Part One
Nascent Craving

The insular heart unsealed; pearled eyes
Breach parapets of stone— periled shield,
The sweetest ****—
A threatening wonder and irrefragable synergy,
Nervous routes of cognition  
In this nascent, amorous craving.
Locked and abased,
Dissonance lends pathos — euphoric and onerous,
Disconsolate cries curb sublimation,
The regnant bleed diffusing — fervid lust
Fondled, tactile surfaces in throbbing anticipation.

Sullen, aft a veil of laughter,
Visceral aftermath, out of
The ardent ash,
Burns a thirst;
Insuperable numbness and ache.
Efflorescent intimacy,
Table for two
Enraptured in new alliance,
Élan vital (psyche);
Urgent dialect petitions
Equivocation, jocularity blending
Provocation with indecision,
Noted lilt of descending inhibition.

Adrift, the incessant Now;
As occasion inexorably diminished;
Resonant simpatico tending,
Numinous amity;
Heard conversant, cognitive idioms—
Lassitude, time-eaten pangs of the unhinged heart,
Wounds axiomatic,
In disquieting synergy,
Nibbling, the circumference—
Misery’s permeating truth;
None immune, all trundle incongruously past,
Facing intrepid savages.

Licitly felt, reverberations of Amor
Whence the heart behaves;
Measured cadence, pulse elevating—
Treasured lover, contemplative muse;
Undulating clasp, inflated bone of absence;
Incarnation — a woman,
Beyond prosaic;
Ineffable adoration pours in certitudes of verse,
Elenita, enclothed —virtue unvarnished;
Reservoir intrinsic, poised advocate of the innocent:
The crooked lines of insolence,
Brazen culture of neglected youth.
Perceptive blue stare, sensitized tears—
Plaintively, evincing her injustice ago.

Part Two
Tendered Senses

Siren silence, eruptive blush, ampler between phrases
In dulcet tones — stirring discourse;
Foments rebellion, the strife beneath— his ****,
Out of its vast reserve,
Penetrate the narrowed ambit, vaguely announced.
Groping hands, migrating the sensual member
Stern faces grimacing— mirror in abrasion,
Under the blind surf of consent;
Burrowing ambiguity, emerging torsion,
Plunge, enlisted and content in the sea;
Subsumed in the nonverbal cue,
Persuasion’s plea,
Quelled in the post cerebral assent.

Piercing eyes parallel crystalline waters of Lake Tahoe.

An untouched portion of his awareness remains aloof,
Palpable in the subsequential quiet,
Obsequious and febrile, they sinned on sofas;
Peregrine predilections quenched and viscid—
Serenely requited, the room breathes her presence,
Limp, figures *******, mantled in adolescent torpor.

Erudition in bloom, trust undoubted,
Illuminating, satiating; tempest calm—
Under canvas
Terrain soaked and sodden,
Postliminary — rains of invalidation.
Allowance and permission
Recalibrate, salivate, shortly only—
Initiate, obliged consecration, appraising
Curvatures of the spine,
Stuns him obeisant, her femenine pulchritude,
Propinquity inciting vigor,
Emergent allure, the updriven
Tower of wood sprung from the blanket.

Suffused in ether, purring streams of remembrance
Vaginal honeyed dew, sung into
Orchids, remnants of remember;
Drenched down the cynosure of devotion;
Succulent view, diaphanous pantied bottom;
Halcyon mist, saporous wine — compliance of the will,
Freed fires wander,
Pliable rind, twin plums dripping,
Abject confession, dispatching doubt
In tendered senses,
Pivotal tree, lavender Jacaranda holds the key,
Unfurled, cindered vulnerability.

Half-denuded skin invites confessional savor
Acutely bubbled rear, fleshly furnished denim;
Sultry visit, San Ramon Valley in the fall,
Strewed limbs splendid, flowing filmy;
Imagination yields—
Bursting silk congealed
Across deft thighs, ambrosial thong draping ankles,
Grazing ascension, the curvaceous trajectory
Nose inflamed with fragrance,
Inhaling, climb of acquiescence,
The ****** weal, amid the globed fruit,
Focal intention — ploughed lance thrusting,
Absconding, the ancillary perfume of essence.

Perceiving avid validation,
Swimmingly, amid the monstrous gaze.
  
Humid skies simper dank, set swell the incense of Eros,
Surge of poetry engorged
The flame levened shaft,
Nimble ******* flounce, spill the harboring mouth;
Moist hands merging, unfettered,
Weave in supplication,
Vicinity voicing, enmeshed diversion;
Supple and spherical behind
Posterior arch, milky-skin against the lip—
Ripeness jostling their complacency;
Lapped the mooring, ridden decisively;
Recapitulating— spumed forth, bellied over hips warmth.
Abandon the dirge of self-pity
Late under ego’s trance.
  
Part Three
Present Tenses

Tempting trespass across sacred gardens,
Flowering, scandal set luminous: attachment—
Consensual, their corresponsive fear;
Protean manifestations— evocative, perpetual
Unutterable contention in a fictive resolve,
Deliberating the merits of their widely disparate tastes in coffee,
Amorously touring wine, let’s drowse through the gnarled vine.
Sundry deficiencies pale, once contrasted;
The beatific vision—
Material substance unaccompanied,
Imperceptible, tear-streamed cheeks in synch,
Ventral kiss, peak of carnal perfection,
Reminiscence— flesh violent with Love.

Fiction knew to meander the innominate rift,
A tincture of irony soften misdeeds
Immense as the sea.
Insolvent beast stippled with sapience—
Unmasked, the fabric of delusion;
Dependence smothering the disciplined heart
Resentment put up for release.

Waste of residual years
Fate’s apportion, scars bleakly observed;
Chastened by heartache, engulfing fervor
Too faint to recapture.
Vague glimpses dry—
Hypervigilant his defenses,
Veritable suspensions, embers lit linger;
Slender walls of solidity, the horizoned self,
Faith and reason in concert — stone levels of elucidation.

Fractured bones of distance, emanate a rigid salience,
Another ponderous night of absence—
Lingering, cauldron of dearth as indifference ushers,
The quotidian coil of contrition.
Tearful pallor, sequestered —ciphering time and solitude;
The unkissed mouth, his restive brow;
Suspend in the approximate span.
                      
After Lucid alliterations are spoken
Devoid of her face, his lover’s nudge—
The man nurtures his hurt.
Anxious as seldom unscarred,  
Venus’s susurrations,
In present tenses,
Kissed by her serenades of integration—
Notwithstanding metaphysic intrusion,
No chain stays unbroken,
Postponed drifts of deferment left unspoken,
Reverberations of amor.

© 2013 W. S. Warner

In darkened dream, my walk was halted,
confronted by a tree,
It stood upright, a branch outstretched
and blocked the path on me.

In circumventing sideways dance
I edged in grass quite slow,
but a craggy root handcuffed me,
and would not let me go.

I stood in shocked drawn silent gaze,
unsure of where to turn,
This tree had pulled me tighter now,
it fought my urge to run.

But then it spoke in ancient voice,
in tones of guttural flow.
Dark words in wood translation,
spoke of a poisoned stream below.

The leaf on every branch now shivered,
in worried recounted tale,
as it described through words so clear
what caused its bark to fail.

A darkened tale of toxic waste,
a legacy untold.
of man's destructive story,
where greed and fear unfold.

Water table now unset
In (fractured gas) halation.
Land is sold and cracked
in tempted cash flirtation

War for oil in scarlet lands,
where majors lived at base.
The youth in pointless sacrifice,
to save the political face.

Where poverty prevailed amid
abundant arable nations.
and the silent cries of children
skewed charitable donations.

Air of grey, fermented
with pollen soft pollution.
Chokes of spluttered ash,
cast doubt on evolution

This tale of woe recounted
by nature's mother-tree
with roots now losing hold
while balanced grip on me.

Swaying branch quite dangerously
in forgotten leafy youth.
this once majestic elder falls,
unburdened by this truth.

It died in pain where it had grown
drowned slow in poisoned stream.
a fading track on reddened skin
where its handcuffed branch had been.

I straightened up and stumbled on
relieved it had let me go.
My eyes in shock, slowly adjusted
To wood in flat plateau.

I cast my eyes in horizoned view
not believing what I'd seen.
The wood in matchsticked pattern
where once proud kings had been.


The landscape now lay barren,
with wood strewn all around.
The stench of rot erupted
from muddy blackened ground.

I wandered off to tell the tale,
of being confronted by this tree,
unsure of what just happened
or why it had chosen me.

I walked for miles in desolate,
through air starved atmosphere.
but met no one along this road,
a winding ***-holed frontier.

I walked until I finally woke.
in spluttered inhalation.
Confused, I feared this reality,
of earth's final damnation.

In darkened dream, my walk was halted,
confronted by a tree,
Awoke, its tale will linger,
forever haunting me

No more warring over God knows what.
No fretting over business matters.
Embrace the silence that precedes the dawn,
Or settles over a red-horizoned twilight.

Just chill on a slumbering beach licked
By a rippling ocean, as the sun sinks down.
Breathe deep and slowly and stay calm as you recline
On softening waves of slumbering sand.

Imbibe that smooth clear golden beer, its snowy head
Soothing your taste buds as it slithers down your throat.
Enjoy the glow of a chasing-whisky
As it spreads to parts that only it can reach.

Lay back and slumber down to dreaming
Peaceful scenes: remembering happy days
When all was well with the world in which you lived.

Sleep well, surrounded by peaceful people:
Miles of smiles from folk just loving life.

Paul Butters

the wine-singing ceases its crescents as the grasses' leaves' small leaves are blown/
by wind. the wind paused by sunrise. airless and plum-coloured. my fire runs grey-dry. i'm drunk./
and well? doesn't poetry arrive here then? imagine my wordliness!: i know things!/
claiming them on some soft days as if the end of time will not yet have happened yet, grand/
as big children in bell-towered schools and the word that is taught to them there. meaning that/
the affront of the word is not something that should compel a throat opening. my throat opens/
without expectation of an other entering. through. and then what if not surprise when they do?/
and after when my tongue turns sarcophagus?: a song?: singing/
black! like mirrors and black! within it saying how here we go again with how the sun did me/
before i was born. how sturdy and taut this sunned-skin is. how apple-mouthed and coffee-bean. here we go again,/
i watch the cars go by my window with great longings of elsewheres. and fear. the red, white and blue flag-flashes,/
passing by glassily and hologrammed in front of me as the question of when, the question/
with the gun, here,/
horizoned./

click. icarus./