"contingency" poems
Sometimes I ask myself
when did my thoughts and hopes of blue and green
turn into violet worries, violent dispositions
When did this soul with its empty bookshelf
burn all its unwritten scripts of things yet to be seen
and my steady solace turn into a contradiction
I know what I want in life
when I see my favorite pieces of art
scattered accross the canvas of my solitary nights
my cold fingers once touched it and I can count it on all five
I want to believe that I'd be content with really only a shard
to know my dreams aren't just made of imaginary sights
My open heart drives me
in uncertain directions with clear aspiration, sometimes just insane
but always looking, always wanting, always one heart ahead
If my eyes could only look beyond uncertainty and I'd finally see
a way that goes far and will let me travel along a green country lane
If I could feel as if I'd know why it seems so difficult not to be dead.
In everything that had to be broken and shed
these distant promises on remote and empty shores
For only the contingency of all that could be good and whole
Truly not knowing where this road might have led
and still keep my hands open and reaching and breathe in deeply through all of my pores
let me just find one wholesome and abiding content in this burning library inside my soul
Jul 14, 2018
Jul 14, 2018 at 1:50 PM UTC
The Destroyer of the division machine1
Had first to run on the Way of the Cross
To have souls over the long lived ruin.
Robben, Pollsmoor and Victor2 caused no loss
In the Staff Heritage of the Thembu3
Rulers, forever loved by their people,
From whom was learnt right fight ain’t to taboo.
Good farmers’ teeth run right through the apple;
Likely after the Hard Walk to Freedom4
The Son of Gadla and Nosekeni5,
When his Soul flies up to the Lord’s Kingdom,
Glass will keep his body, and not any
Stain will sully the Star of the Nation
Whose Light will shine for each generation.
1. The division machine: The Apartheid.
2. Robben, Pollsmoor and Victor: During twenty seven years Mandela was successively jailed at Robben Island, Pollsmoor and Victor Verster prisons.
3. Thembu: The tribe over which ruled Mandela’s ancestors.
4. Hard Walk to Freedom: In September 1953, Andrew Kunene, a co-militant of his, read out Mandela's "No Easy Walk to Freedom" speech at a Transvaal ANC meeting; the title was taken from a quote by Indian independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, a seminal influence on Mandela's thought. The speech laid out a contingency plan for a scenario in which the ANC was banned.
5. Gadla (Henry Mphakanyiswa): Mandela’s father; Nosekeni ***** His mother.
Boniface
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 8:33 AM UTC
Against the saturated
Horizon of dawn,
Loitering in the dark timbre
Of emerging consciousness -
Dissipating somnolence
And preemptive despair,
Tacitly adumbrate the
Yawning abyss.
Chastened by the cunning and
Lubricious nihilism,
Igniting fermented provocations,
Silent subterfuge; death,
By mirth - the inane;
Lament of the mundane.
Fallow paradigms, accretions of
The last gasp -
Evaporating empty liturgies
Of suspicion;
Charity and equanimity -
Lost in confinement,
Triumphant avarice bearing
Descendants
Of intransigence;
Wielding imperious
Schemes of orthodoxy.
Pollard fragments of
Silken tapestry,
Miasma draped depression
Abridging;
Conversely,
Permuted flurries of anxiety
Dislodge
The vestiges of meaning
That abide
In brazen equivocation.
Tributaries of dogma reach
Their confluence,
Watershed moment,
Numinous effusion
Streams naked epiphany,
The precarious vision -
A gesture of providence,
Certainty and contingency;
Gratuitously derivative, life
Equals choice.
Verdant branches of intention;
And opportunity the vine,
Live forward -
The pen, my voice,
Piquant conduit pouring,
Exuberant wine.
Footprints found in givenness
Underline,
Penumbrae of my soul;
Mirrored silhouettes,
Thoughts and words engender;
And in verse adorn
Fecund soil, Line after line,
The cosmos altered,
Continuum of permanence -
Artist’s art articulating
Essence of my imagination,
I proliferate, I design
Phrases unique,
Participation mystique.
Words creating world,
The apparatus of infinity
Heidegger, ontologically precise,
Language -
The house of Being,
Ineffable, Promethean
Literary devise -
Envisioning possibility,
And abundance to allow,
I occur
Inhabit
Manifest
Future phenomena
Experienced as now.
©2008 & ©2011 W.S. Warner
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 2:02 PM UTC
The Crickets cackle “crisp,”
With an only interruption, being I,
Atop dust, whisper and
Desert highway.
I’d tell you if I were running,
But I’m not quite sure, not yet,
Leaving the Coyote to eat,
Respite, and devoured,
The singing Crickets,
A’howl later,
To deliver answers unimpeded.
I have a faint memory –
A snake’s grip promised, via hand and
Crystal contingency,
“Wiser,” once bestowed, the mystic;
An epic complete, atop 17 years of thunder,
Steel stained crimson,
Street stained whimper
And forever remaining,
“Under-construction.”
Symbolic a more relevant scaffold,
½ bamboo and the other steel, the tower,
Note ‘fore me, it’s only purpose –
Elsewhere, and anonymous,
While I tap my belly to some
Melody we’d once enjoyed;
Maybe something by, “Coltrane,”
Or maybe not; but music we’d both
Recognize and reminisce too.
It’s an awkward alchemy of sorts,
As the Crickets, post-mortem,
Persist if only to chirp, and the Coyote mulls.
When the dust continues to cake.
When the whisper finds newer ears.
When interrupt’s abrupt, erupts,
Pacifies and interrupts again;
My precious distraction –
An amnesia loyal in away from, “then.”
Somewhere beyond, “there,”
And onward, “anew.”
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 4:17 PM UTC
Yule envelope your being
With imperfect generosity
Yule be swept by the tide
Of beloved ambiguity
Yule christen the emerald
And new ruby revelation
To unviel the contingency
of a jubilant nation
Yule welcome the lesson
In manger and hay
And You will show love
For the rest of your days
Dec 25, 2010
Dec 25, 2010 at 2:22 PM UTC
What is it to be free in an unfree world?
Madness, as the only escape, is what I have chosen.
Madness in the sense of unrest,
Disavowal of the properties proscribing my actions
I smoke and drink to put off life
to ensnare nothingness with breath
and feel contingency take its hold on me
I want wine, furies and song to be my epitaph
and grasp at meaninglessness with two sweaty palms
I am not comfortable and never shall be
with this notion of decidedness and squalor of the mind
yet it is I
I know little of the great works and can hardly hold a pencil
This is where I meet myself, a worker, unfit for labor
exposed to existentialism and sick
I shudder, alone forever
Good things given to and wasted on me
I am death encapsulated
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 2:02 PM UTC
Emaciated creatures
pace their pens
Erasable features
begin and end
locked in hand
locked by key
Just demand
Dreamless sea
The miasma shrieks
An impulse creeps
Floorboards creak
to disturb your sleep
Now rest well
Empty, undefined
heaven or hell
you decide
May 12, 2025
May 12, 2025 at 5:44 AM UTC
We should never envy the happiness of others just as we would not want them to view us in
the same vein. How is happiness quantified? Who knows the extent of other people's happiness? How do we know whether they are really happy? Are we conjecturing?
Leave others alone. It's totally futile to make any comparison between our state of happiness with that of others.
Let us learn to be content with our happiness however tiny that is. Aren't we lucky not to be living in pain or sorrow? To wish to have our happiness augmented is indicative of our discontent. A true malaise that would be.
No one can be totally happy neither can we have the same degree of happiness all the time. Our happiness has its ebb and flow and this duality we should always remember.
Happy people also have unhappy days just as unhappy people might have some happy days. Life viewed from this perspective is an alloy of happiness and sorrow.
With that in mind, we can assuredly say that happiness and unhappiness are not mutually exclusive.
If we can understand and accept that life is never perfect, that our happiness is only a contingency as all other aspects of our life are , we would have done away with that which unsettles us and would be a step closer to achieving contentment and tranquillity in our individual life.
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 9:12 AM UTC
Off on a tangent
My fingers in transient
Clasping and clutching
sensing and touching-
While they still can,
Before our crossroads split
And exigency omits
That peculiar feeling of familiarity
And all absconds that impression of clarity
Then it is goodbye
With all relics of that high
All remnants of our contingence
Because our futility is insistent
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 11:13 AM UTC
This degree is a badge, not a tombstone
or it could me the makings of the next decade
I’ll procrastinate on being an adult
while my father leaves our house and
drives his new used Porsche around,
In the swells I play my Stratocaster
alone in the dark and I’ll make the sounds
of waves and
anger.
I’ll be lifted up by my collar bones
my speech will be the sounds of ripping paper
I’ll lose all contingency
And say good bye to serendipity
It will be my last known surroundings,
The trembling hands of human qualities
Be comfortable, creature, creator,
Let me back in.
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 12:32 AM UTC
We like to take care of skinny people
as if they were just passing through.
Like if we don't hold them tight, they'll disappear.
We put sweaters on them
bundle them up with words of concern.
We take them in.
We tuck them in.
It becomes an addiction
that runs both ways.
I fell in love with worried eyes
and pursed lips, the feeling
of ribs knocking into the yielding flesh
of a whole universe of mothers.
They do not leave.
They stay and take care of you
fortify you, nourish you,
bring the colour back.
Skinny, I can't let you go
because I don't know how
to just ask
for love.
Not from them,
and not from me.
I don't wanna grow up
I don't wanna die
keep me at age five
before the flood came
bring her back
take nothing away
ever, ever again.
*Not strong enough to feed myself the inherent right for affection
and not brave enough to be strong.*
And so that's why I chose you, Skinny.
My collar bones are my contingency plan.
If they disappear too, God help me-
because I got nothing.
Apr 18, 2013
Apr 18, 2013 at 11:25 AM UTC
A fascination, of incomprehensible thoughts,
winding in, and around your eloquence.
A sense, that lingers in respectable beauty.
An uncontainable, unrestrainable feel.
Anyone would **** to be in the presence,
of this simply complex contingency.
Nov 17, 2010
Nov 17, 2010 at 8:31 PM UTC
within Zieglerville, pennsylvania
genuine snow white hair
upon her noggin doth adorn,
perhaps she will divulge to me (in private)
after i croon (to said lass),
the melody of Jimmy Crack Corn
hmm...or, maybe this mission
perchance twill be doomed from the start,
and hence finding me forlorn
thenceforth, a backup contingency measure,
would warrant me to don my thinking cap,
and for extra ordinary reinforcement unfold
each Taj Mahal shaped ear flap
plus (for reinforced ironic steeliness),
aye also resort to buttress
any aural "stormy Dani yelling)
via walled in interlap,
which accouterment functions
as a double agent i.e. (or,
to be rather crude),
an audiological jockstrap
to vet or figuratively kneecap
any unwanted infiltrating leaping lap
ping "FAKE" distracting news
inducing madcap
mass media circus
driving this generic teetotaler
to pour himself a nightcap
essentially providing wig gull room
with very little margin of ear err, or overlap
against bigwigs to trumpet pap
pill low ma rendered free and clear
asper insidious (mama mia) paparazzi
charting imp pea ching fear
bringing out bare arms
most likely something internuclear
simply to discover visa vis authenticity
if cute employee
(sporting hair
white as the ****** snow),
which doth simmer and glare
blindingly, thus necessitating sunglasses
(I choose the Ray-Ban brand)
as recommended by cited
all time favorite pharmacist
who unwittingly (or simply because
my myopic eyes didst stare)
fixedly - drawn to such a darling (doll ling)
explaining any reason to go THERE
to CVS - that tis where.
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 5:58 PM UTC
Un-relentlessly beaconing to us with the ebb and flow of passing time,
Lake Winnipeg crashed against her rocky shoreline.
Creating harmonious ambiance for the star struck budding lovers lost in each others eyes.
Oh contingency, lock your hands with fate.
Make this moment surpass even time.
Jul 22, 2015
Jul 22, 2015 at 9:24 AM UTC
Gun control?
You mean like not going crazy with it and be a responsible adult?
This nation has a apparent gun contingency
But the moment we take the guns away
Will be the modern fears of Communism striking us from within
We would be the Rome with no able army
The Founding Forefathers knew this
And would of handled this shooting problem with some extra assistance from the nation's defenders themselves
Mr President, employ the protectors to keep us safe
But do not take guns away.
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 11:36 AM UTC
In a kingdom full of inclemencies my hubris does not fail me
Profuse and Fierce, Some may call me arrogant
'Hubris!' chuckled I, 'Yes Hubris!'
It's a recording of my failings.
'It's that amorality,' I muttered.
My hubris is my substratum towards my nescience.
It is that aspect that will lean me towards drowning in the sea of my own incoherent imbecility.
It's a deep program in my faulty code, a nightmare towards monks.
It's the ink on my arms, tattooed to my soul.
'Hubris!' chuckled I, 'Yes Hubris!'
It does not fail to show in my wording.
It's the ferry to sea, the net in the ocean.
It is limber as it is inventive, with every exception.
It has no ingenuousness, it is unlike modesty and threatens to surmount me.
It's a sandwich in which has caught every hitch of breath, it leaves me bewitched, no certain pitch that I can tell afore it chokes me.
It leaves no correspondence with those around me, too caught up in my own fantasies that I can no longer celebrate or verbalize felicitously.
Many times I wished that I preserved my receipt so that I could trade in my Hubris for something a little less mucusless for it is something akin to Judas, and I cannot utilize it for anything utilizable.
If I could somehow find a way that would lead me to a resilient recuperation. I would judge that to be more utilizable then this Hubris that encumbers me. No matter how many times I beat it down, it war's like a lion and a bunch of tourists on a safari.
If only this grotesque lion-like hubris was shot by the doter of a hubris poacher. Every generation would be gratified and they would find that it is much more facile to coerce without that unpleasant Hubris.
Of course, I suppose in a way hubris could be utilizable in some situations that required it. If I somehow found a way to trade my hubris for something like modestly and found that I missed my hubris quite dearly. I would laugh at my incoherent imbecility and perceive myself to be remotely mad!
These ravings of my hubris I'm quite sure because I found it so consequential to indite a poem of stark preposterousness. In a contingency like this, I suppose my hubris is getting quite polished, so sharply able to strike down any sense of modesty.
I conjecture this is the terminus of this arrangement, please omit my hubris for a moment. I suppose I should give you some tea afore I dose myself in a salubrious dose of radiation.
Apr 20, 2019
Apr 20, 2019 at 11:01 PM UTC
All Roads lead to Salvatore
A Poem by Corset
On the way to Salvatore
I was cracked
A diamond with her head down
pops another piece of gum
makes light of the crest
makes the sign of the cross
across her window pane breast
forever more
Gooseberry products only
she swears
the scratch of her voice
a sonnet of fingernails
on chalkboard
"there are no teachers here "
says she
only nightmares of agriculture"
and the slow lonely climb,
limbs bowing to the knees.
acquiesce of leaves
holding on in vertigo
skinny dipping the night air.
Bertram tells you to ram it
his balcony tilted
like a slot machine
a glimpse of clothes drying
on a Taiwan breeze
ran into a tree
"don't be afraid" says he
"it won't feel a thing"
You keep your voice down
still it drowns the radio
while fashion jewelry
lift their pointed legs
it's pepper on a dying mans steak
we dare to be sub-standard
people are shouting
we will do our best
to make sure promises are not kept,
to honor the test subjects
we will build a barn
threaten the faculty
with time honored contingency
and look forward to the *****
side of fact.
We shall take our time,
scoffing behind our hands
we know
if a person can not be themselves
they tend to be someone else...
suffering.,
surely there must be a way to
pin this tail on the donkey,
or at least the blunt
blonde official, when you
get a close up
you can tell how old
she is.
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 12:03 AM UTC
Gallantry badge stitched to rotting cloth
as the skin sinks and the bones fade
and the love made is left to reek the bed
where sexless wife and lonely daughter
Lay their head's arrest.
In due time they both tan, sag and crackle
Under weight of the sun.
That dizzy cyclops that roped forth
homecoming boats and ships stands
five years from being defunct; rusted
to the hue of a coppice
and hardly the attraction it once was
But oh well— sighs the sailor, too old and bankrupt to care
for approaching poverty— the money has been made and my life spent
For others (his Sister, his Niece, his Brother)
They lack the ability to sigh;
the closest they get is the occasional stormy wind
that cracks the surface, blows through their teeth
resembling a crooked lullaby,
Revolves the bullet lodged in their skull;
O occasional stormy rain that beshrews the water
clogging their lungs and, in due time, The leaking muck
that’ll pluck and sharply snap inward the casketwood--
directly against the bullet gathhering mold in their heart--
Their souls have been spent.
One less soldier wouldn't have changed a thing
(The result was a certainty propagated
as a contingency)
And if G-d bare'd witness his eyes no longer sting,
His grievances had and his puppets dead
Following a suffering in his name.
If Thy Kingdom holds true
They bare witness now to the lighthouse
In it's chipping hue, it's trivial dock and visitor
Silhouettes—
All held in place and burning; They disfigure
Under weight of the sun.
Aug 12, 2019
Aug 12, 2019 at 2:58 PM UTC
I find myself far gone, drifting alongside the beach
of some nubian kingdom
A sharp inhale of starlight and cutting holes
of awe,
she's there for me.
but,
Not in presence,
Red clouds limping through my comfort,
keeping me safe
far far off, in its tempered perfection.
Writing my fiction, one word at time,
biting into my rotten ear,
cracked surfaces of
sugar lined castle spires
pointing downwards,
In the paradox named perception.
Release!
Stretched out in our isolation.
yet I'm alone, becoming longer,
wandering,
raiding into an artificial night
Where no time appears to pass.
Encroaching on the expectation.
for food,
be it wanted or difficult,
for lips, ink nor illness.
The coast brings in
an ease that I drink from,
when dilly-dallying,
along the mad irreverence
of a random bed that you dream of
each time you wake,
each time you sleep,
There is no content in your bed sheets.
Spiralling in and out of information infection,
Oh how? Oh how can I sleep,
when I stand with my back to space?
Splaying limbs as they exert
the last beams of recklessness
- reverting to old habits,
obsession with erratics,
no form and no care.
Riddled with a chaotic mop head of stringed stupid.
How cute.
Juiced from his tender prospects,
intent on separation
entering use
**** bored and loose
Frothy white moaning flow,
tenderly crushing
Contingency.
I avoid moving inland,
for fear of peace of mind
Combing the canal with the brisk
jaunt of my limping legs,
unsure of themselves
in amidst,
the warmest blanket on the coldest day.
An old kingdom,
founded on consumption,
tradition and extraction.
We keep our distance,
I keep my distance.
Cold water minces around my feet.
Pith/Medulla.
Falling to earth,
beneath the sedge.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
If her hair was like seaweed
Pulling me into those surfing blue eyes
I would forever have sailed
Upon the waves of her sadness,
Dripping tears into her
Lonely waters
She spoke to me like
A mother speaks to her baby
Soft, sweet and gentle
A pillow of kisses and compliments
Smiling
I was her lover
We had found a pretty paradise
Anchored and secure arm in arm
Rich in happiness
Hand in hand
Dancing in the rain
Just as simply as
We mistook temporary as forever
The power of loss spread it's
Feared wings
For distance accompanies all
Reconciliation
Ah, but to dwell within a hell
Self created shell of hindsight
Even harder to
Move forward from the
Comfortable bed
The silent room
The touch-less relapse
Of memory addiction
The daydream fix
Of a what-if ******
The foot planted firm
Atop excuses
Atop excuses
Atop good excuses
Eventually, get over it
Becomes a favorite phrase
As I grow bitter
Suppressed
Full of emotional
Pressure
And now
I wait for something to come
No contingency plan
For the most lazy cause of action
Just dizziness
Windowpanes to reflect my futile
searching eyes
Rain, to pitter patter a lost voice
away
And a dreamy nap
May I stay here
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 4:47 AM UTC
I'm up at 5 a.m., and it's cold in the basement again despite the new summer heat. I am quiet.
You know, every morning, I choose a face. It doesn't matter which one I choose, it doesn't matter what place I have to go. It only matters that I have to constantly know that I have it on, and that however long I have to wear it, I'll be able to bear it because that is what's required of me.
I say, "This is today's face...the one that everyone will see." "Today's face is funny." or "Today's face is sad." or "Today's face says 'fuck you' to everyone I pass."
Now, about the other day...just the way you said you hate it when I'm quiet.
I should tell you that I love you most when I'm quiet. Even though I know it bothers you, and I know you'll never buy it, It's the truth.
Because, though I've been doing it for a long time, and it's nothing new, putting on these faces often gets old.
So, even though I know it's 5 a.m. and it's cold, I think I may need to stand up and be bold and demand that you accept me as I am, without any stipulations or a contingency plan, and without any reservations.
I want today's face to be me. I want it to be the face that you see when I am quiet, and at peace. The face you see when I am able to laugh as a child would. The one you see when I smile and kiss you, or when I crack into a good book, or ride a roller coaster.
As you and I get closer and closer I think it's more than fair that we should share who we really are with each other.
As we get to know one another, we become a part of something special that will be good for us both.
So think it out. Even though you have your doubts, you should think about it, and we should try it.
I'm willing if you are, and more than ready...If you can love me when I'm quiet.
Aug 18, 2011
Aug 18, 2011 at 4:15 AM UTC
To be necessary is
to have purpose in essence.
Disavowed from senses
of contingent dependence.
Disallowed from connection
in simplest of form,
the necessary are
to be dead and too born.
Existing in realm
of support for all else,
with no reason at all
in helping themselves.
To be necessary is
to have purpose in essence;
contingency aiding
with iris virescent.
Dec 7, 2016
Dec 7, 2016 at 7:07 PM UTC
every day i wake up
expecting full formation
only to discover i have yet to pop.
life feels like a kernel in my back left molar.
i look for my future in
yesterday's egg scramble.
the yolk: no solution,
no bramble
i yearn all the more for my unrummaged brain--
keep ice in my left hand,
sanity in the wrong vein.
i always fall too steep,
staccato fingers quick to adjust
a smile to a frown.
i always bruise my hips on the way down.
my glass-bottom floor,
my lamp-lit contingency.
all's keepin' me afloat:
my swiss-riddled dignity.
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 9:41 PM UTC
I disappeared so long ago, I need a welcome home
I need the truth to tell me I have never been alone
I'd knelt before an idol head who took away my name
And walked away to follow her - the shadow and the blame
A hologram in summer sun, you saw me now you can't
I found a way to lose myself by leveling a slant
The angle formed the solitude within which I could stay
A sleep deprived contingency whose methods I could play
But soon enough my thoughts became a harder kind of game
Along with them my heart compressed to stone of just the same
I beat to beat the hands of time but mine are weary now
I try to close my eyes sometimes but can't remember how
So here I am, alive and still, I'm asking you to see
I'm asking you to spot me here, wherever that may be
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 10:55 PM UTC
Much in doing..
all the trip planning
detailed itineraries
of course, maps
without which
we are surely lost..
distances and times
contingency insurance..
What of all this
preparation..?
much effort dedicated
to here and there..
if we could
locate ourselves
on the roads between..
there we find
no places and times..
freedom arrives
ourselves the
destinations...
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 10:31 PM UTC