"etude" poems
In your vision you are the only thing with bloodshot eyes.
You always wear a robe
that speaks seven languages... and a bank of fog is at your feet
nipping at your naked heel.
In your vision you remember how your arms feel in sunshine.
It is intense.
Your can-opener is hissing an etude
that alludes to wise men...
who bathe in miracles
and roam the world,
untarnished in Poverty.
Your can-opener whispers in hush tones
about barbarians at the gate. And they say
' they've come for the Linen ! '
You are not deceived.
In your vision you are the only thing that can backward engineer
a Universe.
On your way back to the homeland of your algebra
you hesitate. “ you may have left your keys in your Other Robe...”
The Robe that hallucinates constantly~ Carrying on about
' The dire consequences of leaving terrycloth alone with the keys '
and, afflicted with Prophesy Tourettes
the piteous tide of doom ' sayeth the robe '
you must suffer.
In your vision, you are the only one
looking for the keys.
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 5:09 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
from her window she could see
the shells of buildings the bombs battered--gray concrete
ghosts, haunting in their silence
Father said his ears
hadn't stopped ringing since the attacks, though he still
could hear her playing
and he expected her practice to continue
for one day, he promised, prayers would prevail, peace
would return, and her song would be heard
play, he entreated, for ivory, black
and white, has forgotten the evil of men, their carnage;
the notes know nothing except to be played
and to give pause for hope, when
more trenchant sounds demanded one’s attention,
still the song must remain
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 7:38 PM UTC
Our footsteps echo through ancient halls,
where here is everywhere
and every time is now.
Caesar’s twin-edged conquests are our own
as is Brutus’s fickle knife
and Marc Anthony’s cunning speech.
Plague steals across our Europe
like a remorseless highwayman -
rosies all ringed and falling down.
We wait in Wien's Kärntnertor theater
for Schiller’s An die Freude
to shine anew in Beethoven’s score
and are ushered in at Menlo Park
where Edison's tungsten faintly glows.
Tomorrow will bring sun to the night.
There's Jonas Salk at his microscope.
One more test will crack the code
to banish polio's scourge.
But nature’s caprice strews logs on our roads.
We are dashed by a Tsunami’s rage.
Katrina’s torrents have swallowed our homes.
Prides of warriors wade rivers of blood
and Darfur bullets tear into our chests.
Nuclear Toys ‘R Us shelves are fully stocked.
We are the heirs of each triumph and treachery.
We grasp the keys to tomorrow.
What have we done? What must we do?
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 5:35 AM UTC
twenty minutes to write a poem
to stop and think and scribe
to create an etude, a vignette
from daily life,
minutea
teapot sits
still warm
rendolent
of terraces
of camelias
in foreign lands
crumbs sit in clusters
on the worn pine table
survivors of the toast and jam war
underneath the tuxedo cat
basks in a sliver of stainedglassgreen sunlight
hopeful of something wonderful
the clattering of the boychild
can be heard, akin to rollerblading rhino's
as he prepares for another day of learning
I sit, running fingertip around teacup lip
as I contemplate procrastination
with regard to all things domestic
outside, the world reverberates
as some one begins to cut grass
and the the Beach Boys sing Kokomo
Dec 5, 2016
Dec 5, 2016 at 3:54 PM UTC
Morning Greeting to God
On waking I say (thinking, really)
“You’ve been here all night.
You’ll be here all the day,
Providing time, my needs,
And more abstractly, destiny.
The trick is to be welcoming,
A trick that makes the play of pain
More comfortable,
For comfort is so comforting.
When I say pain,
I do not mean
A shoulder ache or thereabouts.
It means the pain of all around,
An ‘all around’ that’s all unbound
Which one will never have the skill to grasp,
Or power to reshape.
The day’s blank piece of paper,
Bland or stimulating,
Filled with action or quite still –
Always etude and apprenticeship.
So I ask myself (symbolically)
What can I learn?
With no idea of what’s to come,
Anticipating nothing
I accept each crumb that falls from
Shall we call it ‘heaven’s table’
(just a metaphor.)
Heaven’s table may be fable,
Morning’s greeting, fleeting phrase;
Both are ways to start the days
With positivity, an energy
To improvise with happy creativity.
What could be better?
Morning Greeting To God 9.25.2017
God Book II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin
Sep 25, 2017
Sep 25, 2017 at 5:44 AM UTC
-I've got bored of words.
-You tergiversate... Small world.What this bouquet of flowers is doing in the intermediate?It's a date?
-Ah... such prolixity... More champagne?
-What's the point?
-My aim? Mmm... to try to oscullate you.
-... What?... Such profane elixir do you desire?
-It'll be more than tasty.It's alleged...
-But, don't you distinguish the mayhem's reflection below?
-Your solicitude.. Ah!... What a nice champagne.Hmm... Cake? By the other way or not there's nothing at the ceiling.
-You've perused my protocol... A small slice, please.
-A kiss a skirmish.Palatable as this recipe... Well... apart from an armageddon...
-Stop pushing on boy.
-I already vanquished the inception, you know...
-Catastrophe is your trophy, but I disavow your apocalypse.
-I was expecting something more digestible.How's the alcohol?
-Standstill...
-Hm!... As everything surrounding us.
-Ahhh... No... They just don't move.. don't have gravity...
-Funny waiter... Hovering waiter.Did you emend your canon?
-Champagne and desserts will not litigate your anticipation.You know.How strange is...
-The room? No... Is normal for it to circle upside down.
-A hug?
-In this desert? With all those people?
-They are frozen, and... before I veto, quivering in a hurt heart.
-Blown sand... popped champagne... Oh, I didn't notice the light fixture's embroidery.
-The sun's in the bottom.Look up... Its obumbration is into the typhoon.
-Standstill, nothing's synchronized...
-Is your tranquility dissipated? gone?...
-No.If isn't yours.
-I just still want that hug.
-Hmmm... I forgot you're a cold person...
-And you a hot girl... Irony...
-You'll melt...
-I'm apt to it...
Then an aurora flash
And splashing glass
Accompanied by springing sparks
Shattered bass walls
Begetting noctilucent dark and dusk
A hurricane, breathing the sun
Just dust to dust
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 5:48 PM UTC
displaced to the sterile mercy of this place.
Diaphony withdrawn as probably as
destiny, recalling her palm upturned
to feel the grains that slip into
our sleepless eyes
where she dreamed our futures.
This thought threads arachnodactylous wisps
spreading their many jointed legs to fill
the dancing of a body well used.
I could have come sooner.
I could have divested the clatter,
the shine of baubles and nebulous distractions.
I could easily have offered my soul.
All you wanted: our eyes locked into a perpetual bliss.
All you wanted was a deep and endless pool
the darkness so complete
so comfortable, you said, so final.
You couldn't have fallen the coloured glass like
rain on the asphalt, and somewhere a sandman
dusted the reverie of the highway in downbeats
across the windshield an etude in betrayal.
The night before I tried to call you into the shower,
to call you with my body into the sacred space
that might have saved you for a moment
that might have closed the distance
strung too tightly, the tendons a terse
and gut kept silence of reserve,
between your bruised eyes and shutterred hands.
Jan 27, 2012
Jan 27, 2012 at 4:57 PM UTC
Western star
I set for hours in the darkness spellbound you held my gaze
The trees and night darkness completed the picture
Your mind races ever higher quiet etude the engulfing blaze
Silver light breaks all captivity you to are suspended held amidst glories brow
Within darkness you are the cloaked sojourner destination improbability
Somewhere in the mix of thoughts for a brief time you are free of all concerns
All that exists is the span of distance in all this voluminous emptiness lies compatibility
Measureless void you wash in great waves against my enthralled soul
You give abundant texture to the wall and windows that I view this indispensible wonder
Because I know you seem localized but half of the earth at least can be held in the same awe
The earth when viewed aright by going to the edge and then stepping into space unchained bounder
Do you affix your very being to channels that gird the heavens go beyond be spellbound at long last right living
You’re tenuous diminished life will catch space in the raw your life will begin at long last to thaw
Your views will startle and alarm those not yet up to the throttled speed found at every level life should be lived
Adventures have for millennia shown the way over and beyond the darkest expanses victory without flaw
Table your defeated hand speak with dignified power as you break the common tide thou conquer who envisions stars as friends
Jan 10, 2012
Jan 10, 2012 at 1:20 PM UTC
The sky...
A canvas of blue
as I climb up
-on the roof
laying beside you
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
I counted more-
than one to ten,
dreaming of oriels
till all is well
Up a Hill...
Were I gaze
towers of cupola,
a heavens place
were we dreamed,
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
To Venus, to Mars
of dancing stars
a wishful reverie,
circling above thee
Then I blink...
Twice to think,
and opened freely
seeing all of You
in tangled vines
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
Coasting up above
loosing mimes,
an aurora night
on New York's sky
Time traveled...
As eyes passes-
to were it humbled
on fountain trails
and bluish vales
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
Horizon unwinds
hands that bind
etude punctuates
'twas a circa of mine
Morning rung...
A fadeless runic,
I fell out of flung
following sheets
my bedding's reap
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
A story unsung
lips were unkissed
wondering why
Love was not found
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 6:22 AM UTC
A canorous music perforates my opaque
Quivering chromaticism smears me
With osculance and solidarity
I solicit solitude
And altogether, I'll be accompanied
By my only one ally
We, anon, will rally loneliness
Imbibing a cup of chocolate
With zest and dally
Oh!... An ameliorated hallucination
Do not! I beseech! decimate
My incipient, redintegrating mate ---
I cannot delineate now any line of this smooth... lie!
Oh... What love dove above!
Blinked delving and desperarion
Scintillated once whilst falling apart on my face!
With a liquor of ink... and... tears
Penetrated any level of my flesh and sunk into my sole soul
Letting a chrysalis breed into a labyrinthine verisimilitude
Lulled by loop and fetching,
Fetching equanimity
I'm sorry... I cannot any more equilibrize anything
This is my alibi desuetude
I hope desynchronised is not my goodbye!
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 2:56 PM UTC
Another day has come; and gone...
Come the night we’re on our own.
Lay us down and tuck us in,
And let our sleep come when.
Suddenly we have no say:
Unbidden dreams take us far away.
Our minds will rapidly unfurl:
We belong now to another world.
Finally! morning lights our eyes awake.
Dreams’ murky memories we try to take.
“Hush now; say your goodbyes.
The sun arises in his skies.”
For Rickets.
Copyright © 2010, 2013 by John Russell; all rights reserved. No reproduction allowed in any manner whatsoever without permission.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 6:02 PM UTC
oh oh muse...
oh oh muse...
will your vacation here last forever?
holding hands hence and kiss
so many call you at their side
time to bring all of your juice tonight
inspiration and windfall your vanity
take me to an cosmos free of promulgation
oh muse...
give a touch to my trembling hatch
I feel like dust
and the pages...
oh muse ...
scratched and peeling...
no odour at all
no colour at all
only the light that makes them spicy
if you're there step by step come stand by me
I need you
oh muse...
petrified my skin, statue my corpse
I see only blue
a window of vanity
Feb 13, 2018
Feb 13, 2018 at 11:22 AM UTC
A quiet, solemn voice passed over the fallen leaves,
creating an unusual high pitched whistle.
The sound could be heard from all over the land,
and it entranced many of the listeners.
At first, all that could be heard was a single pitch,
no variant could be made out.
Then a slow, intense melody could be made out.
It painted a picture of a farm somewhere in France.
The melodic etude's tempo soon raced with urgency.
The yelps of young children and women could be heard,
covered up with the melancholic sounds of gunfire
being gunned through the dreadful, gray air.
The deep drumming of the bass and low brass
signified sounds of heavy artillery colliding with the earthen ground.
The rapid succession of chords and key changes
slowed the scene down to almost a standstill.
And almost as fast as it had begun,
it ended with a somber, low pitched note.
The whistling from the leaves discontinued,
and the memories of World War II was lost.
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 4:50 PM UTC
i heard the stories
how you claimed your
body for your own
it is not a temple
if you believe in nothing
a sanctum for whichever
number you want to place
in pairs or triplets of sixes
you took your body
and you made it god
perhaps they killed a good guy
or an mutual enemy of your enemy
i want to stroke you
and stoke your desires
until the fires span across your
etude - fire is what you use
to sing and show them
that you don't need a god to stand
in awe
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 8:13 AM UTC
Let's have some coffee, shall not we?
Are you hungry?
No, why?
You have a playful deluge to propagate, do not you?
Your eyes blaze vividly like sky
And? The whole street's quivering by luxurious lights
The clouds strive to squeeze amongst each other
What's recrudescing?
Get up! thunders doodle the sands
I got bored of coffee
With such clouds amidst the sun'll be discombobulated
Are my eyes still blazing?
Oh, stop chuckling
It's not me! listen! the wind blubbers and woes don't you wonder why,?
A blizzard's ambulating?
Observe those odd bolts!
Want to race?
You think you'll be rejuvenated?
By the inception sunshine, wasn't we to bloom blows?
How bizarre now! you forgot the cup of yours
I'll imbibe love without you! will you please, catch me?
If I don't want to scratch me!
Your kiss mangles me delicately
Look.. I believe I cannot inhale
The billows of zest, touchy how you are!
The sea becomes boring to behold
It's whether we play or hunt
Dull, warm lasting not night
Hold my hand
What? we'll in such transcendence, dance?
Increasingly
Let's demonstrate our demons
You are drunk bliss
Some coffee?
It's a pulchritudinous oblivion! no
You utilise love as toy
I just connect the tiles
Jun 13, 2017
Jun 13, 2017 at 10:09 AM UTC
And here’s another religious theory:
craving the sweetness of fruitless purpose,
we hunch with our loads under the big above eye
and scurry a little faster.
Looking only up or down
-at the sky or on the ground-
and deriving no drive from our surroundings
(the universe erupting in the beauty of our limited spectrum rainbow)
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 12:41 AM UTC
A canorous music perforates my opaque,
It is gods, talking...
Rain's drops are their pillars of the temple.
Echo of gossip...
Quivering chromaticism smearing me,
With osculates and solidarity,
Eventually...
Kissing a cross 'round my knuckle,
I start...
I solicit solitude...
Away from this deluge of unknown.
This echo of bursting sparks, dreams...
Will I altogether, be accompanied
By my only one ally?
We anon, god(?) I hope(!), will rally loneliness,
Imbibing a cup of chocolate
And zest and dally.
This sweet's like gold.
But... One for all, all for one...
Ostracizing my faith...
Oh!... An ameliorated hallucination.
The cross fell.
Do not! I beseech! decimate
My incipient, redintegrating mate ---
I cannot delineate now any line of this smooth... lie!...
Gods still howling
But I am still walking
The echo melts through.
Oh... What love dove above!
Blinked delving and desperarion...
Scintillated once whilst falling apart on my face!
The rain of dead, the rain of shadows.
With a liquor of ink... and... tears
Melting my ego, my flesh
Sunk in my sole soul
I yield and fall
Letting a chrysalis breed into a labyrinthine verisimilitude
Of lies,
Lies,
Yes.... Of lies!
Lulled by loop and fetching,
I cannot resume, I kneel more and bow,
Tie my cross again 'round my knuckle
Till I dust to golden grain.
And hover
Fetching equanimity... No eyes will ever again bloom hope.
I'm sorry... I cannot any more equilibrize anything.
This is my alibi desuetude
'Cause I'm thirsty for luxury.
Stopped ended lines, squeezing and hugging ink.
I hope desynchronised is not my goodbye.
Aug 3, 2017
Aug 3, 2017 at 7:30 AM UTC
With Life's song subluxated
The whole world by a reminiscence's hunted
The imagination, oh, ripped apart and soft
Here I hear always a laughter, sweet and shimmering
My God...Am I lost in lust?
Is this my Game last?
My thoughts are relinquishing through and fly
Let me be free! to dry in tears
That's a game
With an exhilarated name
That makes me happy
To smile, to hover with what's funny
Jun 5, 2017
Jun 5, 2017 at 4:43 AM UTC
There was somewhen love
Only to adjust with evil
Turning life into something hard and round
Trying to escape the bowl
Only to taste a glimpse around
Before you just fall apart and down
Feb 6, 2020
Feb 6, 2020 at 4:57 AM UTC
A knife swims in the eery air
bursting down
smearing the few fawn
crooked'em crotales
springing drops of meltdown sun
God hollows
and shadow balloting follows
Feb 13, 2018
Feb 13, 2018 at 12:46 PM UTC
This is my internal explosion. It's as if I slit a piece of art into every ***** and drained out everything that was taking up too much room, suffocating me. And everybody is wading in a pool of my insides without even noticing. I'm all torn apart far away from everyone and my pipe intestines are still leaking. Just put a rusty bucket beneath them. **** it. Let's wait for a mechanic that we don't even know to fix the leak and dump my organs into some random creek. I know I am weak, even though I act like a too cool for school freak, alienating me to nothing. Forgive me. You'll outlive me because I don't even feel alive anymore. I wish I was still a chore. I wish I didn't only exist on the outside of the door to your brain, unlike before. I wish I could still live in the insane with you. I wish I could be an amplifier for you. I wish I could still fly for you. I wish I could die with you. You hate it when I cry with you, so why do you always make me cry for you? Why do you force me to die for you all the time? I'm your zombie lover, standing for nothing except your brain.I wish I wanted to eat your brain but I only want to live inside of it. I'm your zombie lover trying and failing to haunt your memories. Why aren't you scared of me? You were never prepared for me. You never really cared for me or truly bared it all for me, until I was already buried. It's not like we were married or whatever. I just wish we could have carried the weight of our hearts together. But you never wanted my support or should I say weight, or should I say baggage, or should I say obnoxious and monotonous heavy heart?
You say you don't want to be with anybody right now. Does that make me just anybody? And don't kid me, please. I wish I wasn't so whiny and I wish your feelings weren't so tiny. I wish if I yelled, "Hide and seek!" you would actually try to find me. I wish you would be kind to me. I'm binded to my lonely splint of solitude. I wish people would quit asking about my mood as if they don't understand that I'm brooding my monotonous personal etude constantly. My etude's mood is a just a ******* boring dude at party.
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 3:20 AM UTC
Tessa V
Your talk is big when the axe has fallen. A cavalry blinded
by butterflies and empty eyes, never have seen a real vision.
My talk is small, low ineptitude, etude. I won't fly the skies,
empty or surging with endosperm. Tacit knowledge isn't that
hard for you, is it? Another name will descend in time, maybe
close enough to your century when I am gone and won't be
remembered through symphonies of your love. Human loving
from some other base unknown. Hacking in and out what was
destined for slaughter, which birthright? For less than a penny
to buy a prince or king, or strangeness coming from heaven.
Their talk is big, surprisingly. The hardest thing yet on earth,
was never a small thing for mankind. Easy firing shots, with-
out a warning sign language, I can feel your presence getting
hot again. What I have faced before is you, up close and dan-
gerous, and you know how I feel when unarmed. The end.
Tessa VI
Trust or play simplicity, me or you. Eyes to uncover the deep,
dark mirrors. On account of many charges, this is extreme.
What is love to you? I see the barrel of a gun. The rabbit hole
is what you hate most. And I keep on trying, e.g. like this over-
bearing nerd. I am old, close to you. The pizza is turning cold.
Evenings are labelled, and your anger does not need any
more logs. In fact we have nothing in common, except when
it is bedtime and night matures inside your mind. Lightness of
fantasies, I can't stand it. Fork and knife feeling like a company
on the plate. One that you build, manage, and without me.
If you want the house, Citroen X, the e-motions, you will need
something beyond your own skin. Mediation through invest-
ments are stone and bricks to me. I rather be drunk all night.
Sometimes I wonder are you or are you not a general? I had
a simple dream yesterday, but now I am the jester. A smile...
Aug 17, 2019
Aug 17, 2019 at 2:13 PM UTC
I could only think of
your sweet voice,
because i have no
any other choice.
i can only imagine
your eyes and your smiles,
that i wont be seeing,
again in a while.
I could only hold
my thoughts of you,
cause it’s impossible
to hold you.
because even if i wanted to
it’s not that easy.
because right now,
you’re a lifetime away from me.
Sep 19, 2019
Sep 19, 2019 at 12:47 AM UTC