In her gauzy garments
Above the bowing trees
The moon has many lovers
In the sighing breeze.

They all take her dancing
In exotic lands
They give her sparkling diamonds
They kiss her milk-white hands.

She is round & fullsome
Or slender as a waif
When she is then waning
Her flowers are kept safe.

Silken skeins of darkness
When she's waxing full
Are parted by her brightness
She is NEVER dull!

Her beaux are all so courtly
But she eschews them all
Her only love can make her pale
She burns at his call...

She lets out her moonbeams
Through her eyes they weep
She loves the one eclipsing her
They can NEVER meet!

She, so strong within her court
Will curtsey when he comes
The moon has many lovers

But she's taken by the SUN.


Catherine Jarvis
(C) 12/14/2019

Umbrage ultraism infrangible extemporaneous incognito edition
Penumbral platitude platonic proxy photics rendition
Interface fenestration imbroglio pandemonium inducement sedition
Wretched infelicitous extant trajectory sordid intuition
Scandalous scavenger squalid anomalous punitive condition
Panacea chiaroscuro parallax emanate imminent perdition

Equilibrist revision exertion suborn temerity imbues
Indulgent zealous discrepancy apparentness cogitation accrues
Heuristic noumenal psychokinesis extrapolation incursion construes
Aura auspicious primitive prism processional reviews
Obstinate tenacious preeminent edificatory omnipotence eschews
Equivocal gumption ratification constitutional manumission ensues  
  
Delusory apparition extravagance peccavi verity tempestuous
Obtrusive obtusely overt indemnities sagaciously obliquitous
Ephemeral anxiety antonym existential exigency alacritous
Fortuitous emendation phantasm ontological ontogeny acuitous
Indemnify veracious infernal infidel impunities iniquitous
Meritorious fulham presumptive extrication expiation indigenous

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

Little Miss Muffet
Sits on her knees
Eschews cottage cheese

Does as she pleases.

No cobwebs
Or flies on her.

Life does not frighten her
Either side or during
Any meal.

And do you know what?

I am not afraid to say
I could write
A graphic novel
About my ideal
New Millennial Girl.

Umbrage ultraism infrangible extemporaneous incognito edition
Penumbral platitude platonic proxy photics rendition
Interface fenestration imbroglio pandemonium inducement sedition
Wretched infelicitous extant trajectory sordid intuition
Scandalous scavenger squalid anomalous punitive condition
Panacea chiaroscuro parallax emanate imminent perdition

Equilibrist revision exertion suborn temerity imbues
Indulgent zealous discrepancy apparentness cogitation accrues
Heuristic noumenal psychokinesis extrapolation incursion construes
Aura auspicious primitive prism processional reviews
Obstinate tenacious preeminent edificatory omnipotence eschews
Equivocal gumption ratification constitutional manumission ensues  
  
Delusory apparition extravagance peccavi verity tempestuous
Obtrusive obtusely overt indemnities sagaciously obliquitous
Ephemeral anxiety antonym existential exigency alacritous
Fortuitous emendation phantasm ontological ontogeny acuitous
Indemnify veracious infernal infidel impunities iniquitous
Meritorious fulham presumptive extrication expiation indigenous

She brushed out landscapes with her words
as deftly as any impressionist master
and speed-trekked us from where we sat
to scenes of transcendent beauty.
Each day I awaited her verbal canvases
with self-indulgent anticipation.

But one day all was all different.
What was this horrific account of
of unspeakable Afghan tragedy -
A wandering woman whose final defeat,
after all she loved had been butchered,
was hope beyond all recovery
dragging her feet through the dust?

I picked up my heart from out of the soil
to ask her, "were you there?"
She was  - with a physician's bag
for Cindy is a doctor
who eschews a suburban clinic
to defy all danger
and be where life would fail
without her healing craft and care.

Dodging bullets, sputum and mortal threats,
Cindy fights life's most essential battles
and so uplifts the standard of our species.

The next day Cindy painted for us
a verdant mountain scene
whose whispering streams and fragrance
exceeded all I'd every witnessed.

I wonder where she is.

*September, 2013

gently bid the night  goodbye
it nourishes no more
the unblinking stare of the stars
no match for my candlelight
wakefulness is more coveted
as everyone else dozes
pieces of calm snatched away
from a world that eschews it
in silky silver voice i sing
lullabies to the waves
the sand gets between my toes
soft and grainy roses
the wakefulness that comes now
has white metallic motifs
shimmering away
mother of pearl
lights the road
across the ocean

- Vijayalakshmi Harish
  21.11.2012

Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish

falling into subterranean sleep, I notice such blackness
   bypasses a pinprick of light; dreams are avenues
   to enigmas presenting themselves as someone forgotten.
sleep laves labyrinths with incandescent sequins.
    everybody is strange here, interlocutor commune,
still yet nothing I can understand – better be braille, or
    contrapuntal dance, but still you uttered nothing;
your locutionary silence seeks no contentment.

                                           i have never heard such riot
of laughter toss me out of sleep. perhaps it was our undoing,
   our deepest, secretive entrails unloosen us in such fashion
   worth depicting as obscenely courageous, the width
of arm-span the size of outstretched islands, and stepping into
   that particular wideness, are my small feet traipsing
   swiftly throbbing in the heat of choosing:
to go      or     to stay – cyclic spectacle that eschews
            dailiness that I know I may have forgotten you in faces
of lampposts, the pared skin of onion, the gleaming washlines,
     the white feral on the rooftops, a blank piece of paper,
            a munificent Bulacan sky, or any sky at that since
they are all bleached and they arrive not with wind but
    with lashes: the color of white that flagellates, that blinds,
        that oscillates in space which is then reduced to the
     back of my hand: I know this. I know all of this.

                                                we were not naked, yet something
         buried in the skin reveals itself disarmed, mumbling
             an earnest palaver of questions I have no answers for.
                     what happened? where are we? should we just – die?
                                   an echoing reverb, or simply a song – a metronomic
          carousal of swan-song I have heard before persists
                            and maybe all this time,
                                                       we have been awake, in separate cities.

I.* there is no thicker undergrowth than feeling. first to go is reason, everything
    else levitates into something graver than say, one foot deep  in the grave
     and the other somewhere off-tangent like an offbeat adagio zigzagging
      into slammed slalom.

II. the crush of oregano against mortar, and the clasping of a hand. carbon monoxide
      fades into air as youth takes on momentousness. take for instance this once soft
    hand like a breath of cotton in a precipitate noon: once whirling in claustrophobic
      space, this slight inch of feelingfulness is dazed into the span of *Maya windhovering
       somewhere unseen like paramours *******.

III. from the window you can feel the bluster of falsetto disintegrate at its slouched peak,
       and from where you hear it, a dance thwarts itself like a cigarette ember
       convulsing mid-air – that slow, repugnant twitch: that is you, when you first
        broke your silence in thick shrouds of disgust over strobe-lighted simian jaw.

IV. what else is there but to take this sour ocean in front of me and decode something
       the blue always means mellow but the froth of white something the tragic caprice
        of tropic: some nights, they remind me of bodies careening repeatedly; some days
                    they just are, like you, just are, like a riot and only sound, or sleep and only
          reticence, something short of wonder and terse with reply.

V. there is a cluster of harmonies flowering in my mind when the sensurround of din
        starts conflagrations in the ornate dark of ear. my limbs snake in the garden
        of plank, my shin bitten in sharp reiterations – my mind crossing the equinox
         looking for shade, or possible, a parasol underneath the crimson of rain.
           say this is the sky, this dense space when I motion both hands into a length
       not an inch could ever devour. suddenly a boy made out of a man, flustered
        in jangled arpeggios and unapologetic thought like a letter of debt opened,
         paying no heed the mind and only what the body dictates: a smash on the
    escritoire or vigorously scratching scalp, reopening scabs and watching
                old blood ooze dry like a lightweight webbed impression
  of       a    dreamy legato.

VI. the night deepens with the warmth of its black upholstery – we do not know
      when to stop and bid for home. last to go is will of force and first to arrive
     in the bleakness like a recalcitrant thought often straying outside with the
       strut of a yuppie, fervor of old haunt. i conjure an image over the cold chair,
    its steel framework thighs untouched, its four decrepit legs the foundation
       of something that refuses to admit its weakness. the very base of what would
   catch the anchorage of my gravity, the very heart of all, and the flattened back
      with a vandal that says “Soleil was here.” the liver shattering in the trance
                    of everything.

VII. night is stupor. i am the lilt of words from a rambunctious machine.         there seems to be an afterthought that separates
                       a concept of vastness and the tactility of narrow ether.
        a word is uttered in extremis - something heaven eschews
                with its bright, arrogant face.

“And only the azure painted sky to shake the rain from its sound,” so the plain falls, opening its mouth through a bed of headstones dotted with the hollowed trunks of magnolias and cedar at afternoon and that cameo of calamansi velour interwoven with the softest glaucous velvet. Inside that whirlpool of sacrosanct textiles a blur, that shocking shrill of coolness catches the skin- this hole-covered schmata oozing cesious acronychal threads pull tight across the hooves, branches, and stream. Only the thin repelling flume of winter’s height eschews this ianthine material over the sinews and map-lined bones. A corpse shortening its gaze, eyes stone-free, empty of nictitation. Nothing stings more than autumn’s filemot sins scraping sideways down a tiled balcony, and the dove’s beg like circus rats, shaped by the finite breaths of decade’s old poetry edging its moods like a bold inflammatory conflagration of the  de-evolution. While the fulvous trammeled dirt abounds.

she sits by her window to write,
ever fond of the morning light;
not a day passes when she fails
to pen an epistle to him

she envisions him pulling
the missives from his saddle bags
perusing them a second time, a third,
admiring her chancery cursive

a year now since she saw him:
steady on his steed, his regiment
waiting, eager to join the fray, to ride
north under his proud command

perhaps at eventide, she will
write another letter, in case she
forgot anything she intended to say
this morn, or just to reach out again
before the setting of the sun

a cloud passes as she signs
her name, another as she folds
the paper; soon it seems, a gathering
storm--she places the letter in the
envelope, its traveling home

she turns the candle to pour
the wax, then presses the seal;
another story from her to him
ready for its long journey

the stroll from her room
to the mantel in the parlor
to the pile of paper that grows
higher above the hearth

a cold cavern of late, for
without him, she eschews all
things warm--for she knows
he must be freezing in the
cruel ground where he fell

(Spartanburg, South Carolina, Winter, 1863)

Floating
engulfed in penny light

the coppery-brine amalgamation penetrates my mouth
swallowing
viscous globe of blood-riddled ***

the shards of shell
spines split by the tide
echo my sentiments

current eschews shallow alluvial grave
cognizant cicumvolution
ambient gyre
diffuses carapace shrapnel into my calves

gulls enigmatically screech-stripped
slap briny padded patterns into the shoreline
pausing only upon my primal glottal stop

toes curl about inundated sand
clouting divets shift
dilatory run – slammed inert by invariable wave

cochineal effluvium plumes lilt
crepuscular rays refract further distortions

Neath the water I blindly ***** my body
Ridged projections jut from smoothed flesh
Puckering at my own touch

I sink beneath atmosphere
liquescent folds embrace promptly
I drop beneath chaos

Bare palm dig into viscid terrain
rung after rung demanding presence into the depths
I claw forth onto a sand bar

emerging
shard flanked form
eyes blazing
cuticles numb

pulse flit
patina of blood and grit

Fulgent tread propels
Upon shore
I walk back to my residence
A warrior - mortal
plated in copper and brine

he moves the pace of the river,
his home a houseboat

he eschews dry land, for that is where
they are all buried:

a wife, his only son, the anonymous victims
of his rifle's rabid rattle

whatever ghostly litany lives in the lapping of waves
against his hull remains mystery to him

on the water he'll stay, drifting downstream
until he reaches the sea

where he hopes he'll have no memory
of hard earth and tormenting souls

I have a poem, a wandering wraith
to capture you I tried
in putting pen to paper
of my feelings when you died

But feelings are elusive things
especially when acute
and I have felt my words betray
my heart and leave it mute

Someday the poem may finished be
and then it will be known
of gifts you oft conferred to me
of love not said, but shown

But still my mind my heart betrays
eschews my fervent call
your dwelling place my heart these days
as tears unbidden fall

28 Dec 2002

4/16/2019

Closed off to the world,
That’s where I’m secure.
Terrified; so up I’ve curled,
Perhaps, this way I will endure.

I fear the unknown,
How can I face it?
I try to argue on my own,
But will the judge acquit?

I am comfortable,
Is that so wrong?
You call me a vegetable,
I resemble that, so I belong.

Can I bridge the gap between?
Is it getting nearer or farther?
I’ll just sit – observe the scene,
Change? What’s the bother?

In the past, this or that,
Not what I thought it’d be.
I can’t stand their chit-chat,
Talking always turns out crumby.

Who predicts the future?
None but God alone.
So I sit here in a stupor,
Apathy – now full-blown.

If I can’t know what to expect,
I might as well not do anything.
Of this – guilty – a viable suspect.
My uselessness: like a napkin ring.

If I venture into newness,
Evil surely awaits.
Positive outcomes in fewness,
I only see dire straits.

Let the world leave me in the dust,
You’ll see if I care!
It’s always been so prejudiced.
As long as I’m happy, that’s fair.

I’ll stay here and be constant,
I’ll let others make mistakes.
Fail? I’m too important.
I mean, for goodness sakes!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I can’t just end this here,
That was me in the past.
My pride – nothing dared interfere.
But God did, the obstacle passed.

I’ve learned more about losing,
I’ve lost more than I’m winning.
My victories, all by God’s choosing,
My choices are all towards learning.

You could me on quote, this:
“I had pride in my humility,”
A contradiction I always miss.
I focus now on vulnerability.

Because when I choose,
To choose spontaneity,
A boring life it eschews.
Abundant life, takes responsibility.

Some, ode-to-be,
Never let my get so close
That I should turn to graphite
That which set notes
To a discordant symphony,
Lyrics to that beautiful muteness.
Never—I promise—will you be my poem
You’ve mastered an art
Only dreams could capture
Half as well.
You make me seek and chase
A fantasy
And long to capture what, before
I never thought.
I am left in division:
Do I love what I can’t have?
If so, how?
Do I release what eschews chains,
Arrests me having done the better?
O, then this I hear a locket
Whole, in faith, on my breast
And lest I’m to sail
Towards an in an eastern destiny
The key will blow in warm
From the west
Strangely, a pattern unlike my own
On wings that flutter
Free
And I will, somehow, hold the key
That, somehow, predates
Her western destiny.
Two lockets broken
And chains entwined
Shall render useless an eager hand
But still the palsy that urges it
Amidst the ailing hate of it:
Love in its purest.

Above the Arctic Circle, where the Laplanders dwell,
A place where sunlight never melts the tundra’s icy shell
And Beelzebub himself eschews, strongly preferring Hell.
Yet evil is no stranger here
Due to a beast the natives fear:
The dragon of Parikkala.

The provincial church was burgled, a most confounding case
Church poor boxes relieved of gold and scattered ‘round the place
The cleric who resided there was gone without a trace.
‘Twas nothing the good priest would do
The evidence all pointed to
The dragon of Parikkala.

The sheriff was a bruiser by the name Jyl Purrakut
Rumored to be the owner of a house of ill repute
Such assertions (quite naturally) he’d angrily dispute:
Not down to me, he’d all but hiss,
You know who is to blame for this
The dragon of Parikkala.

Banker Aric Toskala charged outlandish interest rates,
And those who did not pay on time met most unhappy fates,
Tossed rudely from their homes and forced to sleep on sewer grates
Confronted, Aric explained why
It seems his brain was addled by
The dragon of Parikkala.

Young Jana Makkarainen, from a fine family in town
Was victimized unknowingly, her life turned upside-down
Resulting in a swelling underneath her simple gown.
My maidenhood, the girl would cry
Was cruelly stolen from me by
The dragon of Parikkala.

In this cold, humble northern burgh, sin is the soup du jour
Although the town folk, one and all, are wholly chaste and pure
And so a host of gloomy fates they stoically endure
Yet they are blameless in the least
The fault lies wholly with the beast
The dragon of Parikkala.

If he prefers a bitter brew and takes his coffee black
You my friend had best beware; you ought to watch your back!
A scientific survey says that of all people on the street;
those who prefer the bitter to the sweet,
have psychopathic tendencies revealed by what they eat.
If he loves eating Brussel sprouts, but passes on the butter
He might be the sadistic type with issues about mother.
If he takes his coffee black but eschews the use of sugar.
It’s a good predictive marker that your colleague is meshugah.
So pay attention to the habits of your most near and dear,
because their choice of what to eat makes their intentions clear.

Upon its back, we ride,
into the books of history,
all of this, it takes in stride,
for it, there is no mystery.
Slithering through the sands of time,
but of it retaining no memory,
simply drawing an unstoppable line,
continuing on to infinity.

****** wars and droughts and famine,
like the hands of a clock continues,
we like to stop and examine,
but it goes on as its muscles stretch and sinew.
Political changes and new regimes,
trapped in the past as the times fuze,
through all the ****** and the schemes
all of this it simply eschews.

Is this the worm of fate,
or simply that of time,
we can love or hate,
be just or enjoy crime.
No matter what we choose,
we ride it anyway,
to the future, we ooze,
there is no escape.

Yellow buddy Gunther meets
Ginger Fred the red

Nose touch and sniff
Yep. You. ‘K.

(He eschews those black cats—
Snubs uncomfortable loves)

But boys will be boys
Meeting nose to nose.

We just feed them.

"Don't fret," he says,
As feet singe along the highway
As callouses form
And perdition looms ever closer

"We do not count missteps here," he says,
As our eyelids flutter
As colors bleed
And the horizon becomes our last best hope

"Perchance one day I tame this gravity," he says,
"I may yet label these perils as the cruces of my life,"
As mirages dance
And tomorrow's spies step out of shadow

"Ensure, my child, you settle your debts," he says,
As the fog dissipates
As pockets jingle
And the road eschews its weary travelers

And so
I
Confined my
Life’s fire
To a minute radius
For fear
Of self immolation

Since
I believed
that to feel some warmth
was far better
Than destruction.

"But what of the darkness?
What of the winter?
How are you to survive
with such a derisory ember?”

To inquire
Into such fallacy
Eschews all tenets
Of primacy

Witness, as I
I have formed
The ultimate aegis and

have paid
In full
The requisite price

For how can the wintry colossus possibly
besiege a bastion of pure ice?

the surface of the sun erupts
spilling streams of brimstone
into airless passageways
where poets roam

words catch fire orbit the mind
like elliptical rocks mortared tight
they shed more heat than light
pile them high

pick only hard consonants
their Anglo-Saxon pedigree
stirs the lowest impulses of life
use them sparingly

elegance eschews vulgarity
the driving force of the body
the circulation of black blood
swallow it like wine

to name is to own
like landed gentry you parcel out
your words as possessions
****** them from the void

you must climb over the walls
of what cannot be spoken
stitch the sun's lacerations
into the fire of the poem

Only musing
Long excludes
The madness that this world
Eschews
And leads me once again
To beckon
All the currents
I am swept in
Cast away
Forever kept in
Empty bottles
Dying breath in
Its bereft of hope’s
Last gasp
The sum of all of its fears
Amassed
Should come to pass
Its message dated
Only unto shores
Invaded
By the situation’s
Room
To grow
Its crypto
Oil boom