"bathos" poems
There’s a menacing chill
on the air
this evening.
“Had I the wherewithal
I’d leave this place,”
I think to myself
as the first warning is issued
by that unfriendly cloud
hanging low and dark
over the mountain.
While once I thought that
the rain would fall with purpose,
I’ve come to understand
that floodwater has no manifesto
except to place the scumline as high as it can.
We can stack these sandbags tall
around our hearts
without regard for what’s on either side of the dam.
They’re only transient monuments to ineffectiveness anyway.
An assassin stands at the corner
wondering if I’ll ever leave my house
and its warmth.
I have news for him, though…
There’s nowhere to go, and
the weatherman thinks we’ll have a storm.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 3:49 PM UTC
Sweet and seductive
The twilight
Can I come in?
No need to worry
Frustrated moments
Tempting lies
Please don't scream
I'll be discrete
Caresses recollected
Old embraces
********** and bathos
Fur instead of hair
Movements in a mirror
Time for breakfast
The appearance of a peach
Fried sentences
Scrambled words
Rhyming couplets
Tea and coffee
Contradictory conversations
Flee from open mouths.
Sep 29, 2014
Sep 29, 2014 at 12:47 AM UTC
The way we cry, and
if our cryings be heard,
the way they are attended to
will set the walk. The way we
are treated as toddlers, the way
punishment may be meted out,
will further the course. Kind-
nesses, magnanimity of spirit,
love--all will determine not only
the paths we are led down, but
also the paths we shall set for
ourselves and travel ourselves--
pathos, bathos, ethos--until
death deals an end to our
earthly peregrinations. These
spoors--the lives, the lanes,
the passages we shall be
traveling--will tell us, and
others, about who we are,
and were, and if we were
befriended ever by others,
and by ourselves.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jun 15, 2019
Jun 15, 2019 at 2:50 PM UTC
Verdant eyes, translucent pearls
speak in silent witness,
wounds unfurl
meaning revealed,
interrupted girl.
Safe in solidarity
prolific 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 the mind’s thirst
a vogue sultana,
seasoned swagger
hair resplendent flame,
alternating cool, black
asymmetrical coiffure;
nonconforming demure
the renegade metaphor -
singular for sure, no cure.
Muted vanity, bathos piercing
the jaded circumference of banality;
pale protagonist servitude
the sapient palaver of the urbane,
covered 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 ingénue 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
awareness; 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
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 9, 2011 at 1:20 AM UTC
The circumambient wings of a seraph
Obstrepously monastic within
Dereliction contemning the
Mendaciously obsequious;
The bathos of ablution grittily
Jejune fulgerating the engrossed.
The chaldean lachrymatory
The ligature of the darklings rheum,
Volently acclaimed
The paladin necromancers
Circumfluous wintry orbs
Ardently accosting the chasm
Lasping tarnation fructifying
Acedias roborant,
Heavens ignoble lassitude
The boreal scope of causality-
Hells predacious moil.
ELEETE J MUIR..
Apr 9, 2012
Apr 9, 2012 at 2:24 PM UTC
******* at tickling the ivories,
at inducing the jet buttons
to chortle, say, in a concerto ;
but I do strum and flirt
with those amazing royal,
88 unrepentant loyal
keys for Jupiter and Saturn,
for Mars and Neptune,
making a blank bland tune
for extraterrestrial beings for fun.
On the cosmic moors
the moon's whirling feet
cease for my discordance.
What a slurred entrance
by F in D major!
Only a novice--an amateur.
I'm no magnificent pianist,
O majestic Mercury.
Summon the stars the search
to lead for a supreme virtuoso,
one of no incongruent ingenuity
like this dilettante--a pseudo
music polymath, counsels Thebe.
A Mozart, Beethoven, or Bach?
Any of the greats scored above, as well
as geniuses like David and Handel.
Impressario fly! Flee thou away
and go get a classic maven.
Otherwise sleep there forever at Erebus,
never dream of waking up in Eden.
Circuitous world stops: strings break off
at the Earth's axis--
the Sun's panels pause
and darkness' movement begins
its own obscure notes to improvise:
apace demented melody
is released,-- bathos of symphony:
tinny wine of concord
settles on the lees of discord.
Asteroids hooting some ***** calls
when into the grand chrysolite chamber--
in her tailor-made blistering gown--
strolls in the coruscating Venus
in the sturdy arm of jaundiced Uranus,
garbed in his glistening stomacher.
Like a ball, all eyes are bouncing
hither and thither, up and down,
googling and ogling,
once more at them leering,
gaping at the irreplaceable paintings of
da Vinci, Picasso, and Van Gogh
cavorting upon the weightless walls
to the romantic performance of Strauss
in the palace orchestral of Bacchus.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 8:17 AM UTC
this is a page about how you broke her bones brutally.
blinding her days into the darkness she couldn’t settle for a stand.
“this is your sin.”
love was great,
love was strong.
but,
she felt small and very alone.
she has been good with broken things.
she is a big bang of catastrophe, an eruption of God’s tears.
if you just didn’t promise, she was whole without your shadow.
a promise is a sin.
and there is a sea of promises bare of thunderstorm needs to be nurtured because she has been damaged with your bona fide lies.
a dudgeon.
her voice is hoarse, a singer of your sobriquet name.
nights are no absolution and her cries are getting softer.
she wanders aimlessly to the 12 am's.
for her, this is exactly what death looks like.
a midnight snack and frozen story with her bedroom’s wall.
she locked herself in a funeral she called a slumber.
your love was a fanciful story, but one night away from the present time.
“this is your sin, and now she’s a sinner.”
she has been fragile and your love was boastfulness.
she was a rose and you brought her wrong.
this time, it’s her period of middlescence.
maybe you love her but your goodbye was more intimate on her guessing mind.
she was no longer a human, nor ghost in your grasp.
she is a belle of disaster.
but a million miles away,
you will beg her to come back home.
and missing her will be the only thing you need to shrive.
she has struggled to pluck your name and deep in the ground up you know she will.
and you expect her to be whole for your bathos tub.
the riot forms within your lungs,
and you had enjoyed as a fabulist to her.
she was your joke and games.
she's altering your lies into poetry.
her dictums soon to be as soft as the dusk teaches her tenderness.
to tame the seas inside her,
you have to tame her kingdom with thousands of armor.
and her Lord listens to her prayer.
Mar 11, 2017
Mar 11, 2017 at 5:52 AM UTC
Sugar nightmares haunt children
Nancy harlequins cane them
Oh, child of mine
your life you did,
away,
sign.
Force fed familiarity with already branded emotions,
irregular realities and clouded surreal formalities,
so very many humans’ form dichotomies
out of our shared mute gray;
spinning constant self-important prose.
So very many humans share so much,
so little,
not often
doing little to soften
all of their emotional blows
trying hard to strike enigmatic pose.
Oh, child of mine
the heart of utilitarian method
has receded in incredulous fashion
followed by authoritarian apologies;
the majority is not icecream people
spreading simple good thought,
but generations fraught
with trivial conformist ideologies.
We are all hiding our seams
with creative masks
and self created tasks.
Oh, child of mine
your prescription reality is revealing itself as Atlantis,
sinking and shuddering into Quaaludes
with frightening psychotic interludes.
Emotions paint
stained lurid faces,
dancing with
ludes effecting movement,
nudes of swaying and repose.
You arose deeming so much rightfully yours
waltzing through seemingly already opened doors.
Holy curb their anti-Christ
Consider your aging soul
Oh, child of mine
Belief of awareness in action
understand the probability of dissatisfaction,
Stop!
treating the moment as a bleak bridge to the next inaction.
Eventually ponderous thoughts form
resembling an orrery,
an incessantly philippic story
orchestrates your oleaginous personality.
Oh, child of mine
Youth flees and your mind
takes once again to the seas,
a vexing penumbra of perception.
Bathos permeates the fathoms of an obstreperous life
and if you still care,
lament that this meaningless congeries
of moments
inspires only delusion,
no disillusionment.
Eventually a lilting threnody
leading 'tween burning pews of proposed serenity
and the following bumping callithump
will firmly stamp you into black infinity.
Oh, child of mine
You've used the switch
too much
too often
coupled with lofty scoffing
giving the innocent up as offering
to the
mechanical engine
of organic creation.
Sep 1, 2010
Sep 1, 2010 at 11:05 AM UTC
Metaphors like similes
Alluring alliteration
Onomatopoeic sounds
Swish swash through its creation
Full of figurative constructions
To skyscrapers of the soul
That rise to a crescendo
Then with bathos quickly fall
So what is it I have written?
Just a stream of consciousness?
For if I claim a classic poem
Then you’d be right to take the …. :)
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 11:55 AM UTC
Gallimaufries Incondite in-risible pules from anomie.
Recondite jeremiadtions of every pessimal influence.
Yearning for the Quid-am Xanthochroi to sybaritic in the manner I long to LOVE,
Unrestrained The pennicle of BATHOS
observations of human
hopes and dubietys of mankind
An anodyne, the demersal soul
attempts at pawky insights often written whilst
inebriated and Katzenjammered!
Dec 31, 2009
Dec 31, 2009 at 7:51 PM UTC
A waxy, dimpled orb in my hand,
A tiny sunrise, sweet and sharp.
One nail-blade incision and the
Peel tears away when you find the foothold,
Then coursing acid fires through your cuts and bruises,
Burning and tasting wounds with sharp recoil taste,
An acerbic spark.
Pith lodges under my nails,
Tang cloys beneath my nose.
The fruit now pulled apart, the ceremony over,
Segments of the sun lie exposed.
Eat half and half a year you'll remain.
The stringy web of white
Latticing the fruit-flesh
Is a pain to unentwine
What with the juice.
An explosion when you pierce the pocket,
And the gamble of what the burst will be.
Hedge your bets by eating the tasteless ones too.
Then the bathos of a pip
(the pebble inside the fruit, too small to be a stone)
Punctuates the sweetness you'd been enjoying.
Now the fumbling spat to get it out.
And after all the effort it's flavourless,
And you ask was it worth it?
Wasn't even really orange.
May 26, 2016
May 26, 2016 at 4:22 PM UTC
Fashioned by grace amazing and mercy
Divine. Wrought by his unparalleled Passion:
His suffering, death and resurrection--
The cross of Christ in Calvary
Is the lone bridge, the only ladder
That reconnects man to his Maker.
No one who has traversed
That Golgotha-link hath ever
Fall'n into the deep r'ver
Of hell 'neath, nor by damnation
Touched in Satan's condemnation.
"Hey, what about so-and-so prophet,"
Said one, "and such-and-such sect?"
I do not, sir, over religion quibble.
Compare to grave matters--trifle.
Get books and the Bible. It's futile,
Argument, making a sage an imbecile.
And why lose friends to gain foes,
Multiplying instead one's woes?
God doth not any man in life compel.
Each soul chooses 'tween heaven and hell.
Yet his love daily he whispers to you
And i. College cobber, that is true.
"Oh, you are just a pedestrian
Writer, without wits and sans brain,
Like an *Onitsha-market author."
"Thou art also a paltry poet, a bad bard.
Folks should simply thy collections discard.
For i can nought make of thy poetry ethos.
Your works wherefore are but bathos."
Hallelujah!!
Praise i Jehovah!
"Hell. Away now thou pedantry."
Thanks for your commentary--
It's heavenly--erudite Professor.
Faith ferments finer than wine.
Thy decision it is with whom to dine.
The self-righteous, the holier-than-
Thou art, who prefers to leap
Over to God on his on major merit
Will always go under the heap--
Thinking he can close the chasm
Created by sin,
And cover the gulf caused by transgression
By ritualistic rules and doctrinal devotion,
But ends up in some bedlam--
In Sheol's loony bin.
Broad are the twain heaven's arms
Filled with warmth and soothing balm
Often open to embrace prodigal souls.
Jun 25, 2013
Jun 25, 2013 at 2:36 AM UTC
Whilom seafarers in rapture,
seven minutes in heaven,
then nothing but bathos,
--a woman in bed,
she and Rembrandt quarreling
over fidelity or obedience to her king?
"It is I, Seagull!"
"Everything is fine. I see the horizon..."
Night sky, a blow torch,
a golden rain flowing between her legs,
curled in the veil of imperial lineage and/or arousal,
--ballistic arc,
peering into the hand mirror,
a breach of promise staring back.
"Will the flight
affect your reproductive organs, Danaë?"
"Conceivably...
and how they shall weep
when things go wrong between us?"
Jan 22, 2021
Jan 22, 2021 at 10:50 AM UTC
The shape
of blissful thoughts
float like melodies
in the breeze
as limericks of love
to Nacy and me.
There's nothing left
but expectations
and wet sand
on melancholy evenings
beside listless tides
and lengthening shadows.
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 12:01 AM UTC
I fell in love with a frog,
who was sitting alone on the banks of the Nile,
mooning over the premature decease of his beautiful wife.
He was sobbing his heart out,
his lips convulsed with woe, dripping emotion,
his chin atremble, the words buried in a raven black but deafening silence.
I instantly knew he was the find of my ultimate search for love.
A bathos unknown to those seeking earthly pleasures,
a poignancy knocking vulgarity off its temporal pedestal.
My dear love, dearest of all other loves,
my love for this frog, please become a wreath
a halo, a redemptive power to soothe all pain
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 4:34 PM UTC
"You are allowed
One stupid question
So use it wisely
And would you kindly raise
Your hand if you don't
Understand and then politely
Leave my room
From what I can assume
This room thins out nearly
Yearly -
For Locke's Knowledge Theory
Grows weary on your minds, and
Time and time again I see
You, straight blank and ivory
Pages wilting, crumbling
Tearing to bits and pieces
But
Then I see!
Be it rare, a stare of a colorful
Sheet, lifted, gently gliding
For no writing could hold it down
And all else folds in around
It as it gleams of wisdom!
Of originality!
BREAKING THE MOLD
OF OLD WAYS OF THINKING
CHANGING THE EARTH
AND KNOWLEDGE SINKING!
AND ILL BE THE ONE
TO SEE THIS SON OR
DAUGHTER RISE UP TO CHANGE THE ORDER!
AH-HA!"
achem
"Yes, you there on the end!"
"What am I talking about you mention?
Brilliant, sir, what a wise
Way to use your one stupid question."
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 5:57 PM UTC
Sometimes it might be useful,
to tread without purpose,
a dusty reminiscence,
and relieve idleness,
with the bathos of a burlesque.
To think of the plastered actors,
and actresses lit by torchlight,
or gas flame, or the new electric light,
which even though splendid,
cannot match the sun.
And when followed down,
into the back rooms,
where the personalities hang,
all seem to slip away -
all the more for each time spent there.
You might ask yourself,
is this the show they showed,
to the common punters,
to the boy with a ***** shirt,
and the auld one by the door.
Or is it just for me to see,
to rise and fall,
writhe and wane,
like the moon, my mistress,
who says after a long day:
Sit you by a fire,
and seek simple pleasures,
of simple rest and sleep,
so that we may, the next day,
on a past life think deep.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 1:42 PM UTC
Vane glorious and absolutistic,
though I defiantly,
cavalierly, and blithely attest
Yukon bet your (laugh-in) sweet bippy
mine acidic breast
houses anarchic, anti-poetic ballistic,
barbaric, and bubonic
cannibalistic demons within thy
safely guarded Pandora chest
atomic cesium clock
timed to trigger avast
burst of anxiety, frenzy, and
(What me worry
Alfred E. Neuman) blast
ting mental quietude at most
inappropriate, inconvenient,
inopportune, out classed
adrenaline rush, nausea,
palpitating heart, vertigo
besieging, corrupting,
endeavoring fractured arrant
cleft daemonic gripping
hellishly psychic chant
rendering unto sieze ****
a choking vise grip extant
yule hiss sieze indomitable
banshee fully controlling grant
diabolic, dogmatic, and dynamic,
anguished corporeal ache
easily, egregiously, and emblematically,
exemplified historically
graphic fatalistic, and ecstatic coup,
(koo), when I caused furious frantic flight,
and/or fight betake
king angst causing just desserts
for Marie Antoinette,
who got her humble pie cake,
thence dispensing with formalities,
where a joshing drake
(named Gill O. Teen)
also known (solely known
to mine selfish source error ways)
alias i.e. as; the Lewis (loose)
lunatic, heady harvester,
and decapitation Deacon trumpeting,
trouncing, and triumphing tranquility
for fifty three Tuesdays,
thence sea king punishing psychotic
pre pound payment
basking in glory (re: gory us)
amidship crashing quays
music to mine ears hearing plaintive neighs
high pitched straining
vocal chord hamstrung keys
regaling oceanographic
lambent hagiographic essays
and keeping at bathos bays.
Jun 24, 2018
Jun 24, 2018 at 11:45 PM UTC
The lone figure trudged
up the sloping hill,
rolling his shoulders as if
preparing for a punch.
His hair glistened with sweat and grease,
every feature sagged with grief and weariness
he wore a long dark coat,
no shoes.
The wet grass shivered around his feet,
and bowed in wide circles where he
stepped.
The man disappeared over the hill,
the crickets, previously startled into silence,
resumed their drone.
The grass straightened,
and the moon reappeared from behind the clouds.
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 10:48 PM UTC
I want to drink and watch a clean body enter clear water
-
I have prayed naked
over
an insect, have lost
mother
to her gift
of not talking
to animals…
-
the ****** believes
loneliness
can be
exaggerated, dear
spider: I swaddled
in blankets
so many
babies
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 1:13 PM UTC