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

Each day with so much ceremony
begins, with birds, with bells,
with whistles from a factory;
such white-gold skies our eyes
first open on, such brilliant walls
that for a moment we wonder
"Where is the music coming from, the energy?
The day was meant for what ineffable creature
we must have missed?" Oh promptly he
appears and takes his earthly nature
   instantly, instantly falls
   victim of long intrigue,
   assuming memory and mortal
   mortal fatigue.

More slowly falling into sight
and showering into stippled faces,
darkening, condensing all his light;
in spite of all the dreaming
squandered upon him with that look,
suffers our uses and abuses,
sinks through the drift of bodies,
sinks through the drift of vlasses
to evening to the beggar in the park
who, weary, without lamp or book
   prepares stupendous studies:
   the fiery event
   of every day in endless
   endless assent.

In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds

Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual

My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary

Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments

I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path

The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux

As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate

Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift

Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary

Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode

And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles

Thin she looks, like stippled wheat
With anxious eyes and crippled feet
Flaxen hair and halting way
But Jesus baby.. Can she play?

A siren song on notes of gold
Floats out and lets the dark enfold
The lovers as they dance & sway
And kiss & smooch the night away.

She bends way back and holds the note
That muted trumpet starts to float
You’l never hear a better sound
From any jazz man in this town.

Exquisite is the word I’d use
Enticing is her favourite ruse
Alluring now in shades of gray
Her silky sequence soars away.

The song entwines your heart & soul
The moment stops, your pulse on hold
Fantastic senses start to reel
Hot n ****’s how you feel.

You glide your way around the floor
Feel the rhythm, seek for more
That lady makes the music move
She’s making magic, in the groove

Swinging at the local hop
You’ll never want this night to stop
Thin girly with her magic horn
Convinces us we’re all reborn

You wake up in the light of day
Haggard, spent, bereft of hay
But Jesus boy.. You had a ball
You grooved that ladies trumpet call.

So count your blessings, share a smile
You’re winning by a country mile
When you did hear that lassie play
You stretched your life another day.

Thin she looks, like stippled wheat
Anxious eyes and crippled feet
Flaxen hair and halting way,
But Jesus brother….can she play!

Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
29th. September 2007

The chill of an autumn morning
A rising steam as the fallen leaves exhale
The lonesome trees have given up their glory
A carpet of red, yellow, orange, and brown

An overcast sky with no definition
Is but a blur
Movement indiscernible
There is wisdom in the sky, revealed to a few

The smoke of the day’s first fire ascends
Wafting its familiar fall fragrances
Brings warmth and comfort to the soul
And campsite memories of long ago

We pass the bleak and barren cornfield
Stippled with autumn’s harbingers
The Raven
They stare with the blackest of black eyes

Sweat
Fills my palms
I scratch
My head
Pulling out
All my hair
On the inside
I am screaming
On the outside
My eyes
Fall deep
Into their concave
Sockets
Shaking
I swear
Out loud
Sorry mom
I am not angry
Just disappointed

You are as tall and beautiful as the Singer Building in New York City,
But your father calls you mustard seed.
The slits on your wrist spell out save me.
She protested black is no longer a color, but her insides,
And if her mom''s job is saving lives, why isn't she saving her daughter's?
When her mom hugged her it stung-
The needle and ink stippled in her back the expectations placed on her.
Her kitchen is a court where her parents find her guilty of being a teenager.
Her parents don't introduce her by name,
But by her future vocation.
The pretentious white picket fence and a dog that barks when you call it Max are distilled with dreams of catching the next Amtrak to California.
She spends twenty minutes a day cutting the rope her mother has involuntarily wrapped around her neck-
Choking out the little identity left
She screams, "Stop tearing down my infrastructure!"

who can say
that they have
ever gone home?

Slender eucalyptus trees form a fragile trellis
Welcoming you into a land of enchantment
Wandering asphalt stippled with afternoon light
Leads you through vast vineyards striping distanced hills
Their branches drooping with plump purple droplets

Following the single road curve after curve
A bend brings a browned tipped fade edging every vine
Half a tree’s round bowl cut shows a dip dye border beige
Ominous foreshadowing of the landscape’s angry scars
Lurking ahead the winding way amongst the chartreuse charm

Then one twist brings the astounding view
Land licked clean by ravenous tongues
Heat and wind --the insatiable elements
Their appetites consumed whole hillsides at once
Leaving behind blackened branches: bones ****** bare

Ochre tipped foliage studs the rolling ravines
Exposed bedrock stares back at you with ravished eyes
Surrounding elevations graced by green clouds of resilient oaks
Enunciate the stark boundary between
Devastation and lively exuberance

Canyons once dressed in elaborate emerald garments
Now clad in scandalous shreds
Reveal the ripples of ancient fault lines
Testimony to their violent origins
Forged by gaping crevasses, quakes and flames

Solo skeleton shrubs stand adorning
Charred hillsides like chewed and spat gristle
Puddles of white ash and their dusty rivulets
Hint at feverish efforts exhausted in defense
Of the crumbles at the feet of lone chimneys

Naked trees cut from winter landscape
Appear misplaced in the summer heat
They stand forlorn with gnarled arms and curled fingers
Their writhing immortalized in stiff post rigor
An involuntary inhale touches your lips. “magnificent”

The scourged scenery fades with each bout
You are surrounded by sun kissed hills
Their slopes end in brilliant blue water
A promise of peace reflected in still reverie
Mauve mounds guard the serene sanctuary

A splashing otter slinks onto the sand
Nearby mallards preen unperturbed.
Birds chatter in flight, two settle on a shrub
Standing stubborn with smoke shriveled leaves
The enthralling sight envelopes you pressing you warm and close

Your eyes close under the competing warmth
Of golden rhododendrons and blinding sun
Radiance bounces off green fluorescence
A cheerful backdrop to the wind dispersed soot
A slow easy smile tugs against your cheeks. “Magnificent.”

palette
russet, olive hues
yellow ochre
bird's egg blue

vastness held
within a bowl
turned over earth
to heal and hold

moisture from
the morning rain
thus the painter's
eye is trained

cadmium white
a fan-like brush
sketch mare's-tail clouds
an artist's touch

far horizon
grayish blue
a woman reclines
in the ****

her form reveals
the breasting hills
her hips the mountains
hushed and still

mid-ground
blurs of olive cacti
the saguaro
rise like hackles

Palo Verde lie in lumps
yellow flowers
bloom in clumps

point of brush
tweaks out the trees
turn of branches
stippled leaves

small are they
to catch the light
but the moisture
loss is slight

ochre foreground
brownish stones
blue-gray shadows
light source shown

grayish purple
prickly pears
ocotillo
here and there

spindly with splash of red
barrel cacti nod their heads

buff highlights
saguaro flowers
I could sit and
paint for hours

there's time to write
but now I pray
look upon these
words today

they paint the desert
you will find
If only in
the poet's mind!


SoulSurvivor aka
Write of Passage
2017

taut
beneath midnight stippled skin
you lay stifled in humid half light
stymied fingers
between edgy estival beats
drum your chest

fluid smooth
over wind-whipped knees
my hiemal body pours
a blasé moon
briefly strains to contour
my salt slapped cheeks

I begged her
that lunar *****
to rake gelid slivers
across your skin
my name wistfully hissed
where fingers would skate
to patent my cure
for your searing need

but that vainglorious orb
kept you
her guiltless reflection
swells in your dolorous eyes
as she pins you
taut
beneath midnight stippled skin

I could toss my cares over a rainbow
Let it hang there a while and dry out its sorry behind
As I squeeze some slices of brackish time to research the deliberate contours of your patience
Swerving its way past concealed match sticks
Bend at the so definite behest of none.


Slurring backwards
Tentative graphica
Huge baskets of winding fun
Sketchy image pencilled in, for now
Details come later in -------- a terminal
(hopefully)


Charcoal drawings offer the sweet sound of breaking cumulus and sudden wax of orange
come to life on a sullen bed of love apples
shapes are p-p-p-pulled to painstaking proportion
deep lines stippled drastic
dragged along on unwieldy wagon strokes
       Art never really tastes ink but celebrates ephemerae
yet trapping half understood and beautiful pictures
beneath mocking glass panels
smudged with such deep knowinggggg


You can do something to stop this **** blood impasse
beset more so with counterfeit decline
blind bull rage too ready and bloodthirsty acts bay
half crippled and on its knees, how your land cries
see the (over)spill of rightly invective remain unresolved
  

See the deprivation at the lake
all gall thirsty, yet none to drink
just a hapless event smarting  
On a downward cyclic turn
no more will sing voices when old gripes unheard
scream in the long, red lines bulleted across that holy floor  
albeit the wicked general holds the trussed up cards
he won’t bother scraping the dried salt of kin later
it grows ever more in sad mounds on the little green book
awaiting missing miracle


inflections of a restless mind
within the ***** creep
retorts from peerless craft forge  
entangled moans in briars and sundry
resort to savour within disyllabic silence
  
Can you but count the ways in which these coins of seeking do ****** across
an afflicted floor of red lines to an exculpated heart, un(cor)rected ?
Unprocessed miracles are items of constant bewonderment in duress living

Sugar sand beaches reach the horizon
Water so far it is naught but a glimmer in the distance
Sitting in the warmth of that powder-like earth
The sun seems to set over a desert
Purple and pink in smoking swirls of Heaven
Sopping up the beauty in open pores
Ready to receive all that is offered
Watching the sun begin to slumber
As Luna's light begins to shine in bulbous splendor
The glimmer seems to twinkle as brightly as the stars as they awaken
Multiplying by the moment
Mesmerizing, as the lights seem to grow
The air changes, a little cooler now
The sand turns to black glass glistening in the moonlight
Slowly taking over the horizon
Watching the twinkling onyx reflect the night sky
Almost hypnotized by the melodic whisper
The only evidence of life within the breezeless air
As black meets gray, the warmth of the water glides further
Swallowing the shore inch by inch
Blanketing all as it comes upon its farthest outstretched reach
Bathing in the warmth of black water,
Stippled with the most brilliant twinkling reflections
Wrapped in the heat of the night
Consumed by the darkness, by the stars, by the very heat of the earth
Slowly, deliberately, the water rises
Basking in the beauty of a sea that came to greet all who care to notice
As the ripples and waves wash over the footprints
Erasing the day and birthing it anew
The moon smiles its bright smile
The sand swims by unseen
And the stars shine like the brightest diamonds
in the light of the moon

TLC!

Black night sky stippled with lights.
Falling in showers of passions delight.
Forest deep where lost dreams do live.

In the forest there can be found a treasure chest.
A golden chest.
Wherein dwell a collection of hearts.
Ripped out, but tied in sinewy *****.
Encased by perfect vessels.
Sent there for a spot of palliative care.

Abandoned by souls of lost lovers.
Romeo and Juliet's both stuck in there.
Still captured in love's young dream.

Maybe the souls of poets trapped.
We are a weird bunch.
Stranded inside the land of words.
In the land between light and dark.
Somewhere lost along the way.

Within our play on words.
Summed up in a pun.
Such fun.

By ladylivvi1

© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)

Half-shut eyes shying away,
Lids fluttering from flat lines to fear.
Heaviness with
Every inhalation of this acid,
Poisoned air stippled with pollution,
Hatred and despair.
Envision trembling voids that yearn
For the pull of a black hole's infinite birth.

I am Heavy-lidded tonight,
Heavy-lidded
and inscrutable in my childhood.

My childhood that was spent hysterical in airing cupboards,
Where I wept unashamedly to the fixed God
And the stained glass, rose-hewn Angels of churches
That reeked of oak and holy water.
Where I sat in the trees, high on life and vanila-blue ice cream
And with knees skinned by the ****** pathways of woods
Or the safe gravels of playgrounds.

Where sunbursted mangoes dripped with musky-sanded chlorine
And the sun-hot metal gates clanged shut in the holiday winds.
Where rocks were thrown by fated children
And paper-cheap candy wrappers filled up plastic trash cans.
Where strange, money-minded housewives gaggled and giggled
With their ******-white teeth
And reflected my mother' s bipolar poverty
In the lenses of their plastic sunglasses.
Where my self-hemmed summer dresses were stained
With green and brown and red finger paint
As the days outside grew warmer
And the inside self grew older,
Colder.

Where I was punished for expression of the self
And confined to the sanatorium
Or the offices of Moloch's servants
On a sun-stippled day in May
Where my scrap-bruised hands
Were bandaged by the words of the Real World
And threatenings of expulsion.
Where I hid behind felted display boards
On a landing somewhere near Neverland,
And lay and listened to the friend-fuelled ramblings of lost boys
Who sat and smoked in dormitories
And hallucinated Peter Pan.
Where I wrote self-indulgent fuckery in toilets
And drew crude artistries on mirrors with lipstick
And contemplated
Amo
Amas
Amat
As I sat and stared at my own disassociated hands.

Where paper aeroplanes flew and were thrown
By hungover kids in threadbare jumpers
With chewed cuffs and prefect badges,
Where holy Evian was poured over my head
After a long last day under a white marquee,
Where I disassembled pencil sharpeners with iron-smelling razor blades
and violated erasers at an exam hall desk in a stormy June.

Where I contemplated death;
Sang hymns in the darkness of my bedroom,
Took a blade to my flesh
Like the soulless piece of meat
That I believed myself to be.
Where I fell in love;
Hurt myself
More than anyone else ever did.
Where I read,
Where I wrote tear stained elegies
To my idols under the earth
And prayed that I
Would last
Just one more day.

Looking heavenward, I see only the earth.
The stars align and the planets turn,
But what of the holy?

Archangels sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
And the collared cherubim bleed into the rainswept gutters
Like cut dogs in cardboard boxes by the highways of New York,
Or the roadsides of back-alley Brooklyn or Paterson,
Where the demonic masses lie naked in the streets,
Their souls bared raw to heaven
And their hair as messy as sidestreet dumpsters.

The misted rain fogs on the busted double glazing,
The bare limbed trees outside fallen victim to a long winter
And a late spring.
The air that blows through the streets of these mundane cul-de-sacs
Has passed through the lungs of cancerous dodgers
In those hell-indulgent cities,
Where children find their kicks by freerunning
Across buildings of bricks made from c-grades,
Or by standing atop high-rises in the grey wind,
And biting their tongues only to feel their own consciousness
Burrowing into them
Like parasites from the condemning schoolhouses or university halls.

You’re alone when your skies turn grey,
And the rain falls with all the purposeful intent of a neon god.
You’re alone when your smashed milk bottles and broken plates
Are like music on those drug-dampened dawns,
You’re alone when your cold, ash-stippled roof gardens
Are your only way to heaven,
You’re alone when your fingers are cut on your own writing
And you are dizzy from spinning yourself sick
Alone in your splintered art lofts.

Your stars are misaligned and your planets need engine grease to turn,
And you sit and smoke and weep on tenement rooftops,
But you still look heavenward.
You see your madness in the same silver moon
That compels the tide and transfixes wolves,
You recognise yourself in newspaper clippings proclaiming ******,
You acknowledge your expression in broken syringes
And powder remnants
On the glass-topped coffee tables of water-dripping apartments,
You feel your heartbeat in the gasolined engines
Of stuttering Cadillacs
And taste your own warm lifeblood in the burgers of roadside diners.

You see cosmological galaxies bursting like Van Goghs,
Horrible, bitter-cold starstorms underneath white skies,
Raindrop-dripping garden leaves in shrubberies and verges
And earthy rockeries,
You dream of enlightened, ***-smoking boys in beat-up trailers
And the cluttered box rooms of sky-high apartments,
Of screeching atop stone-cragged mountains of green in highlands,
Of bell-rung harbours in the white seaside towns of England,
Of the salt-chapped lips of fisherwives
And the bone-skinny children of sailors,
Of visionary angels in stained glass cathedrals,
Of the cobbled thoroughfares of lamplit cafes in a Parisian purgatory.

And yet you lie naked on floors,
You lie high on floors and let visions spill from your hands
Like the whiskey you drink.
You are under us now,
Under the earth like meat sacks.
But your vision lives on
In every piece of self-indulgent fuckery written for you,
In every copy of your collected works
Or your novels.

Seek,
Live,
****,
Die.
For you are immortal, in the end.

When I'm falling asleep in the teal hue
of our tiny, tiny room.
I'll look out the window,
drowning out the sound of your snoring
with the city sirens and taxi beeps,
and see how lovely
the lights glow on the glass.
How beautiful a picture they paint,
a stippled masterpiece of glitter specs,
glowing circles that blur at the edges
in every golden color, in every shimmering red.
When every odd is against us,
every gray cubicle and tan cracked sidewalk
that gets in our determined way,
I'll just remember how beautiful the world looked,
with your arm wrapped around me
looking at the color in the life
constantly living outside our window.
And how lucky we are
to be a part of it.

Cuticles burn and nails curve
Scratching silent yearnings into wood
I yearn, ceaselessly
Splinters bite and rage
But do not fill me with doubt
Stippled marks made by callous fingertips
I yearn for something less than subtle
Less than ideal and far more shapely
Hands cramp as branches crack
Unwavering, I'm asking
Will you yield and come to grips
With becoming my creation?

Do not leave me child
Do not fledge and grow
It’s just my broken soul in your way
Crumbling soft and slow
The first moment I held you
Is the moment I let you go.

A daydream then my sonshine
My sonshine then her man
New love swept you away
On a sweet summer day
Suddenly I’m alone again
You’ve found paradise
In a pair of brown eyes
Place a banded promise in her hand

Such a primitive shelter
You carved in this heart of stone
Life etched sweat and dust
Blade stippled with rust
Furrowed deeper than I’ve ever known
Now my fractured heart
Is falling apart
As you step out on your own

This gift I never wanted
Now I cling to you so tight
With a ferocity
Upwellling in me
I’d rather die than lose the fight
But I have to concede
When you were born you were freed
I’ve just prepared you for flight

TL Boehm
06/20/2013

In the morning, we were woken by thunder,
a vicious gurgle vaulting across the sky.
We watched the rain fall outside from our bed,
the windows stippled with droplets,
the clattering of water on the roof
like women dancing in high heels.

I breathed in your smell, wanting to
inhale everything about you that morning,
wanting not to forget our trickle of minutes.
I brushed my feet against yours, under the sheets.
At one point, our hands touched, I knew your fingers.
That’s what I thought then. That I knew them.

Your khaki green shirt sleeping over a chair.
Design of our fingerprints on the half-full glass.
I caught a glimpse of your Atlantic eyes
as you turned. I kept my words private,
wanting, not wanting to stitch them together.
Last night, lightning. Now this.

In a pure world
music and birdsong
spinning
the lingering
melancholy
no more sadness
only memories
and longings
prostrating on the trails
of yellow leaves
counting the rhythms
of loneliness
the handsomeness of the island
the dreaminess of
the susurration of the beach
the elegance of the sails
the water as always
beating the stippled quietness
awaiting the next dawn
a ketch drifting on the ocean
shining a turquoise light
portraying the poetry
of the predawn
or the predawn hilarity of
the fish and shrimps
in the ocean
this is a pure world
and there is music
and running water in it
and the samisen of moods
and the psaltery
of the nature
whats more
the happy pixies shuttling
in the forest
of purity.

night wears a skin
of cold velvet
stippled with pores
through which illumination
prickles as the intergalactic whiskers
of Schrodinger's cat
catching the scent of gravity

Gray hardwood Creek saga , hillside natural harmonies
Woodland musicians and warriors blended into
Coweta flora with piedmont songsters
Sip sip cha shree mockingbird melody
Whoo -reet bobwhite chantey from floor to -
windamere operas brushing live oak canopies
Land blushing with evening blue , stippled in
magenta and lavender cirrus sunset* ...

The rosy sun peeks over the tree tops.
We hear the sounds of a baseball game,
with the howling coyotes as fans.
My eyes droop as the onset of sleep nears.
The bitter coffee runs down my throat.
Francis is seated across from me,
peeking over her glasses at her cards.
Her brows wrinkle while determining the best way to win.
It only takes moments until the entire Texas sky is stippled with stars.

You say we should build one,
I say we're not six-year-olds anymore
but you coax me into it
and I find myself
digging with a blue plastic *****
but you use your hands,
scooping up lumps of the stuff.
I notice how some gets stuck
in your fingernails,
how the tip of your thumb
has been stippled orange
but I laugh when you tell me
it's nice to feel young again
and I feel it too
although you, not the building
has more to do with that.

We don't stop,
we make a whole row of them,
name them after ourselves,
feel so proud of our work
like builders after a long day,
but it's still morning for us
and every-time you stand,
tiptoe up to the sea,
I get so stupidly worried
the tide might take you away.

Before stiff frost of winter melted to spring dew,
That was when I met you.
Windy gusts of goosebumps to fill the air
Making my arms stippled wings,
Almost ready to fly.
You wove me through the winds of those westward peaks.
Through sugar dusted days,
you were quickly woven in me.

My life's fabric,
newly adorned with the imprint of you-
A colorful, bright adornment to a darker whole.

The frost did melt,
And the river began to flow,
Your promising path was dealt.
And while you sailed away, the rains came, dropping silently from blue eyes
Slowly feeding the river.

It wasn't until the last drop of rain fell
That I noticed my wings
Full of life, renewed in strength and vigor
It was then I realized
You were my catalyst
For my own flight

While others fastened anchors to me,
Freedom was your gift

And with gratitude
The sea bird flies
Hoping to reach the mouth of the river
That carried you

From your lips,
I feel the burn
capsacin ignition
beyond measure

Scovilles scale
Destroyed by your
radiant red lips
as they press to mine

Southwest flavors
burn my tongue
as my senses
are over powered

Sweat beads
and rolls down
bare skin
stippled

I am blistered
by your love
passion

The wimpled scrolls recede....
The Authors of the braille sands
leave Northern marrow in their wording,
as sharp as Marram grasses bent
in keening subjugation....

Illuminated Sanskrit kelp,
infused with lust of fallen auras,
scrims the ****-green gartered breaks
now shaken from the glaucous mane,

while fleets of stippled cumuli,
( rain-chartered galleons of the West)
in line astern, prepare for war
beyond the deepened brim.

We,- the town-worn Pages- flutter,
drawn to trace the moiling hem,
to pour away into the water....

Salt-preened minions of the wind.

If I place it under my chin it might ruin the beautiful stippled ceiling Father paid so much to have put in , against my temple could quite possibly destroy the gorgeous wallpaper here in the den . Putting it in my mouth would almost guarantee maximum spread in just about any room in this haunted house ..These walls are as confused as I , beautiful artwork and photographs mingled with dark secrets within . Joy and abject terror blended together like off white walls and walnut stained wood baseboard and trim ..Two one of a kind lamps , family Bible , pure white doilies crocheted by Mother on every table ..Pine flooring and wormy Chestnut kitchen cabinets will prevent the inevitable this morning !

Before me the monster grew
In the stippled light
Dappled blue
It was an interesting sight.

A wondrous uncompromising
Dark hue
Its features had a disconcerting
Temporary feel. Nose and ears fixed by glue

And where his mouth should have
Been was a blue suede shoe,
And in place of eyes grave-
Stones inscribed with the names of no one I knew.

Still, he was very polite
For such a badly-hewn
Creature of the night.
Crafted as if from ancient stone,

He quietly broke my neck
With a pleasant-enough smile
And I heard it crack
Dying, deeply impressed by his style.