In your vision you are the only thing with bloodshot eyes.
You always wear a robe
that speaks seven languages... and a bank of fog is at your feet
nipping at your naked heel.
In your vision you remember how your arms feel in sunshine.
It is intense.

Your can-opener is hissing an etude
that alludes to wise men...
who bathe in miracles
and roam the world,
untarnished in Poverty.
Your can-opener whispers in hush tones
about barbarians at the gate. And they say
' they've come for the Linen ! '

You are not deceived.

In your vision you are the only thing that can backward engineer
a Universe.

On your way back to the homeland of your algebra
you hesitate. “ you may have left your keys in your Other Robe...”
The Robe that hallucinates constantly~ Carrying on about
' The dire consequences of leaving terrycloth alone with the keys '
and, afflicted with Prophesy Tourettes
the piteous tide of doom ' sayeth the robe '
you must suffer.

In your vision, you are the only one
looking for the keys.

Everything An Etude

Your cooking, your yoga,
Your diet, your posture:
Everything a try,
Chance to be brave
Chance to be plucky:
Symphony unfinished;
All’s a laboratory.

Everything an opportunity.
An exercise to make you better.
Never best.
There is no best.
So rest in knowing
Everything is etude.

Everything Is Etude 4.11.2017
The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic; Vaguely About Music II;
Arlene Corwin

from her window she could see
the shells of buildings the bombs battered--gray concrete
ghosts, haunting in their silence

Father said his ears
hadn't stopped ringing since the attacks, though he still
could hear her playing

and he expected her practice to continue
for one day, he promised, prayers would prevail, peace
would return, and her song would be heard

play, he entreated, for ivory, black
and white, has forgotten the evil of men, their carnage;
the notes know nothing except to be played

and to give pause for hope, when
more trenchant sounds demanded one’s attention,
still the song must remain

Our footsteps echo through ancient halls,
                where here is everywhere
        and every time is now.

Caesar’s twin-edged conquests are our own
                as is Brutus’s fickle knife
        and Marc Anthony’s cunning speech.

Plague steals across our Europe
                like a remorseless highwayman -
        rosies all ringed and falling down.

We wait in Wien's Kärntnertor theater
                for Schiller’s An die Freude    
        to shine anew in Beethoven’s score

and are ushered in at Menlo Park
                where Edison's tungsten faintly glows.
        Tomorrow will bring sun to the night.

There's Jonas Salk at his microscope.
                One more test will crack the code
        to banish polio's scourge.

But nature’s caprice strews logs on our roads.
                We are dashed by a Tsunami’s rage.
        Katrina’s torrents have swallowed our homes.

Prides of warriors wade rivers of blood  
                and Darfur bullets tear into our chests.
        Nuclear Toys ‘R Us shelves are fully stocked.

We are the heirs of each triumph and treachery.
                We grasp the keys to tomorrow.
        What have we done? What must we do?

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 ****** 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

-I've got bored of words.
-You tergiversate... Small world.What this bouquet of flowers is doing in the intermediate?It's a date?
-Ah... such prolixity... More champagne?
-What's the point?
-My aim? Mmm... to try to oscullate you.
-... What?... Such profane elixir do you desire?
-It'll be more than tasty.It's alleged...
-But, don't you distinguish the mayhem's reflection below?
-Your solicitude.. Ah!... What a nice champagne.Hmm... Cake? By the other way or not there's nothing at the ceiling.
-You've perused my protocol... A small slice, please.
-A kiss a skirmish.Palatable as this recipe... Well... apart from an armageddon...
-Stop pushing on boy.
-I already vanquished the inception, you know...
-Catastrophe is your trophy, but I disavow your apocalypse.
-I was expecting something more digestible.How's the alcohol?
-Standstill...
-Hm!... As everything surrounding us.
-Ahhh... No... They just don't move.. don't have gravity...
-Funny waiter... Hovering waiter.Did you emend your canon?
-Champagne and desserts will not litigate your anticipation.You know.How strange is...
-The room? No... Is normal for it to circle upside down.
-A hug?
-In this desert? With all those people?
-They are frozen, and... before I veto, quivering in a hurt heart.
-Blown sand... popped champagne... Oh, I didn't notice the light fixture's embroidery.
-The sun's in the bottom.Look up... Its obumbration is into the typhoon.
-Standstill, nothing's synchronized...
-Is your tranquility dissipated? gone?...
-No.If isn't yours.
-I just still want that hug.
-Hmmm... I forgot you're a cold person...
-And you a hot girl... Irony...
-You'll melt...
-I'm apt to it...

Then an aurora flash
And splashing glass
Accompanied by springing sparks
Shattered bass walls
Begetting noctilucent dark and dusk
A hurricane, breathing the sun
Just dust to dust

Another day has come; and gone...
Come the night we’re on our own.
Lay us down and tuck us in,
And let our sleep come when.

Suddenly we have no say:
Unbidden dreams take us far away.
Our minds will rapidly unfurl:
We belong now to another world.

Finally! morning lights our eyes awake.
Dreams’ murky memories we try to take.
“Hush now; say your goodbyes.
The sun arises in his skies.”



For Rickets.



Copyright © 2010, 2013 by John Russell; all rights reserved.  No reproduction allowed in any manner whatsoever without permission.

And here’s another religious theory:
craving the sweetness of fruitless purpose,
we hunch with our loads under the big above eye
and scurry a little faster.
Looking only up or down
-at the sky or on the ground-
and deriving no drive from our surroundings
(the universe erupting in the beauty of our limited spectrum rainbow)

A knife swims in the eery air
bursting down
smearing the few fawn
crooked'em crotales
springing drops of meltdown sun
God hollows
and shadow balloting follows

I wake to this, the soft caress,a morning kiss and would not miss that sweet surprise of love that looks out from your eyes,
I wake to this.

The day is way beyond my dreams that stream unbidden through my sleep,
these moments keep me so alive,
the love that shines out from your eyes
I wake to this.

I wish this lasts for evermore,
this core of my existence
the light that shines on you and me
and eyes that look surprisingly,
full of love.

See,
I’m pretty deeply rooted on this small rock,
this minor island.
I can’t move.
Sure
I can gain fleeting satisfaction from docking
ships which need a repair
or wish to experience the depth of isolation.
But like the clouds
those ships pass.
And I can only wait for when
the storm or tsunami
will absorb and erase me
with hardly more than a flinch.


When that time comes
I will have been
nothing more than nothing (+x).

funny how
even at a grinded pace
we forget about the
fingers of air that brush past our face
as we walk onward into our far-too-long lives
that end abruptly and without trace

Is it true
that the poison
which drinks life away
can smell
like cheese and honey?

During I was cogitating
I felt something silently booms
A spark bubbles it is, vellicating my desire.
I let down my hands collapse
but, constantly merry scared was I again
by a sparks' silent booming in front of me.
Purple, violet, pink and colour mandarin.
Glimmer, maddling, melting.
A sparks' shy bubbling coy blink
Blue, turquoise and diaphanous white.
«Stop this transcendental dance,
you'll subluxate yourselves», mentioned I.
Soon an exhilarated game overtook the chamber.
«Your tingling tickles me», said I and they scattered thorough in the air.
«You should run fast», uttered I, «for I'm going to pursue you» and bit a rose betwixt my teeth whilst rejoining them, dancing tango with extempore fashion.But having been besides them, they vanished letting me hit with my shoulder the window, looking down my blunder, grimaced contemptuously by their blundish.
«That's the matter: you are immaterial» murmured I whilst removing and throwing the rose behind me without looking back.
Thus, looking down, letting a sigh flew in the air, I laid my hit shoulder to the window and turned left my down-bent neck, letting my hair cover my face.
The sun it was, bathing the chamber, cheated by the black clouds.Its departure's time is coming closer but, early tonight.«How deluxe» murmured I schematizing a grimace of a half smile.The sun didn't see it, for only my unshaved chin was obvious to him.
«Hmmm, the dawn is inexorably amaranthine for those accomplished the impossible» I sighed turning away my indifferent sight.
I was heading immodesty to my comfortable armchair.But the sparks' bubbling, squeezing my three-days unshaven cheecks, plopped me to the sofa, dancing like a ballerina.Dazed by the intensity, I fell in a prone position on the sofa with my legs bending to my back, my eyes covered by my hair and my coat's tail covering the rest of my upper body.
Soon, yellow, green and grey, I fell ill.
«Yyoouuu vvanquishedd me luxuriously» I murmured and closed my eyes.
Having them opened I observed the rose on the floor, being bathed by sun's last beams.
I tried to catch it but, it was farther I optimized.
I looked at the sparks, who were dancing more vividly and playful.
I blew my hair,blinked and looked them again, with my eyes begging artificially whilst they passed it to me, continuing their dance.
«Oh, benevolent you are», I murmured having a contemptuous half smile.I blinked.Then my coat were fixed and my hair parted by them.
A rose, I was deliberating.
«I have to be arose» sighed I a blow against my hair, slightly.
A rose red as blood and gold of fade.
I couldn't get up.The mesmerizing fragrance couldn't be interpreted.
Then, I resume my deliberation, with my body fixed, facing the ceiling, bringing my fingers' distal phalanges together at my lips whilst the spark's bubbles were trying to lull me.
And I closed my eyes.

A spark bubbles, tickling the incessant intensity.
Intensity forever stultified.
We are neither savages, nor can become salvages nor slaved.
But we belong amongst, amidst sparkles shadowy.
Touched like vellicated babies by a bird's song.
«You are ossifying the world, please stop».
«Others melt by feasts, why don't you call them beasts?».
Who then luxuriates the corpus?
Who embellish peace?
Lotus by whom are distributed?
It's a piece of blast threshing what can last.
That neither yield nor bend.
What trending is throwing hope inside a spring's bottom.
Becoming immediately a dried hollow which billows.
Billows spitting dust and gold.
The dawn is inexorably unforgettable for those accomplished the impossible.
Constantly, purple red and pink,
glimmer, maddles, melt.
Neither calamity blooms.
Nor clarity booms.
Are we then, not all abiding.

Motions croak in crimped t-shirts
Peace hurts the leg of 3 wheelers
Spit in a book, carefully holding hands over healers
Frosted articulation of bricks hitting off buildings
The doctor resumes surgery on the filming
Actress gummy mouthed backpacker sharing rooms with a jet-lagger galvanizing goo
If I phone myself, I’ll phone you too
Ad-hoc hop around dentures holding saxophones, laziness is the common king around here
Match the sketch with the deliriant fear free freedom and sneer
Shut the promo drunk and dolo
Potions of pogos bouncing so low
Both bones focal, keeping in a smile from an eye perched over the edge spitting on the populous
Attacking formulas with cruel gruel from the oesophagus
Wilting oxalis wooded in obelisks
Mortal coil in amphetamine greed for the sleep
Positioned slightly awkward and barely out of reach
Been seen being dreams piercing holes in the purple of the seeds
Peace is deemed green, free me from the iron between the sheets
Coins flipped in a river and an etude rings out with a profound sense of urgency
Won't wake up faces blindly painted deranged by a 5 sided box that gave fame to what was contained
Warp the wattage, walk in nervous
Hold cosmic stardust in one hand
Another a phone to call the best man
To marry the two hands and I’m sure the priest will understand
Hairs on the ceiling float through the window and provide an outspoken account of how they are feeling
Canisters of friendship huffed in the backs of vans till passing point seizures explain themselves
9mm film reel candy bars and ring modulation skeletal structure cat gut harps
Never finish a walk to work without beginning the start
Trolleys of Dolly Parton facelifts
Knife cutter butterfly anaesthesia makeshift
Hollow bellies of pardoned mop heads becoming a commodity
I can't say sorry if I begin to speak so oddly
I’d say probably yes if you lit a fire beyond the fence where the old man gambles drop-***** with 50 pence
Bite down on copper, synchronise the action
Winter comes and goes like conversation going out of fashion
Morbid, terra-fin switches waterbeds
Hints home at spit-roasting ostrich heads
Cost and effect, cause and intellect
The castle puts his foot down only to find a horses neck
Zipped up in honey, the combs hive mind should reconsider its self lucky
Unorthodox autodidact naturally diffracting compound eye composes paranoia and lies
The patronage of the savant is murderous and contrived
Its better out than in
The constant metaphor for unluckiness
Is where we begin
Radiance in a hot water semi permeable membrane crescent
Strokes the backs of frogs in the desert, stars iridescent and sun bears a weapon
Hammocks, ****, sweat on the brow, split lips on cornerstones of the solstice in the dead of now
Space-age ape on the country road lets out a cough
Caution to the hissing hills ****** in hidden zygotic havens
Actors have no time to cut themselves shaving
Austro-Bavarian chemical burns Molotov cocktail sewers
Crayons let me draw this face on, paint the day on and on, it gets newer
Its the context at which you and I notice the separation, that cues canned humour

Morning Greeting to God

On waking I say (thinking, really)
“You’ve been here all night.
You’ll be here all the day,
Providing time, my needs,
And more abstractly, destiny.  
The trick is to be welcoming,
A trick that makes the play of pain
More comfortable,
For comfort is so comforting.

When I say pain,
I do not mean
A shoulder ache or thereabouts.
It means the pain of all around,
An ‘all around’ that’s all unbound
Which one will never have the skill to grasp,
Or power to reshape.

The day’s blank piece of paper,
Bland or stimulating,
Filled with action or quite still –
Always etude and apprenticeship.

So I ask myself (symbolically)
What can I learn?
With no idea of what’s to come,
Anticipating nothing
I accept each crumb that falls from
Shall we call it ‘heaven’s table’
(just a metaphor.)

Heaven’s table may be fable,
Morning’s greeting, fleeting phrase;
Both are ways to start the days
With positivity, an energy
To improvise with happy creativity.
What could be better?

Morning Greeting To God 9.25.2017
God Book II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Her life is a melody,
an etude of melancholy
Her wrist is a violin,
where marks of practice make its toll
Her bow is a blade
sliding it deep and hard
until the notes,
colored with crimson red
oozes out

Tonight, she made up her mind
She will end the etude
that she composed all her life

The restroom is her stage,
her shadow is her audience
She will play her violin
until the last note drops

twenty minutes to write a poem
to stop and think and scribe
to create an etude, a vignette
from daily life,
minutea



teapot sits
still warm
rendolent
of terraces
of camelias
in foreign lands

crumbs sit in clusters
on the worn pine table
survivors of the toast and jam war

underneath the tuxedo cat
basks in a sliver of stainedglassgreen sunlight
hopeful of something wonderful


the clattering of the boychild
can be heard, akin to rollerblading rhino's
as he prepares for another day of learning


I sit, running fingertip around teacup lip
as I contemplate procrastination
with regard to all things domestic

outside, the world reverberates
as some one begins to cut grass
and the the Beach Boys sing Kokomo

This is my internal explosion. It's as if I slit a piece of art into every ***** and drained out everything that was taking up too much room, suffocating me. And everybody is wading in a pool of my insides without even noticing. I'm all torn apart far away from everyone and my pipe intestines are still leaking. Just put a rusty bucket beneath them. **** it. Let's wait for a mechanic that we don't even know to fix the leak and dump my organs into some random creek. I know I am weak, even though I act like a too cool for school freak, alienating me to nothing. Forgive me. You'll outlive me because I don't even feel alive anymore. I wish I was still a chore. I wish I didn't only exist on the outside of the door to your brain, unlike before. I wish I could still live in the insane with you. I wish I could be an amplifier for you. I wish I could still fly for you. I wish I could die with you. You hate it when I cry with you, so why do you always make me cry for you? Why do you force me to die for you all the time? I'm your zombie lover, standing for nothing except your brain.I wish I wanted to eat your brain but I only want to live inside of it. I'm your zombie lover trying and failing to haunt your memories. Why aren't you scared of me? You were never prepared for me. You never really cared for me or truly bared it all for me, until I was already buried. It's not like we were married or whatever. I just wish we could have carried the weight of our hearts together. But you never wanted my support or should I say weight, or should I say baggage, or should I say obnoxious and monotonous heavy heart?

You say you don't want to be with anybody right now. Does that make me just anybody? And don't kid me, please. I wish I wasn't so whiny and I wish your feelings weren't so tiny. I wish if I yelled, "Hide and seek!" you would actually try to find me. I wish you would be kind to me. I'm binded to my lonely splint of solitude. I wish people would quit asking about my mood as if they don't understand that I'm brooding my monotonous personal etude constantly. My etude's mood is a just a ******* boring dude at party.

Western star

I set for hours in the darkness spellbound you held my gaze
The trees and night darkness completed the picture
Your mind races ever higher quiet etude the engulfing blaze
Silver light breaks all captivity you to are suspended held amidst glories brow

Within darkness you are the cloaked sojourner destination improbability
Somewhere in the mix of thoughts for a brief time you are free of all concerns
All that exists is the span of distance in all this voluminous emptiness lies compatibility
Measureless void you wash in great waves against my enthralled soul

You give abundant texture to the wall and windows that I view this indispensible wonder
Because I know you seem localized but half of the earth at least can be held in the same awe
The earth when viewed aright by going to the edge and then stepping into space unchained bounder
Do you affix your very being to channels that gird the heavens go beyond be spellbound at long last right living

You’re tenuous diminished life will catch space in the raw your life will begin at long last to thaw
Your views will startle and alarm those not yet up to the throttled speed found at every level life should be lived
Adventures have for millennia shown the way over and beyond the darkest expanses victory without flaw
Table your defeated hand speak with dignified power as you break the common tide thou conquer who envisions stars as friends

displaced to the sterile mercy of this place.
Diaphony withdrawn as probably as
destiny, recalling her palm upturned
to feel the grains that slip into
our sleepless eyes
where she dreamed our futures.
This thought threads arachnodactylous wisps
spreading their many jointed legs to fill
the dancing of a body well used.

I could have come sooner.
I could have divested the clatter,
the shine of baubles and nebulous distractions.
I could easily have offered my soul.

All you wanted: our eyes locked into a perpetual bliss.
All you wanted was a deep and endless pool
the darkness so complete
so comfortable, you said, so final.

You couldn't have fallen the coloured glass like
rain on the asphalt, and somewhere a sandman
dusted the reverie of the highway in downbeats
across the windshield an etude in betrayal.

The night before I tried to call you into the shower,
to call you with my body into the sacred space
that might have saved you for a moment
that might have closed the distance

strung too tightly, the tendons a terse
and gut kept silence of reserve,
between your bruised eyes and shutterred hands.

A quiet, solemn voice passed over the fallen leaves,
creating an unusual high pitched whistle.
The sound could be heard from all over the land,
and it entranced many of the listeners.

At first, all that could be heard was a single pitch,
no variant could be made out.
Then a slow, intense melody could be made out.
It painted a picture of a farm somewhere in France.

The melodic etude's tempo soon raced with urgency.
The yelps of young children and women could be heard,
covered up with the melancholic sounds of gunfire
being gunned through the dreadful, gray air.

The deep drumming of the bass and low brass
signified sounds of heavy artillery colliding with the earthen ground.
The rapid succession of chords and key changes
slowed the scene down to almost a standstill.

And almost as fast as it had begun,
it ended with a somber, low pitched note.
The whistling from the leaves discontinued,
and the memories of World War II was lost.

come find me in the lurch
with the dogs beneath the avenues
on barefeet and scars on my knees
arms extended in hypothesis into the
sultry sky, bridging the gulf
between god and myself

i am a prisoner who
spends restless nights staring into the void
my wounds, to all appearances healed-over
open themselves inwardly and leak freely
thru the cavernous expanse of my body
absentmindedly retracing my torment with
the callous pads of my fingers in the dark
dancing over my own flesh like a cold stranger
my lips twist into a grimace and my cheeks flash hot
and wet as a bolt of grief sinks itself down deep into me

i am alone here
lost in listlessness gasping
for breath on this tumbled mattress
alone as i've ever been
with the clang of the bars and
the muted squawk of the captain on the radio
when it rains i am alone with it
alone too out in the sun and grass
and concertina wire
alone with the impatience and courage
particular to the condemned
listening to remote nestlings
howl themselves hoarse in the treetops
searching for the motherbird come to
subdue and nourish them as i am hoarse
and i am searching

oh beautiful mother please find my
withered eaten heart discarded like
a cut flower and sanctify it

my heart breaks again and again
under the reiterated gusts of shame
my memory thrusts against me

come and find me
look down here
because some of us will not see
heaven when we die
instead of tasting the delicious picnics
in paradise accompanied by angelic
flute-and-lute bands we will be caked
in layers of fresh **** constantly
raw sewage on our raw skin with
hairy black cellar rats singing the blues
***** by wild beasts dragged by devils
thru the packed streets of hell consumed
by a hopeless desire to start a new life of
chastity but there will be no second chance
just the eternity we deserve

i heard the stories
how you claimed your
                 body for your own
it is not a temple
          if you believe in nothing
        a sanctum for whichever
        number you want to place
in pairs or triplets of sixes
                       you took your body
           and you made it god
        perhaps they killed a good guy
        or an mutual enemy of your enemy
i want to stroke you
and stoke your desires
until the fires span across your
              etude - fire is what you use
              to sing and show them
that you don't need a god to stand
          in awe

I saw a giant flock of Wrens
Fling themselves across the dawning sky
Like a scattering of onyx jewels,

Flowing like the tide at ebb,
This way and that, swirling
In fantastic breezes I couldn’t feel.

As suddenly as they came, they left,
Headed for some magic place  
That only birds know how to find.

The sky seems empty now they’re gone
Even though a brilliant sunrise
Lurks behind the distant mountains

And promises a light show of it’s own.
The birds became an Obbligato
To this morning sunrise Etude
And I am enriched for sharing it.
ljm