"inoculated" poems
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
how sad to be misunderstood
to be evicted from life
to have the full tenure
of a torrid human existence
gesture horribly at you
in faultless reputation
like that of a rancid rage
over a lost trinket
or to be quarantined
while fingerless skin scolds
and noiseless voices are raised
in a donated generosity of savage ignorance
striving to make copious amends
in vain efforts to regrettable
slow acting poison that boils the mind
oh how sad to be misunderstood
such varicose viciousness
oh it’s sad quite sad to be misunderstood
to live through and inoculated hour glass
giving limitless time to a wildfire of idiocy
and when your breath speaks they laugh
black laughter that shatters wet umbilical truths
shudders
knowledge gestures to smoking nostrils
oh how sad, how sad it is to be misunderstood
to be drenched in the rain but not get wet
in which antiquity rests with its
mythologised stupendous ill effects
getting vivid shadows massed all around
oh how sad it is to be misunderstood
until dactylic, hexameter, elegance
completes and slithering syllables
by their antiquity focus a shuddering shriek
that sends an exploding heart through your chest
Oct 3, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 at 4:56 PM UTC
1.
Such vehemence
For immigrants
Border patrol
Vigilance
I never knew
A human being
Could be illegal
2.
A child should never be taught to hate
And human beings must never be insulated
Or inoculated against the horrors of war
3.
There is no liberation in this economy
Debt is a slower and slightly grayer
Variation of slavery
No more cotton fields but prison labor
Tell me where is our great modern emancipator?
Dec 15, 2014
Dec 15, 2014 at 7:13 AM UTC
American city, your roads make me gasp,
Hold my breath with cancerous anxiety.
Your sidewalks,
Ancient ruins of time passed: A failed optimism for Utopian desire:
A house, a yard, a car for every person.
Now derelict, termite infested, but rented.
Chlorinated chemical water runs through rusted, moldy spickets to
Rinse pesticide seasoned vegetables.
And yet they remain so tasteless.
But who cares?
Suburban middle class zombies?
Created with media placed propaganda.
Born and inoculated with DisneypepsiMccocacola ideologies.
Oh Wal-Mart,
how we love your homogenized Chinese products.
Oh America,
how we love your multi-million dollar cathartic films,
They bring my mind to no place and inspire nothing.
Your theme park inspired retail caters to any identity I desire:
I am a professional,
My wallet lined with the best credit cards,
SUV, Hummer, Super boat, designer label, mall bought,
bleached teeth smile, with slick greasy hair style.
I'm cool, I pay for the gas.
Beep your horn, and rev your engine.
We are at war with each other.
Everyone get out of my way: road rage lifestyle: compete or die.
Big screen television dream.
Bought it at Target.
Open my cupboard: Macaroni and Cheese, delicious.
Ambian, Prozac, antibiotic, Listerine.
Collagen bovine beauty:
Manicure, pedicure, dye and wax
Acrylic nails, hair extensions
And silicone sacs.
Oh, American city
How we want to steal your money and **** your blood.
Chop your trees and cement your grass.
American city you are dead.
Jan 11, 2010
Jan 11, 2010 at 6:22 AM UTC
Discombobulated...
"Bob! You late Again!?"
Its not
A statement
You can make
To make her change
The date again
Happy Belated
Birthday celebrations
Embracing
Her forgiveness
As the cure
For your forgets
Forged
Your signature style
Across the lines
Of her smile
As you kiss
With the intent
To signal her bliss
And ignorance
What's in store
For her
Is distortion
This portion of life
Fused with confusion
Contortionist
Twisting
The body
Of lies
With the a prose
That matches
Her pose
Unjustified margins
Never
Crossing the red line
But riding it
Writing with a wit
That could
Split her brain
In half
You call it
The gift a gab
Emotions versus Logic
The verse is
Littered with poetry
Personified
As a woman
Mixed feelings
Remixed
And mastered
To produce
A new product
For you to accept
Instead
You neglect
Her
Collected thoughts
!Implode!
She gathers
The pieces
To gain recollection
Of what happened
To her
To you
To love
She battles
Herself
To win the war
With you
Tie the knot
For christ sake!
Or undue
"To hell
With you!"
She yells
Her voice fails
To really reach you
It takes
Two
To tangle
Not to tango
To tango
Is to dance
And you'd
Miss your step
Every chance
You get
She feels
Obligated
To feel
For her first love
Inoculated
By the drug
That leaves her
Discombobulated...
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 12:17 AM UTC
We all thought he would
Stay here forever, like
So many other lethargic
Sons and daughters of the slough
Who may never have learned what the mustard fields were for.
I escaped early, lucky I
Guess, but never quite let
Go of him, and another year
Gone by, like battered ships we return.
Those eyes are intense and
Hazel in the oncoming
Headlights, buzz-cut
Hair black as the ruins of Haystack Landing.
Once you’re told, you remember what the mustard fields were for.
“I’m different, I mean,” he says,
**** even at dinner with family. I
Freak out, get paranoid, like I’m
Fighting for my life in the Sonoma hills.”
He sighs, “I know you know,
When I come back from
Where I’m going, seeing you is
What I’ll want the most, but--”
I wonder if he knows what the mustard fields were for.
“I’ll probably be real different,
Probably need a lot of help.”
Passing elevated acres of mustard, we
Pause; he says, “Gotta stop for gas.”
This soldier stands in sharpened
Contrast to this rural, liberal
Community, these Victorian
Cathedrals of a quiet isolation.
They will never tell you what the mustard fields were for.
I wonder then if something about our
Air here makes us want to reach out,
Aspire for our names and badges
Across the expanse of war and peace.
Like the murky waters of the turning basin,
History hides a silent violence.
Hatching, we find ourselves inoculated against
Human strains of moral dystrophy.
I went into the world knowing well what the mustard fields were for.
They’re still here, still growing, those
Slender, musky stalks, golden heads
Sweetly pastoral in their floral bloom,
Soft biochemical carpets in a cultivated sprawl.
I know now, I know **** well what the mustard fields were for.
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
a music box of magic words
of circuses, gruesome murders and monsters
a mad logic of connected disconnected things
held together by the drifting mists of dreams
first air and rainbows
destroying pious falsities, telling new tales
of many things to come, flying above the crowd
showing the blinding white distance ahead
of the two ice capped poles
past he various categories
like old people who die when the weather turns
yet there is a desire to summon and expect disaster
you've seen the show, blinding like the sun on water
matched only by the patience
of the floating fall of a ladies silk stocking
a music box that looks immensely vindicated
and in those precious seconds, these busy seconds
that mumble and murmur to themselves
of divine and temporal forces
tastes the whiff of immorality
that possesses that special skin
that cruelty of countless acquisitions
of alchemy especially its capacity to coach sorrow
to teach it to touch the regurgitated
inaccuracies of indentured truth
ah! the music box who returns the echoing roar
of answerless answers with questionable questions
yet inoculated and protected by the vast pleasures
that somehow conceal themselves within the music box
in its rhythms and its clock-work metal innards
cancel out any pain and the half closed eyes that stop the heart
shatter the sky
shower with an avalanche of magnetic attraction
the magic music box, the magic music box
Pandora's magic music box
Oct 5, 2013
Oct 5, 2013 at 10:55 AM UTC
We are human
Walking traumas
Left untreated
Open wounds
Being leeched
To treat
The wrong fever
It is incongruous
Being inoculated
Against the wrong disease
Vaccinated with apathy
So we don’t feel
The sores that bleed
But you have to laugh
We are mortal
Not merely men
Nor women
More like
All the things
Around and in-between
Searching
Sub-consciously
For peace
Trying to sustain ourselves
While losing
Everyone else
Crying
But you have to laugh
We are little boxes of flesh
Lego people made to fit together
Chipped
Scratched
Lost and found
Each stress tearing at our flesh
Rending our skin
Like a thresher
Building internal and external pressure
Till we need release
****** and or emotional
But you have to laugh
Ready to cry
Sometimes
We are ready to die
Till the brain twitches
Till the broken switches
Leave you in stiches
And you see something strange
Irony or absurdity
Life twisted in its purity
On the verge of exploding
Not really knowing
But something hits
Something fits
Presses the right button
Slapstick
Stupidity
Intellectual curiosity
Sanity flipped on its heels
But you have to laugh
A chortle a choking gasp
The tension breaks
The air whooshes past
You have no control
You have to laugh
The world doesn’t change
Much
The feelings are still there
But with each laugh
It gets easier to bare
It’s a chemical reaction
With endorphins and stuff
But I don’t think you care
It’s just what you needed
To fight off the despair
So I say it again you have to laugh
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 3:43 PM UTC
My eyes saw her
And my heart longed for her
And my lips wanted a taste
Of her seething venom
She was a cup
I didn’t want to pass
Without having a sip
That opened a flesh wound
Only she could nurse
Because it could never heal
And any one I’d ****
For her to be mine and mine alone.
On the drags ov the black wine
Brood from African matured raw dark vines
Bitter sweet and sedating like ecstasy
She anesthetized me
Leaving me numb
To the wound she had inflicted
Upon my heart of flesh,
When I let my
Shield down
And left her sizzling arrow
Piercing my heart
Like a thorn for the holy one
Her arrow inoculated a venom
That enfeebled my trembling frame
As I bled love unafraid of bleeding to death!
I looked deeply Into Her dark eyes
My vision impaired,
High from the venom
And partial hemorrhage.
I said slowly
“What is love? Tell me please…”
She smiled and replied…
“I can’t tell you,
I can only show you
Cuz you have prayed.
Love is a tourniquet
To your heart a wound
I can nurse it for you
That’s why it hurts
If you are wounded
By someone without skill
Some wounds never heal
But fear not
For my love is not lethal
And leaving you might be fatal,
Words can never be love
Only actions can be
Thoughts are useless
If never said or expressed
So don’t be afraid
I will nurse your wound
Because mine is deeper than yours”
Aug 1, 2018
Aug 1, 2018 at 6:14 PM UTC
When time ceases and your world falls apart,
When trepidation clouds your imminent future,
For when everything you ever held onto is lost,
and your thoughts shamble past your once glimmering eyes;
For when you stop moving your dexterous arms and just lay,
You feel pain surging through your veins,
Detriment taking over exuberance
fighting your self doubting mind off of deranged thoughts;
For once you feel the need to close your eyes
and fight off the impassiveness that blocks your sight,
For once you just wish this wound would heal,
For your toiled life to just ease into calmness,
To be ridden off the weight piled on your fragile shoulders;
Your mind seives through various ways
To feel the ubiquitous presence of ethereal light,
To curl up in it's peacefulness and inevitably give into it;
Tranquility takes the place of hurt
like an addictive shot of cannabis dissolving into your system;
You feel the penetrating urge to hold on to it
To reach out to your sliver of hope with your scrawny fingers
and grasp it tight,
Your hope of a world inoculated against the social stigma,
Rid of narcissus and his obnoxiousness;
Where for once in your troubled life you would not have to hide;
You feel your numb fingers closing over something sharp,
Possessed by an unquenchable thirst for freedom,
Wanting to insinuate yourself with the ethereal glimpse of hope;
Your breath lies between the blade of wishful virtuality and reality;
Reality, a now tormented word,
a word defining a world arisen out of
A never satisfying greed for power and erudition;
You fathom your cognisant mind to construe the moment,
To feel a sharp paroxysm of pain, a flush of wrong;
An ardor to redefine reality,
To concoct the mundane world scrupulous,
To write the wrong;
The heart now pumps blood of valiance,
Belligerence to cause insurrection,
A piquant taste to live builds up,
To fight for righteousness and to die of victory,
For it is in our nature to fight;
The blade falls into the pit of cowardice,
And reality has been chosen;
Chivalry triumphs over death
and the **** that time is begins to run rampant;
The crusade soaring in your mind now vanquished,
Your fragmented scorched life now meaningful;
For you have been reborn,
a master of time and chaste;
Reborn into a warrior,
one who has fought off the wards of death;
Whose prudence his armour,
Benevolence his weapon,
Candour his speech,
Dauntless his demeanour and
Intrepid his blood.
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 10:00 AM UTC
I asked Vanessa
If she had a cure for block.
You know that whisky dipped, **** ****** feeling of despair,
The **** sure, achy ***** tastes like *** Jesus Monday already,
Realization,
You've said every ******* thing you have to say
Twice.
Vanessa said, only pain cures block,
And after the limp life you've led, she said,
You might be incurable.
Perhaps, and she
Stared at me over the black rims of her glasses
Until I felt damp and exchanged,
Perhaps you have inoculated yourself against all forms of creativity,
Simply by being a ******* wimp.
You pride yourself on being a child, she said,
A L'Enfant terrible, a pretense
Someone who would swear in a church,
Tell a woman her cleavage was obvious,
Or pretend to count your change three times
To irritate the bartender.
All a charade,
The artist as infant,
That’s you!
Instead, here she hesitated,
Of the artist as infinite-
Do you get it, she demanded,
Do you understand the distinction at all,
She asked me,
As half a baguette exploded out of her fat mouth.
I didn't and I began to sulk, withdraw
Bite my lip and pick at the scab on my hand.
Pain you fool,
Vanessa moved closer to my face,
Put yourself in real danger
Buy a ******* ticket to Tangiers or New Delhi,
Take only your passport,
No money, no phone, no safety straps, no underwear,
Just go and see what happens to you.
Yes you might die,
Be drugged and have your organs removed,
Be ***** by philistines with aids,
Who will jeer at your poet’s credentials,
And sell your kidneys,
But go.
Go now
I will drive you to the airport and buy your ticket,
Throw yourself into the world,
Powerless,
And dependent on the conscience of strangers,
Here
Vanessa said,
And extended her hand,
Let me squeeze your testicles blue,
It will stimulate your courage
And uproot and cleanse the black mold
Of your depression.
You cannot watch life anymore,
She pleaded with me,
You are useless now and trite,
Know one thing,
You are not blocked
You are dead.
I’m offering you another chance
At everything.
Jump at it.
Dec 16, 2015
Dec 16, 2015 at 9:23 AM UTC
I'm afraid, these hands that hold my ego are shaking.
I've been inoculated by a dangerous romantic. A feathered creature whose ghoulish eyes seeks for ME.
Me, the serpent hiding in the grass.
Me, the one in the mirror.
The one in the echo chamber, considering less the repercussions.
My vulnerabilities are embarrassing,
My insecurities are medicine for disaster.
Under the layers I find a rune,
This one says honesty, && kindness
Is that you laughing?
This one says tenderness && tranquility
That was just a dream.
This one says I'm in love with you.
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 7:39 PM UTC
1.
A child should never be taught to hate
And human beings must never be insulated
Or inoculated against the horrors of war
2.
There is no liberation in this economy
Debt is a slower and slightly greyer
Variation of slavery
No more cotton fields but prison labor
Tell me where is our great modern emancipator?
3.
You may be shocked
But the truth is
We are strange variants
4.
There are no perfect promises
Life guarantees nothing
5.
Tears of laughter
Veil tears of frustration
Improper reflection
On taboos and tragedies
Burning cities
And dying loved ones
This is not where the
Laughter comes from
But it is where the laughter
Is needed most
Jan 31, 2017
Jan 31, 2017 at 5:44 PM UTC
Her bed
Isn't as interesting
As it used to be.
Her bed
Isn't as enticing
Anymore
To me.
Her bed
Has become
The bed
Of non-marital
Of non-committal
Separation,
Where an imaginary
But real
Wall
Blocks all intimacy
And separates us.
It has become
Holy
And wholly
Immune
To all and every
Non-existent touch,
Immune
To all and every
imagined intimacy
Contrived
Or concocted love.
Her bed
Has become
Just a place
To half-sleep
Half-dream
To lay my head.
Her bed
Has become
Still
Life-
Less,
Loveless,
And the place of
The love-dead.
Her bed
Makes me want to fly away home
To my own
Home
And bed
Though I'll be just as lonely
And alone
As when
I'm in
Her bed.
Her bed
Makes me want to fly away home
To the only true love
I've ever known;
Fly away, fly away
To Jesus
And up to holy heaven
high above
Far away from
The heart
Innocuous,
The heart
Inoculated
Against love.
I need to get her
Out
Of my heart,
Of my head
I need to
Get myself
Home
And out of
Her bed.
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 8:13 PM UTC
The taste of death alters the soul:
once coolly cautious of its effects,
now we are struck hard by its bold proximity
Once filled with dread at its prospect,
now we are at once infected by,
and yet inoculated against its cruel pangs...
It has become part of our world.
In seeing and knowing we learn yet more to fear it,
but also by familiarity to bear it
as one more part of the perplexing picture
growing before our eyes.
Dust returns to dust,
rising from the devastation of our lives.
Yet while grief and rage would fell us,
Life bids us rise up and go on.
We falter forward, resisting the inner call to despair,
with hope in time and endurance
to soften the sharpest edges of pain.
Now in our souls we bear the mark
of ones who have been touched by death,
and we know in our very beings
that we will never be the same
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 11:35 PM UTC
.
I swear there's no desperation ,
~ I'm inoculated with self love.
an amelioration in self appreciation ,
I've taught myself the how.
yet the velvet core in my heart ~
yearns to be caressed
& engulfed in warmth ,
~ feeling summery Hawaii ~
with no snare or snag or con.
for I give the world ,
all my tender zeal ,
and unsolicited adoration -
which backfires, 9 out of 10 ,
Though I never seek, reciprocation.
But, there exists...
a glint
a tickle
of AbSoLutE craving
a spec
a freckle
of great raging longing
for all the worlds attention
to fill my chalice of a soul
- to the brim
~ with affection.
Dec 13, 2022
Dec 13, 2022 at 9:37 AM UTC
many words act like a disease
diseased tongues
licking stamped poems
to send out stinging tentacles
into a world inoculated against love
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 11:18 AM UTC
You have to keep
the child inside alive.
In a cage.
Locked up.
Feed it twice a week.
Enough to keep it alive
too weak to escape.
Make it your zombie.
You have to keep
the child inside alive.
Feed it sedatives.
Feed it poison.
Keep it inoculated.
Brainwashed.
It'll never leave you.
Bound in a small box.
Don't let it grow.
Keep it's bones broken and soft.
You have to steal its teeth.
All of em.
When it tries to bight off its tongue,
bleed out,
it will not die.
You have to keep
the child inside alive.
Don't let it leave.
Don't let it see you.
Don't let it see the man or the monster.
Don't scare it.
Keep it calm.
Don't let it see you.
Don't ever touch water to it.
Don't wash it. Ever.
You can't let it know it can be clean.
Teach it the truth-
That the sun is an angry god
who eats precious things like you.
Teach it the truth-
That the nest of insects inside of your brain can only be quieted to sleep by me.
Don't let it grow and touch itself.
It can't know the
functions of its form.
Wear your mask when you attack it.
The monster in its nightmare becomes something
you must mimic.
Then come in
clean-shaven
to save it.
Leave before it learns
what love is.
You must keep it estranged
because it is something
that you covet.
You must be the savior
of the child inside
and you must never let it die.
If you do,
what will become of you?
Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017 at 1:55 AM UTC
treating her sadly
in his dull pride admired
when his innocence, inoculated
with sour spores,
devolves into thick hides
jaded attitudes
and glazed gaze
raised in the house,
to only look in at the garden
via viewports distorted
Nov 21, 2020
Nov 21, 2020 at 10:24 PM UTC
In pain our skin is thickened.
Fear causes pulse to quicken.
Getting the feeling we’ve been tricked,
so we harden our defenses,
strengthen our immune system.
Inoculated with heart break
After deadly heart break,
until, we become invulnerable;
Losing the ability to feel anything.
Sep 9, 2015
Sep 9, 2015 at 11:40 AM UTC