"disinterested" poems
I reserved a table for the two of us
at the only restaurant in the world
that not only offers atmosphere and setting
but tone and syntax as well.
First some articles for appetizers. They're
easiest on my pocket you know.
An an, a the, and an a.
Let's not even start on the punctuation,
I'm treating you to a rather large meal.
As large as the entire English language,
now back to the articles.
Sure these taste like lint but they still
taste. Petit fours but there you are.
Try to be disinterested or you'll
put me off my food.
Nouns now. My, what a variety.
Bit meaty, eh? These have staying power.
They taste like a bit of everywhere,
and everyone, and everything.
What's that? Surely they're not that bland.
Maybe you need some seasoning.
"Adjective" comes from the
French for "to the word."
So exotic aren't they? These
really are fantastic.
Exquisite, unique, zesty to say the least.
You must admit, they
make the meal worth it.
I hope you're not allergic,
I could have sworn I just
had something "nutty."
Oh, it had nuts "in it"?
There must be some prepositions
mixed in here.
(I'm glad we're getting through
these now, I've never been a big fan of them.
When I was a kid, I would always push my prepositions to the end
of my sentences. You just can't do
that in a joint like this, it seems.)
Ah finally. The verbs are served.
Well-prepared it would seem.
Yes, anything you can do to a verb
they've done to these.
Infinitives (too good to realistically be believed!),
gerunds, and participles (No, not particles. But we
did have some of those at the Japanese restaurant.)
Fairly lean too, as I can't see
any auxiliary fat.
For some reason
those adverbs (just to your left, under that
thesaurus) really go well with this.
Plus those adjectives from earlier, rather pleasantly.
Now a brief selection
of conjunctions, but don't ruin
yourself. They're not a meal of themselves,
just a link to...
Oh! Look at those interjections.
So delicate, so (Wow!) incisive.
I told you to keep your appetite.
Well, just try a little of this. Goodness, me!
And then everyone proceeds to
die
from a split infinitive.
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 7:44 PM UTC
She is disinterested in small talk beyond the park benches.
She longs instead for late-night confessions,
for the quiet unraveling between sentences—
the hidden chapters you both never dared to read out loud
She has no fondness for candlelit dinners
or anniversaries dressed in silverware and manners
What she wants is the open road at dusk,
the wind like a dare,
no map, no compass—
just the delicious risk of getting lost together
She detests the pop songs blaring from car radios,
those perfect little lies that everyone sings along to
She belongs to the sound of something raw—
a forgotten folk song, an aching guitar,
a voice that cracks where it shouldn’t
Her room is lined with vinyls and dust and memory
And no—she doesn’t want drizzles or passing breezes
She wants the storm;
The hurricane that splits her open,
the tsunami that drags her under—
because only in the wreckage
does she remember what it means
to feel
Oct 6, 2016
Oct 6, 2016 at 7:24 AM UTC
Not a face, but an eye,
a single glowing eye.
Watching you and I.
We think it cares, but it doesn't.
It just floats by, disinterested.
A glowing eye in the sky.
An illusion of something that cares,
blind to love and heartache.
Unaware of suffering,
ignorant to it all.
The light it shines, is not real.
Shallow, hollow and devoid of devotion.
Empty of emotions.
Every night, it watches you and I.
Watching but not seeing,
a single, glowing, blind eye.
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 5:37 PM UTC
I feel so out-of-touch and small talk seems out of reach.
Are my thoughts worth airing? Maybe its better to not speak.
See, lately I've been thinking. More so than usual.
And its come to my attention that my attention is unusual.
I can't believe it took me this long to realize
just how egocentric I can be.
A fourth of my life is gone and its always been about me.
I know and acknowledge that you're a person too
but something has changed and I feel like I can't talk to you.
Where once it was effortless, now conversing is difficult.
Instead of truly listening I'm preparing my rebuttals.
It isn't that I don't care.
It isn't that I'm disinterested.
But it feels like my volume knobs got ****** up and I can barely listen.
Why is my head louder than reality?
It's exhausting to focus on anyone but me.
Truly a self-serving, self-centered friend I am.
Sorry.
Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016 at 12:22 AM UTC
Today is the anniversary of another trip around the sun for the woman I love more than any other.
Happy Birthday to my mother, Elise
who drew me a picture of the female reproductive system
and labeled the parts
and explained the process
of ************
before my body ever had a chance to frighten me
who taught me the word
******
and taught me that there was nothing silly, or shameful, or icky
about the word
or having one.
who taught me
that people are inherently the same
and humans are valuable
and the meaning of the word
humanity
and the value of justice
and the meaning of the word
"injustice"
and consistently confronted it
often uncomfortably
but un-apologetically
whenever we found ourselves in its presence
Who responded to compliments
about my appearance as a child
with humble disinterested grace
and taught me with intention
in everything she said and did
that what is valuable about me
is my mind
and my heart
kindness
spirit
ethics
righteousness
some may say too much of the latter
who taught me about Janis, and Sylvia, and Frida
and Roe v Wade
and punctuation and articulation and diction
and the Serenity Prayer, and that Galway Kinnel poem about what is still possible...
I love you Mom. I could go on forever. My love and my gratitude for you - and what you have gifted and instilled in me - is bigger than the universe and eternity and possibility.
So glad you are with the sweetest child in the whole wide world this evening.
Loving and sending you love and bright light so hard.
Micah Haverly 2015
Jun 7, 2015
Jun 7, 2015 at 5:38 PM 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
Awkwardly, I made my way to the back
To listen to the lonely performer
Pour his heart out over his guitar
And over the sounds of the crowd,
Too engrossed in their conversations
To enjoy the melodies unfolding.
With every transition they applauded
Politely showing their affection
And as the performer resumed strumming,
So did the chatter of the disinterested.
The lyrics were muttled, drowned out
By the inane banter surrounding the stage
But his fingers continued to dance nimbly
From one string to the next.
And for once I was happy
To not be the center of attention.
Jun 6, 2010
Jun 6, 2010 at 11:16 PM UTC
dissipated and disillusioned worms eating through the last splinters of the rotting universal wood.
the last transmission of regret sent electronically, spluttered,
into a tissue; in a moment of self indulgent **********
live showings of vicious execution, transmitted directly from the electromagnetic waves into the alpha waves of the young and naive. Desensitization, the last drops of humanity into complete disengagement.
endlessly recycled bohemian ideologies whispered into the ear of the eager idealist. spreading like fire, before burning out into the uncatchable reverie up with the stars, with all the other reveries, shining bright, intangible.
Instant dismissal from the old man, as the big curtain draws. Cynicism and fragmented past, falling on apathetic eyes, a proud man treat with a padded hand. faux sympathetic tones, blushing cheeks on old bones.
Begging with your body crumbling to dust with the disinterested doc, looking at the clock counting the milliseconds to the paycheck. Decomposing until you can be swept under the perpetual rug with the rest, Vacuum.
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 12:11 PM UTC
The casket was coming up, swaying and wobbling
Like a novice skater’s layover spin,
The workings proceeding apace,
The stillness of the August heat
Punctuated by disinterested growl of the backhoe,
The occasional out-of-place jocularity by the excavators
The creaky jingle of the chains holding the muddied box
As it proceeded skyward in its clumsy poor-man’s Resurrection.
The affair was being observed by an elderly couple,
Old enough to be of no particular age.
Their car had Carolina plates,
But their inflections, their casually-tossed idioms
They noted that ruefully The grass needs mowed)
Marked them as natives.
They’d returned (Last time, most likely,
The wife uttered mournfully)
To take their son with them; he’d drowned when was five? six?
(The years will do that to a body, apparently)
In Kinzua Creek some half-century ago,
Back when little boys weren’t under a mandate
To be safe from themselves, as it were.
He was our boy! We’ve never forgotten him!
The old man said, the words snapping off
In a manner that spoke of something else altogether,
How the whistle at the Montmorenci
Went off at three and eleven for second shift,
And your *** had better be there,
As those were good jobs that didn’t wait for bereavement leave,
Because there was always someone
Just itching to take your spot on the line,
And anyway life went on,
At least in the sense that television screens went all to snow
And tires went flat and fuses blew
And eventually a dead child
Is not always in the forefront of your thoughts,
Only tiptoeing in when the Press ran a picture
Of the Montmorenci Area Class of whenever,
Or there was an item about some other family
Who opened their front door
To a grim sheriff’s deputy with his hat in his hand.
Eventually, after some time
And in defiance of both the odds and gravity,
The casket was settled into the back
Of the undertaker’s huge old black Caddy,
And the couple cane-toddled back to their car,
Following out the through the old spider-like gates
And onto the main road.
The brief procession fading from sight,
Until there was nothing left to see
Save the hillsides covered in old growth pine.
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC
I find myself free falling
pulled by gravity
watching the ground slowly sneak up on me
and if I knew a way to slow my fall
maybe it would be your arms
that caught my all
but you seem disinterested
distracted by the sky
I'm just another spec of dust
something that's in abundace to find
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 10:02 AM UTC
Zen monks sit quietly on
stern pillows of effervescent soul.
I do not,
My patchwork pillow is filled with
styrofoam-- artificial.
Hasidic Rabbis rub their tired pious books
adding more wear marks from years worrying
which appear like a foreign tongue on the cover.
My book is full of yellowed, empty pages
sitting, dust-ridden on a abandoned shelf.
The head of the Shiite rests against solid stone
The penitent countenance like a mirror of Mecca.
My forehead bears only the reddened mark of my forearm
from the vibrant narcolepsy of life.
The Atheist sits in the coffee house
lecturing the disinterested Baristas
about the tomfoolery of religion.
I sit alone,
nodding sagely,
sipping wine that tastes
flat against my tongue.
What does a depth of spiritual belief offer?
There is an unwritten, unquantifiable,
essence that belief gives the human.
A depth of meaning, like
a shot of penicillin to a case of chlamydia.
Apr 28, 2014
Apr 28, 2014 at 2:29 PM UTC
So appears another empty promise
I made to myself
In this disinterested cloud of delusion
What once were my dreams
Are now dull precipitates
Pooling into my minds crevasses
I may appear calm on the outside
But a storm rages in my mind
This too I will weather
And come out the other side
For the better
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
butterflies on a beautiful boy
cling with insect intensity
they wear candy pink lipstick
he has his face reddened
with blusher
his hair is depicted in triplicate
on the cubical doors of toilets
black painted cubical doors
that possess an objective scrutiny
of an immediacy that suggests
a knowledge of expendable names
of disinterested inspection
names that are deletable with time
all that is left is a screaming solar plexus
he waits like an animated aura
a haloed head of violet rings him
as he leans against the toilet wall
with beautiful blonde ambition
the butterflies cling with insect intensity
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 4:01 PM UTC
I always thought pink hair was stupid
The color never looked good on people
But then you dyed your hair
Maybe I’m bias
I am
Who am I kidding?
You pull pink off well
To bad I don’t get to see it much
I wish I could see it more
Seeing the face under that pink hair
Makes me smile
Feeling the body attached to it
Has me feeling warm and comfortable
The things that that pink head comes up with
Gets me laughing at all times
Too bad you seem disinterested
In anything that involves me
Friendship even
I thought we were going to be great friends
Then we got here
And your real colors were revealed
They don’t seem to be
As attractive as your pink hair
Sep 12, 2016
Sep 12, 2016 at 8:43 PM UTC
"If music be the food of love play on"
The essence of a failed courtship linger
Where the music of the background is louder
No hope, no rest, no chance to because its gone.
A chance to open a door.
A chance to close the other door.
Look back and see,
Why does the music feels so glee.
Because at the last moment of acceptance
is the lost you gain from courting.
Back up now and think.
The music is enticing.
Because music is not the food of love,
but an accent of your actions.
Thy actions are drowned by notes
of the disinterested maiden.
So feel the glee,
and be ready to flee.
******* be crazy,
to crash a large party.
In the end, it will pass
you'll soon find new to court,
where the music doesn't drown your actions,
but makes melody with you and your future wife.
May 7, 2021
May 7, 2021 at 10:00 AM UTC
I, round the brae of Howth in chalky light,
Lamented my lot more spent in sport than play.
There, land appeared disinterested and sight
Was a teary well. Cold was the shivering day,
And my frame, a ghost of shadow, was erased,
It receded like the fog. Just then, overhead
I saw brave birds engaged, a raptor traced
A mourning dove’s faltering flight, how it fed
Its own shining sense of purpose, for not
Wanton sport or lordly state do falcons
So hunt, nor did the bird in peril belabour
His reason, rather he tried avoiding those talons.
A question answered itself within my breadth,
Survival resides in a pageantry of death.
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 2:00 PM UTC
There is, one supposes, a certain nobility
In simply carrying on with the whole **** thing,
Though that assumes some epiphany,
Some clawing toward grace, or at least common decency.
He had, in some once upon a time,
Cast his lot with a better class of people, so to speak;
It had not ended well, though,
In line with how such things are resolved,
His fall not a spectacular, tempestuous thing,
But a gradual, veiled affair, not a fiery spectacle
With metaphorical medals cut away, epaulets stripped,
But a shaded silence, a shrouded yet palpable shunning.
And so he is here, in this fading little city
Perched forlornly on the banks of a nondescript little river,
Having taken an apartment above a pair of offices
(One occupied by a seemingly ancient and disinterested lawyer,
The other by an ostensible private investigator)
Which is sufficiently large and reasonably warm
Come the seemingly perpetual winter.
He lives, if not in such a manner
As he was once accustomed to, comfortably enough:
He has his practice, and an adjunct position
At the little cow college down the road in Alfred,
And there are the occasional women,
Sad divorcees marooned in this hill country,
Dewy-eyed undergraduates unable to discern
Suit coats that are a bit shabby and somewhat passe
(There is a haberdasher in Buffalo whose garments
Are in the neighborhood of up-to-snuff,
And he could certainly manage a trip
Down to New York for better tailoring,
Though he would be traveling in places and circles
Where he is not remembered fondly.)
Stepping outside, he encounter snowflakes,
Light and unprepossessing,
But he studies the sky anxiously, apprehensively
(One learns that he must pay Nature its due fealty in these climes,
And give into the primal, the instinctual)
For he knows what can transpire
When the wind blows off the big lake out west just so,
Turning innocuous flurries into a malevolent blankness,
Making the landscape inscrutable, alien, utterly terrifying.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 10:01 AM UTC
anxious
surgery
waiting room
tic tac toe
winning
losing
waiting
can't
help
but
notice
not one
but
two
"Top Rated Doctor"
magazine covers
hanging
right
in
front
of
my face
waiting
still
…
called
back
disinterested
nurse
*****
-yet brisk-
cavalier
surgeon
cutting
sewing
apologizing
plainly
unempathetic
couldn't
help
the
tears
that
followed
and
for
taking
the
*********
time
to write
about
this
****
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
The world is but an oyster
which we all are forced to inhabit
in a scramble of arms, legs and meaningful dreams.
A disaster in the wake.
A broken-hearted fowl.
A disinterested love interest
with a clasp on the bitter reality of rain clouds and hurricanes.
We lie in the waiting,
tell truth in the rush,
inpatient,
immoral.
We never really understood the world and how it rolls.
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 6:12 PM UTC
Behind a speakeasy
in a ***** moonlit alley
silhouettes climb up a tired
and worn out stairway
vacancy signboard beneath
an incandescent light bulb
marks the nondescript entrance
for the nights commerce
Outside the window ledge
a billboard hums an electric tune
between the blinds neon light
sneaks into the room
casting shadows on a naked
landscape across the mattress
spread totally disinterested
pockmark flesh limply waiting
Clumsy hands fumble
to unzip stained denims
hobbling with unsteady steps
to the edge of the bed
a drunk smelling of cheap whiskey
and ***** smiles at me with
two rows of rotted stumps
my first customer of the night
Jul 26, 2010
Jul 26, 2010 at 6:48 PM UTC
I, round the brae of Howth in chalky light,
Lamented my lot more spent in sport than play.
There, land appeared disinterested and sight
Was a teary well. Cold was the shivering day,
And my frame, a ghost of shadow, was erased,
It receded like the fog. Just then, overhead
I saw brave birds engaged, a raptor traced
A mourning dove’s faltering flight, how it fed
Its own shining sense of purpose, for not
Wanton sport or lordly state do falcons
So hunt, nor did the bird in peril belabour
His reason, rather he tried avoiding those talons.
A question answered itself within my breadth,
Survival resides in a pageantry of death.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 10:40 AM UTC
It was January when I wished to have an adventure
Like climbing a mountain; just being one with nature
But you seemed disinterested. You didn't make plans with me.
You simply said, "Don't worry. Someday. Maybe."
On Feb fourteenth, I made some chocolate parfait
Hoping we can enjoy the love-is-in-the-air day.
But you wrote me, "There are some things you have to let go."
And I thought to myself, yes some things, but not you. No.
On March, there was a pile of school stuff to work on.
Everyone was so busy to even sing me a birthday song.
As I entered the room, you just smiled and said "Hi."
And that left me thinking you forgot that today is my...sigh
End of sem, 'twas posted. Yes, we passed the exam!
With tears of joy, I gave thanks for a job well done.
I so wanted to celebrate that joyous moment with you.
But you weren't there. Worse, there was no one to talk to.
It sounds heart-breaking to know how cold you treated me.
But wait, there's more- I'm not yet done telling this story.
There were things that didn't turn out as I wanted it to be.
What happened next sums up how you ruined it perfectly.
You didn't plan that trip with me 'cause you wanted a surprise.
One day in January, you brought me to nature's paradise.
Hours of climbing up the mountains, alas we have arrived.
And that 'someday' you told me then, is a dead word given life.
I flipped that letter on valentines, and read what's written next.
"...except lollipops. Everybody loves it", that's the following text.
You said I should let go of the things that made me bitter.
And that you'd never leave me, come worse, or even better.
On my birthday, I managed to say "Hello" but nothing more.
Then I saw your doodle greeting posted on my backdoor.
"Happy birthday dear", it says. That made my day brighter.
Turns out you've worked overtime on that since two nights prior!
You went home that night when the exam results were posted.
I wasn't in the mood to talk. I'd rather sleep on my bed.
Then you placed on the table, this fruit you brought from the city.
So that's why you were missing! You bought a delish gift for me!
Looking back, I can't complain on how sad I felt initially
'Cause when I felt so down, you never failed to uplift me.
And if being with you means my every plan will not happen,
Then I'd bravely take that risk and live along these lovely ruins.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 9:13 AM UTC
Nobody respects a liar.
I just want to know if they chose, or just learned to cool down quicker than me.
Im not learning anything about
the riddles I gave myself years ago.
Cardboard sleeves and my truth explodes
When I fall like the last leaf.
What is one thing I have always been?
I have always been an apologist.
What else?
because everyone, you already know that.
I hate female vocalists. unless they sound like they cant stand themselves.
Unless they sound as disinterested in their own voice as I am in mine, I cant stand them.
I only respect female singers who play their own **** instruments.
And I will never have the guts to ask if you're wearing your heart on your sleeve
Or if it's just me and my wearing my heart as my sleeve.
Sometime ago I asked myself if I could see ahead, and I laughed, and hit my ****
Ive suffered,
and Ive sang it off.
Even when I couldnt sing a note to save my pathetic life.
No one respects a liar.
im not a liar.
Im not different at all.
In fact, im exactly what I've been grown around.
Im half alive and I'm nothing but sacrifice and I feel worthy when my worth is measured in something else.
There is not one thing I can stand less than people who do not underdstand their own language.
for gods sake, it's they're, not there. it's here. not heir. it's i BEFORE e.
but im a hypocrite,
because half the time...most the time i dont capitalize any I's that i'm using to explain about myself.
i think it's because it's not worth the stretch to hit the shift bar.
for myself I'm lazy.
I have an eleven key hand span on the piano, and i cannot even type properly.
thats an octave and a half almost.
I was born to be a woman that pays her taxes and has a checking account.
And a four door sedan with two carseats.
And a ring around my finger, a two bedroom house and bedtime stories all over the bookshelves.
I want to teach my partner how to play the ukulele,
i want to show my children that faith is real,
even if god isnt.
I want a family that will have me for the rest of their lives,
through good or bad.
Through tradgedy, illness,
thinness, gain, loss, stress, sobriety,
through debt and through retirement.
I was made to give,
and I feel selfish for writing this.
Because its all about me.
I want to give myself to something.
I want to be the best fiance I can be.
I want to be the best student I can be.
The best daughter.
The best owner to my pets.
The best aunt, neice, cousin.
I want to the best wife
and mother I can be.
I'm not lying.
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 7:22 PM UTC