I feel what you feel
I feel it like we feel pain
like we feel love.  

it hurts beyond belief,
to some people they cry for no reason.
they cry because they are

SAD.

are we sad?
do we deserve it?
should we deserve it?

you and I are in the same boat.
this tiny ******* boat that
keeps rocking back and forth,
back and forth,
back and forth.

I wonder if the boat will rock too much
and tip.
then what?

DROWNING.

we are drowning, fighting for life
but maybe we can survive if we hold onto eachother,
and we embrace our sorrows together.  

I am here,
you are here.


We both are suffering from the same thing.
but it's not sadness that we feel.
it's loneliness,
it's grief,
it's asking ourselves,
"what could have made it work?"

you and I are in the same boat.
So let's just row to shore
and get the **** out.

he rots at his window,
a stale cornflake man
with eyes like ****** smoke.
behind his tree bark eyebrows,
he watches the children on the sidewalk
and paints wet dreams
of how they would taste
wrapped around his tongue.

this ***** fingernail man,
he smokes his cigarettes the wrong way round
and swallows the ashes.

This music
(My music)
It’s getting in my head
Staying there and crawling through my thoughts
Have you ever wondered what it sounds like
To be insane?

Would you like to?
I don’t mind letting you see
A million and one thoughts colliding
And all these brilliant colors being born
One by one
I try to find out all their names
But, there’s a fine line when I try to hear
What they say and what they mean
I lose my place
Simply close my eyes
And let my body become light as air
Becoming one with the sky

I’ve been waiting in the clouds for ages
Died here, born here, lived here
Met myself here, said goodbye to myself here
Somewhere up there
My diary still stays
But there’s a new chapter in my life now
It’s you

This figure that caught my eyes
Stole my soul
I remember watching you walk
Flowers blooming at your feet
Your smile radiant as the sun
This was you
Tried to find out every place you were going
Secretly hiding all these feelings I had
Behind the curtain of my heart
I couldn’t speak, you stole my words
My body quickened at the thought of you
Longing for just a moment
That I could spend with you eternally
And, how lucky I could be
That moment came
How lucky I could be
That moment is here and forever

My love, I look into your eyes and see endless depth
This beautiful expanse of your soul
Stretching out to meet the moon and shadow
I put myself right beside you
Get caught up in this wonderful tug
Between this reality and yours
With delicate hands, you open my chest
Find out what makes me tick
I like that
Something was always in the way
With such ease
You dispelled it, it’s no more
I am free
I am in you

This is my song of a desperate soul
Who found madness conjoined
In everlasting love
I sing it forever
Of how perfection can be found
Right in front of me

This world has grown so colorful
You have been it’s life
My head twirls as butterflies
Moonlit flowers
Sweet white light
All come together around me
I lay down
I soar high above I was ever before
You meet me
Kiss me
Love me
And I’ve found my place
Bodies perfectly interlocking together
This lovely motion
Turning the world and switching the stars
We are the story of the cosmos
All eyes are on us

Darling, just breathe
A thousand hands pulling you under
Do you like that?
Let me roll you over in my mouth
My arms like lightning bolting across your skin
Electricity spinning in the air
We will become the sun
Our love burning so brightly as one
Shining on everyone sleeping
And awake
The story of star-crossed lovers
Etched in the sky

Black/White

Life isn’t just…
Black or White, Up or down, Wrong or Right
But shades of gray, on a rainy day
When a family cries, ‘*** another member died
While religion lies, and the churches are fake
And you’ll find better salvation by getting baked
All this aggression bursting at my seams
All from figuring out what it finally means
I look into a mirror and it makes me want to scream
But insides my head plays a silver screen

Life isn’t just black or white, but shades of gray
Just like a cloudy sky, on a rainy day

Fight or Flight, War or Peace, Life or Death
But shades of gray brought on by decay
Of bodies littering streets to close to home
Blood and guts and exposed bone
Ash soot and cinders on houses stone
Cities growing corrupt, bankrupt, ingrown
But these great graveyards still hold hope
People live, fighting through all the smoke
Hope for future still unknown evoked

Do or Die, Love or Hate, Day or night
But shades gray found only at twilight
That binds the two, combines the two
Just like commonalties that ties us to
Everyone on earth, both old and new
Does matter what race, creed, or view
We’re all stuck together in the same boat
So don’t try to sink it, make it float
All while singing out this very note

Life isn’t just black or white, but shades of gray
Just like a cloudy sky, on a rainy day



Left or Right, Better or Worse, boy or girl
Doesn’t matter how you came to this world
What matters isn’t what you take from it
But what you make of it, Create from it
What you awake in it, and remake in it
There are no shortcuts you can take in this
And resist the temptation to not coexist
Try to remember my rhyme deep in your mind
And remember the lines are never defined

Life isn’t just black or white, but shades of gray
Just like a cloudy sky, on a rainy day

Life isn’t just black or white…

Life isn’t just black or white…

Life isn’t just black or white…

I watched the turtle dwindle day by day,
Get more remote, lie limp upon my hand;
When offered food he turned his head away;
The emerald shell grew soft. Quite near the end
Those withdrawn paws stretched out to grasp
His long head in a poignant dying gesture.
It was so strangely like a human clasp,
My heart cracked for the brother creature.

I buried him, wrapped in a lettuce leaf,
The vivid eye sunk inward, a dull stone.
So this was it, the universal grief:
Each bears his own end knit up in the bone.
Where are the dead? we ask, as we hurtle
Toward the dark, part of this strange creation,
One with each limpet, leaf, and smallest turtle---
Cry out for life, cry out in desperation!

Who will remember you when I have gone,
My darling ones, or who remember me?
Only in our wild hearts the dead live on.
Yet these frail engines bound to mystery
Break the harsh turn of all creation's wheel,
for we remember China, Greece, and Rome,
Our mothers and our fathers, and we steal
From death itself its rich store, and bring it home.

There are several truths that float here
Like leaves on winters infinite pool
And sometimes sink after hours, further,
Into the depth of my breakable mind.

I am almost always clothed to the body
Of an undetermined tomorrow,
Suffocating in the sleeves
Of any hopes shirt.
Keep you, I have been, for there
In the dirt road of my eyelids
You play with the riddled veins
Light cables unmet by reason.

It is not a tragedy, because
sideshow children were once living
And in their surrounds
Alive, beautiful people breathed.

I will be eluded by a string of pacifiers
A mobile above my head at night
But in-between lies of mystic creatures
And pearl planets, I will always be met by myself.

Static, memories
Emanating, separating  
The postcard- perfect
Still life speaks
From its 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, quite candid in it's
Return to callow.
Consciousness athirst,
Absorbing phenomena
Effervesce, inquisitive
Ideas foment,
Sealed inside a question.
The what -
Against the narrow
Scarcity,
And fatigue of should.

A tender malleable
Youth,
Betrayed, under
An assumed decorum -
Residue of truth,
Flattened emotion
Privations of a self
Unheard;
Misplaced affirmation,
Buried pathologies  
In architecture
Fear manifests symbolic.

Harboring apathy
The lunacy of pious
Pedigree,
Import contagion,
Fetters of benignity
Doubt and indecision  
Into ******
Cognizance,
Fallow spirits
Seep fumes of decay,
Credulity bleeds a human stain.

Social edifice, inoculated  
Heirs of neurosis;
Palpable, sensual pain
And transience, though
Tacit - remain,
Our haunted history,
The blind hyperbole,
Maudlin
Forbearance, this haven,
A portrait
Of immaculate condition,
Nurtured with precision
Under sterling pretense.

Provincial domicile -
House beautiful,
Savage irony -
Unseen treasure
Innocence unabridged,
Faces, tiny creations;
Compliant vessels
Wounded,  
While modernism murmurs  
Its promise.

Brave New World,
In a late model sedan,
Domestic ranch on a
Corner lot,
Suburban natives,
Silence means security.
The misunderstood
Speak louder -
Consumerism beneath    
Unvarnished ambition,
Never could
Repair the brokenness within...

© 2011 & 2018 W. S. Warner

I'm sorry if I don't give a **** about
couplets
or rhyming words
or patterned stanzas
or structured lines
or even making that much sense.

Poetry to me is about
drinking too much
smoking too much
speaking too much
and spitting words onto paper.

I'm sorry if I
swear too much for your taste
or my poems are scattered remnants of dreams
or I mix tenses and completely make up words sometimes
or maybe I hide behind vices.

Poetry to me is
finding out who I am
and what honesty is
and trying to appease the beast
and telling the truth even when I lie.