#obscurity
seeing how many do not wish to like these lines
finding a way still to keep on writing these words
letting these words run as they flow out from my mind
having bounds and goals while keeping them meaningful
Apr 17
Apr 17, 2026 at 11:30 PM UTC
#(Spinoza, in the Quiet of His Work)
There is a clarity that can only be born in solitude..
the kind that comes from slow, exacting movements
of a man bent over imperfect glass,
turning opacity into vision with nothing but pressure, patience,
and the discipline to remove what does not belong
Spinoza understood this.
Each sweep of the grinding wheel was a confession;
each rotation, a prayer he never spoke aloud.
Refinement was his reverence--
a steady surrender to the truth
that light is always waiting.
He breathes in the dust of his own devotion,
each breath costing him days he will never reclaim.
Yet he knows clarity is expensive,
and still he pays without complaint.
Every rotation of the lens is a prayer.
Every fine-grained circle of motion
a small resurrection of what is real.
Ground once- still cloudy.
Twice.. still difficult.
Again and again;
until the glass begins to confess
what it has always held.
In this craft nothing is rushed.
Truth asks for patience,
reality for precision.
The grinder knows
that nothing revealed by force can remain.
So he gives himself wholly
to shaping light into a form the eye can trust.
But elsewhere, another movement unfolds..
not a person, but a psychology.
Not a face, but a stance of the soul.
Some rooms thrive on spectacle..
the loud fogging of the surface
to keep a certain shimmer alive,
to make the glass more dramatic than transparent.
Here, opaqueness is cultivated.
Not because truth is feared,
but because clarity threatens the architecture
of the illusions required for survival.
In that dimmer workshop,
glass is never ground.. only breathed upon,
smudged until blurred.
The blur is mistaken for depth,
the haze for mystery,
the distortion, for meaning.
This movement does not seek God
because its survival depends
on never encountering anything absolute.
Clarity is too revealing.
Too **********
Too honest.
Better to keep the lens smudged
than surrender the illusions
that keep the self stitched together.
Better to let the world remain indistinct
than risk seeing what is truly there..
or what is not.
But Spinoza’s craft is a different vow.
He bends over the glass
as though the Divine were hiding
in every grain he removes.
And perhaps it is.
For with each pass of the wheel,
light gathers itself more clearly.
Contours sharpen
Edges awaken
Reality remembers its own name.
God appears not as a theory
but as clarity itself;
not imposed, but revealed
through the removal of everything
obscured..
all that is opague.
...
The grinder dies young.
His lungs fill with the very dust
he spent his life shaping away.
But the lenses remain.
People he never met
see, through his work
and find distances suddenly honest,
horizons suddenly true.
His clarity outlives him.
There will always be two movements:
One that grinds toward God
through patient removal of illusion.
One that fogs the glass
to preserve the comfort of distortion.
One sacrifices itself
to make sight possible.
The other performs distortion
to keep truth at bay.
But in the end, only one transforms the world
as it lets light pass through, unaltered.
Only one leads the wandering heart back
to the God it thought had disappeared.
And it comes from a small, coughing man
alone in a dim room;
bent over a lens
that becomes clearer each day;
because he refused to stop
until it revealed the truth.
#
Nov 17, 2025
Nov 17, 2025 at 9:26 PM UTC
High on shallow dreams
Empathize with fellow beasts
Preach obscurity
Aug 5, 2025
Aug 5, 2025 at 10:02 AM UTC
Obscurity is a quiet violence—
not sudden, not sharp.
It seeps.
Tilts the world by degrees
until struggle feels like balance.
You stop reaching for air.
You start pacing the silence,
memorizing its corners,
finding comfort in its ache.
It does not shout;
it hums—
soft, constant,
like a thought you can’t unlatch from.
And in the famine of recognition,
you stop needing to be seen.
You fold yourself into the absence.
You name the ache familiar.
You name the silence sacred.
You call it love.
Mar 21, 2025
Mar 21, 2025 at 10:22 PM UTC
#
In the name of love..
in the name of the Value
*you bring to the family
In the name of just how good
you can make Grandfather feel
on that worn-out, old brown chair
What were you when he started*... ***four?
He said he loved you
He said this is what love looks like***
*And you took it into your little mouth
And in an instant
a sweet little, innocent child
became an un-feeling, little product
Of the un-feeling love of man*
#
Dec 14, 2024
Dec 14, 2024 at 7:06 PM UTC
Waited women
Sojourning men
Accuracy, for a doling wind
Sophistication, and their children...
Purpose ought a promise...
Sans a wishful eye, we knew you...
Truer by a salt; a fault to wizen...
Collapse and see, the honor you are due...
Adding hours, with their causes
Risque, is the name of sinister works?
But with reality to invest, the cares are odd...
Of a reason in love with bests, the smile of worsts?
Callous
Actual liberty, to worth in the limelight...?
A voice so simple, that it is the speed of us
Viewing the mercy in a lived seem, are we forever, right?
Lies to the patience, the turn of solace into deems weal, real...
Have the excuse of decisions few, but forces of a secret's wish
Has become the only way to pardon life, a heart to steal?
Hatred is cheap, when your mind swims with a fish...
God's heaven
Smiles of decency, for a frightening halt to it
Timid futures, with a place for love, even given
Only lead by the truth of us, sincerity and wit...
Sleep of the, ages...
Sent to went, the tilling eye of loves sate...
Merit in one more kindness, above which is life's wages...
Time with no proof, of what is a lovers fate...
Sep 21, 2024
Sep 21, 2024 at 12:11 AM UTC
Maybe this non dairy rocky road was already laid out for me like some kind of haphazardly tossed together destiny of unfathomable tragedy
Or maybe I was too afraid to look too closely or venture too far from safety
Didn't see the blame had shifted dramatically, mostly to me, but how wrong can one guy possibly be?
And yet still I will admit, there's a possiblity the mentality I harbor is mostly negativity manifesting this reckless trajectory
No way to know for sure cause the final copy sent to the publisher was never run by me
So maybe, just maybe, it's some combination of these three, and everything you don't see but what pushed the first domino is beyond me
Can't jog my memory, the good, the bad and the ugly all lost to ancient history, constantly looked over, over and over to the point of obscurity
There's no money so follow the calamity of the paper back story, it's short and gory
Densely packed and stacked with everything that would make someone uneasy
Only pain and shame, no glory, not even a hole, boxed in and been lonely for 40
My future is solely based on what I've done previously
Most might say, "uh, yeah, obviously" but it can get tricky
With a little creative liberty taken to push the limits of an already worn down psyche
Me, myself and I, a split personality or just a not so holy trinity?
©2024
Jan 20, 2024
Jan 20, 2024 at 5:39 PM UTC
With fine bush strokes
The Poet breathes
Grammatical adaptations!
Uncanny ideologies!
All these contemplations
Are an ******** sensation
And now it’s time to write another one!
Oct 30, 2020
Oct 30, 2020 at 7:45 AM UTC
#the forming of substance 03
Stephan W
(fallen from grace)
~
*"I have just come back from a party
where I was the life and soul.
Witticisms flowed from my lips.
Everyone laughed and admired me—
but, I left,
yes.. that dash should be as long as the radii
of the earth's orbit ———
and wanted to shoot myself."*
~Soren Kierkegaard
~ ~
*It is not enough...
It is never enough--
we need too much
But, here on earth
we have to make it work
so we call good-enough, "good enough"
and with gratitude, we
learn to take in what it's available to us.
But the truth behind it all remains--
the fact that we need so much;
Where is one that is complete..
and if so, complete--
compared to what?
There is a perfection- cloud-hidden
within everything that is human
The spirit within the body that carries it--
b r e a t h e s out perfection's truth,
though- we may only experience it
in the moments between awake and asleep-
the human psyche is bent on survival--
and in a broken world, the thought of an
inherent perfection brings on too much--
our own condemnation even.
In our minds we fall too short of even the
concept of it.
Or do we?
The gravitational pull towards Muse
borderlines on that of addiction;
its stirrings touch what is primal in us--
once-inexpressible words, suddenly find expression;
And a Beethoven finds musical notes
that lead to a symphonic masterpiece.
"Words from Heaven" is not saying too much
concerning the poet, or lyricist.
"Music from Heaven" is easier to say,
when concerning a Mozart or Beethoven.
Or a Tchaikovsky.
Perfect reaching into the imperfect?
How about 'imperfect'- feeling, and then
expressing pieces of its own long-forgotten
perfection--
things experienced within the sphere-
made tangible again through the flesh,
simply in a moment of remembering..
and also that of a temporary forgetting--
of limitation.
The beauty of despair is in the heartbreak
of finding out that what is right in front of us
is never truly enough
or worse yet--
possibly even harmful to our own true needs.
What we need most is all and everything
that helps us remember--
That we came from perfection,
and were loved there first,
and now, within the imperfect-
are unable to be denied by the perfect that is
forever inherent in us--
It is completely unable to deny that
which is of its own.
If we were to never despair over what is in
front of us, we might never be compelled
to find the strength to remember-
flashes of the primal--
that of our own history, of perfection.
And if there ever were ever an evil,
or a Darkness-
it would be hell-bent on keeping us
from finding that very thing.
Sometimes.. just sometimes, death
looks just like love.*
#
Sep 27, 2020
Sep 27, 2020 at 8:29 PM UTC
folding the sirens of
eternity in on themselves
as this scant hour
rebuilds its stage
over and
over
in the light of my eyes
already there is a perception
of being caught
in a loop - of a lesson
playing out
before a malady
of ignorance
i am free to see it
and i am free
to miss it
it is the long
breath
of the breaching
whale - an exchange
of currents for
the transformation of
sky into
ocean depths
it is
the
hidden union
in transience
recurring
in beautiful
obscurity
Sep 10, 2020
Sep 10, 2020 at 4:53 PM UTC
When there is obscurity
Darkness fills the room
Clouds with a chaotic scene
Along with sadness and gloom
One often feels despondent
They are in a state of uncertainty
Always feeling unsure
In a world of acrimony
Jul 31, 2019
Jul 31, 2019 at 12:58 PM UTC
I'll run out of money, ideas, madness, and sanity
creativity will peak for long instances
But for you,
I will always have words!
At times I won't explain, or think, or even say what I am wondering
feelings will take over thoughts to where only words will express,
unsung, overused and independent,
made up squeezed together letters of nonsensical impressions that will run-on to appear proper
Pages of self plagiarized poetry
half finished expression to ensure you know I am spilling out with the same intuitive passion as many moons before
and until I start to give you new words, a realization takes hold of my pen and will speak up,
"you've already told her this!"
But I'll give it to you all the same. And you'll read it in privacy and feel what I have felt time and again, times 10!
I assure you that I will run out of places, originality and giving.
But for you Annie Anne,
I will always have words
weathered, and gathered
grouped and scattered
Presented for your approval
Squeezed together letters
Apr 23, 2018
Apr 23, 2018 at 12:51 AM UTC
seeing through
glass as clearing waters
a droplet
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 5:45 PM UTC
The cracked window brings the light, beautiful to many, yet vile to to my sight.
Can I sleep?
don't remind me of what I must do.
When they weep
Leave me my silence,
leave me my grace,
leave this ***** grimy disgrace.
We all should lie in obscurity.
Leave me this mourning
Leave me this bad taste
Leave me this sad and sorry waste
Living world of impurities
Cracks in the pavement
They wont break her back.
but don't break your neck.
I will make it through.
We all should lie in obscurity.
In a world of such impurities
Left in the distance.
Recognize the light.
Walk the paths of fear,
Acceptance takes flight.
Cloudy eyes may not see.
I'm not here to race,
It's another dawn ,
and the darkness breaks
In my opponents
I see great teachers,
family, monsters,
Scared men and preachers.
Lie in the shadows
Lie in the twilight
or a darkened room.
to embrace the light.
Such cunning,such sleight
Hardly believe your eyes
Phoenix taking flight
Takes us by surprise
Does anything have one side?
Truth found in a lie
Does anything have one side?
Truth found in a lie
Try to tell myself
brush of the ashes
you lived through the flames
some disfigurement
I killed love itself
with a thousand lashes
I know I'm to blame
The killing wont stop
This is just a play?
Will you make it through
Make me feel something
A knife on a strop
but it never slays
Just black and blue hues
This the love that stings
Leave me my silence,
leave me my grace,
leave this ***** grimy disgrace.
We all should lie in obscurity.
Leave me this mourning
Leave me this bad taste
Leave me this sad and sorry waste
Living world of impurities
Leave me my silence,
leave me my grace,
leave this ***** grimy disgrace.
We all should lie in obscurity.
Leave me this mourning
Leave me this bad taste
Leave me this sad and sorry waste
Living world of impurities
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR FROM ME
I COULD SQUASH YOU LIKE A FLEA
BROKE THE SKIN MADE YOU BLEED
YOU HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR FROM ME
The cracked pavement stained like night, beautiful to many, yet vile to to my sight.
Can I sleep?
don't remind me of what I must do.
When they weep
Leave me my silence,
leave me my grace,
leave this ***** grimy disgrace.
We all should lie in obscurity.
Leave me this mourning
Leave me this bad taste
Leave me this sad and sorry waste
Living world of impurities
Leave me this morning
We all hold the pen in our hands, we all sing the tune
many stories will be told, many pouring out their soul, was it love or rock and roll
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 4:57 AM UTC
Crackling. Rocking. Crackling. Creaking and oscillating, a century old Mahogany Wood seceded to the paSsage of time.
Particles of sand, confounded by the Peninsula’s chaotic, blasting breeze now revealed a shade of burnt tar.
Outside of the second floor Maissonette, sways the rocking chair once warmed by Grandpa.
A Tactless, impatient, rhythmic Requiem Bashes near the wiNdow pane as the sunset falls Under the frame.
Empty Folklore presides like the Residue of a once lambent effigy… SwOosh. Hush!
Cocktails were a Preamble to lunch like diabetes to Nephropathy.
Corrosive Rhetoric seeped in to expose the ego of a Sommelier.
A smile would Parachute down when you needed it like Nicotine to remind that no Precedent had been set, just an Anomaly.
Cutthroat beginnings, this was no Analog man.
In grade school his Cosmos found Zion and “The world to come”.
This baby’s Cradle, abandoned High atop a mountain was blown by a Chinook towards the Atlantic.
“I was found swallowed in a stained Table cloth by Balkan children on a treasure hunt, with no Guarantee and no resignatIon. "
The boTtle narrates these chronicles and a smile parachutes down when you need it like nicotine.
Dionysus Crafted his accounts while most Garnered his spiels with Snide. As they witnessed dream remembrance; he thought his memory was Presumably accurate, and although his tales were triFling to the gathering audience, they became his Heliocentric history.
Calling me a young Galleon and handing me a map, Grandpa scanned his hand across the vast land
guaranteeing trEasure would be found if I had no resignation.
This Asinine assertion to my teenage sister Symbolized the Barring of her unheeding imagination by time and then a smile parachuted down just when she needed it like nicotine.
_TRF
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 11:13 AM UTC
I've found my new obsession.
Smirk affixed to his face
with sarcastic remarks
and slippery words,
mysterious in that stupid
teenage way.
I'd **** to hear what he has to say
about the nonsensical ********
we're forced to endure
each day
that the government calls an
"education".
I'm sure
his opinions on how
we're taught to the standardized tests,
nothing more
and nothing less
could cause enough raw power
to run the whole of New York City
for a month.
Though, too, I'd **** to learn
the terrain of his lips
as our bodies
slammed
against lockers,
oblivious classmates
a wall away
consumed by the
awesome
world of geography,
missing out on something
so
much
more.
He and I,
we'd know what more is,
we'd know how to consume it,
how to keep it at bay,
how to work it
like a hat,
a hat we aren't allowed to wear
at school.
We'd laugh at our own obscurity,
and shared secrets
would run through our veins
like blood,
one cut and it all spills
Dec 3, 2016
Dec 3, 2016 at 10:16 PM UTC
***I stand here
One of many
You'd think I'd realize
I barely noticed any
I stand here
Where there's others
I'm just one
There'll always be another
I stand here
Full of stories to mention
But there's going to be
Someone else's tale of epic proportion
I stand here
Amidst the buzz
Rushing back and forth
Tending to life's fuss
I stand here
On a space so tiny
With herds of other identities
Filling Earth's every nook and cranny
I stand here
I'm just one
But I'll make that one
Stand out to me***
Jul 25, 2016
Jul 25, 2016 at 4:39 AM UTC
The trees in the valley far down remains to the viewer's eyes green,
she came back cleaving the hills of dead leaves, blocking the way
her songs vibrant,indeed like it was in a time long past,hard to forget,
One is in for wonders if the time travel is done mindful,dispassionate,
life is a garden full of strange flowers, bloomed at various times ,
standing still, magically fresh, all along ready to be plucked at will,
But one easily falls to corruption, blinded are the eyes of the fallen,
this is a game, playing the role alone matters,nothing else elevates,
don't forget, flowing with the current alone ,takes the drop to the ocean.
She came back, I suppose to complete the circle of illusion,we are in
nevertheless the imaginary places she scented,still cause me an elation.
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 1:40 PM UTC
Men with your sort of name are dangerous.
The way each letter makes your tongue work as if it knew you would never be easy.
The way you sound sharp and ready to break me like the bones you wear.
You carry the weight of ghosts I'll never know, the way each vowel kisses the next.
Men like you are dangerous, and your obscurity makes you all the more sinister
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 7:38 PM UTC
The stars have all turned to dust
Trampled by their affiliations
A gaping hole swallows the light
Another crucifixion.
Each day, a constellation falls
Again into her dolor
And no one tries to help her out
Another mindless toiler.
Fate destroyed her life's foundation
She is a ship adrift at sea
Her cornerstone was cast away
Another lost divinity.
Apr 18, 2015
Apr 18, 2015 at 9:46 PM UTC
Streams of waves
Flowing with sympathetic feelings
At this dark hour
Sleeping, quite not
Yet minds wander to unknown places
Obscure landscapes
To be seen with the heart
And felt by the mind
Knowing not of this
Yet to be
But one day the midnightness
Of the world might be known
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 8:13 PM UTC
Atmospheric rage,
Luminous obscurity.
Discharged sky barrage,
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 9:04 AM UTC
*The crucible of Wants is insatiable
Expanding the chasm of greed
Hurling us into depths of obscurity*
Jul 26, 2014
Jul 26, 2014 at 12:33 AM UTC
Something original. Of newer words, that originate from the pleasure and happiest of timeless incidents. The happenings, back of the park, near a set of restrooms, a pool of clear sea water and a purplish-red starfish. A sea cucumber. Trailing sea lions diving off of a cliff, a vertical display of rocks, moving a millionth of an inch each year. You caught me. --------
I can't nail it. It happens to me when I sleep, it comes around me, over my shoulders and latches onto my breaths. I'm breathing and it creeps inside of me like a mealworm, I turn to look for it and it disappears again. It lives in a shadow but it is also a shadow of itself. An anomaly, a space for time and the tell of time, its hidden agenda, its positive nature, how it yields itself to prey, how it coos for a sweet smile, runs up to me in mid-day traffic, and kisses me, noon at military time. ------
The blessings come. All of them. Laid out on a table in red and white checkerboard, making the eggplant parm and the homemade vinaigrette. Peanut butter chocolate chip vegan cookies. A dandelion necklace that only fits around my wrist. It makes me weep some twenty years ago on a Playskool slide, orange, red, bright. I'm looking around my neck and still it's not there. Every where I want to be, every where I've gone and could go. I should go to California too but all of this...stuff, everywhere, under my legs, in my pockets, the closets tumbling high and low, I haven't had enough to change, and still I am wanting something else. You the same, my shoulders tell me stories, I listen and I fall asleep. -----
Sometimes my nerves grow quiet, my words grow- but then they just fall again, skittering in a lull plash of blue-green pond water. The bench I sewed to the ground. A tale of mirth and woe. I cannot call on you, you will not come. Sleeping beauty, blue eyes, blonde hair. I wrestle you in the day to day, the hour to hour. Minutes cannot go by. Pages that turn but I remember everything. My mind will never go. -----
Two pink letters in the post today. Maybe neatly placed for you. A fake-tattoo puffin, upper-left hand corner. My hands are empty, they have indecent memories, they write indelible superpowers. I can't go on. I run lake water over my ankles, slowly drift beneath arcing waves and cold grey skies. Half a day blue goes black, night comes and I whisper when the sky goes quiet. Nothing is as serious as this. ------
In a white box there are two pairs of shoes and a soft bear. The bear without the name. He doesn't speak to me so I leave him with the sea birds. Put them in a push cart and show them off, I take them here, I take them there. No one asks his name, where he's going, what he's going to do. ------------
Tuesday's are the worst. I count and count and count. I will never forget Tuesday's, twisting like a cuneiform jelly, fingernails spoiling me-meat, breaking the Styx crossing the river Rhine, there is nowhere that I will not go, only for me to cross time. To wait, I really hate waiting. Nothing comes between, I lie to a stranger and they fall in love instantly. I see you on Monday evenings and I want to kiss you gently, the sides of your neck, on the inside of your hand. Where do you go when all the shadows go? ----
Some of me is backwards. The waves shape the sky. A rabbit goes with a fire truck, a blueberry with a cephalopod. Back to the soft wood walls of the cotton luxe room. My legs have never felt so safe, you have never made my teeth so happy. In Russia you touch my face, I see you, a picture of you, any part of your eyes or the things you draw upon and I am instantly in love. I love you, a part of you, all of the parts of you, your soul is the only part of me disconnected. You are the happiest moments of my pleasure. You taste like Tahitian Vanilla and Acai berries. Gold grains hit our shins as we go like great wild horses through the alluvial plains. -----
I cannot count to you. There are no goddesses in numbers. I only have sleep, for you to look me square away into a bliss I have in a picture of the two of us, lost in our faces, our hands wandering each others knees. I sit across from you and I am not close enough. I go closer and I want to be inside of you, all across my limbs expanding our spiritual forms, intertwining in our skins. So I speak, I lay my words gently in front of you so you cross them as you walk our path, back from the sea into a narrow slumber. Sleep is the only place we all can play. You, me, her, her, and I.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 12:39 PM UTC