"exposition" poems
Everything in quotations marks and italics was written by TS Eliot.
eyes knowing glossy men,
sheer women, creatures,
not all artists, but artists,
always thus,
centrifugal, simple
from their core,
emanate, resonate,
expand the exterior
with interior precision sculpting
to the interior delve,
via brush or limb,
pen or music,
the exposition, the exploration,
the reconstruction of composing
one's self, creation and destruction
of your own myths
movement of arms and legs,
sparseness of simplicity
subsidiaries of centricity,
tributaries of complexity,
oriented to their locality
the simple purpose of inhalation,
to exhale, after transformation,
the calculus of thought into emotion:
*"the tongues of flame are in-folded
into the crowned knot of fire and
the fire and rose are one"*
the dancers hear the music:
*"so deeply that it is not heard at all,
but you are the music
while the music lasts."*
**”Quick now, here, now always –
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well"**
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 10:42 PM UTC
A follow on poem to 'In the Sunroom (Suicide)" (1)
writ many years later...
~For MWK~
<>
A stray thought. a burring burrowing, thorny tawny:
A wish, yet to get, but vetted for each of us.
*This within, this redoubt, a contemplative oasis,
my indoor poet's nookery rookery sanctuary
each one, each is, deserves, all, one such,
a place holy filled, with lice and dirt of a life,
strained and trained for emission and transmission
of the best of the worst, and the triumphant emergent commission of
our individualized most excellent fresh best
where crumbs of apple crisp pie solidify, vanilla bean ice cream
melt offsets the oven heated warmth, and from this interactive
contrasts combative,
a poem pie reborn, newly disguised, familiar words,
yet unheard and before this very never,
went unspoken and now goes forth
svelte and unbroken
*rhymes of yore, forgot from a before, but making up the walls
of the here and now,
a sunroom to spread out the lit lights of egress and entrance,
of fire door no exits that now are chiseled closed,
lock in, lock up, and somehow, one, stills to learn from
the stilling quiet solitude.
to penetrate the prostrate kneeling grinning grief,
how to expel and spell the words
that grant
relief
visit my sunroom, though no fiction.
the sun rays *********** create the friction
of that which cannot ever be withered nor contained,
and your mouth opens wide and a poem birthed and delivered,
pastiche paste composted of truth and dreams of fiction, fine diction,
with a shrug, a smile, a satisfaction extracted extraordinary,
you garner moments of satisfaction but cloud cover returns,
and the process of sunrise exposition recommences,
and one revisits the elemental sequencing of
all the predecessor pain, but this time,
for gain, for gain,
<>
written this sabbath Saturday
12:38am EST
Sat Aug 2
2025
in the sunroom,
on Shelter Island
Aug 2, 2025
Aug 2, 2025 at 12:59 AM UTC
<>
you pout and defer, dancing backwards,
claiming, blue is now blackened
from underuse, incapable and incapacitating revival
*saying eyes cannot see, distinctly, neither near or far,
the tremble of love, forgot & distantly absent,
but I know, a heart’s sensory muscles never die,
though weaken they might, underused, un-exercised
denying that inspiration
no longer resides with in thy sensitivities,
has fled, undercover of smoking forest fires
all the diurnal hazards that invade, occupying
my internal spaces once filled by poems
you conceived, birthed, in a pleasured haze,
came so fast, you bare recall agony accompanied,
but not the ecstasy of the end resultant!*
***you know it’s you of whom I write, but,
a note not shaming names, but messages
countless private messages have I sent
begging, beseeching, give me your gifts***
once more, you owe me not, though I
oft irritate with my deafening pleas,
yet only denials continue, my pleas ding
but dent not, the tired fear of your exposition
so speak to you plain,
feed my soul selfish
like in years gone past,
there are holes in mine
that require your elixir,
creamy softness that moistens
my face with tears of your words
originating, astound, enfold**
not later, not soon, not excusals,
write for me NOW, WRITE FOR YOURSELF,
but leave me not forsaken and thirst un-slackened,**
Answer! To whom do you owe your poems?
Jun 11, 2023
Jun 11, 2023 at 11:30 AM UTC
a HOME credible THE BISHOP accusation ADMINISTRATION is PARISHES one MINISTRIES that, SCHOOLS after RESOURCES review SAFE ENVIRONMENT of EMPLOYEES reasonably CAREERS available, CONTACT US relevant MAKE A GIFT information BISHOP’S FAITH APPEAL in LOVE AND JUSTICE consultation AFRICAN AMERICAN MINISTRY with CATHOLIC CHARITIES the PLANNED GIVING Diocesan CHANCELLOR Review OFFICE OF CONSTRUCTION Board HISPANIC MINISTRY or CAMPUS MINISTRY other CRIMINAL JUSTICE MINISTRY professionals, STEWARDSHIP AND COMMUNICATIONS there YOUTH MINISTRY is FINANCIAL SERVICES reason MODERATOR OF THE CURIA to MAKE A GIFT TO THE CAPITAL CAMPAIGN believe SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY is FAMILY LIFE MINISTRY true VOCATIONS
The soup today is not what it could be;
We’d better search out the old recipe
Explanatory Note:
I fear the poem as written fails, which is my fault (perhaps I have lapsed into fuzziness from reading Leonard Cohen), so here is a bit of exposition:
The words in small print are a quote from the Bishops of Texas (long may they wave), generated by some in-house scrivener, about what constitutes a "credible accusation." "Credible accusation" is not a title in civil, criminal, or canon law, and it appears to be some sort of Article 58 (cf. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago), a means whereby anyone is guilty because he has been accused. It stinks.
Also stinky is the behavior of some few priests and religious.
Anyway, I pulled the quote from a diocesan web site, and scattered among it in LARGE TYPE categories from that site. I stirred 'em all up in a soup because the matter of paedophilia and the bishops' responses seem to be a soup, making it difficult for a "good simpleton" (cf A Canticle for Leibowitz) like me to understand.
May God have mercy on us all.
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019 at 4:20 PM UTC
When I decided to write my first poem, I thought back to the days,
when we were studying poetry and the teacher would amaze,
she'd make me write down words and things, I'd be chasing praise.
But looking back at my book now, I know what I should do,
and so here follows my glossary of things I'll write for you:
I have - Alliteration, Antagonist, Allegory and Anapest.
Characterisation, Complication, Convention and Connotation.
Elegy, Elision, Epigram and Exposition.
Free verse, Falling action, Falling meter and also Fiction.
Literal language, Imagery, Lyric poem and Irony.
Rising action, Resolution, Rising meter with Recognition.
Acatalectic, Anacreontic, Amphimacer and Amphibrachic.
Cliché, Common Measure, Couplets and Catalectic.
Deconstruction, Dispondee, Dialect Verse with a Dictionary.
Iambic Meter, Incantation, Impromptu with Inspiration.
Laureates and Limericks, Light Verse poems and Linguistics.
Metaphors, Mock-Heroics, Middle English and Movement Poets.
Oh gosh that seems a little worse, than I had it made to be,
I was expecting just to write a poem 'bout my cat and me.
I guess it's harder than it looks so I'll just give up now;
I'll let those big brave poet people, write them all somehow.
Apr 29, 2012
Apr 29, 2012 at 11:55 AM UTC
Relax, de-stress, the moon is full tonight
The stars are out, faces turned forward
Trials painted end to end
Your heart never felt so bright
So good night stars, and good night moon
Tomorrow’s quick to come
Awaken to the face of the rising saint,
I’m glad this day is done.
They say early to bed, early to rise
If I wake to the absence of our smile,
Was it worth the rest I took?
What am I here to compromise?
I’ve heard what They say about love,
I’m really not impressed
Like I said, now you’re de-stressed,
Time to compress, to digest my exposition.
If your heart doesn’t flutter like mine,
Relax, all will come in time.
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 23, 2011 at 2:18 AM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineation
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Jan 12, 2013
Jan 12, 2013 at 8:07 PM UTC
Maybe they'll publish me
one the corner of the
daily
page 6
and sorry ***** black smears
bite they no longer
print any questions about what
or why
the daily exposition celebrity
murders
all bright screens now
farms as far as you can squint
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 10:12 AM UTC
Exposition
Exploration
Examination
Experimentation
Exhibition
Experience
Exercise
Excelsior
Explosion
Exposure
Expansion
Exceeding
Excitement
Excellence
except
Excessive
Expectations
Excuses
Exclamation
Excommunication
Excluded
Excreted
Exorcised
Expunged
Exacerbation
Exhale
Exit
Exeunt
Extinct
Ex-Star
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 3:06 AM UTC
Harvey sees the sun for the first time
without history--
the worn leather, unshined shoes in closet,
the ex-girls off the telephone--
the beams blow kisses, taunt, and beckon.
Harvey folds a paper with half a sentence
and puts it in his pocket--
"I'm too callused to love, too empty to be, a void..."
he knows the end but doesn't write it.
Harvey dreams of calm waters,
salt, sundresses, and eager toenails hammered into sand.
A waitress's reflection in the coffee shop glass shakes Harvey from trance.
"Another cup?" she asks with a crowbar forehead.
Harvey stares at her wrinkles, prying for exposition--
while her voice melts over innocent questions.
Harvey thinks about taking her home.
She'd talk of her ex-husband.
They didn't have kids, but she wanted them.
Harvey couldn't give her kids,
but he could give her him--
a favor.
She wouldn't die alone.
"Did you hear me? Coffee?"
He'd make her feel tall.
She'd find new, fast-talking, book-n-tabloid-munching friends.
Harvey would nod and "oooh" and "ahhh".
Harvey would itch for wrecking ball.
The waitress pours the cup despite his silence.
"If you need anything, let me know."
Harvey nods.
The coffee shop contains the hustle of a mad race track.
Elderlies at the bar, youngsters on the tile floor,
moms and dads hoping to choke with each bite of doughnut.
Harvey doesn't pay much attention to the other patrons.
They are reds, yellows, blues, and noise to him.
He unfolds the piece of a paper and writes,
"I'm too callused to love, too empty to be,
a void in search of a void to sink and share
the blackness."
He leaves a tip on the table.
He pays the cashier.
He leaves the colors and the noise.
He crumples the paper, and gives
it to the wind outside.
May 4, 2012
May 4, 2012 at 12:43 AM UTC
Words spill like an avalanche down a mountain,
Swamping out the message in a flurry of exposition.
The plateau crumbles, dropping great sheets
Of icy statements down like old guillotine blades,
To shatter against the cold rock in tears,
Too frozen, too brittle to pierce.
Such noise, such ineffectual destruction,
Laying snow on snow on piles of snow;
But the mountain stays still beneath the weight,
Its stony face unmoved for yet another day,
Knowing it will soon abate.
As the tide drifts to a halt,
The mountain slowly, contemptuously,
Turns away.
Mar 6, 2015
Mar 6, 2015 at 5:45 PM UTC
This constant presence of you.
It's been a year or more.
You've seen the ugly bits,
The confused frayed edges.
All my lies and hedges,
a time to sit and ponder
On whispers of who I am to people.
Your sweet **** my sweet heart.
That old whickering tremble
How did I get this lucky?
Bundled up in sweet cliches
Characters of my inner dialogue come to life
May I return to being an individual?
Once I find where I buried my Trust.
All the games and masks?
To conduct a minefield exposition.
My thoughts are so clean and linear
with you, I'm afraid you're synthetic.
A dog bites, it's tail
No one loves a lurker.
There'll come a time
when you'll have to stop hiding,
lay down your mask,
and come face me.
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 7:37 AM UTC
Petty problems intoxicate
Liberate inebriate
All I have are petty problems
And the petty people
Who began them
But let's not point the finger
Let's not draw comparisons
Let's not do these things
That make me realize
How senseless
These issues are
Because without the issues
Without the conflict
Where can the ****** be?
The exposition
That shows nothing
What point does it all have?
Give me a reason
A flow to my story
Even if it is petty
Just let me have it
The reason moves me
More than the pettiness
Disappoints me
Oct 16, 2013
Oct 16, 2013 at 7:59 PM UTC
exposition of my position
connecting epic art of
scifi legend extraordinare
frank franzetta.
from my back to distant Barsoom
A princess of Mars is my captive muse
to a story of a pale blue dot.
where an archer's bow points
her lady-ship has no censorship
unbiased in crowded eyes.
blinking aeons of information
torching elemental tables
undisguised for public record.
unforgettable this ticking thought of self
Converging lines and tectonic season
Moving over earth with pilgrim miles.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 6:25 PM UTC
For a mind unclear and sitting in wait,
A drip of exposition
Settles into a calmer state.
Questions asked, with answers that weigh
No bearing.
Although the clarity come with peace,
It would be better not to care.
Tell me what to do, where to go
And how to steer
Or help me come to terms
That
"Things don't have to be clear"
Feb 23, 2023
Feb 23, 2023 at 2:17 AM UTC
I struggle to notice the simple beauty of the stars which are present only at night
You look left and right and see people care for you, however I do not and that is not right
I feel laden when I am misinterpreted for the wrong reasons
I wish to feel equal, appreciated and capable instead of a treason
A simple person like myself has a simple life to fulfill with problems in my position
A simple person like myself has a simple life with an exposition
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 11:46 AM UTC
Pharmacopoeias
Pseudo psychedelic phantasms
Kaleidoscopic deliriums
Mushroom acerbic cloud igniting
Truth denying exposition
Chemical makeup
Dressed to ****
From seed
To harvest
To market
To dinner plate
To grave
In wooden box decaying
Infatuations with infrastructures in frustration
Genetically modified bullets
BT Corn ripping organs
Exposing the explosion
Imploding on a sunny afternoon in March
Ants on the streets
Trampled by elephants’ ***** in the parade
Rats in slavery’s maze
Corporations’ corporate mandates
Sold out government conspiracy
To cover up the conspiracy of conspiracies
TV eyes ratted out you and yours
A fist-full of dollar bills
Some odd change to clink in the wishing well
Monsanto seeds die at plantation
Reincarnation of a deadly virus
Sow the soil and reap rewards of petulance pestilence
Mar 26, 2012
Mar 26, 2012 at 7:18 PM UTC
Fertile earth’s seductive sorcery
Like ephemeral effulgence’s effluent effusion
Can lead you to believe that it’s not a travesty
Like life’s visceral intuitive eternal is not lost in subtle evasive confusion
Life’s virile translucence reflects this glow
Like an aorist ensemble of interludes transposition
Can lead you to believe that you’re in the know
Like omnipresence presages omniscience’s ubiquity is existential exigency’s peroration’s exposition
Corporeally preternatural's metaphysical mystique
Like a mirador bartizan tableau panorama
Can inspire us to rise above its critique
Like spatiotemporal’s telemetry incarnate is creation’s vivid intrepid cyclorama
Spectral verve’s liaison’s consortium
Like eclectic synectic’s conclave’s fatidic
Can leave you lost in germane compendium
Like terminus thrall’s apriori inclination is transcendental accession’s endemic mnemonic
Monad’s transitional majestic splendor
Like residual harmonic vibration’s resilience
Can autonomously evoke and vicariously render
Like rubato’s actuator’s prospectus revealed is orchestration rendition’s intriguing brilliance
Eidetic preterit’s aesthetic amendments
Like protractive analyses’ dimensional delineations
Can lead to cogent salacious enticements
Like phantasmagoria’s fantasia fantastication’s magniloquence is sultry solace’s ostentatious ideation
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 2:47 AM UTC
It’s 1:21am on a Thursday night and there’s no rain
where there should be.
There’s no weeping over the seven-colored earths
and the erosion of the skin is building up.
I have a mouth full of stumbling words,
nervous and absurd,
like wax flowers and plastic china cups;
bottles of placebos.
I have masks on the walls
and body parts on the floor.
Dim light from violet lampshades painting worlds
with minimal effort, but with profound meanings
that pretentious collegiates speak over bearded elders
while stuck in fishbowl towns, separated from the oceans of
metropolitan beliefs.
*Pulling nail fibers from fingertips with crooked teeth,
a habitual ritual christened from a darker half.
Waves of feral multitude plunging the streets
As riots of people made of fire chant the names of fallen angels
And personified martyrs.*
Episode after episode of plot-thickening exposition,
the weight of which is but a feather to the pull of the moon.
To **** my privates to a saddened resolution that’s
sweeter than a mutual **** for the sake of love.
*Penetrating me with needles as thick as bones,
Brittle as sculpted phalluses made of teeth.
Drilled out from the cavities and clamped iron
that make me grind and ******
In my sleep
out of nightmarish extremity.
Or persistent calamity.*
She’s dead, wrapped in plastic
And fountains are pouring mercury
Profuse silver-stained drooling
Ostracized from sane certainty
*The thunder of guttural bellowing
In the chasm of bed sheets,
where leather bound demons
split ***** hands under ice knifes
Muffled voices
And embryo faces
Tearing out primal smiles
Tied with black laces
In a public amphitheater.*
She’s dead, wrapped in plastic
And fountains are pouring mercury
Second time I’m seeing it drool
With a last moment of certainty.
It’s 1:41 on a Friday morning and there’s rain.
Finally.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 11:15 PM UTC
It really makes me wonder
Why we do these things.
May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 at 4:43 PM UTC
Specifically
Those Who Can See Over Everest & Those Who Think They Climb It Daily
GIANTS, BEWARE! The American People are not ready for you. They prefer stretching 4 year olds into fine angel hair and serving them up with a side of “Italian” meatballs. They do not classify your biologically natural state as a desirable beauty. For those who choose to assimilate: they dedicate an entire chapter to your mental status in a Psychology textbook.
DWARVES, BEWARE! Even the dolls are tall.
S.Kelly Woz '13
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 1:34 PM UTC
Unpolished weathered wood plays on my palms,
I pull and reach and pull an even beat
Attending algae'd oars aqueous psalm
Altered by the tangled grass I meet,
in counterpoint small waves percuss the prow
Accentuating the pause before I cull,
Mellifluous zephyrs bowing across my brow
Enhance the exposition of the gulls,
Above the hem of heaven's dress the bright
Cerulean bodice trilled with Cirrus lace
Beguiles regard, but maddeningly polite
She smooths her skirt across the score of space
Eclipsing a poet's want to read the ruse,
This lady only lingers to amuse.
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 3:32 PM UTC
When we enter this reality
Through the uncalled memory
Of our birth,
Crying with nonsense
To newly unveil senses.
The doctor readying his slap
To insure
You’re aware of the world.
The initial daybreak
Grasps with instinct
From the stem
Of our brain,
But we develop
Further in life learning
To walk, talk,
And even further
To tuck in that dress shirt,
All in all learning
The basic facets of living;
Only to further learn
That we cannot know everything
Undefined definite definition
A plotting knot of resolved fiction,
Dualities, influences, susceptibilities,
Insecurities, indecencies, and tendencies
In us all for us to see
And choose not to be.
The card game
Of social exposition
And inquisition
Learning to understand our face
And the people that we trace,
Forming, deforming, uniform
Difficulties
We stumble,
To return standing;
Challenges in holding hands
Returning affections, and mental afflictions
Gaining understanding
That we are being human beings
Refractive in and Reflective at seeing
Birth parallels death
No choice, versed vice
Falling and stumbling sadly
Last moments
Of our lives, begin
Talking gibberish,
Eating mush,
Having no memory
What happened yesterday?
While you lay in your crib
Asleep to a reality
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 12:16 PM UTC
I never did like my non sequitur thoughts.
They bounds and jounce and leap expertly
In their own journey of destruction.
They care more for their attentive
Distraction in reaping imperfection,
And in doing so they mitigate
Every length of my inspired potential
I despise them with a passion,
For in my hope for creativity,
I've only exposed the worst--
Profound limitation.
That's the definition of my thoughts though--
Great exposition, in a myriad of disoriented aberrations.
I'm not a fraud, a fool or a fiend,
But my unsettlingly broken, detached thoughts
Will surely be the end of me...
Can I contain the courage to counter it?
I am uncertain...
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 8:08 PM UTC