Now the working day got me blue again
and the taxman takes all profit from my sanity,
lining the pockets of the rich in this top-heavy system.
I fell to the delusion that the left is always right
in this fight for centralised power,
but now the working day got me blue again,
and I'm tired of watching the news at ten.
I'm tired of seeing the human race **** each other,
so I turn off the television, and I try to live again.

Try to live past that working day,
past the need to keep artifacts from yesterdays
that can never effect the here and now.
Try to live past the event horizon,
the Great Electron in the sky;
the awful weight of uncertain futures-
but the working day got me blue again,
and those twelve hour shifts **** my strength
before I can punch through the wall that separates
you and I, from the happiness we earned,
the tears we cried.

The working day got me blue again,
and I've been quitting smoking for five years now,
But bad habits accumulate when you have no time
to file all the information that passes your way-
like dust across a construction site, when they promised
things would change. Though I've been breathing since birth,
I still turn to cigarettes as if they were the only thing that will calm me
in this sea of high expectations, sugar and caffeine; an isolated reality.
The working day got me blue again
and only music seems to talk above timesheets
and all those titles given to fools that you must obey.

I try to live past this humdrum panic,
this commonplace, day-to-day emergency.
I have been waiting for the paramedics,
for a team of experts or an expert lover
to frame all my fears into words, into diagnoses,
into myths and fallacies that tell me everything will be okay.
Everything will be okay, despite the finger on the button,
despite the chaos in my brain.
The working day got me blue again,

the working day got me blue,
and so all I can think of to do is to
fall into the grooves, into the static sheet of familiar melodies
on midnight walks, only my headphones and a cloud of smoke
to keep me company. The constuction site is always under new management,
the disabled are always ****** over by the government,
and its a surprise the fire service can still afford the price of running water-
double the price of Coca-Cola, and all the sheeps left to the slaughter.

I try to live past the bitterness that kills invisibly
like Carbon Monoxide; a fog, a cataract, that occludes the vision
so steadily, so incrementally,
that you cannot see the Scrooge in you,
until you find yourself alone in your room,
when only yesterdays remain, tattoo on your skin
in a series of callouses, of scars; photographs of guilt or all those better lives
lived by better men. Better women: better blades of grass and ameoba.
We stare into our phones in some punch-drunk hypnosis,
glowering at the world that distracts us from distraction.

The working day got me blue again,
and so I fall into a retreat. Into a fox-hole of self-delusion,
of puppetry in the world through my ugly words
and solemn verse; as if being clever with my tongue,
as if being cursive at the microphone is enough to save the world-
or at least, to save myself. You see, I've been a beacon of poor mental health,
I've been a victim of my own crimes for too long,
but the working day got me blue again, and before I find that strength
to punch that wall, or to make a change,
the working day got me blue again,
the working day got me blue again.

I try to live past the elevator jazz, as I stand on hold
for a company that would just as quickly drop me,
despite the smiles on their logos, despite their slogans of delight.
The lights went out a while ago,
and so I'll work another weekend,
I'll fix up my future pay, I'll sing sadly into my guitar
after a twelve hour shift, my ode, my unrequited love,
my poetry for Saturday.
You see, the working day got me blue again
and though I've spent my time saving up,
putting in the hours to fill my cup,
the working day got me blue again,
the working day got me down.

I’m sick.
I have a fever and flu-like symptoms.
I am alone, and have been for hours,
lying on my bed
with a lavender candle pulsating
to the sound of classical music,
dancing on the darkness of my
ceiling.

I am not aroused
but, playfully,
I slide my palm
over the underside
of my hairy
behind
and begin
to gently stimulate
each hair
with near-static
force.

I occasionally push
my fingertips
into the crevice—
my crevice—
my end.

How good this feels
to be sick
and allow oneself to
feel
the emptiness too
dark
and bold
and powerful
to be contained within us.

The comforting,
soft touch
we can give ourselves
is like a loved one
holding our hand;
it almost tickles, and this sensation
although distinct
reminds me
of the pretend animals
my grandma would parade
across my back.

Beyond our view
the guillotine,
existence,
slowly begins to descend
as we lie,
holding hands with ourself
on top of the covers,
sweat pants around the ankles,
grabbing our own ***
as the steady rain
trickles from the roof
of tenement housing
and beats
on the aluminum gutter
for hours
until it’s over.

The night has fallen
like a punishment
for finding no one
and it occludes my sight;
I shiver, and cannot *******.

Existence is too dark
to allow dancing candlelight
or baroque masters
to tickle its space.


It is filled with falling heads
and clutching grasps.

words are bones of the dead
exhumed by mind or God or worms
to serve as the razor’s edge
carving trenches along
tongues where words are hung on tips
of innocent cliffs above guilty shores
while dreams unravel their threads
to shed narratives even nightmares
fear to tread;
the labyrinth from ear to eerie
plunging fathoms beyond waves
into oceans without words
where context meets
space;meaning meets time
swirling currents


before your eyes

focusing your sight
into a thousand words
of blistering might illuminating
recesses with signs of life
clung fast to the boiling point
of excitement possessed by ecstasy
ebulliently freighting sweet air
to the surface
where the survey concludes
that pollution occludes all reasons
as to whether or not
the will might’ve brought
a word or two from
original thought.

Existential ache,
Visceral and immediate
Occludes all reason,
A fated Solitude.
The myth of dearth,
In prose retold
Retaining fictive resolve,
Tacitly confessed.
Ineluctable Torpor
Petitions my
Ardent supplications.
Present,
Beckoned in the dulcet
Confluence —
Beauty and affliction
Freshets of silence,
Redressing the fallow
Surface of my soul.

© 2016 W. S. Warner

He dives into the night and tastes the colours of darkness;
He remains in disguise of the web of darkness,
Like a black spider, star burst horn baboon spider.
Grounded by the white stringed haphazard web of darkness
And he made darkness his covert, his pavilion round about him.
Dark waters in the clouds of the womb bearing seeds for the nation
Darkens and further occludes his opalescence into black and what?
He searches for the diversity of the rainbow with an iambic meter.


A biased accented and unaccented mirage of nations…
An optically dark-phobic illuminated biased meter
Synergism of nations is a phantasm meter display.
The hope of sanctuary proves hallucination by darkness.
Darkness is the absence of light, but light is light.
In his darkness he ponders

Drop selfish ideas
of what should be,
and seek to accept
what is.

One may find
One obstructs and occludes One's Self,
and thereafter may One find peace
in each and every day.

A forced, facsimiled smile
crept upon my weary face
to help construct the wall between us
although its design is in poor taste.

It’s as if mankind colluded
albeit leaving out few and far between
to create a solipsistic kingdom ruled by masks
while truth lay dormant in the unseen.

Should I shatter the aporia
That occludes our interaction
Or propitiate the insipid bond we share
to neither of our satisfaction?

****... I need some coffee.
- - - —— - - - —— - - -

a single rosebush beside the path
its thorn ****** at her side
but on she walks at a solemn pace
her heart in agony

a patch of brambles occludes the way
its vines too thick and wide
but on she walks over briared earth
the pain becomes her guide

a path leads down to a shattered coast
its tide so strong and high
but on she walks into greyest sea
and melts into the tide

a hollow gasp slips from thinnest lips
teardrops from iron eye
but on she walks at a solemn pace
she feels the spirit die

Do you hear those cars
On golden street, loud
Take the sounds out of hounds
Who dream of such speed
Walk the streams and swim
Growl in cold mountains
Leer at fountains
Because they are scared of water
Intrepid like midnight dreams
Howling like a wolf's bane
Purring like a night cat's fear
Pulsate like the trees in the windy weather
Or a blind man's cane that occludes