"fettered" poems
*Jesus, please set my bound heart free
Let not this world my prison be
Where fear and shame would pull me down
To suffocate and cause me to drown
'Stead loose my soul that it may soar
Heavy, fettered, chained no more
So You can lead me to the hills
Away from where 'perfection' kills
In You alone my worth is found
What joy immense, this truth profound
To know I'm precious in Your sight
My strength, my hope, my life's delight
Surrendered now to Your control
'Tis love which heals my wounded soul
Convinced that I can trust Your heart
Toward me, to You my cares I impart
And selfish may I no more be
But lend me eyes that I might see
The wounds which other souls still have
To give to them Your healing salve
That You might take their tender pain
And turn it to eternal gain
So suffering may not wasted be
But used to set our cold hearts free
Then we who in triumphant praise
More closely on Your face may gaze
Beholding all Your beauty vast
Held tight to You, content at last!*
Aug 3, 2017
Aug 3, 2017 at 11:49 PM UTC
Fettered by syrupy curves
of well-handled prose. Exposed,
prone. Bound to bleed
maraschino in free-verse.
Nov 10, 2011
Nov 10, 2011 at 3:37 PM UTC
*O Lord, please set my bound heart free
Let not this world my prison be
Where fear and shame would pull me down
To suffocate and cause me to drown
'Stead loose my soul that it may soar
Heavy, fettered, chained no more
So You can lead me to the hills
Away from where "perfection" kills
In You alone my worth is found
What joy immense, this truth profound
To know I'm precious in Your sight
My strength, my hope, my life's delight
Surrendered now to Your control
'Tis love which heals my wounded soul
Convinced that I can trust Your heart
Toward me, to You my cares I impart
And selfish may I no more be
But lend me eyes that I might see
The wounds which other souls still have
To give to them Your healing salve
That You might take their tender pain
And turn it to eternal gain
So suffering may not wasted be
But used to set our cold hearts free
Then we who in triumphant praise
More closely on Your face may gaze
Beholding all Your beauty vast
Held tight to You, content at last!*
Nov 11, 2015
Nov 11, 2015 at 2:47 PM UTC
When the fire grabbed his body, it didn't happen by degrees.
There was no burst of heat before,
or giant wave of smothering smoke
and the feeling of a spare room one wants to escape to.
The fire held him at once
—there are no metaphors for this—
it peeled off his clothes
cleaved to his flesh.
The skin nerves were the first to be touched.
The hair was consumed.
"God! They are burning!" he shouted.
And that is all he could do in self-defense.
The flesh was already burning between the shack's boards
that fed the fire in the first stage.
There was already no consciousness in him.
The fire burning his flesh
numbed his sense of future
and the memories of his family
and he had no more ties to his childhood
and he didn't ask for revenge, salvation,
or to see the dawn of the next day.
He just wanted to stop burning.
But his body supported the conflagration
and he was as if bound and fettered,
and of that too he did not think.
And he continued to burn by the power of his body
made of hair and wax and tendons.
And he burned a long time.
And from his throat inhuman voices issued
for many of his human functions had already ceased,
except for the pain the nerves transmitted
in electric impulses
to the pain center in the brain,
and that didn't last longer than a day.
And it was good that his soul was freed that day
because he deserved to rest.
Translated from the original Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut.
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They had played for too long.
The stretching shadows sang in minor
whilst tackling gusts
scratched the colour from his hands
and tugged wire through her clutches.
Their fettered aircrafts swooped
in plunging shifts:
seconds of clouded rhapsody
and cotton screams-
equalled in deflection
and discord.
Their colourful counterparts
climbed higher, twisting
in solar breezes.
They gaped upwards with
tense suggestions
neither knowing
how to sever
their tangled kite-strings.
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 1:10 PM UTC
I want more
Than just to touch you
As you kneel down
Licking my feet
Your wrists fettered
By cold metal
The leash
Adorning your throat
& you look up to me
With begging eyes
Exposed for my needs
I slap you
While you cry for mercy
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 7:09 AM UTC
Dreams are imaginations that set you free
Dreams are the stuff that emancipate fettered hearts,
meandering absentmindedly
Dreams give hope and last till infinity
Dreams are a rope to cling on to sanity
For when the world hast been tarnished and depraved
dreams are but a cascadence and showers of grace
washing you gently ashore,
into another chimerical world
in which is only soon to fade
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 11:10 PM UTC
So breaks the sun earth's rugged chains,
Wherein rude winter bound her veins;
So grows both stream and source of price,
That lately fettered were with ice.
So naked trees get crisped heads,
And colored coats the roughest meads,
And all get vigor, youth, and spright,
That are but looked on by his light.
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Ne'er have we met
Nor spoken together
All ties and only ties
By blood wholly fettered
Yet ancestral branches
Cannot e'er be severed
And I long for you now more than ever
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
With nothing to see and nowhere to be,
With no one to be and nowhere to go:
Empty, like the meaning of the spring dew
Dissipating, hundreds of pieces, scattered
Individual voids waiting upon a cue
To become what they embody, fettered.
A field of unquiet quietness, occasionally
interrupted by a single, awful tone.
What existence is this exigence?
Unknowable, unspeakable, unending:
Pain is what it is.
The dew knows not why it's stepped on,
Ending its momentary nature
Only to crop up tomorrow and be none
The foot becoming again its berater.
And so it goes until the summer,
with the cruel months behind it.
The skull becomes and beckons
Back into nihil.
But there's too many things to see, places to be
Too much to be and too many places to go
For to be one is to be many and the dew tires.
Apr 17, 2021
Apr 17, 2021 at 3:57 PM UTC
From out the dragging vastness of the sea,
Wave-fettered, bound in sinuous, seaweed strands,
He toils toward the rounding beach, and stands
One moment, white and dripping, silently,
Cut like a cameo in lazuli,
Then falls, betrayed by shifting shells, and lands
Prone in the jeering water, and his hands
Clutch for support where no support can be.
So up, and down, and forward, inch by inch,
He gains upon the shore, where poppies glow
And sandflies dance their little lives away.
The ******* waves ****** and tighter clinch
The weeds about him, but the land-winds blow,
And in the sky there blooms the sun of May.
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The wind diverges the horizon boughs
into view finders of royal blue.
The flicker of the blue beyond washes to
brown sticks fettered with dry leaves.
Oh what cadence ensues,
From a bent bough and a
Sifting wind?
If that limb but a will,
And that breeze but a pulse,
Harmony would hide in the
Heartbeat of an eternal summer.
Yet eternity suffers sterile sadness,
And cadence breeds a timid tempo
Of hollow trees against a grey sky.
So speak the world in discord,
Unveil blue skies from cacophonous trees of green,
And push the wind in hurricanes.
As wind and bough dance in perfect imbalance,
I admire the flicker of their countenance.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 4:34 PM UTC
I couldn't begin to repair
His broken wing.
Born of the bluest of blue skies
Soaked in kerosene, sitting on tinder
his intentions have fallen
to a blanket, fettered with
pine bark, rotting leaves,
rich soil and dark magic.
His tiny heart, as small as a poppy
seed beats faster than a drum
His tiny form yearns to catch the breeze
to the nectar of the next Trumpet Creeper.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 7:51 PM UTC
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
Sep 9, 2011
Sep 9, 2011 at 1:20 AM UTC
trapped in a ribcage
frail and fretting and fettered
hummingbird heart beats harder and harder
your skeleton fingertips tilling the ground
combing for the catacombs
of all your past lives
look what i have done for you
teeth marks to chart your growth
black red purple sky no stars no light no
for thine is the kingdom, the dead leaf diadem
battle-ready raccoon eyes, scored and scowling
if you do not run you will be left behind.
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 2:49 AM UTC
I am so very broke, I can’t afford to pay it thought.
Fettered in a cage by poverty, left only to pray and rot.
The feathers of my soul have been tarred and stained by life.
So much so, I'm not sure if they'll ever again shine bright.
This Bird in my heart used to sing for my hopes and dreams;
Mourning every tragedy with requiems that gleamed.
A little Canary to be all mine until the very end of time,
Staving off this cold world and reminding me I'm fine.
This poverty starved her slow and deep, down to the very core.
Melodies that once remedied despair gone forevermore.
Nowadays, all I can ever do is reminisce about that yellow bird;
How she'd bring warmth to my life's cold hell of a blur.
The way our voices would harmonize on little notes;
Prophecies of a better future foretold from our nook.
That's why I still cling to the distant sound of their words,
Because they ramble on in me until nothing seems absurd.
I like to think she still sings sometimes, though no sound is heard.
That music of hope rings in my mind still, all thanks to Bird.
Jun 12, 2019
Jun 12, 2019 at 4:31 PM UTC
There're some things I'd like to change-
Some things I need to rearrange.
Things like my heart, my mind,
My whole **** life.
They need some tweaking,
Some fixing up,
But I don't know what went wrong.
I made it up as I went along;
I had no plan to follow.
Now I'm empty and hollow
And looking for something
To fill me up inside.
My head knows what I need,
But my heart refuses to believe.
I don't know how to make me better,
I only know I feel bound and fettered
By the choices I've made,
The things left unsaid,
And the things I've said too much.
They're killing me.
'Cause I can't take them back,
Or hit rewind and fix it.
I just have to build on top of it,
And, man, that's so hard-
To forget all the things
That make life so rough,
And act like they never happened;
To just keep on going
Like I never made that mistake,
Like it never cut me to the bone,
Like it didn't leave a scar.
It's too bad they don't make Mederma for the heart.
Oct 8, 2009
Oct 8, 2009 at 8:41 AM UTC
In Autumn,
as in Spring,
the sap flows,
the sap wishes to race
against heartbeats
before the winter,
before the winter
buries us
in her usual shroud of ice.
I turn to you
knowing that
unrequited love
is good
for poetry,
knowing that pain
will nudge the muse
as well as anything,
knowing that you
are afraid, fettered
to a life
you do not love,
& so unfree
that freedom seems
more fearful even
than the familiar
business
of being
a grumbling slave.
I lived
that way
once,
& I know
that freedom
is its own reward,
that it propagates
itself
by means
of runners,
that nobody
gives it to you,
not even me
to you,
but that you
must seize it
with your own
two quaking hands
& pluck
the strawberry
it bears
in the green
ungrumbling
Spring.
2.8k
What is the thing in us who love to pluck the strings of our imaginations
and try to create resonance with the words that float to the page. To create something from the
nothingness .
We paint our pictures in tortured hues or opaque clutters of expression. At times the palate will surprise even we who mix and stir and strive to find a unique shade or texture. We trawl and dredge and send up pretty balloons in hopes they will return with answers. Well I do
I am odd in that regard. I think all who strive to express , to be heard, to hear to see to grasp and
be ambushed by sudden revaluation. To make sense of it all. to look deep within and waft on the wind at once are kin.
What is it for you?
To wash away pain.
To turn your face to the pelting rain and feel the value of your existence.
What is it for you?
To say the things your mouth cannot express, untie your fettered tongue.
Do you dream in color.
Does your poets voice speak to you in hushed tranquil tones
or rumble and stutter or whisper softly from dank and dusty places.
What is it for You.
A way out of your suppression if not expression.
The rubbing of a soothing salve over the aches and pains endured.
The betrayal acknowledged. The Key finding purchase in the rusted lock. The key falling from your hands in the pitch dark once again as you wake up and find yet another door to open.
What is it for you. For me it is validation that my mind is unique as the neurons fire and
speak a language spoken not by many. We are seekers. You and I.
I do not fit the profile. I am rough and hard my facade has bonded with my skin. But look within. I am bookish and brutal.Loving and glacial. Witty but slow. Volatile but pensive . A walking talking conundrum. I do it just to **** withum.
Why do you love poetry.
What leaks out of you mind.
What goes in.
What is it ?
.
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 2:40 AM UTC
In straps, of wire saplings,
Becomes one wild rose.
Alone in the dawn,
A solitary crow knows
That this is beauty,
Greater than his own
Shiny black robe.
Impossibly regal
Red as a scarlet wail,
A siren, amongst all
The greens and yellows
Of a meadow, of the entire
World, is the rose, above those,
Especially the bleak, envious
Crow, latched to a branch
As scaly and gnarled as his soul,
Blacker than eternal night,
Beside the shining light
Of the rightly charmed
Wild rose,
Alone.
Sorry is the crow—
Most of all unmatched, strikingly
To long flame of chalk faced moon,
Rides in airs, misbegotten, makes
Desolate cries, of wounding caws,
Self inflicted, so, somehow seems
Unalive, tarred, undead as smoke,
His fettered, black, unfeathering
Eyes. Not like the blooming spark
And flash of the stunning, runner,
Unbeaten, indomidible, shocking,
Wild rose, unmired by bramble,
Wood nor motley thorn of bush,
A star of life, razor cut, blistering,
Free, this spirited, ****** heart,
Set, a rage, on jagged leaf.
In tangled straps of green wire saplings,
A Rose is even more a rose, next to crow.
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 5:19 PM UTC
My mind a prison,
Chains of memories
Fettered to this body of chaos and miseries.
Trapped inside the four walls
Of fantasy, reality, faith and fear.
No hope seems to exist here.
My future burned out long ago.
There is nowhere that I can go.
Lost forever in the depths of despair.
Longing to gasp and breathe new air.
Escape an illusion;
Fate cast as my path.
To not walk it would be futile,
To exist only in the past.
My mind a prison,
A marriage so dark;
Together forever til death do us part.
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 3:28 AM UTC
Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
We drenched the altars of Love’s sacred grove,
Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
The launching of the colored moths of Love.
Love’s proper myrtle and his mother’s zone
We bound about our irreligious brows,
And fettered him with garlands of our own,
And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear
Though we should break our bodies in his flame,
And pour our blood upon his altar, here
Henceforward is a grove without a name,
A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,
Whence flee forever a woman and a man.
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Let’s divide the sky, you and I,
With Wilco tapping our gut, our eyes,
Supplanting the clouds from our grape cigars;
We’ve been folded, too creased to remember
Those country nights, those starry remnants when I would
Always point east with a fettered finger.
If I held it long enough, just enough,
Horns would bud, deviling my digit,
And the fireplace froze over.
I destroy homes and fall, fall, fall with them.
I play the bench observer,
Cigarette **** to people with permanent smiles.
‘Relax,’ you said ‘you need to relax,’
But your lips chapped and bleeding--
They resemble mine in humid daylight,
And the sky moistens and melts
To the tantalizing tune, yellowed summerteeth.
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 1:06 PM UTC
.
In straps, of wire saplings,
Becomes one wild rose.
Alone in the dawn,
A solitary crow knows
That this is beauty,
Greater than his own
Shiny black robe.
Impossibly regal
Red as a scarlet wail,
A siren, amongst all
The greens and yellows
Of a meadow, of the entire
World, is the rose, above those,
Especially the bleak, envious
Crow, latched to a branch
As scaly and gnarled as his soul,
Blacker than eternal night,
Beside the shining light
Of the rightly charmed
Wild rose,
Alone.
Sorry is the crow—
Most of all unmatched, strikingly
To long flame of chalk faced moon,
Rides in airs, misbegotten, makes
Desolate cries, of wounding caws,
Self inflicted, so, somehow seems
Unalive, tarred, undead as smoke,
His fettered, black, unfeathering
Eyes. Not like the blooming spark
And flash of the stunning, runner,
Unbeaten, indomidible, shocking,
Wild rose, unmired by bramble,
Wood nor motley thorn of bush,
A star of life, razor cut, blistering,
Free, this spirited, ****** heart,
Set, a rage, on jagged leaf.
In tangled straps of green wire saplings,
A Rose is even more a rose, next to crow.
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 5:18 PM UTC
.
In straps, of wire saplings,
Becomes one wild rose.
Alone in the dawn,
A solitary crow knows
That this is beauty,
Greater than his own
Shiny black robe.
Impossibly regal
Red as a scarlet wail,
A siren, amongst all
The greens and yellows
Of a meadow, of the entire
World, is the rose, above those,
Especially the bleak, envious
Crow, latched to a branch
As scaly and gnarled as his soul,
Blacker than eternal night,
Beside the shining light
Of the rightly charmed
Wild rose,
Alone.
Sorry is the crow—
Most of all unmatched, strikingly
To long flame of chalk faced moon,
Rides in airs, misbegotten, makes
Desolate cries, of wounding caws,
Self inflicted, so, somehow seems
Unalive, tarred, undead as smoke,
His fettered, black, unfeathering
Eyes. Not like the blooming spark
And flash of the stunning, runner,
Unbeaten, indomidible, shocking,
Wild rose, unmired by bramble,
Wood nor motley thorn of bush,
A star of life, razor cut, blistering,
Free, this spirited, ****** heart,
Set, a rage, on jagged leaf.
In tangled straps of green wire saplings,
A Rose is even more a rose, next to crow.
.
Feb 26, 2022
Feb 26, 2022 at 9:41 PM UTC