth and orbed
summoning
long thoughts,
(my) citadel made
of three,
uniquely ensconced
inside -
priceless gems
that sustain me.

Enclaves of privilege
possessing vacant
mirrors,
until notes and
words gather to form
your story,
the world shifts
Altered anew.
Minor resurrection,
simile of
our reconciliation
visceral and singular,
teardrops of euphoria
resemble waters
of an April freshet

In the lavender garden.

©2012 W.S. Warner

Inhabiting Sorrow

Underneath the anger, there are tears. Beneath the fury, there is hurt, a river
of affliction -the day that possibility evaporated. I knew, the moment
it was gone. Telos obsured, like a mist, had left me.

Frost in February, morning at the local coffee house, perseverating, sedate
in privatized, cogitations – certainty dissolves into irony, the transient
collective with predictable cadence and singular objective. Borrowed
energies – preferred anesthetic in defiance of the placid, quotidian horror.

Angst wrapped in skin, clothed in remorse, like a muslin coat unable
to keep me warm, the palette of truculence, dislocated savant,
with guarded aversion – faces enucleating in tacit harmony, the muted tragedy
of the forgotten.

Yoked, the metaphorical satchel, freighted with the sentient debris, sifting
the fuckage, memoirs of failure, privation of venture and honor, objectified as
mere portent. [Existence] – the daily riot, becomes the necessary crucible.

Dissonance and detachment resonate the cultural banality, [being] displaced by
icon; [branding], ideas about ideas, life several times removed,
emblem over essence.

Existential renegade, exploiting counter intuitive, the paradigmatic prodigal,
favor squandered, in the absonant passage, bearing fruit of the undone.

Bones of contention lament, interminably, like a false friend, present in absence,
perceived in the lack, subtraction, slip-stream – the disheveled
palaver of the broken.

Acutely self-referential, misery enfleshed, its own reward, a post-war
discontent inhabiting sorrow, compressed and narrow, begetting
apathy in springtime.

Commodity of youth, the currency of beauty – permuted, commerce of the
ethereal and diaphanous. Human caprice, post-modern fog,
the flattened self,
The enemy of us is us, drowning in the decorum of narcissism.
The fattened calf,
immolating on the sword of autonomy.

Recycled grief, a recursive loop of gestating thoughts, marinating fluidly
within the interpretive grid. Confessional cyber community – exposed wounds
and concrete suffering, abstracted from virtual solidarity, refracted through
a reductive sentimentality, maybe they will ‘like’ it.

Iconoclast in exile, inhaling the incense of barrenness, surrounded by synoptic
drivel in understated – present tenses – alight in the now, axial axioms of the privileged,
who genuflect to the god of unfettered freedom.

Peripatetic intervals of isolation, self-imposed, hidden in a sanctuary of
derision, colliding with immutable otherness, the waters of chaos, calm. The
proleptic display, announcing eschatology. An ancient text written on the interior
expressed in myth and narrative the courier. The carnal and cerebral
arise, rightly flourishing.

Sense thresholds stirring, surprise and turbulence, reverberations of altered
domains merging – the temporal and ubiquity, the indissolubly resplendent
inversion – the invisible made visible. Opaque intrigues subsumed into the
balm of reconciliation – the first shall be last…

©2012 W.S. Warner

Venus in Bloom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frozen moments,
embraced,
visions of
luminous things,
unpretentious
pearls dancing;
embers of memory linger,
elegy of the lachrymose,
this horizoning self
lying low in saturnine
tranquility
and repose – paternity lost
to the provisional.

The cross of lassitude,
forming
scars of loss;
estrangement,
preface to
ineluctable autonomy.
Earthen treasure – immortal
footprints, the migration
of fair maidens across my
effusive heart.

Venus trio in bloom,
aesthetic allusion,
ephemeral incarnations
of beauty – perishable fruit,
transcending the plebeian.
Aerial substance -
the hermeneutic,
betraying desire’s
ambrosial tyranny;
The permuted passage -
savor the sojourn, submit
to the fated peregrination.

Purple orchids blossom,
immortal creatures,
culminating
in perfection
from the sheath
respectively,
each plume,
singular,
the continuum of
splendor, mediate
the inviolable.
Eternity compounding,
time and essence suffuse
the already and not yet
into an
orbiting mosaic.

The susurrant devotions
of a satellite father,
summon the quest -
both, and,
absence and proximity,
conduits of
distress and peace
ironically,
solace and
terror
traverse the
same path.
Plunge though,
deep, the depth of pain;
deeper, sweeter
the taste of pleasure.

Engender and witness,
window into
preeminence,
surface azure,
the sacred -
inimitable gravity of
grandeur,
ma petite,
you – are
lived poetry
seen and heard;
cosmic order,
a mediating heuristic -
to love is to see,
in the dismal,
gift of distance.
child of delight,
evermore, Don’t I hold you?

Beauty and strangeness,
music found
in linear,
secret places
beyond the tangent,
purview of limitation,
arousing imagination -
infinititude as near
as it is far.

Long loneliness -
dissonance that
resolves;
perceiving,
the tertiary refrain -
as exquisite verse,
and matchless liqueur,
sublime gratuity
derived
through
doors of surrender.
Daughter,
in adoration and wonder,
I hold you.

©2012 W.S. Warner

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
a 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 deity,
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,
the 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,
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 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 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
and 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,
convered 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 ingenue 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
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 Precarious Vision

Alone, against the saturated
horizon of dawn,
loitering, in the dark timbre
of emerging consciousness -
the dissipating somnolence
and 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.

Pollard fragments
of 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 and
numinous effusion
streams naked epiphany,
the precarious vision -
the 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;
and in verse adorn.
Fecund soil, Line after line,
the cosmos altered,
the 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, 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 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.