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WS Warner Nov 2013
Part One
Nascent Craving

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

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

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

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

Part Two
Tendered Senses

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

Piercing eyes parallel crystalline waters of Lake Tahoe.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Fractured bones of distance, emanate a rigid salience,
Another ponderous night of absence—
Lingering, cauldron of dearth as indifference ushers,
The quotidian coil of contrition.
Tearful pallor, sequestered —ciphering time and solitude;
The unkissed mouth, his restive brow;
Suspend in the approximate span.
                      
After Lucid alliterations are spoken
Devoid of her face, his lover’s nudge—
The man nurtures his hurt.

Anxious as seldom unscarred,  
Venus’s susurrations,
In present tenses,
Kissed by her serenades of integration—
Notwithstanding metaphysic intrusion,
No chain stays unbroken,
Postponed drifts of deferment left unspoken,
Reverberations of amor.

© 2013 W. S. Warner
To Eileen
Daniello Mar 2012
What is hoped trickling between
splintered crags of hard matter
as between slabs of sliced I
like water through the desert crust

the beginning-end fusioned whole?
it resplendent through the cracks?

What might be enough
for its time being
might be the first loosening
a knot’s dissolution  
beginning

unwrapping light and breath
deep underground  
after prying like suffocation
the thing loose, never budged,
still you yanked, pulled,
screamed, spumed, more than

frustration through your fingertips.
For the brain, don’t be fooled,
s’more the psychedelic fruit
than just saying apple computer

the pulpous embryo of imagination
feeding

what seed, sprouting tendrils,
protracts without desire
(but causing desire)
ever outward, growing, clasping,
(hinging on unhinging) meshing
an electric net
and collapsing a shock they say

until the taste of its taste
is so succulently pungent
that after hours of dull mumbling
its projection upon the mirrors

it bursts in puffs of screams
short tense contractions
[image fizzing, over-heating].

Like a cracked computer reading
an animal program: Alpha Beast
of the Ill-Illusioned
. Or: Runt Wolf
of Gaia, the Undarwinian Survivor
.
Software ones and zeros digitizing

the command:
Must do the act cannot be done.

Till it breaks. Unimagined.
Ashley Chapman Oct 2017
A lover asked me
to be her rock
and I agreed.

On the moon tide
she ebbed
far out to sea
leaving me
naked and raw
upon the shore.

Then
after a while
back she flowed
  gurgling and fizzing
round my bare rock
her spumed up sultriness
teased my longing ****!

And in this way
in the ebb and flow
long months we loved
until she ebbed
more than she flowed
and I chose
to no longer live
marooned
on a barren rock.
Dana Pohlmann Jan 2012
I rode again the horse cover
of night, where indiscrete yearnings
cast doubt upon the aerial
flagellate of milk spumed stars.
A jealous denial: their
froth no terrestrial hide.
How strange to imagine the stars want skin,
or kin,
and must think that I touch you
as if without consequence
moving my hands
from peals of belles to petals,
stamen, the flower unfolding
one cupped nautilus
full of a prismatic wanting.
This is how I learned that something larger
than me speaks in echoes
stands at vital distance
a shiver in the vacuum infinity...
Unimaginable. Infinity.
zebra Jun 2019
I'm not coming back
no more vain rebellions

hello to nothing
from the inquisitor of nothing
no ones home but shapeless shadows
cutting across mysteries
of multiple worlds

an empty head
so patient
ghost moon

my legs aren't tired anymore
here in the undergrowth
of slugs slides and slime
whispering hymns needle green

buoyant belly on the rings of night
libation of death
apprehending the void
dissolving doom broadens to immensity
like a light flicks on
wonder wave

no death for the dead
they could care less
nearby in endlessness
stretched out on a couch
spumed mouth
papyrus frail
creature of black steps

waking will not raise burnt wings

where I lived and was broken
noon day demons lost
I dangle from a nightingale floor
burning hair waves windless

linking one self with the other
like night with day
gales of dreams
falling lulls weave me together
like a thorne bridge knits fate
hand over red hand

mind of winter
now I inhabit you
slain and shaken
(scoured from dregs of me muss held head)

I shore up a vignette to free
my ("FAKE") grandfather Hymie,
whose scrunched countenanced
evinced beetle that of browed monkey
he spent his entire life at sea
his thick calloused hands

and ruddy complexion re
enforced non verbal body language
voluminous tomes smoothed
nick holed money
to countless years (spilling into decades)
exposed to salty spittle nee
where watery terrain spumed
raw elements piscine

art finest artisanal blended, crafted, nein
mean feet resources dredged reluctantly
relinguished by mother nature mean
craftily pared within each trough and crest
found thee old man with privateer mein

whose skin fiercely weatherbeaten
leathery and lean,
epidermis tanned tough
as rawhide, reptilian, prithee
chafed skin to me
not surprising, since

this mariner born, bred and near lee
schooled within briny deep ever since knee
high (or so he claimed truth
to swirling rumor), jovialy
pleased that his purportedly
learnin' myth writ tik ne'r included

NEVER settn' foot in formal classroom,
his knowledge icy
anecdotes aced, surpassed,
and trounced that of what he
referred to as grenadier landlubbers
green behind the ears – glee

fully jabbing with his
unsheathed scabbard play flea
actually downplaying any exploits,
that didst educate him, 'ee
got taut learn'n survival skills asper
pre ponder hunt via eddy fied tests frequently dee
siding a life or death outcome,

yet our Dickensian
mutually bonding friendship
via shared exploits while
he dressed not in tatters,
but self made clothes from cree
chores comfortable furs, and though

a striking appearance cut, ne'r
did this ole codger (fit as a fiddle
with tall slender build),
said middle aged man
appeared quite becoming.

An aura, charisma, dogma
amazingly graced stalwart, gestalt,
deportment aie
found added an air of charming debonair,

esteeming flair, genteel heir
which tasked guessing years old,
aye presumed him to exit the uterine lair
at least a few score tours round oblate sphere

as aspect of youthfulness played across his eyes
one colored green like a spring day in the country,
the other jetblue sans burnin'
four pearl jam oyster cult year.
I met her when the journey was yet plumy.
     “Yet, met only—"
Hand within hand, yet time only for lend.
     “Yet, met only—"
Heart within heart, a start yet to part.
     “Yet, met only—"
Now, query after query, as to why all had to be;
yet only a theory, teary and lonely…
     “Yet, met only—"

Was it the gold in her hair
whose sheen I’d sought,
     or an ode to inlay in gold
     and let it glow till Time grew cold?

Was it the honey in her eyes,
dripping dreams on Time’s tides,
     or the old Time bending the knee—
     trapped in wax for eternity?

Was it love in her voice, breathing of balm
whose single strum had my hive hum—
her honey coated thrum that had silver Diana glum;
     or was it only the benign buzz of a busy bee
     brewing tomorrow for her and me?

Was it the Cyprus sun in her Venus-smile
whose arch in late March gets blossoms to march?
     Or maybe— I failed to see,
     beneath the fizzy florets of a blooming sea,
     did spin the whimsy tides of green envy,
     leering and gloating over her and me
     from the shingled shrine of their majesty,
     the haughty, naughty, iffy and fluky Aphrodite.

Perhaps, she was Beauty and I was Love;
yet with a poignant poem pounding above—
bathing while us in each other’s eyes,
shifted the shingles with a titan’s lies.

We were at the prow,
but we didn’t know how—
When the tides breached the brow
we didn’t know how to plough.

We were shipwrecked; we were flecked.
The wheel was cracked and we were whacked.
We washed on different islands of fortune’s choice;
not met either with any garlands or someone’s joys.

Sealed though in opposite hourglass ends,
how we despaired for its shared sands!
Yet, how it slips through mere human hands!
How it slips through until no one ever stands!

I was Love
and Aphrodite let me be.
But she was Beauty,
over whom the dazzling deity
spumed with envy—
     this is how she, Aphrodite,
     effervescing with grim envy,
     flexed her hands in a hungry ivy,
     ever growing green with her envy
     breaking in her glass, and separating us.

No vine will creep over her morning memory.
And this, not only—
The moist moss of loss muffled the old buzzing bee.
“Yet this, not only—"
Her strands ripple only in the wake of memory.
And this, not only—
Her balmy breeze breathes now over a secret sea.
“Yet this, not only—"

Whenever I lock my eyes,
I travel for a million miles.
There, I see in disguise
her summer-leaking eyes,
blinking at me from paradise.


© Hirondelle, July 3, 2025
    Arif Hifzioglu
This is based on a real story, unfortunately and most bitterly. I stumbled upon her obituary most unexpectedly back in 2003. How time froze around me in an instant, at the time! How all feelings went in a flush from the planet! How I wept! How I wept! How radiantly I can feel the hot kiss of the racing streams down my cheeks! Then, when the pool was emptied, my shock was lifted, and how hard the bitter grief struck!

She was Şahnaz (pronounced as ‘Shuhnuz’). And we had met on board of the plane, flying from Cyprus to Ankara in March, 1990— we were 21-year-old university students back then.

As fortune would have it, there was this delay due to poor weather conditions, and I found myself she talking to me. It was a dream unfolding because she was the girl who had passed by me before the check-in and ever since I was in a hopeless crush with her. Yes, the fortune had it and she sat beside me, and she talked to me, and there was this heaven-sent delay for about an hour on board of the plane!

We had melted all the ice and were pretty comfortable in a friendly chitchat of our education. She was a medicine student in Moscow, so she would have a transfer flight in Ankara. I was studying English in Ankara, so we would separate. I felt the heavens by my side when she wrote her address on a piece of paper and gave it to me. When next she said she didn’t have any aviophobia but she was terrified of take-offs so she asked if she could grip my hand whilst the take-off, I felt like all the universe stop their business and come to my aid. All these were much more than a lucky coincidence. This was a heavenly miracle unfolding right by my side. She was either a heaven-sent angel, or I, for one reason which I will never know, was chosen by all the heavens.

Or, it felt like that until I went to the flat where I shared with four other Cypriot students. Dear friends they were and still are. It was not long after I divulged the story of the miracle that there was a loud knock on the door at around two o’clock in the morning.

No, it was not her. Even miracles have their limits and mine had even transcended any conceivable limits, if any!

The coin had flipped over, and it was time for tragedy to unfold. There were four or five ruffian looking men with automatic guns in their hands. After fear and stress, it turned out they were undercovers from the Bureau of Foreign Terrorism and we were to be taken for surveillance and interrogation with a warrant.

No, we were not terrorists, nor political activists. We were a socially active bunch who prepared concerts and drama shows for the summer youth festivals in our own country, Cyprus. We were also writers: we had our culturally oriented journal which we issued 4 times a year. Anyway, we desperately watched some of our personals being confiscated among which was the address which never came to me.

The surveillance took three days where we were kept in separate one-meter square dark cells. Then we came out, without our confiscated personals. That’s why some part of me is still in one of those *****-stinking cells.

What I love about the belief system of pagan or naturalistic cultures is that they see gods or superhuman forces to be capricious. Most of us, the modern men, are pushed to the edge of an abyss of modernity, feeling desperate within the clutches some meaning-devoid existential crisis. It’s not only to watch all our sand castles being leveled to the ground! Accordingly, there is ample reference to ‘whimsy tides’ in this elegy.

I haven’t seen Şahnaz since then though I did my best to find her. And you know what happened 13 years later.

I have found her tomb, though. It is in Lefke on the mountain overlooking the sparkling blue Mediterranean Sea. Her tomb is very easy to spot. Her parents must have been found solace for their insuperable grief in attributing to her a shrine-like tomb. The structure has four marble columns and a ceiling. It features a marble bench and a faucet. The marble is honey with natural veining. You walk up a short flight of stairs to the entrance of her shrine which is flanked by her initials carved in marble with exquisite calligraphy.

I honored her by riding my father’s ill maintained bicycle with my guitar on my back to her shrine which was on the other side of the mountain. It was a grinding experience but spiritually relieving all the same. I reverently lifted the chain on the entrance and placed my hand on her tomb for a long time, like we did on the plane ‘many a many year ago’.

Then, I sat on the bench and played the song I had composed for her right after our release from our interrogation. How desperately I had believed that if I compose a very beautiful song and played it with my friends in the ruins of Salamis for a large audience, she would rive the standing ovation and run up to me.

“I was a child, and she was a child in a kingdom by the sea.” (With due respect to Edgar Allan Poe for his Annabel Lee)

Some of you may wonder what happened to Şahnaz in 2003. It was a car accident. I have been told that on her way back from the hospital where she had checked the condition of a patient she had recently operated, her car skidded into a ditch because of the sudden rain which fell on the hot asphalt and causing oil sheening.
This poem is my first written tribute to her. The next one will be the full cover narrative of the what little account I have provided you with above.

But, whatever I do part of me is still on that plane and some other one is still in that dark cell, shivering in my father’s souvenir corduroy jacket against the biting cold of early March.

— The End —