"preface" poems
#Preface
This is not aimed at a single person, nor written for applause. It is a naming, a mirror, a reminder that truth spoken with accountability carries its own fire. The Witness belongs to anyone willing to bear that flame, even for a moment.
This is not accusation, but naming in clarity:
Projection is the currency.
The herd is the instrument.
Seduction is the method.
Obscurity is the shield.
And when truth enters,
it unsettles the herd.
The first defense is always the lullaby..
soft verses sung to calm the trembling,
to cradle the anxious back into sleep.
But the lullaby is no vision;
it is anesthesia, a narcotic of words.
It soothes so that no one questions
the darkness that holds them.
Yet the mantle descends where it will.
A word spoken in accountability burns like flame,
piercing the fog, shattering the spell.
Even for a moment, it breaks the hold
and shows the rulers for what they are:
*unclothed,
powerless,
undone.*
#
Sep 26, 2025
Sep 26, 2025 at 2:25 PM UTC
ken not the
vive la différence!
entre les deux,
these two bed and head chambers,
for all poets are seducers,
regardless of *** race, creed or color
when first we employ our working, yeoman vocabulary,
we plain start,
to relate but not to regale,
the whom we are,
hoping our moments unique,
will breach the boundaries
of our collective commonality connectivity,
and find human receptivity
thus, the seduction of self commences
though every possible combination of words has somewhere been inscribed and committed, we ****** ourselves
(the seduction of poetry)
with potions of notions that we are and always be our
first, and now soon forever,
yours as well
of course, we are, it's true,
our very own first admirer & lover,
having conquered the hillock of self,
see the universe expanding and the
****** need to conceive
and prowess to please
beyond the beyond with
the poetry of seduction
do not want your body, heart or soul,
commitment, allegiance, vows,
sacred or profane,
all such in vain
crave your everything,
not even a legal nine-tenths satisfactory
dare not call me arrogant or presumptive,
gaze upon the mirror that cannot lie,
rereading thy words assemblage,
and deny to lie to yourself
want you, you want me,
my adoration,
we want to be in
a poem together,
lovers at the molecular level
where words dissected into letters, then again,
into guttural sounds where a simple outcry is an elegy,
a love poem, a wound, a denouement, a preface, a tear,
a welling, a heaving, a sigh, an exhalation, all,
an entrance to where the need for words
is long since past
the sin and crown of seduction completed,
unanimously
now breathe out
and then,
breathe in
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 3:54 PM UTC
The principal in a cool cartoon tee
His fashion sneakers squeaking across the floor
Sets out candy, pizzas, and canned sodas
Arranges a door prize, and assembles the faculty
Requires them to sign in so he can check on them
Orders them to hold hands and sing the school song
Reminds them they are all one big family
As a preface to his primary agenda:
To tell them to be more professional
The principal in a cool cartoon tee
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 3:57 PM UTC
1088
Ended, ere it begun—
The Title was scarcely told
When the Preface perished from Consciousness
The Story, unrevealed—
Had it been mine, to print!
Had it been yours, to read!
That it was not Our privilege
The interdict of God—
5.7k
Please let me preface
I dont like people
crouds make me cringe
and while i value my friends
i highly value my solitude
------------------------------------------
I cant picture a face
when i close my eyes
when my mind trys to grant
that one final human wish
before slumber encompases my body
and reality and dreams interlace
For i have no soul to match with mine
nor a soul to follow
in deepest secret with the fleeting hope
that maybe our souls shall intertwine
But i wish not for two to meld
for hearts to pledge an undying vow
for lust and ****** greed
for billowing convorsations
But silence
An individual respect for ourselves
two beings gracious for company
bodies laid side by side
your fingers tracing circles
on blank canvasses of skin
Where there is but an understanding
that breath so silent can be pleasently shared
and electic touch soulfull
igniting warmth surrounding my heart
of which embers burn soft and hot
Where aching muscles
tense from harsh realities
are smoothed away with solid hands
a mutual relationship where the
solidarity in thought is aknowlegded
yet the pleaure derived from presense
a caring being holding steadfast
unwilling to let me go
gentle and kind
Where the silence of
spiritual understanding guides
the instictual need for
companionship
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 10:59 PM UTC
Preface
**When the broad mind has opened, to gaze the stars that shinning in the unfathomable skies and the glittering Nature, its flowers’ fragrances given to taste the wealthy realms of her, as well as Earth's mysteries—that I ever think of to feel and by my thoughts that spread so deep to try to work with things that sounds of ‛creative’. Here I the ‛moody soul’ started his first journey, leaving his home a few years ago and his up-start was through Literature, Science and Arts and Fiction. Writings and paintings here I believed to be most powerful and that those more often need to convey by the Artist’s conscience and the intensity that gains moral knowledge and appreciation. Here the book has the pictorial paths of Quest and the wanderings, all by imagination’s boat, sails from the western Ideas and its enthusiastic flow. Some finds hope along and also hopelessness, God and Love vagabonding among these ink-stained pages.
Dreamt in the wandering world where no chains shall bind, from the dark veiled lands to the daring spark, no atoms that obscure the force calling light, to aim the glad precious moments of life, to embrace me with a silence and its whispering magic, where gate of hope’s always open to bliss, thundering words are always from roam, the nocturnal pleasure that I only know, and when all will run away as time—why I alone in the upward steps of solitude that caressing wild only wings?
If I met Life as a strange stage of different senses—and I only say you to enjoy the aggressive fruits of my invention. Here it is for all of you can read and evaluate.**
Nithin Purple
Acknowledgement
**This book is dedicated to my parents of Love and support,
from where I got the powers to be inspired—to write and prove.
Special Thanks to Parisian Author and poet Roman Payne of
‛cultural book’ for supporting me as a writer of varying tastes. Also Writer, Wilson B Sanchez of New York, who first gave suggestions
and his valuable sparkling comments of self-improvable topics, which I always bother. Belated friend, poet and writer, Curtis Plaskon from France for his valuable support. Also Poet Timothy & Hilda from Virginia, to them I had good writing memories. And for all the Indians, this book is an open heart to read.**
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 3:06 AM UTC
"Life is so fragile. Love when there is love. Don’t mistake the moon as the preface to dawn. Sometimes there are only stars…"
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 11:39 PM UTC
in the river of good company
***I dedicate this poem to
Mr. Harlon Rivers,
one of the best poets (here)
and from his good company,
i could drink all day and
never be quenched***
~
Preface
sometime, the heart wants it wants,
denial, temporarily from your vocabulary, excised
sometimes, beauty keelhauls you, gets you
awestruck inspired, then arrogance overcomes
the brilliance of common sense and you go ahead and
mess with perfection despite every sensor flashing
uh oh, duh, oh no, fool on the premises, lockdown needed!
do believe this condition can be found in the medical books
under I, for Inspiration, Incantation, or S for Stupidifacation
my heart wants to write a poem,
cause I was a witness, sitting twenty feet
from the heavenly crime scene,
and every intonation swept my brain into that secret place,
when I heard KD Lang singing "The Valley"^
~~~
in the river of good company
simple sentiment but good god
all I ever wanted and so oft lacked
such was my fate, one I made,
had plenty good words for boon companions,
the occasional touch of a woman rippling waves
cross my face, a love lapping slapping
of concentric pebble rings,
till like most good things
gone good goes bad,
it just happens to evaporate and
you think someday, maybe,
you will walk again in good company
the brain says quit right here
but the heart brooks no damning tantrum of sanity imposition,
for those handful of deepest, not quite six feet under
palpitations of insensible, cutting glimpses of that word I hate so,
memories,
of when
you walked in good company
men women no different - it is that heated aura
tween bodies that confirms that you are once again
a human being, just a being, temporarily
enhanced, elevated, by good company
so go ahead sweet talks ya, that devil id a/k/a desire, says -
one more for the road can't hurt ya,
write that poem -
and perhaps one good man, glory hallelujah, a good woman,
will read it and you can stop weeping you idiot,
do it so you will be back, nuttier but nurtured,
drinking from the river of good company,
mouthing not even dare whispering,
satisfied satiated, loving and loved
~
all reposts greatly and grateful appreciated!
4/2/17 9:24am
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 9:27 AM UTC
"...FRESHER FIELDS THAN FLANDERS..."
Christ! Even the Son
of God can get it wrong!
Time his Second Coming
to end up in WW1.
To us he looked like one of the 'Un!
To the 'Un he was one of us.
Both sides let him
have it.
Him who had come
to die for us
and by God
He did.
Hung on the barbed wire
for days on end
we all thinking will it
never end.
Crying for His Father
getting on our ****** nerves.
Some say they saw him
at the Somme
some say at Crucifix Corner
"...forgive them for they know not..."
it went on and on
'...what they've done."
But I had by gum!
I pitied the poor ******
Crawled out under
****** fire.
Put my last ciggie
between his lips
made of nothing but
tea leaves....liquorice...treacle.
"Thanks mate.!" he gasped
with his last breath
turning into young Tommy
Smith at His Death.
A right good lad I knew
from Hudersfield.
Shell shocked
they said I was.
I wasn't.
All men are the Son
of God as it happens.
Even a dead 'Un is one.
The Son of God is forever
getting it wrong.
Christ! Will He ever
learn.
Timing His next Coming
to land up in WW11.
Other Wars
waiting in the wings
for Him
to come again.
Wish He would just
give up on us.
He's of no ****** use
whatsoever.
Death is a better
friend.
Survival as I know
is Hell.
***
***
"...FRESHER FIELDS THAN FLANDERS..." is the last line of a Preface that Wilfred Owen intended for his book.
Was first going to write a sci-fi thing with the Saviour coming down at just the wrong time. But as I wrote I remembered an old man I used to look after who would tell me about his WW11 experiences and of his grand dad's tales from WW1 so that it ended up as a mixture of the real and the unreal in the surreal situation of war and all it entails.
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 4:13 PM UTC
I've sought, throughout my entire life, what were inevitably all for naught; to beseech a heart as this
I would have traded all before it just for a moment to embrace it with all my own
This is the preface of a blessing unto a man who lost faith, long ago; the echo of a voice what crept in through mere dreams and left with stoic wanting of what never could be found before
I yearn to give my heart for this
Dec 23, 2017
Dec 23, 2017 at 2:09 AM UTC
2am Friends
winter has set the boundage, bars of chill, escape-urge killers,
self-imprisoned by our ruthless timidity, that both comforts yet,
worse violates our truthful, unwanted inadmissible-neediness by
purging the touches and the knowing kindage, this then,
this preface, your reminding of-as-of-yet untouched,
half-invitational, half-regret, half-cursed, whole red need for
2am friends
to fill the void that poems can n’ere fill
1/1/18
Jan 1, 2018
Jan 1, 2018 at 11:36 AM UTC
Frozen moments,
embraced,
visions of
luminous things,
unpretentious
pearls dancing;
embers of memory linger,
elegy of the lachrymose,
this horizoning self
lying low in saturnine
tranquility
and repose – paternity lost
to the provisional.
The cross of lassitude,
forming
scars of loss;
estrangement,
preface to
ineluctable autonomy.
Earthen treasure - immortal
footprints, the migration
of fair maidens across my
effusive heart.
Venus trio in bloom,
aesthetic allusion,
ephemeral incarnations
of beauty - perishable fruit,
transcending the plebeian.
Aerial substance-
the hermeneutic,
betraying desire’s
ambrosial tyranny;
The permuted passage -
savor the sojourn, submit
to the fated peregrination.
Purple orchids blossom,
immortal creatures,
culminating
in perfection
from the sheath
respectively,
each plume,
singular,
the continuum of
splendor, mediate
the inviolable.
Eternity compounding,
time and essence suffuse
the already and not yet
into an
orbiting mosaic.
The susurrant devotions
of a satellite father,
summon the quest -
both, and,
absence and proximity,
conduits of
distress and peace
ironically,
solace and
terror
traverse the
same path.
Plunge though,
deep, the depth of pain;
deeper, sweeter
the taste of pleasure.
Engender and witness,
window into
preeminence,
surface azure,
the sacred -
inimitable gravity of
grandeur,
ma petite,
you - are
lived poetry
seen and heard;
cosmic order,
a mediating heuristic -
to love is to see,
in the dismal,
gift of distance.
child of delight,
evermore, Don’t I hold you?
Beauty and strangeness,
music found
in linear,
secret places
beyond the tangent,
purview of limitation,
arousing imagination -
infinititude as near
as it is far.
Long loneliness -
dissonance that
resolves;
perceiving,
the tertiary refrain -
as exquisite verse,
and matchless liqueur,
sublime gratuity
derived
through
doors of surrender.
Daughter,
in adoration and wonder,
I hold you.
Jan 19, 2012
Jan 19, 2012 at 5:25 PM UTC
Sitting by the Birdbath~He noticed the sloshing had suddenly stopped~Looking over his book to take a Gaze~A bird he did not see~but He DID see a Face with legs~Glaring with RED eyes~that had a piercing effect~making him not fear~but rather be Drawn~to this face on the Birdbath~He saw no wings~but as he approached~he watched the feet Push the head upward~Wings from his ears~stretched it seemed for 20 feet~And as it Lifted~not screeching as a Bird might do~but simply with firm clear WORDS~stated; I'll return at Midnight, , , BE Ready for the Journey..........
Apr 2, 2011
Apr 2, 2011 at 11:29 AM UTC
*This, is a journal strictly for an open mind. One that's willing to explore the wonders hidden within the ambiguity of reading or writing. It is for a mind willing to take on thinking about the obscure mysteries of life. The ones that remain taboo to others.
This, is a journal where limits don't exist. Where worries of others opinions fade into non-existence, for you are in your own matrix right now.
This, is a white canvas waiting to be filled in with the strokes of your brush. A blank slate waiting, eagerly, to be filled in with your naked, non-societial conforming thoughts.*
Dec 8, 2014
Dec 8, 2014 at 11:53 AM UTC
~for Isabel, Alex & Wendy, Theo & Rose~
be reading Whitman and Hafiz,
adding some Shelley and Frost,
for (no salt) seasoning, might add in
a biblical, King Solomon’s be-loved,
sugared Song of Songs…
won’t need to go far, on my nightstand,
search & reach, to love and preach to
generations next, a lesson last & simple:
read, read, read there by learning,
how to first define, then preserve the
variety of feelings rising from within!
here’s a starter morsel from Walt,
sort of a summary of how to do it,
all well and proper…
poppy
”This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families,
read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life,. re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Walt Whitman
Preface to Leaves of Grass, 1855.
Walt Whitman, c.1887.
Aug 16, 2023
Aug 16, 2023 at 4:08 PM UTC
I was an idiot back then,
those trips to Rebekah's hovel.
though they did make me sentimental,
for the days when her dad had taught me guitar
for eight weeks when I was thirteen.
she told me of a suicide dream
that utilized her iron deficiency.
I told her I would tell her parents
if she started pushing it in motion,
that made her cry,
though in retrospect, I wanted her to die.
I was at that misery factory age
when your heart pumps nothing
but razorblades and jealousy,
and the death of some overly-depressed
girl would at least give me a story to
tell.
I was a pseudo-lover,
writing page upon page
of poetry for Sheila,
I used an alias for her:
"Nature's Criminal".
It felt appropriate.
what she did to my
emotions seemed rather
unnatural.
we would kiss on dark, dirt roads,
and duck when cars would passby.
she would always preface
our encounters with,
"remember this doesn't mean anything."
now, Rebekah only writes to tell
of artists signed to Saddle Creek.
she got married to some diabetic,
acne-marred, sex-fiend that
bares the burden of a pet peeve
that revolves around bananas.
now, I only see Sheila,
when some boy is ********** her,
when she feels beyond used.
in her parasitic apartment,
I always remind her
they don't mean anything.
Dec 22, 2010
Dec 22, 2010 at 8:35 AM UTC
by Gary Snyder
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with–"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"–in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 2:27 PM UTC
mini
[=small car]
mal
[=preface
as in 'malformed']
minim
[=musical note]
al
[=aluminium]
minimalism
is
art
in
its
simplest
form
its
fundamental
features
in
words
[start again from the top]
[read beckett]
in
art
[look at stella]
[look at judd]
in
music
[listen]
[hear]
[each]
[note]
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 3:01 PM UTC
You can't see beyond the cover
Of this book
The preface, the synopsis is great
but you won't even look
There is imagery inside which is breath taking
and blinding gorgeous.
But will never be read
you will buy a book with a flashy front cover
Never even see me as a potential lover
I could be all you wanted
But my love for you is an ellipses...
Or a full stop.
Because it can never be
because you believe the thin surface of skin
is more inviting.
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 3:25 PM UTC
*
Is your body, so yielding, so tender;
Is your sweat, too salty, so render !
In my whispers, a passion desire;
burns for true lust to fuel the fire !
black book written; with no preface;
Pain never speaks; nothing on face ;
lodged to have love; longed for hate;
Life begins and ends up in debate;
touched, kissed, hugged each other;
vowed in a ******* to one another !
*
BY
WILLIAMS G MAVELI
[email protected]
www.williamsji.com
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 5:09 AM UTC
Neither man nor machine,
these beings; being pipe dreams
were conceived by the silver screen.
Unseen by the naked eye,
they have taken you and I
by surprise like a tractor beam.
Neither the factor of genes nor factories
nor anthropological capacity.
These beings, being faculties of thought,
predetermine the preface of the plot.
© Matthew Harlovic
Mar 17, 2016
Mar 17, 2016 at 12:22 PM UTC
bring two cups of tea
to the eye of the storm
and let us drink them
under the cold barrage of voices
let us write a book on the soil
with a preface written by gods
and a dandelion index as boundless as time
let us write about an earth
in which tree leaves are sacred
its rain is the verdict of fluttering
and its children are the blue pellucid of life
and its people prostrate to the skies
let us speak of an earth
on which tulips don't grow*
swallows stay and plant dandelions
let us write a book
in the diameter of dreams
in the length of smile and width of tears
with the weight of seedlings
by the ink
dripping from the lips of spring
— M. Melia
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 11:22 AM UTC
we started out in a
in a parking lot
with no shopping cart
look at us now
appeal to her desperation
for a moment in her sunshine's bravado
she dose not think beyond the moment despite my effort
i drink her in
and she is such sweet nectar
it is thinly disguised that she is no
snowbunny as she pulls herself from my bed
her deep rich tan only flavours my desires
as i pull her back in
her thick musky taste so intoxicating
flawless in her unique beauties
we lounge in the sun's dying breath
and quietly marvel at the skyscape of colours
she places casual hand on my arm
and i catch breath
isn't to be read into
but see that allure inspite
and with that desire lingering plunge slowly back
into her subtle skin
into the long sweet night of her lips
once again i float the rational
shes as smart as sinfully beautiful
but with a quickness
towers of the absurd fall under pretender's preface
she entangles me with the most sinister of **** laughs
and we spend the night deep in eachother again
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 6:58 AM UTC
Through cold New England January's air
I saw him (Frost) squint,
iconic
from across the East Portico,
culturally symbolic
on a platform above me (I was twenty-eight).
Years later I knew the paper
he held hard to read,
his hotel's old typewriter
running low on ink
the night before.
The illegible poem a preface
to the one Kennedy requested -
the one he'd read years before (ca. 1942)
in the Virginia Quarterly Review,
eyes watering.
Frost stood there, faltering
in the new-fallen snow's reflective light,
half-blinded,
and I was twenty-eight as I thought,
"Kennedy:
cultured man,
sycophant, or...?"
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 3:49 AM UTC
Neon lights from salt rusted beach buggies, gypsy camels and a faint memory of dollops of colour reflect under the milky moon that hangs unnaturally low.
In the car window, the reflection of her pensive eyes are overlaid with the mischievous moon, and a vendor selling animated light toys skip like stones that never sink -
ceaseless ripples in the unconventionally eerie and curious night.
They say the moon has this unnerving attraction to the earth -
a pull, compelling and persuasive. Like a tangled ball of yarn it is unkempt, woven out of threads of enigmas. Each of us having a loose end of the intermingling threads tied around our waists, like our own invisible axis.
Every time our thread is tugged, almost like a reflex we are compelled to look up like a reminder that we might live on earth - on the ground, but our eyes, minds, and our souls are infinite.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 6:08 PM UTC