"fumes" poems
except that you have
attached your parfumed,
par~col~odored exhalations
into our shared airs,
with uniqued fumes,
thy airy
essences
to thine own chosen words,
in combines never before
seen or heard,
but worn by you,
draped from chains abound your neck,
dripping from thy tongue,
dropping from thine eyes,
leaking from your pores,
from fingers in rose gold
adorning rings bright shining
so more, so unique,
impossible to misidentify
as anything anybody any anything,
but
yours, yours…yours,
but not belabor this
fact basic,
disguise your name,
hide your fame,
make your locale,
somewhere in the unreachable,
unreal,
multiverse,
none the less,
and allthemore,
cannot escape,
the ultimate reality,
when first you press that
keyed
SEND,
you have parted, done with,
an immeasurable
small but grandeured piece of
your unique self,
if that makes you anxious,
here my eyes crinkle sympathetically,
am please to blurt
this major alert:
u have nothing to fear,
too late, too late,
you are now made,
part and particle,
past participle
futured history in
the particulared,
longest continuum
on this tiny, tiny
planet
oh well,
just thought you'd
like to know,
despite your guises,
your are now
100 per cent,
immutable ^
10/5/25 staying alive
Oct 3, 2025
Oct 3, 2025 at 8:23 PM UTC
Thank you ~
for a life not to trade
blessings, in spades
tight spaces
behind laundry doors
packed closets
and open drawers
gator tails, tarnished brass
cracks in kitchen sliding glass
wet towels, withering plants
foundation filled
with carpenter ants
buckets piled with
shoes and tags
village clothes
and saddlebags
peeling paint
and broken walls
****** seats
in bathroom stalls
clogged pantry
frigid rooms
table scribe
and carbon fumes
comfort capsules
empty tanks
broken limbs
from children’s pranks
**** finger
double tongue
long goodbyes
and sidewalk dung
cluster flies
chavie’ clique
accompanying
the hypocrite
cracked back
and hidden smiles
chalk on board
with mr miles
atomic wedgies
closing doors
wrotten eggs
and open sores
jaw jack
nasty folk
dinner calls
for pig in poke
penny pinchers
double dip
yellow mouth
and silver tip
brown nosers
thick red tape
paper cuts
and pimple nape
gallivants
so out of norm
the joy of life…
in basic form
Jan 14, 2017
Jan 14, 2017 at 2:03 PM UTC
Summer days and heatwaves
Sweat pouring down our skin
Working hard no time to rest
From the time the day begins.
Bailing hay without a shade
Not a single cloud insight
Gathering all the barely corn
We work until the night.
we have a little hideaway
A place down in the vale
Its where we drink some scrumpy
Along with beer and ale.
We while away an hour or more
Depending on how we feel
We rest and take it easy
No sound from the tractors wheel.
Now tomorrow is another day
Our work load it will keep
We may be striming hedge grows
Or we may be shearing sheep.
But we really are not bothered
We've been farmers far too long
We carry out our dutys
And sometimes with a song.
Our lives are hard but simple
We are living the country life
Away from the city and the fumes
From cars and such alike.
You see we have this hideaway
A little place down in the vale
So come along and join us
At the end of a farmers day
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 9:13 AM UTC
Pinto?
No, not the wild-spirited, color-splotched mare
with mane streaming like flames-thrown
behind in the wind
Taking desert inclines
with scuffing hooves on rock
catching her balance in mesquite
curbing?
The sage, dust
All
that nature throws in its pathway to knowledge
toward treachery of crosswalks?
“P-l-e-a-s-e don't slow down!
Stop signs--?
”No!
Just keep going!
Don't slow down now!”
“They'll hear us coming
3 blocks away!”
Pinto?
Clogged carburetor--?
No one much-mentioned
rear-end inferno reputation??
A mere twinge in my signature
Woman-without-a-clue
“Hey, it runs, right?
Gets where we're goin'?”
Kids duck in back seat
so as not to be seen
In the cloud of smoke
We make our approach
Hiss Spitter, Belch, Pop
and--
BANG!
--Like a gunshot
Kids take cover
on street, in backseat
duck down
so not to be noticed...
“Oh Ma!
MA!!!
Not right here!
Farther down!”
...so not to be seen
...by friends that matter...
in this ride
from hell!
Backfiring Beast--
“Friends”
skitter away
from what will emerge from the smoke and fumes
of high-risk-situation
Kids spill out through jammed door
to unexpected accolades
onto equality's curb
of laughter
Public school's
wake of exhaust and relief
I drive mercifully away
Start of another school day
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 1:11 PM UTC
Static, memories
Emanating, separating
The postcard- perfect
Still life speaks
From its storied past.
Invisible, to drift
Among
The florid aphorisms,
Ending in
Deleterious debris,
Aftermath of
The inevitable.
Empty room, echo hollow
Tabula rasa -
Carpet clean, quite candid in it's
Return to callow.
Consciousness athirst,
Absorbing phenomena
Effervesce, inquisitive
Ideas foment,
Sealed inside a question.
The what -
Against the narrow
Scarcity,
And fatigue of should.
A tender malleable
Youth,
Betrayed, under
An assumed decorum -
Residue of truth,
Flattened emotion
Privations of a self
Unheard;
Misplaced affirmation,
Buried pathologies
In architecture
Fear manifests symbolic.
Harboring apathy
The lunacy of pious
Pedigree,
Import contagion,
Fetters of benignity
Doubt and indecision
Into ******
Cognizance,
Fallow spirits
Seep fumes of decay,
Credulity bleeds a human stain.
Social edifice, inoculated
Heirs of neurosis;
Palpable, sensual pain
And transience, though
Tacit - remain,
Our haunted history,
The blind hyperbole,
Maudlin
Forbearance, this haven,
A portrait
Of immaculate condition,
Nurtured with precision
Under sterling pretense.
Provincial domicile -
House beautiful,
Savage irony -
Unseen treasure
Innocence unabridged,
Faces, tiny creations;
Compliant vessels
Wounded,
While modernism murmurs
Its promise.
Brave New World,
In a late model sedan,
Domestic ranch on a
Corner lot,
Suburban natives,
Silence means security.
The misunderstood
Speak louder -
Consumerism beneath
Unvarnished ambition,
Never could
Repair the brokenness within...
© 2011 & 2018 W. S. Warner
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 5:38 PM UTC
im tired of supporting this economy with my wealth and greed
i've barely had a chance to consume this world
i've barely had a chance to breathe
yet im stuck under this rock
somehow i've become so sedated
numb to real life
numb to the very touch
raging with fire spewing out of every hole in my body
i pick up with slack for everyone
get nothing, get nothing
get not a god ****** thing in return
my thoughts are mice; quiet, nimble, and unwanted
i take care of this store like a child, wellfed and nurtured
but its a ton to cary when no one aknoledges what they do
take care of the front, take care of the back
take care of the front, take care of the back
i dont want to be here and of course im picking up the slack
i dont want to be here and of course im picking up the slack, no questions asked
too young in mind
too old in spirit
im living off of pure fumes of instinct now
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 4:04 PM UTC
I remember the history well:
The soldiers and politicians emerged
With briefcases and guns
And celebrations on city nights.
They scoured the mess
Reviewed our history
Saw the executions at dawn
Then signed with secret policemen
And decided something
Had to be done.
They scoured the mess
Resurrected old blue-prints
Of vicious times
Tracked the shapes of sinking cities
And learned at last
That nothing can be avoided
And so avoided everything.
I remember the history well.
2
We emerged from our ******* mounds
Discovered a view of the sky
As the air danced in heat.
Through the view of the city
In flames, we rewound times
Of executions at beaches.
Salt streamed down our brows.
Everywhere stagger victims of rigged elections
Monolithic accidents on hungry roads
The infinite web of ethnic politics
Power-dreams of fevered winds.
The nation was a map stitched
From the grabbing of future flesh
And became a rush through
Historical slime
3
We emerged on edge
Of time future
With bright fumes
From burning towers.
The fumes lit political rallies.
We started a war
Ended it
And dreamed about our chance.
Fat fish eat little fish
Big ones arrange executions
And armed robberies.
Our ******* shapes us all.
I remember the history well.
The tiger’s snarl is bought
In currencies of silence.
Eggs grow large:
A monstrous face is hatched.
On the edge of time future
I am a boy
With running sores
Of remember history
Watching the stitches widen
Waiting for the volcano’s laughter
In the fevered winds
Hearing the gnash
Of those who will join us
At the mighty gateways
With new blue-prints
With dew as seal
And fire as constant
And a trail through time past
To us
Who remember the history well.
We weave words on red
And sing on the edge of blue.
And with our nerves primed
We shall spin silk from *******
And frame time with our resolve.
________
Source:
http://www.universeofpoetry.org/nigeria.shtml
17.4k
Little poppies, little hell flames,
Do you do no harm?
You flicker. I cannot touch you.
I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns
And it exhausts me to watch you
Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.
A mouth just bloodied.
Little ****** skirts!
There are fumes I cannot touch.
Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?
If I could bleed, or sleep! -
If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!
Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,
Dulling and stilling.
But colorless. Colorless.
15.5k
thoughts are stars that collide together and shoot hot fumes
thoughts are the unseen side of the moon
thoughts are the miscellaneous objects held in the hands of gravity
thoughts are discovered constellations
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
.
**•i've depleted my font,
my creative well•for each
day passed, with a story to tell
•staining white and barren land-
scapes•by sculpting my words into
myriad shapes•from factory fumes to
a wedding ring•an ominous tombstone
to a flash of lightning•an hourglass to track
elapsing time•the untold story behind a loved**
nursery rhyme• |
with this i conc- |
lude my 30 day run o
•it's been quite a stretch but
all in good fun•rest assured that
more will come when the time is
right•for now i'll turn off my
bedside lamp and bid
you all a goodnight•
.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 11:05 AM UTC
he once said to me...
*“I would blow warm
moist breath through
your toes...
I would do all the
wonderful things
to your big toes
that you do to me.
And most certainly
all the tension would
drain onto me...
I would draw
every last drop
from your toes
with little messages
along the way of my
charted course
to come up
your inner channels.
Resting in the sensitive eddies
behind your knees
we both breathe fire
wafting up and down
your thighs.”*
.... like drips of seduction off his tongue.
And he lingered on, saying...
*“Flaming lips wafting
together with desire,
reaching and pulling
with firey licks.
As I slide
my wet tongue
on up and hover,
breathing
you in
deeply...
through my nostrils
filling my *** senses.
Drunk on your fumes,
I'm consumed.
Circling the tip
of my nose
around
your hard,
pearly knot
feeling the heat
from your butterfly wings
my parted lips surounding
and easing the warmth
of my soul onto you
with wet hot breath.
And I ease the length
of my tongue to rest
completely over
your fire breathing wings ,
warm capable and ready..
leaving you in suspense.
Sliding ever so slightly
and slowly up your
slick silky lips,
tightening the tip
of my tongue -
flick flick
flick flick...
And I look deeply
into your eyes,
into depths
you've never known.
And then I'll take you
all in, with a suction
you'll never escape
or ever want to.
Never breaking eye contact
my tongue slides from bottom
and presses, emphasis
at the top slowly
over and over
settling you in.
We fall into
a oneness
and find
our groove.”*
And I said...
**
*“I wish I wasn't
still irritated with you
so I could fully
enjoy your seduction.”*
**
Nov 5, 2017
Nov 5, 2017 at 1:30 PM UTC
Light train chugging, working to outrun
Over exerting, pulling along your freight
Sand is running out under the diminishing sun
Fastidiously you tug on your enormous weight
Segmented equal in seven hulking proportions
Weaving between sleeping rocky giants
Assertion in your drive gifted from the high heavens
Borne of light your cargo load of tenants
Silver blurred rays glinting back as reply
As you power your way through
Defying seconds, before the last rays should die
Against odds, delivering what is due
Questing to alleviate my inflicted darkness
Spear of brilliance slicing through my mind
Illuminating the farthest and tiniest of crevices
Nook and crannies that willed me blind
Careful manoeuvring to keep your balance
Through scenic views fraught with treachery
Furiously working to keep your cadence
Hopeful of unloading the load you carry
What lies dormant in that cargo of yours?
What sleeps easy within those boxcars?
What stokes the fire to diligently run your course?
What promises you bear, travelling near and far?
Bales of hope and crates of strength
Supplies of kindness and self-worth
Reside within your immense length
Intact and lay quiet within your formidable girth
Reliant on the light that fuels and feeds
Your axles seem tireless guiding forth those wheels
Thundering over land with the power of a thousand steeds
Armed to your teeth with alloys and steels
Expelling grit and dirt as you pummelled across
Grey-white fumes, shoot up to the sky
Flag flogged by wind, billow and toss
Blaring your whistle as you race on by
Propelling forward, horizon up ahead
There it is...in all its tenebrous glory
Darkened locomotive seething mad with dread
Brace for the clash and the loads the two carry
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 8:03 AM UTC
Good sir, one thing I owe to you: to tell you that I hate thee true.
Your sly advances show for real that I am but your body's meal,
to be deliciously consumed, and have my sanctity be doomed.
Repent, oh Devil, back to Hell! Sink back into your slimy well
where from its spout burst tongues of fire to feed your wretched, black desire.
And if you do not go today then under Earth and dirt you'll lay.
I'll see that you ne'er have a breath until you've met your certain death.
You call yourself a pious soul, yet crying's God's name you take me whole.
You choke me up in your embrace, and tell me I'll be filled with "grace."
Thy love is but a dark snake's skin, which when once shed shows what's within.
Thy hands like teeth about to clench. The stink from out your mouth doth stench
-just like the rotting fumes of graves and poisoning the prey it craves.
Ah, sir, if you are even that. You pull your tricks out of a hat.
But I can see the trickery and magic so it's plain to see:
you do not love me for myself, you'd use me; put me on a shelf
- another token that you've won.
But put quite simply, sir, I'm done.
Dec 13, 2016
Dec 13, 2016 at 10:50 AM UTC
It's a humorous thing
How scent can take you places
Past, present and future
Relive fury
Remember lust
Extract happiness
O sweet aroma
Teach me to conjure these feelings again
O masculine, divine smell
Covering my clothes
Filling the atmosphere with mesmerizing fumes
Intoxicating my mind with sensual aromatics
Drink me up
I will **** you in, I will take you in completely
Take me to far away places, dreams and memories of soft kisses and tender hugs
Of romantic dances and innocent laughter
Remind me of past events once enjoyed
Resurface memories far and near, quiet and loud
Let me live them once more
Jan 3, 2012
Jan 3, 2012 at 8:46 PM UTC
My dear, if you were to cut me open,
to tear away my measly skin,
you would not find
the contents of an ordinary human being.
You would not find veins
or internal organs,
especially not a human heart.
Instead, you would find a battlefield, with freshly made bomb craters
and you would find discarded bullets,
fashioned from spiteful words,
that were perhaps destined for use on my worst enemies
but were instead aimed at myself.
You would find the remains of a daisy field
with the left over petals
looking vaguely like feathers
that fell from doves
or perhaps even angels.
You would find memories of a tiny village
once colourful and lively
but swept away by multiple hurricanes,
that took all happiness and innocence along with them.
Blood would not pour
from my lifeless body,
but dark cigarette smoke would seep from the wounds,
and if you closely investigated,
you would find that the fumes were made up of
microscopic black moths
that had all my lies and promises
carefully written all over their feeble wings
For I am not a human being, but simply a worn out shell of one.
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 3:01 PM UTC
Empty hands and love wasted
Wasted, the state of being wasted
Drunk on love
Or high on life
Perhaps intoxicated with the idea
Breathing in the fumes of both
Hookah and happiness
Crushed up pills meant to calm anxiety
Only calm their mind
Not the body, not the syncopated motions
Not the actions in which they're partaking
Crushed up pills, crushed up souls,
Uppers and downers so that maybe
While their mind is numb,
Their body sure isn't,
Maybe for a moment they don't have to think
About what love actually is.
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 3:05 PM UTC
Won't you dare
Step in the storm?
Won't you dare
Cup the hand of fate in yours?
Lead on the way
Amidst corridors of blazing sands
Won't you let the friction carve?
Your hands, your sight and heart?
Brushing against your face,
Peeling off your gentle fate
My friend; won't you dare?
And step in the roaring lair?
For ashes and dust
Is this greyish world
So burn the flame
And light in fumes
Hear the tapping of your feet
And feel your sole melt away
On strange wooden lands
Sprinkled with blazing sand
Catch the pebbles
Struck at you
Let it burden till you grieve,
Or build the castle of your dream
Set ablaze, set ablaze
Set yourself ablaze;
Let yourself combust and scarred
And become the blazing star
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 11:21 AM UTC
Long lost time stretches blacked out questions and
white
in the place where it should have been
A triple threat of time, continuation, and displaced memories
Backtrack
Slapped back into the
black again
I know it's a sin but I ******* love it
Push it, shove it down, choke on the smoke and the fumes of the ancient
Wisdom is the loss of purity
Awakened
Ravaged
Blended back into the swirling twirling Universes, such perverse pleasure in the pain of it all
I love to fall
The wind in your face, blend it with a trace of sweat and blood as it all
clicks
into
place.
I love the taste
Blasphemous and decadent, giving in and giving out to **** it all back in again
RISE and FALL
I grin a bladed smile all the while, never minding the cries
Such pleasure as it dies
All taint of purity reviled
Desecrate the sacred, mutilate this inviolate aspect of creation
Only a seed of destruction contained within the potential
I see and I lust and I take and I ****
Not a drop of precious life spilled
Without cause
The laws remain, rise and fall, rise and fall,
I saw it all and then I sought a call of FLAW
For in the impurity lies perfection
An insecure dissection speaks the truth
As I now lie and speak to thee uncouth
I regret the best was yet to be
Blinded stumbling through Infinity
....just let it be.
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 9:50 PM UTC
******* sawdust
Whiskey and rust
This is the life
This is cloud nine
This used to be a simple alibi
But now it's just a damaged lullaby
It's hard to kiss
Skin that crawls
But in the dark
The weakness falls
Unasked questions
They do rebound
Silent screaming
Rings all around
This used to be a simple alibi
But now it's just a damaged lullaby
Tattoos, perfume
Gasoline fumes
Nursing this poison
cringing, no end
Dysfunctional love
is what we make
just one more hit
It'll be the last I take
This is the life
This is cloud nine
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 11:54 PM UTC
A fueling, flashing fulgent, furnace, fulgurous, frothy, fumes and feathery flakes,
I do not speak of waves of snow, hoary frost, or ice, a cold gelare or even frozen lakes!
Formidable, furrows, fructifying, functioning fruition to foremost fondly found a flaming,
I revel not in such destruction but choices for my naming!
For flowers flow fields forever, forswearing funneling fjords finitely, fire fray’s forests furthermost,
Instructing in the arts of language, for I am your gracious host!
Fakir formulates factious forms fading flummoxed into fury, a fugacious fusible and furtive fleeting feigning furiosity,
A deep ditch dug, tight as pug, wrapped blanket snub though not a flub, all perspicacity!
Finds frosty frore a frozen freezing faction for fusty flaming feasance,
Fomorian fantasy of formidable faggoting, facient up to fancying, fancying, furnaced flesh fluidity finds itself factitivity, facets for fabulists from the faint familiarity,
Relating cold to heat as such, requires but a human touch, apologize I do you see for all my clueless severity!
Fans of all the falconry, who fallow fields of family, falter for a fallacy, falling into infamy as forgone flame frontogenesis, fatigues a Faustian felony, for which fate finds is fastigiated foolery, febrile features featly and yet furiously, favonian fear of fellowship fiendishly, figures foal to fatherly, finally fiddle flinchingly, although not so too furtively;
I finagle in my filigree!
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 1:13 PM UTC
A cloud of smoke and fog so toxic
They had to give it a name.
Out here, it coils around signs
And slinks up the height of buses:
Keen and watchful, like a python,
Squeezing the life from
My lungs. Heavy with ash
And tar from the cigarettes.
The fumes snake upwards,
Swirling in fog, smog,
Ashen clouds. There's a sight
For sore minds.
Nov 27, 2018
Nov 27, 2018 at 5:08 AM UTC
Cinnamon peppers
the rooftops in December
and the shattered
whispers over the hills.
It makes you sneeze
and your fingers
freeze
which causes
evermore solace
with the warming fumes
of myrrh.
The bubbles
which circle the edge
of your tea, darling,
pop on your nose
as the steam rises
we sit in rose,
while outside
the horizon is smudged
with ash, and coal
and dirt.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 3:01 PM UTC
i am homesick
or maybe just
sick
laying in my bed— which really isn’t mine
wishing i was in a house
that doesn’t feel the same
wishing for a place that never wanted me in the first place
where ghostlaughter of
girlchildhood
floats
around my head
the fumes of nostalgia
make me sick
and i feel pathetic
because i need my mom
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 5:02 PM UTC