"desultory" poems
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident
To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.
Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent
Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent
By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant
Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
18k
We fall,
and hard,
and in the shadows,
***** ourselves on snags,
that tear our clothes;
grazed and cut,
we stagger on -
Impressions, ideas, fancies!
Of these have we been disabused.
But is this spring,
come again?
Lovely,
yesterday,
in the bright sunlight,
to see you,
felt green hat in among the photo clouds,
apple suedes on the gallery's dank floor.
Melvyn,
and I,
merrily circling with you the light cloud images,
my nostrils full of pollen spikes.
The pictures:
wisps of trailing dreams churning in ‘scapes of infinite blue;
dark clouds,
in amongst them,
too.
Photographs in two time places
caught;
at once, all:
the other and t'other.
So excitement swells,
and everything besides us quells,
because the knowing of itself,
knows,
and dares beyond the frames;
to skirt knowingly the unsaid;
to want beyond the wounded past,
to pull things,
once again,
inside out.
In whimsy’s currents flow these thoughts,
these feelings,
these drives;
swirling in eddies,
so that as you sit,
on a summer’s day,
it moves,
a mirror to everything above.
The wavelets on the surface,
hammered into shape,
burn, bite and dazzle;
the sun’s flames leaping and dancing on ripples.
In the basement,
on the concrete,
your Y proneness shifts,
releasing knees on black-clad thighs;
two pendulums swinging,
brushing;
yawing metronomes in the cool,
coolness of my desultory thoughts.
Oh, what am I saying?
Feelings like reveries walk along these silver lips straying languorously.
These myths are too soon made,
carried one to the next,
one-on-one,
until contained no longer,
become new truths.
Jun 25, 2018
Jun 25, 2018 at 8:40 PM UTC
Sharp shard with blood, it cuts
your armored heart of crystalline
no one knows you, nor gets in
barbwire wrapped and shut
black, the deep - you've fallen
your desultory descent ever sullen
gasp of strife that smokes
and chokes apart your life
makes a slave of you, alone
calls for your blood
and bones
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 2:21 PM UTC
A supine position
upon my bed
and a slow turning
of my head
I look out through my window
and by chance
LISTEN!!
Hearing the howling
and chilling desultory gusts
of wind
Noticing seemingly deceptive
immutable muffled
grey-white
low hanging clouds
enveloping everything
in its heavenly path
with coinciding
feelings
of being enclosed,
a slight hint,
the oncoming winter
A sunless sky also
matches the early November mood
as virtually motionless
elongated pearl-grey-clouds
having distinct
wind-kissed
topsy-turvy-wavy-ruffled bottoms
that travel and permeate
onward
across the heavens
These eerie vapors
s t r e t c h
from north to south
east to west
casting Buddism's
grey colored shadows
upon the earth below
while not permitting
any sky blue
to peek through
A distant howl and barking
of
a dog,
my inner volcano snuffed out,
the tranquilization of Hercules...
Time seemingly
stops altogether
and hangs...
... heated feelings
dissipate
into
cool nothingness...
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 4:27 PM UTC
The evening's still and quiet
and the katydids abound.
The flag is hanging listlessly
as I listen to their sound.
Desultory the summer air,
as though the world awaits,
"Something evil this way comes."
the foe is at the gates.
A feeling of impending doom
accompanies the air.
Nothing moves.
A stifling presence hovers over there.
Like a blanket, smothering
t'is much too hard to breathe.
And yet, my arms are paralyzed
and sword, I can't unsheathe.
I watch as shadows gather
in miasma up the street.
A harbinger of evil
with an odor, sickly sweet.
I feel it getting nearer
and my heart beats fast with fright.
What imagination ...
on a stifling summer night.
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 8:16 AM UTC
I never could quite imagine the day
When a creature quite as wry and presumptuous
Would break so serendipitously.
She lay ruptured in the desultory plantation
The Stygian colour of her fur rebelled against the sage of the contiguous earth
And her eyes mimicked nothing but the pain that consumed her current thoughts.
Her body was transfixed in an inert trance
The fur on her hunched spine quavered in a subdued zephyr
Quiet insecurities were hid well in her tranquil pained state.
The moon intently watched me
Waiting for me to alleviate the agonized entity
But solicitousness was blank in my frozen psyche.
The moonlight pierced the fox with intimacy
I grimaced in the realization I had failed the universe
With my perennial void mind broken in vain.
The fox gathered some stoicism
The blessing of the moon granted requital
As the fox proceeded to maul my perception.
I accepted my retribution with ratification
As I was the soul who violated the creature
A skirmish that clung to grandeur.
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 4:47 AM UTC
I have been living in these huts lately,
As this life seems aimless and desultory,
Slowly flowing like the splash of drops over the board,
Hallelujah . For me, it's still our God's handwritten story.
Two cents quietly sit in my little pockets ,
And they still fit perfectly in each,
Same as our feelings, as they huddle around our hearts,
Occupying the bijou portions and trying not to leach.
I will hold on till the day, staggering away,
In my tattered clothes, till the color withers and my story stales,
Lingering in the huts, with a hue of nostalgia,
Ailing but not wailing, after a series of massive fails.
Before God finishes writing my story,
I believe he will hand me the pen, its a fact, not a lie,
And with you by my side, I will scribble my glory,
I'll dress you your Gossamer, and myself a Suit and a tie.
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 11:08 AM UTC
The pierced ego sees
through an opaque lens;
a vestige of hope,
humor and
intellectual solidarity.
Effigies of forgotten ethos,
the culmination of a
fated dream;
unrequited ardor, abandons
identity to an irreducible
fervor,
subtext of tension,
enduring ****** privation;
etude of a paramour
ending torture,
tasting mystical polarity.
The wounded heart
once intruded,
bleeds effusive;
the ornament of humility.
Flattened collateral
damage,
primal search,
proves illusive;
portals of hurt, slivers
of pride,
assembled fragments of
thereness
absorb the loss
of my English muse.
Poetry and devotion
punctuated murmurs
of piety,
depth perception
virtue unfound;
expectation - access
to suffering;
disinterested love
present,
desultory carnage
of rescission,
absurdity personified;
euphemism
of adieu,
the sound of no sound.
The discarded image
finds no favor,
the salt lost it's savor
unquenched thirst;
desire of
diminished purview,
the saporus stream
deferred;
vision eclipsed;
saturated self
hidden in the text.
Poverty asks the
question,
absence summons
ethereal substance
merged into
the immanent frame;
integrating,
in solitude signifying,
mediating - logos
contested
the humiliation of
the word.
Lyrical enigma,
where did I go?
provisional
personality
scorned,
renouncing nostrums
of the prosaic,
surrenders to the
the realm interior
sovereignty
assumed in
provenience,
native
horizon of the next.
©2008 & 2011 W.S. Warner
Sep 3, 2011
Sep 3, 2011 at 6:11 PM UTC
“Beautifully Oppressive”
she called my work
“beautifully oppressive”
did she mean like the stifling pall
of equatorial heat?
what lines had I writ
to elicit such truthful and prodigious
adverbs and adjectives?
I can not recall being more flattered
or believing more that it mattered
what one said of my
delirious desultory delusions,
my petty pecking indulgences…
I believe I was recalling a dream
that spoke of elusive, fickle salvation,
the perennial curse of the chosen ******
and their haunting hunger for implacable peace
when I evoked that response from her
“beautifully oppressive” to feel such a fate?
the promise of heaven for those trudging through hell?
what other beautiful oppressive story could I tell?
Jun 3, 2013
Jun 3, 2013 at 5:56 PM UTC
The Eclipse
The eclipse dose not become endless night
The reappearance of light is the same as the survival of soul
The eclipse
Such indeed a character of the historic hour through which the world was passing
Objects close to the eye shut out much larger objects on the horizon
A quiet and unexpected change,
That looked the desultory range
Of happiness and sprightly thought.
Where'er was dipped the toiling
oar,
The direction of winds danced round us as
before,
As lightly, though of altered hue;
Mid recent coolness, such as falls
At noon-tide from umbrageous
walls
That screen the morning dew.
No vapour stretched its wings; no
cloud
Cast far or near a murky shroud;
The sky an azure field displayed;
'There was light sheathed and gently
charmed,
Of all its sparkling rays disarmed,
And as in slumber laid:--
Or something night and day
between,
Like moon shine--but the hue was
green;
Still moon shine, without shadow,
spread
On jutting rock, and curved shore
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 6:25 PM UTC
The sea cast a gift ashore
one stormy sullen day
and the barren rocky coast
was suddenly recast
as a natural history museum.
A whale.
A real whale, just lying there
shining on the shale
In another time,
we'd have known how to react.
This astonishing bounty
would have been quickly stripped
Bones for building
baleen for support
blubber and oil for fuel.
But now it lay
surrounded by detritus
made of better stuff.
The truth was,
we didn't really need it,
couldn't really use it,
like being presented with
Casablanca on VHS.
A sign appeared:
"Quad bike rides, £2",
red paint on rainsoaked cardboard.
I wasn't tempted.
Children poked it with sticks
in a desultory way,
stricken, intrigued, ashamed,
and utterly dwarfed.
The weeks passed
as we coughed in embarrassment
not knowing what to do,
until finally
someone brought a digger down
and discretely buried the beast.
By now, it will be a perfect skeleton
a prehistoric wonder
an artefact from unjaded days
when nature could still astonish,
trampled by unknowing tourists
as they dream of sunnier beaches.
Jan 1, 2012
Jan 1, 2012 at 3:06 PM UTC
Her syllogisms repose trust in her adept beleaguering of unworthy opponents.
Constantly in a state of lassitude for this desultory, inure world of the insouciant youth which dwells upon it's cathartic terrain, she engages not in lachrymose nor is she crestfallen for the hope of romance and it's everlasting ineffability.
She is a fugacious moment of frisson embodied in a human form; a juxtaposition of the serendipitous moments that ever constantly come one after the other in a fickle wheel of steep highs and deep lows. All her life, this girl will lilt through the crossroads of her obstacles and show the world the efflorescence of her beauty. Hush don't speak lest you miss hearing the mellifluous music of her voice of fail to hear the lagniappe that is her name.
She is the cynosure of human attention, the goddess and we are but her humble servants. She is innocence most rare, love most coveted. She is infinite. She is peace.
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 10:25 AM UTC
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.
Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor
as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring
hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea, boils an amnion
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships
of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs
labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away
to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such
alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely
neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,
an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 7:15 AM UTC
St. Margaret's bells,
Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,
Sing in the storied air,
All rosy-and-golden, as with memories
Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas
Disconsolate for that the night is nigh.
O, the low, lingering lights! The large last gleam
(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)
Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,
The silent River ranging tide-mark high
And the callow, grey-faced Hospital,
With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!
The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,
And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky
(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)
Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.
The sober Sabbath stir--
Leisurely voices, desultory feet!--
Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street,
Where in their summer frocks the girls go by,
And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer,
Just as they did an hundred years ago,
Just as an hundred years to come they will:--
When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low,
And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil,
Nor any sunset fade serene and slow;
But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die.
2.2k
The sound of your voice,
linguistic forte
digital portrait combined,
reads lyrical, like Joyce,
the use of imagery -
elevating the plebeian,
resplendent -
the imposition sublime.
Pellucid prose, tête-à-tête
immersed in esoteric allusion
spoken with au fait.
Liberating my pedestrian
inhibition,
premise of surrender -
adrift, desultory,
delicious ambiguity.
Seduction begins in
the mind,
assets of imagination,
intellectual property;
side by side: lying supine
didactic invitation,
in assertions of diversion;
a chance to find
euphoria within our reach.
Linear alliteration;
fulgent flowing Fumé
Blanc,
fire and wine
private beach,
rhymes of elucidation
two bodies align,
I will learn if you teach.
Sensual epistemology,
curvaceous
figure of speech,
the Orphic; woeful
lover’s plight,
a porous song recite
art professor, verse confessor
tutor me tonight.
©2010 & 2011 W.S Warner
Sep 12, 2011
Sep 12, 2011 at 11:03 AM UTC
Ever notice
those
soap bubbles
when sliding down
the sink toward a
-drain?
They either
join each other
at the rim
or
separate themselves
and go down
the -drain?
Seeming bubbly until
there is water,
no longer soap,
not quite
water?
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 9:57 PM UTC
"There is something in you"
"Do not tell me it's the state of my mind that
Crave for meaningful commitments
Do not tell me, our doors are mutually exclusive,
That cannot open to same pathway"
I am in the make and modes of that solitary *****
Who does not know what is the gift of the given moment.
Who does not know whether the next breath is life or not having it anymore.
I am the ***** living life on the edges when not in the fringes!
With desultory realms of engagements,
Let me avoid that growing sarcastic curve on your face
When "my passions are flimsy"; why define the adulations any lower!
So my 'distant untouched enigma';
Do not be dismayed at this callous, rantings of mine;
I have done with many futile 'serious' talkathons...
Ignore me as a silly, frivolous thought
Flew in and darted away in an afternoon siesta
Mar 21, 2017
Mar 21, 2017 at 10:14 PM UTC
Bucolic etchings stimulate
The soul
An assemblage of vegetation
Boils blood
Beauty is discovered in a desultory penumbra
God's message
A subtle stroll in a sylvan birthing
A chapel
To the Romantics with love
Nature rejoices
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 2:34 PM UTC
The sin was mine; I did not understand.
So now is music prisoned in her cave,
Save where some ebbing desultory wave
Frets with its restless whirls this meagre strand.
And in the withered hollow of this land
Hath Summer dug herself so deep a grave,
That hardly can the leaden willow crave
One silver blossom from keen Winter’s hand.
But who is this who cometh by the shore?
(Nay, love, look up and wonder!) Who is this
Who cometh in dyed garments from the South?
It is thy new-found Lord, and he shall kiss
The yet unravished roses of thy mouth,
And I shall weep and worship, as before.
1.4k
for Alice
The coach party bowled off and quiet descends.
In the white room you sit in the corner of a window seat.
The view to the lake and the trees beyond absorbs your gaze.
Whilst I, though staring at your black stockinged knee, suddenly
Catch the sunlight tumble through your disordered hair.
Beside your cool hands lie two necessary props:
A green bag and, nestling close, your camera;
The extra eye and recording angel of your present art.
I am at rest; gathering words to sketch this unplanned pose of your sweet self.
My imagination removes your blue coat, unbuttons your red frock,
The curve of the shoulder then revealed that earlier held me spellbound as you slept.
Though into the silence now come footsteps and desultory conversation,
Your gaze remains caught by the snow on the fell tops
Where above a parliament of clouds determine the possibility of rain.
Know you complement the still beauty of this Lakeland place,
at one with the play of space and the gift of light.
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 1:25 AM UTC
As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
The Holy of holies; who because they scoff’d
Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
With the whole truth aloud, lest heaven should ope;
Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they
In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
Together, within hopeless sight of hope
For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of Death?
1.3k
ramblings of my craziness ~
its 1 : 28am and am walking in circles in my room with my lights switched off
the thoughts in my head are at light speed hitting me in the reversing direction in the back of my skull
silence finally speaks to me
such is the ambiance right now
cold and coarse outside
my feet are going numb because of this winter night
i can even hear the buzzing sound of nihility
echoing now
its overwhelming feeling all together
the feelings between my lungs are in havoc like a thousand supernovas at mayhem , detonating....
i just don't feel myself right now
Dec 23, 2015
Dec 23, 2015 at 3:24 PM UTC
<3
A kind of freedom enfolds me...here,
in this meadow, where summer colors
have deserted the horizon and the sky
a lone kite flyer has gone home
and i am left here, all alone
chasing butterflies in the dark
while i ponder long...on people,
their situations....their ideas,
their outbursts, that trigger uncertainty
their words that wound and hurt, like a plague
i sit and feel this vast openness,
nearing twilight...holding a flashlight
breeze and sound dance under a clearing moon
all i could think of, is i am small, but i want to
stand tall, in the middle of this huge open space
my voice is just a whisper in the atmosphere,
i want to stretch and reach out, but my arms are short...
all i can do, is write...i want to write with sincerity,
........use truthful, encouraging words
.......appropriate...not outlandish
...........simple......not highfalutin
...............never desultory
............or derogatory
all i want is share my thoughts that could mollify
i'd be elated if they please readers, and satisfy
i wouldn't want my words to confuse, or crucify
all i want to say
...and spread all over this troubled world...is:
"te amo"
"je t'aime"
"ti amo"
"Ich liebe dich"
"I love you"
"Wo ai ni"
"Watashi wa, anata o
aishiteimasu"
"Mahal kita"
::::::
during uncertain times,
nothing more than sweet words,
that warmth from love...can soothe weary ears
comfort, and mend broken hearts and minds...
<3
Sally
Copyright July 16, 2017
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 8:08 PM UTC
I release a rich, mulberry cloud of a sigh into the atmosphere of the nine-by-nine dominion I call "Home". Within it sleeps the ingenue that I long-thought was the apex of my quasi-mature, teenage heart. It and she will soon brood alone in the blackest heights of the room. I couldn't see the ceiling with the Hubble bolted to the floor.
I never knew being light felt this good. My desultory dalliance left scars on my shoulders, notches for her to hang her sloth-arms upon. I undress. I lower myself to the ground. The more my skin kisses the marble, the less woebegone my bones feel. Warmth radiates from the marrow into my lymph nodes. The heat spills out from my body and onto the ground, reaching for each corner of my icy bungalow. From below me, the marble murmurs in a hum as soothing as petrichor:
I have missed this warmth.
For too long I've been frozen,
I have missed your warmth.
Apr 10, 2011
Apr 10, 2011 at 11:06 PM UTC