"sibilance" poems
Love is a thousand women who fail to amount to one,
Peasant seductress with bared shoulders of red dun-colored roads and candle smoke,
Who pours down her wet, ungoverned hair, like a fast-fading storm to dry over Aurelian walls,
In that dark sneer of sultriness over the sentry-like stillness of ramparts and stone,
A wasp in water whose sibilance comes from what the sting makes,
Like the upgathered phalanx of spears in the sand,
Or the sisters of fate who have coiled their hair as sunset snakes,
Her fingertips ***** into me like much-traveled and ancient rain.
Apr 23, 2023
Apr 23, 2023 at 11:03 PM UTC
How wonderful it is, I say, to the retreating
yellow form of your feelings I mistook
For Infatuation, you’re a romance heckler
far and far away from
Accepting fruition within classrooms and
being labelled as an angel.
And it was within forbidden hell of
euphoria, I found
You nestled in the society’s psyche
neither content or calling
For help. Neither did you neglect the
pink spectacles of the society,
Even found yourself moulding and moulding
into a fungi green
That I could not recognize, within that
half-sanctum, half-oasis I found you
absentmindedly
Bathing in, you were already out of
its waters.
And I was no longer seeing you within
the dry desert or the sibilance
of my desires, but instead
in cement woodlands and
Within artificial communication and
Intimacy I gave willingly.
Now how does it feel, to have your
heart in one piece,
How does it feel to not use
whipped cream to fill in the
Cracked, salty sections of your
own ***** that,
Out of confusion, continues to
play its favorite song but
in all the wrong beats.
Somehow within cacophony I found
you, nestled, comfortable in
Bogus, fraudulent wings of a former
angel- who now weeps under our
Feet in theory- Somehow, somewhere,
I lost you within an epiphany
That reeked of bliss and pleasure-
Somehow, we end up losing
Twins of the heavens when all is well.
How wonderful.
How wonderful it is, I say, to your
lost, secretly-weeping figure
That I can’t tell whether transparent or
yellow your figure is.
But I keep speaking-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To love the first angel I’ve set
my eyes upon-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To lose an angel, no matter how
phoney, to a social heaven.”
- enriko. aug 5. 11:45pm
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC
Dangling sweet ambrosia scents
Repose upon the jasmine bench
Easing sorrowful soughs
Amidst lamented long slipped
Melancholy memories singing
Suserant soliloquies in stillness
--bruised orange
Oct 7, 2011
Oct 7, 2011 at 12:15 AM UTC
as the shimmering stars
in the scorpio skies
samba in syzygy,
here on scorched earth
the sparkling eyes of this silk rose
become stress’s antidote to soothe body and soul.
feeling sanguine,
even a tad sangfroid,
i smile,
scribbling sultry muses
sauced with sass and sibilance
© 2021
Nov 20, 2021
Nov 20, 2021 at 9:23 AM UTC
Willow herb floating
on silent certainty
ashes of sighs
not fleeting,
unvapoured on the
blossom of the rain,
I am too light to
pull or push
the swing of delight
through this land.
The rain left me for a
while
sun unshielding
-a thousand widows
more unyielding than the depths . .
Once shadowed whisperers
of delight,gossamer
sparkling , descending
their chains
of necromantic hope.
Lilith is no night owl
she is mother, eve
and my becoming:
sweet earth spun
at once ,
exhaling her .
The see saw
bumped gently
on my chin
it is a most gentle
form of awakening.
The silence bore no whispers
till sinking through the quicksand
-or was it quicksilver?
-in any case I could smell little
in my amniotic amnesia.
I made ten thousand friends,till their soap
made this place clean.
Is this a seed or a dying
hopefulness
-is my sallow sowing
beyond all shores of
reproduction;
a reflection of the child
they dared not bear?
Is my last breath like this
a forgotton yielding
will they catch me
as I fall ?
-(sweet earth)-
This moth of my ending,
a shallow recantation,
my fears-
their memories, mere
testubes of
stylish hope .
I breathe the elegant stare
you have forgotten .
Once more free
from such
rememberance
I need not ,
remained not ,
your imploded ,
wakefulness .
A thousand pardons
exhaled like silk
entwining
an unfinished race
spider of a thousand eyes .
One may say
I was
stared
to death
but surrogate air
mocks childish pity.
Taut refelexions
bear salt echoes
in silk convulsions
fresh water
a veneered hope .
Easier in death than life
is a child's sorrowed
partings ,
the illusion of
bouyancy
rippled tides
unfelt.
The oceans have not enough salt
for such shrunken sorrow.
if we could but once
have shared
unbreathed aspersion .
The room has come and gone
the pillow quite undry
unforgotten
unremembered.
A web untouched
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 7:46 AM UTC
I wish I could formulate-
into poems and stories,
fiction and film
the way your eyes
show the innocence of love
and the vulnerability of trust.
I lost myself when I found you-
in the most extreme way
I found double entendre's
inside your tone of voice
and sibilance in your silence.
But it was never your intent
it was and has always been
my greatest downfall
putting more into others
than I will ever get back in return.
Slowly, I am crawling back to
the skin I used to find comfort in
and the smile I used to hide behind.
You brought me out from underneath
the mask I had spent years painting
beneath my eyelids
and above my cheekbones.
The scars from my old skin have faded,
but the wounds from my mind are still present.
It may take some time
but I will form a new exterior
and it will no longer be just a mask
I will run far from the person
that didn't quite love herself
and I will run into your arms
no more self harm.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 12:54 PM UTC
My heartbeat ticks like a clock on most days
the pounding of my chest reminds me I don't have much time left
I start to wonder why being shaped like an hourglass is such a good thing.
We are always running out of time.
So much so that we don't even count when we reach a mile-
in high school they train you to keep time
but somehow you always end up running and running away from it.
Other kids shamed you for not completing the mile fast enough-
but your body thanked you for not pushing it so hard.
There are days when my alarm wakes me up before the sound comes
like my body somehow knows my time for sleep has ran out.
Things are constantly running away from me-
kind of like you.
I try to slow down the hands to this clock
but as yours wrap around my waist
it only speeds things up for me
because I no longer pay attention to the sound of my heartbeat.
Yours is the only ticking I can hear on those days.
I find myself using too many metaphors
and not enough alliteration or sibilance-
or any other methods of poetry for that matter.
I am too busy organizing these thoughts too quickly
so they do not run too fast away from me.
My mind is something I'm always trying to catch-
trying to keep these emotions in order and on cue
so I don't run out of time with you.
But somehow I end up losing it,
all of it and I am on the brink of insanity again
because how can you feel secure
when you don't know how much time you are wasting
I do not want to waste all this time with you.
If I am just another hour on this clock of your life
it will be the best **** hour you will ever encounter
because the rest of mine are spent trying to place
these emotions that have run out on me.
Spent trying to learn how to keep time,
how to keep them in mind
how to not let them change who I am again.
But see these emotions are not an alarm clock-
they are a pop quiz
an erupting volcano that has been dormant for years,
a hurricane you knew was coming but you weren't sure when,
an hour of detention that goes by so painfully slow
you contemplate your entire life.
These emotions don't come every other sunday-
they don't become planted in the soil inside of me
and sprout when I water them.
They are the dust that collects under your bed
from the particles of your skin-
and you don't know they are there
until you clean out the things you've been meaning to for a while.
My life is all metaphor and not enough logistics.
Not enough order and routine-
the only thing keeping me is time
and the dust has settled again.
It had rested in the lining of my lungs
and sits in the bridge of my nose-
it won't be long until it collects and overflows
and I am dealing with the consequences of not keeping
this life in order, in detail, I made no room for cleanliness.
There is no freedom inside of this mess,
inside of this wristwatch that will not leave
even when I try to cut it off.
The ticking of the clock is all I hear-
it aligns perfectly with the sound of my heartbeat.
I fear it will stop ticking
I fear I will stop feeling
I fear this heart will stop beating.
Tick. Tock.
Tick. Tock.
Tick.
Oct 24, 2015
Oct 24, 2015 at 10:14 PM UTC
You require at least three similes.
A metaphor or two.
This section needs more sibilance,
and another allegory on alliteration too.
Creative writing
now a standardized test
where a poet seems
to do slightly poorer than the rest.
You receive a checklist, told
bye and buy the book.
Drain away the colours upon your pencil
or face the examiners sickle and hook.
Creative writing
now a slog a convoluted use and reuse
of that which
"improves"
your descriptions and inscriptions.
You need a conclusion.
something befitting a happy end.
Try anything smart
and a bad grade i'll be "sure to send."
Jun 7, 2016
Jun 7, 2016 at 11:09 AM UTC
times like this, the plenary moon
tonight wearing many faces,
the white-washed truant at bay
white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
of say, prongs of fire on the kiln
the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
what the heat of placeness mints underneath
our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.
we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of light’s bendable
rondure harnessing a truth we let in.
I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
like a well-oiled machine. what do you hear?
we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
or the wild sibilance of breath trying to utter something,
going back home with a song in between teeth,
without words.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 6:56 AM UTC
Testing:
One,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Sibilance,
Sibilance,
Hello,
Hello
Yo!
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 2:20 PM UTC
Alright page…okay, fine, I admit it;
I've been avoiding you.
Your face, beautifully smooth and innocent, reminds
me I have yet to find the time to paint it…so:
I apologise,
to the eyes I should have coated in the eyeshadow of
romance (scorned, loved, lost, lived)
to the cheeks I should have blushed with eroticism
to the ears I should have punctured with anger and
passion and vanity
to the skin I should have smeared foundation over: covering
bad rhymes like concealer over spots (still there, just less obvious)
to the lips which I should have animated with laughter and
sarcasm.
I apologise,
to the body of the poem which never:
Felt the stanza of a corset
Felt the **** lace of an internal rhyme
Felt the bra of a title
Or the shimmering dress of a metaphor
Or the thrill of removing every last bit.
I've missed a million date nights, and I
want to try to fix it.
Please? Despite our marriage of minds, we have drifted, I'd like permission to take our hands on a date once more
Letting the wine of ideas pour between
Sighs of Sibilance
complete contentment
Tasting the catharsis of your lips
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 7:46 PM UTC
I have walked this street too long
My legs hurt and my chest rattles
As I light another smoke
To fuel my endless march
Sneaky slow-motion suicide
(note the sibilance of the wheezing lungs)
I have to stop for a while
But though my body fades and fails
My manic mind remains restless
Merciless and remorseless
Pushing punching and prodding
And defiant unto the coffin
Get the lid down quick, boys
By Phil Roberts
May 28, 2016
May 28, 2016 at 3:38 AM UTC
I followed a writer up a tall tree
And every leaf was his poem.
Once at the top I could look out
Over a sprawling poetic landscape –
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom,
O’ vast quivering sibilance of
Melpomene and Thalia!
And there I remained
Until a long winter wind came
And undressed each tree!
So from my perch,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…
The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “so many writers,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy.”
And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over resting leaves
while red and rust
ran from their veins
Into the rich palette
of my memories
O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 6:48 AM UTC
I followed a writer
up a prodigious tree
Every leaf I brushed,
his poem.
From the crown
I scanned the pastoral
a poetic landscape in repose,
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom.
O’ vast vibrato of sibilance
slipping the breaths of
Thalia and Melpomene!
Alight by dusk, I lingered.
Comes the long wind of winter
to undress each tree!
So from my aerie,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…
The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “here so many,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy…
recite their odes
of heaven and hell.”
And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over quiescent leaves
while red and russet
ran from their dendritic veins
Moldering into the palette
of dormant memories.
O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
From the rot of the roost
to the dust below boots,
by the pen of the winter writer
Spring will come again.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
S is the 19th letter of the alphabet.
I had to count twice on my fingers to be sure of that.
It glues together many, many words.
It fixes people to the walls.
It shrivels fruit in the bowl.
It sticks us all in the same soup ****
Let's swim.
You have 19 reasons to die,
written out like manuscripts in manila folders
populating a small cubicle containing your confidence
pasted to the walls, and neatly nested on the next door desk
at least you told someone.
The logic of your feeling breathing life into the spreadsheet,
The simple clicks of order covering up the shame of dead weeks
Day in Day out working toward a little more
Waiting for the future where the ability to break out is yours.
Cage around each arm. Suffering in small doses.
Never overwhelming the epicenter.
I have 19 reasons to die.
Scrawled in sidewalk chalk on 17th street.
Ringing in the ears of all my close relatives and their next of kin.
They say, "Hurry up and usher in the next generation so we can stop worrying about fixing yours."
The crumpled cover letters in my compactor spell pure love, and the reasons it's never noticed.
Simplicity in disarray, a life of static colors. Repugnant sorrow odors.
I am the only town crier left in this town.
Always complete but never fulfilled.
The sad sequel to a Mexican standoff with a self-referential story.
Narcissism and narcotics.
Nihilism and Mnemonics.
Space and the stuff of the stars.
Love and the war of the heart.
S is the 19th letter of PSEUDOPSEUDOHYPOPARATHYROIDISM
No it's not but what a great word.
No it's not but aren't you glad you tried to count?
No it's not but aren't you satisfied with yourself for trying to decipher?
No it isn't and wasn't it worth it to try to speak the sounds?
No it is not and wasn't it the sibilance in your mouth worth every second?
No it is not thank you come again have you had your fill when we're only 19/26?
Reasons to live:
Seemingly unneeded. We're here aren't we? Doing what we could only be meant to do.
R is the real 19th letter.
One more would have been S.
But you'd never know if you didn't count.
So let's count.
Ready?
3...2...1...
Sep 19, 2016
Sep 19, 2016 at 4:08 AM UTC
The shires bask serenely in the summer sun.
Streams flow smoothly down the green hillsides.
All is well with the world
As apple blossoms bloom.
Such peaceful scenes are soothing to the soul.
Spiritually uplifting: a sensual seduction
Of sight, sound and aromatic smells.
Snakes may hiss and stoats may snarl,
But nothing reduces this sense of peace and calm.
Assonance and sibilance flows as I scribe
My idle dreams upon this page.
It’s good to let your imagination loose
To planets out there amongst the stars
Or simply let it roam over the slumbering countryside.
Good to escape the struggles and strife
Of daily life.
Good to sleep easy
After meditating at our leisure
Refreshing ourselves with Mother Nature’s
Soothing Love.
Paul Butters
© PB 8\1\2022.
Jan 8, 2022
Jan 8, 2022 at 3:50 PM UTC
This could be
my love poem
one dedicated to
the ins and outs
the be all and end all
of my dedication to you
in body and mind
but the sparrows in
my chest flutter and chirp
dampening my voice
and the words all warble
and twist
this could be
my love poem
filled with all the
hows, whys, whens
and wheres
of the passion
I feel when touching
your naked flesh
but the electricity
that arcs from your breast
to mine
constricts my larynx
and the words squeak
and squawk
this could be
my love poem
showering you with
the adoration
that, in past times,
brought nations
to war
but my head is filled
with cotton wool
and my eyes take
one last glimpse
of your smile
and the words are
lost in half murmured
barely audible sibilance
Aug 30, 2010
Aug 30, 2010 at 12:08 PM UTC
The language of lips at the waste side
A bottle of whiskey on our tongues
And the sound of sibilance between our hips
Pure and utter Bliss
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:22 PM UTC
you take the fall’s seriousness
like you were a leaf from the bough
of this tree called love –
as you were nearer to me than any other
light with its hands clasped, starting rivers in me;
you, whose mouth benignly twitch to utter
such glibness that even the stinging fragrance
of newness sings in me
the darkness swallowed slovenly as if all of the world
swims past the squalor of my blood – new to old wholeness
bones to a gleam of washlines,
wherefore there is nothing left to guess
in such hypothetical kisses when you looked at me
with two strutting cities for eyes that
churn to fade out such articulation of sibilance –
it is like this is never a better fate than plunging,
the moon between the hill and my body
within your body.
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 8:31 AM UTC
I'm not opposed to my introspective nature
that most cling on to with broken fingers
and ever trembling lips.
I am forever embracing my most outer self
in more ways than just one.
The sun never really rises and falls,
the earth where you're standing just changes locations
and I am located just above the brink of insanity
waiting until the world turns just enough for me to fall again-
but as the fleeting world speaks to me with tone deaf hears
all I can seem to dissect from the conversation is
that forever means nothing in a world where
tomorrow could never come again-
I could never come again
but I will not take that liberty from myself
I will not sacrifice my freedom of expression
for a small sense of morality
I'm not sure exists in the eyes of those around me anymore.
The one being of my own being means more to me
than being something I'm not
so the facade I play day by day
seems to break away at the edges
like a clay molding of who I once was
and I will make a stone masterpiece
with just my broken fingertips.
Spongebob ain't got **** on me
because these hands can carve memories
into the retinas of another human being
and make this life a masterpiece.
Don't ******* try me
because I will swallow you whole
and spit you back out faster than you can tell me otherwise.
I have self-inflicted my own pain too long
to not come back strong like stone.
Like dark canvas silhouettes syruping over sunrise
when sibilance meets promiscuous
that's where you will find my sunday best.
My meeting with the God that may or may not exist
the self-loathing meets with the self-fulfilling prophecy
and I am the head of the dinner table.
So dig in-
feast your eyes upon the glory that can be.
Feast your eyes upon defeat below your common nature.
Remember morality is a game that only you like to play
just to show others you can win-
but what good is winning if you don't know loss?
Jun 15, 2015
Jun 15, 2015 at 1:29 PM UTC
a well liked man is a well cut ham,
bodies sitting around the dinner table,
the smell of salted snacks, cheap beer, and wine,
sibilance of love and reflection to pass the time,
curvature of lips in an upward spiral,
soft eyes, relaxed muscles,
sitting.
the wise lady walks in,
time to toss the sin,
a prayer for rainbows in stormy weather,
a prayer the same goes through with a warming sweater,
many minds converge as one,
to speak and think of love,
for one another.
Jan 26, 2020
Jan 26, 2020 at 10:41 PM UTC
NAMANNAGARHERE
-----------------------------------
Empty Residence Of Aforementioned Angel In Training
How wonderful it is, I say, to the retreating
yellow form of your feelings I mistook
For Infatuation, you’re a romance heckler
far and far away from
Accepting fruition within classrooms and
being labelled as an angel.
And it was within forbidden hell of
euphoria, I found
You nestled in the society’s psyche
neither content or calling
For help. Neither did you neglect the
pink spectacles of the society,
Even found yourself moulding and moulding
into a fungi green
That I could not recognize, within that
half-sanctum, half-oasis I found you
absentmindedly
Bathing in, you were already out of
its waters.
And I was no longer seeing you within
the dry desert or the sibilance
of my desires, but instead
in cement woodlands and
Within artificial communication and
Intimacy I gave willingly.
Now how does it feel, to have your
heart in one piece,
How does it feel to not use
whipped cream to fill in the
Cracked, salty sections of your
own ***** that,
Out of confusion, continues to
play its favorite song but
in all the wrong beats.
Somehow within cacophony I found
you, nestled, comfortable in
Bogus, fraudulent wings of a former
angel- who now weeps under our
Feet in theory- Somehow, somewhere,
I lost you within an epiphany
That reeked of bliss and pleasure-
Somehow, we end up losing
Twins of the heavens when all is well.
How wonderful.
How wonderful it is, I say, to your
lost, secretly-weeping figure
That I can’t tell whether transparent or
yellow your figure is.
But I keep speaking-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To love the first angel I’ve set
my eyes upon-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To lose an angel, no matter how
phoney, to a social heaven.”
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 11:14 AM UTC
all that is the sea
in
one
full
wave:
the fritter of each line
reaching for shores,
the multitude of eyes
in in phosphorescenr sand:
memory etched
in flumine! erased by
the arrival of blue hands
rinsing all, leaving foam
of passing tides already
full with derelicts.
sibilance of breath speaking
its origin and now
i swim past all ruins,
moss, seaweed, crush of
light and opaque contest,
lifting with the voyage
of a ripple, and back to
your breast,
i dream of fish!
Sep 21, 2015
Sep 21, 2015 at 3:52 AM UTC
Lord, I sure got the blues this morning.
Woke up with nothing beside me, but a pillow and a stain.
The gray clouds crowded around me,
And that drizzle became a pouring rain.
I feel so melancholy -
when I hear your name.
The sibilance of those syllables,
Triggers a recall, Pavlovian pain.
Music's like a wicked woman!
Fickle and sour as a pickle she can be.
Before you go dancing with that damsel,
You better check out the scars on me.
There's a reason or three,
they call me, call me, call me....
Mr. Meloncholy.
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 3:43 AM UTC