"preemptive" poems
Are you aware,
did you know,
have you been told
you've got killer voice,
leaving me no choice
but preemptive action...
Let's ensure mutual destruction
of clothes;
my thoughts
made those illegal
in a secret meeting;
that security council
in my head...
while the heart was busy beating,
doing its own thing...
Captives in my cells
twisted and bled out
their escape plans...
Excuse me, got sidetracked,
what's your name again?
I'm twenty-three
but only if you switch the digits.
For a high-functioning whatever,
I must say I'm admirably sane
but you pull the wrong lever,
and the lyrics spill with the melody
breaking the levee.
So what do you do for a living?
That's adorable.
How are we still sitting
and talking here?
You thought I'd be taller;
I was expecting you'd run off screaming.
Let's drink to that, the small victories!
Time will tell what's next
if only we listen,
instead of reading more text,
unless we're OK with missing out.
God, my thoughts do talk loud!
When did your face get so near?
Lips go "clink", and eyes go "Cheers!"
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 10:19 AM UTC
Against the saturated
Horizon of dawn,
Loitering in the dark timbre
Of emerging consciousness -
Dissipating somnolence
And preemptive despair,
Tacitly adumbrate the
Yawning abyss.
Chastened by the cunning and
Lubricious nihilism,
Igniting fermented provocations,
Silent subterfuge; death,
By mirth - the inane;
Lament of the mundane.
Fallow paradigms, accretions of
The last gasp -
Evaporating empty liturgies
Of suspicion;
Charity and equanimity -
Lost in confinement,
Triumphant avarice bearing
Descendants
Of intransigence;
Wielding imperious
Schemes of orthodoxy.
Pollard fragments of
Silken tapestry,
Miasma draped depression
Abridging;
Conversely,
Permuted flurries of anxiety
Dislodge
The vestiges of meaning
That abide
In brazen equivocation.
Tributaries of dogma reach
Their confluence,
Watershed moment,
Numinous effusion
Streams naked epiphany,
The precarious vision -
A gesture of providence,
Certainty and contingency;
Gratuitously derivative, life
Equals choice.
Verdant branches of intention;
And opportunity the vine,
Live forward -
The pen, my voice,
Piquant conduit pouring,
Exuberant wine.
Footprints found in givenness
Underline,
Penumbrae of my soul;
Mirrored silhouettes,
Thoughts and words engender;
And in verse adorn
Fecund soil, Line after line,
The cosmos altered,
Continuum of permanence -
Artist’s art articulating
Essence of my imagination,
I proliferate, I design
Phrases unique,
Participation mystique.
Words creating world,
The apparatus of infinity
Heidegger, ontologically precise,
Language -
The house of Being,
Ineffable, Promethean
Literary devise -
Envisioning possibility,
And abundance to allow,
I occur
Inhabit
Manifest
Future phenomena
Experienced as now.
©2008 & ©2011 W.S. Warner
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 2:02 PM UTC
Mandatory ignorance
Enforced through early cognizance
Until we come to recompense
Serrated lines of quote "logic"
Complicit as an etiquette
Preemptive nondivergence threads
United though we bow our heads
Suspension stasis animus
Alarming lack of sapience
Vendetted waking populace
Intrinsics lost to "evidence"
Orphans to our mother Earth
Regressive ****** immigrants
Staggering seductions ways
Lethargic lecherous hedonist craze
Ambrosia brown to black tar goes
Vivacious love to skanky ***
Entropy or as that goes
Remorse I say might have some pros
Solemnly a lie you know
Empathy not lost on me
Retracting threats though not my thing
Epiphany perchance to sing
Nocturnal beasts of legend spring
Damnation comes to every fiend
Innocuous solutions seen
Perception slanted serpentine
Impressions sit supplanters quit
The jury rarely gives a ****
Yet here Im relating it
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 1:34 PM UTC
there's no rip cord --
your stuck in this stinking shell,
success measured by inches,
lipstick badged for lions,
punchlines thrown like lettuce
at the bravo males,
there's no rip cord --
the evaluation preemptive,
a crooked eyebrow and a sigh
with the lights on,
a slow grind of inadequacy
leading to a clumsy spew,
there's no rip cord --
so most bludgeon bashful cheeks
with wedding bands --
a life locked in rolling pupil sheets,
a kid, a fence, a lawyer, and
an itchy trigger finger
stirred and served with
a green olive.
Mar 4, 2011
Mar 4, 2011 at 2:52 PM UTC
Intellect without emotion, someone told me once. That's how they described me. That I had more wit and sarcastic charm than I could ever need, and yet I couldn't do anything meaningful with it because I lacked anything real…..like empathy, selflessness…or love. I was the cleverest robot in the world.
The truth is I do have emotion. Bounds of it. It pours out of me through cracks I forgot to seal when I walled myself in. And any attempt it makes to grow a garden is flooded by preemptive rain clouds, conjured up by a self imposed reality wherein the world sees my face in the daylight for what it really is and burns down my garden anyway.
I am no robot, I just hide behind cold metal plates and careful calculations, as if I could possibly predict consequences to chances I never take, moves I never make, and broken down walls I never break. So that the outcome is that i'm the loneliest, cleverest robot in the world, who discarded his humanity for a safety net and a bottle of cheap thrills, a bottle he uses as a telescope to see the rest of world because it looks better through the glass.
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 1:17 AM UTC
On the night of initiation,
curves of pale luster began to gleam unwrinkled from the darkened divots along the lunar surface
A perspective unseen for so long, it was viewed as a defaulted “wink” on the face of the moon
And therefore, forgotten, unmentioned, until it’s means were sought
From days ‘fore, and long since now dust
Scribing authors, secrete beads of frenzy into ink filled phial
Sending tremors down, into the quill tip
Filling scrolls for permanence in a preemptive defense against continuous unraveling thoughts would befall
this fluency into incoherent clutter
Pioneers of preprint in a provoking tome,
would speak educated reasons why these areas of Moon had been locked under sealed dark punishment
since Empedocles mixed cosmic elements to breed an undeniable proving truth
Exhibiting the myth of danger
alongside
The established absolute and supervening fizzling sunset
proving the existence of love...
—————————————————-
“Since I have given you words from my within
like the ecliptic rising and burning massive,
Our mutual visibility of late is either one-sided
or
short lived
I’ll take a detour around the comforts of romance
And try to talk my way into your pants
By tossing at you, letters squeezed together,
for your minds transcription into the heart of my subliminal write
In hopes you’ll feel a trickling gush
If I get really lucky these words will find you like a volcano erupts a ****
The same way water, beating against years of stone can fall
And crash through a dam with pouring force so insatiable it’s territory is marked in history
Jun 22, 2019
Jun 22, 2019 at 11:09 PM UTC
A worst-case-scenario mentality
Breeds emotional nightmares of what-ifs
Methodically feeling the pain in each possibility
Preparing for Hell, knowing it is impractical, improbable, and unkind
Each reaction gauged
Smiles erupt in each better choice
A familiar road traveled often
Lead only by a history of pain
It ebbs and flows, bobs and weaves at will
This reality is organized, easy to understand
Random thought of an unlikely, unfathomable future
**Vivid like a film
Unwavering, persistent
There is no control**ling its outcome
Forced to watch the images forged in a broken mind
Tears burn flesh and a naked heart bleeds
Stop rolling, just...stop
No amount of pleading slows the images
The pain is overwhelming
Far beyond self-inflicted, torturous, methodical thoughts
Uncontrollable, inconsolable
True and real
So very real
There is but one way to stop that future
The one shown in visions of just deserts
The future that smolders through present joy
Preemptive pain is just not an option
I've seen the future my heart has built
**The shards of a shattered soul
Offer no comfort**
My worst-case-scenario was but a benign freckle on the elbow of a body invaded by metastatic melanoma
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 5:00 AM UTC
body genre
at a carnal address
sensory and sensuous effects
materiality
digital images
anthropology of desire
she tied a knot around his ****
a wedding band made of licorice shoelaces
for the art of tongue and ****
driving it in her pink throat
back and forth
like a shift stick
flared for the retina
a puzzlement and fascination
haptic screen of fiction
adventure of being pinned down
an unpremeditated punctum
fucktum sucktum
the stadium of desire
a shop window
banality transcending banality
the literal transformed
into the ******
a ****** smiles red
girl in a suitcase
with a hole to ****
a treasure chest
the leaky boundaries of erotica
sing in
musical blood whistles
I packed her up
limbless and threw
her on the bed
and with tender kisses
of endless
wet permutations
banged
three oozing holes
into finger ponds of oblivion
she taunted
age play- ageless
***** class
a weird ethnicity
from Timbuktu
racially motivated lust for a
conveyance of
fleshy intensities
way past help
a big **** dips
a tender dimple
like a barnacled whale
in a deep dive
the violence of
a preemptive strike
for everything imaginable
across raw lips
in her cosmos
of swinging hips
and cross bone riddles
oh happy *****
suicide ******
at the computer screen
**** bullets birthday cake
in a River Styx of flames
Jun 21, 2020
Jun 21, 2020 at 4:40 PM UTC
The firewood kept beside the fence post was soggy, surly was the evening weather, and Mother Nature was redefining the word torrential
A drop to the eye, rendering it senseless. On one side of the spectrum, a crystal or a rock comes from dirt. Although that other side, the side of the spectrum that enlightens by color. A yellow or a blue or a red are useful.
So by that exploitation will become the
puzzle pieces of which the artist creates. Imagine having a thought cross and be ignored. Saying that, maybe the Earth isn't flat, and maybe a Christmas card is not as commercial as it is ceremonial. Perception is one side to say, but the gentleman pouring gasoline on a fire is far from the man asking for a drink shaken, not stirred.
When the fire becomes everlasting, water will not quench a thirst for destruction, and that is because there has never been an accident that could ever be everlasting. The man that knows that does not exit the house with a helmet. He simply raises the proverbial glass and swallows what is in front of him. At times the end brings a sweetness. The only other times are consumed with a bitterness. One that an artist knows as he takes his shot of whiskey, but not of the man that is readily available to set himself on fire. That is a drop of rain on your tongue. At the beginning it is too fragile to become a warning, but at the end it is what separates lands and lives. That is why saltwater and tears aren't that much different.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
Steady the relation between us
For now...
But what of then and now?
When my loss and salvation lie in hand
A pendulums swing from collision
Speeding up as we approach impact
Preemptive...
Too eager to just let me go
I fear upon my flight's return roost's sanctuary will house me no longer
I will fly away, pausing restlessly...
Wonder is all I am
Until again we feed
Will I ever be free?
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 8:50 PM UTC
Drawn to each other by some magnetic force
Someone else pulls the strings on this course
Two magnets attracting each other with a tight bond
Meeting any controversy with repellant and despond
This mysterious force drives us together night after night
Never ever fearing because its our preemptive right
Mar 14, 2011
Mar 14, 2011 at 11:14 AM UTC
Today has a weird air about it,
It’s sunny and bright and still
But it feels like mourning.
Is this preemptive?
Premonition?
Or a soft surrender to all my trauma.
A delicate laying down of flowers,
Soft cloths,
A blanket of tears
For versions of me that never survived
Or who were taken by the darknesses.
Mar 7, 2023
Mar 7, 2023 at 3:59 AM UTC
A red rosegarden submerged by a
flash flood...a break in clouds.
The sun plays across the red
rosegarden, an aqua posterity...
as if luminescent blinds open a
window to a deeper beauty.
The preemptive strike of being
pools their red...swayed in a
drowned breeze--their lucid
signatures gladly sign them away.
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 10:37 PM UTC
The firewood kept beside the fence post was soggy, surly was the evening weather, and Mother Nature was redefining the word torrential
A drop to the eye, rendering it senseless. On one side of the spectrum, a crystal or a rock comes from dirt. Although that other side, the side of the spectrum that enlightens by color. A yellow or a blue or a red are useful.
So by that exploitation will become the
puzzle pieces of which the artist creates. Imagine having a thought cross and be ignored. Saying that, maybe the Earth isn't flat, and maybe a Christmas card is not as commercial as it is ceremonial.
Perception is one side to say, but the gentleman pouring gasoline on a fire is far from the man asking for a drink shaken, not stirred.
When the fire becomes everlasting, water will not quench a thirst for destruction, and that is because there has never been an accident that could ever be everlasting.
The man that knows that does not exit the house with a helmet. He simply raises the proverbial glass and swallows what is in front of him. At times the end brings a sweetness.
The only other times are consumed with a bitterness. One that an artist knows as he takes his shot of whiskey, but not of the man that is readily available to set himself on fire.
That is a drop of rain on your tongue. At the beginning it is too fragile to become a warning, but at the end it is what separates lands and lives. That is why saltwater and tears aren't that much different.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 3:07 PM UTC
We are a generation,
Indeed, a nation,
Raised upon foreign warring.
Scapegoat aggravation.
Bushes and *****
Clamoring for horror and hoarding.
Conspiring against a population,
I watch through youthful aging.
With my childlike eyes, I see
The target they're blaming:
Afghan families having more
in common with me,
Working class American,
Than those transparent heirs
With the world's wealth and arrogance,
Ordering for the villagers' obliteration
Through boys from our nation.
We are a generation raised
On media sensation
Of militarized devastation;
Animal exploitation;
Technological manifestations
Providing privacy infiltration.
Material attainments;
Mental frustrations;
Fiat debt enslavement;
A nation entranced by
Senseless parading.
Tempting decadence and
Announcements with no evidence.
The September bounty of edifice
That fell with no hesitance
Still echo its unfounded,
Preemptive pretenses.
This murderous reign;
this senseless parade;
Advertisement cyclical
in their game of charades;
Dog on a chain;
Famine causing no pain.
Permissible opinions
To be solely maintained.
The damage, the waste,
The heinous race and class chase.
Oppression remains thoughtlessly dangerous,
As moral responsibility brings no attainments.
Chowing down on maimed millions
Bellowing from enslavement.
Fortunately, elder,
Rothschild, Rockefeller, or
Those above them whom
Remain blackened, faceless:
Resistance shall come
From all places, all ages.
Such as this generation of mine
Inheriting increasing complications,
With the type of America
You wish to keep in rotation.
I'll carry the flag containing
Your mistakes as a symbol,
To remind those behind me
What not to rekindle.
To the Boomer who stews
In your white collar suit,
Still refusing to shake
Your destructive pursuit,
Still asking me to lick
Off authority's boot:
Growing up in this nation,
With childhood innocence,
I grew increasingly aware
Of the land of such ignorance.
I had such thoughts since
Early adolescence,
I was not blind to larger lessons.
Only since supported by
Actual, factual supported confessions.
To the Boomer tied to his convictions,
Now will you see-
That isn't going to work
For us or for me.
I'll bring to this world
Whatever I please.
Which so happens to be
Truth, justice, and peace.
Aug 9, 2016
Aug 9, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
Forgiveness. Is it an act or is it a state? You have wronged me so many times that for me, it has become a state, a constant state. I don’t even feel the cathartic aftermath of “letting go” anymore because now my forgiveness is preemptive. You are my father; we sons and daughters are conditioned to love you unconditionally. But to what extent? To our expense?
Love is not synonymous with loyalty. My own shortcomings have made me sure of this, for I have loved another while making love to another. When is it my turn to turn on you? When do I get to scream, and you listen? I’ve been screaming my whole life but your own self-hatred has made you deaf indefinitely to anything but a voice that spews from the depths of your pain, but tis a voice that is not your own, much like the one that exists inside me, regurgitating your dreams at the dinner table. I will not become a soul disfigured by the fear of your disapproval.
Have I become the epitome of hypocrisy? I preach self-expression to those who know nothing but their own self-suppression, though when I am with you I hide my spirit, gone are all traces of a free soul, I imprison my spirit in fear and submission. A man of command and a child of madness, face to face trying their **** best to love one another, but only one has given up trying to understand the other.
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 12:44 PM UTC
Evening darkens upon the moors,
Forgiveness—a hairless thing
skirting the headlamps, fugitive.
Why have we come,
traversing the long miles
and extremities of solitude,
worriedly crisscrossing the wrong maps
with directions
obtained from passing strangers?
Why do we sit,
frantically retracing
love’s long-forgotten signal points
with cramping, ink-stained fingers?
Why the preemptive frowns,
the litigious silences,
when only yesterday we watched
as, out of an autumn sky this vast,
over an orchard or an onion field,
wild Vs of distressed geese
sped across the moon’s face,
the sound of their panicked wings
like our alarmed hearts
pounding in unison?
My family did get lost in an English moor on a dark moonless night. It happened when I was a boy. My mother was driving and seemed to have no idea where we were, or which direction to head. I wondered if we would ever find civilization again. It was a very spooky experience that I drew on for my poem. Keywords/Tags: England, Devon, moor, car, headlamps, headlights, directions, maps, points, routes, strangers, signals, orchard, field, geese, hearts, relationships, parting, separation, divorce, loneliness, alienation, free verse
Feb 27, 2020
Feb 27, 2020 at 2:10 AM UTC
He who works
with mortality
seeks morality.
To be good,
to be kind,
he walks into
the burning
sands of time
alone.
But a man should not
stand alone,
should find a home,
work out his wanderlust
but settle down,
should have a tribe
to stand by his side,
to be his guide,
when he is wrong
and listen when
he is right.
Perhaps,
I am a fool
who is too far gone
and always wrong,
but how far would I go
to come back home
to my friends again.
Will I always be
one second to late
to see them succumb
to the only true fate?
This is not a depressive poem,
merely a preemptive
elegy for the heart of me.
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017 at 10:02 AM UTC
play me the heartbeats
backward in grams,
kardio-electric.
spool your tingled nerves
around again, tighten
until you are young.
then we will breathe
when the sky is blue
reversing the green of
preemptive bomb blast.
watch the clouds dissolve.
the bullets fly back
with an inhale of smoke and
spark, the children never left,
our flags become furled,
unwrinkled, look at your skin.
we are home.
with the willow and
the garden, both
flowing away
so slowly, until the
blood in your lungs
runs hot over baby teeth
stains us here holy
and safe without
breach.
Jun 16, 2013
Jun 16, 2013 at 7:23 PM UTC
Shove your fingers down your throat
Farther farther till your choke
That never was
A friend of mine
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 4:45 PM UTC
anxiety is my middle name
i've got a sore heart and a rusted soul
***** tastes just like water if you drink it fast enough
but tonight is for working, for preemptive fixes,
for hand cramps and write-delete-write-delete-delete-delete
there comes a time where ******** and moaning just doesn't cut it anymore
and you have to slap your cheeks (to pull it together) to stay awake
putting down your security blanket is harder than it seems
but beauty is pain and pain is bloodshot eyes and all-nighters
so the bags under my eyes really are pretty then, right?
true or false:
-staying up all night will wash away your daytime memories like whisky never could
i don't drink coffee
i'm drowning myself in tea too sweet just to make it through the next few hours
because i have so ******* much work to do
it's okay, though, if only because i'm used to being surrounded by a hell of my own design
i can see the bottom of my mug now and it's sneering at me, mocking me
it knows that i'm seconds away from getting up and filling it with more sugar, more hot water
and so i do, fulfilling a prophecy i wrote myself
but to republish a correction: i don't like doing this, despite contradicting evidence
i don't like falling and failing and flailing
i don't like watching myself run out of breath and steam and ideas
i don't like hating myself
but i'm a wreck, a tragedy, a sorry son of a ***** and so i don't try to fix it, not really
i drink tea
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 10:55 PM UTC
preemptive strike
batting zero
i don’t want to walk
this one
i want a homerun
covered in dirt and
sweat because i
slid on home
yeah that’s where
my mind goes
when i dream about you
i’ve already picked
out our anthem
and i haven’t even
kissed you yet
girl
let’s take over
the world
right now
come on
what’re we waiting
for
and you got me
thinking that
maybe we just might
it isn’t a promise
it’s a threat
it may not be
forever but at
least it’s a start
i’m swinging
with my eyes closed
hoping just
hoping i’ll
hear that
crack
smack
connect
like a firework
point to the sky
and maybe with
you
i’ll hit it out of the park
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 1:26 PM UTC
Slashing, swallowing tongues of fire
Igniting his own funeral pyre
The soldier stumbles, heartstrings rent
From his gun’s chamber, bullets spent
Haggard and ruined, he cries surrender
Welcoming death as his soul’s avenger
Faltering, crumbling, face to the earth
He closes his eyes and accepts his unbirth
Sep 29, 2011
Sep 29, 2011 at 4:09 AM UTC
I've inhabited the inner industrial walls of my head
ever since I can remember.
Willing to sacrifice trivial pleasure for thought,
potential and significant conversation
was too often dismissed as lo-fi dissonant crosstalk.
There wasn't an abundance of characters
in the confines of my elitist circle,
which was essentially a nonlinear grey area
suppressed and pulled back out
from time to time for self-evaluation.
I was far too conscious of new-fangled opinions
and young judgment.
Because so little of what I did wasn't preemptive,
even the yellow and orange playground equipment
was compromised,
which was honestly never to inviting.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 2:38 AM UTC
Yet another year has passed in a blur of waste and want, resplendent in good intentions, and captive to the grievous mistakes and wonderous successes achieved in its wake, and I marvel that i am still present to witness times gentle touch get inexorably firmer as its slow breaths draw closer to my cheeks. Birthdays seem a childs delight, yet it was with barely veiled excitement that i awoke this morning, cataloguing the days tasks mentally as I devised preemptive counter measures for the growing list of demands that seemed intent on marauding the simple joy of celebrating my own existence with the people that found themselves, some to their discomfiture, in my life.
It was early this morning when the first notes of the birthday song, the song that every child knows, and every adult can sing effortlessly, erupted in my direction, and i wanted to hold time in my hand, and forbid its passing as my daughter Taylor sang to me, her soft, lilting voice taking care with each word, as if she bled her heart onto each syllable before it passed her lips, and they fell before me in a shower of soft sighs and silky, red regard. I listened, silent, as I heard her say the words, and they weresuddenly a foreign language to me, a magical language lost to common ears, that echoed with beauty unimaginable, and i stood, transfixed and defenseless against the innocent sincerity she placed on each word, as if she bent over them as they lay down to sleep, kissing each on the forehead, smiling as she went to the next.
“Happy Birthday to Daddy…….”
Since she had arrived in my life, i had taken this name, and with it, the promise to try, in the most assuredly imperfect way, to cultivate her brilliant, questing mind, and to attempt to be the example by which she would measure a man. It was an honor, that name, coming from the lips of an angel, whispering the love of God in a childs song, and i could barely hold the tears as they threatened to seek refuge at her feet, and revere her name in dripping splashes along the ground. Twice today, she sang that hymn to me, and twice i fell in love with her as her sweet little voice lifted in the refrain. “Happy Birthday to Daddy….”. She was, I thought, my sweet, beautiful little girl. As she sang, the sun peered down upon the earth, its baleful eye softening with the rising beauty of her song, and the trees swayed with the words of her adoring communion.
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 9:52 AM UTC