"tabula" poems
Static, memories
Emanating, separating
The postcard- perfect
Still life speaks
From its storied past.
Invisible, to drift
Among
The florid aphorisms,
Ending in
Deleterious debris,
Aftermath of
The inevitable.
Empty room, echo hollow
Tabula rasa -
Carpet clean, quite candid in it's
Return to callow.
Consciousness athirst,
Absorbing phenomena
Effervesce, inquisitive
Ideas foment,
Sealed inside a question.
The what -
Against the narrow
Scarcity,
And fatigue of should.
A tender malleable
Youth,
Betrayed, under
An assumed decorum -
Residue of truth,
Flattened emotion
Privations of a self
Unheard;
Misplaced affirmation,
Buried pathologies
In architecture
Fear manifests symbolic.
Harboring apathy
The lunacy of pious
Pedigree,
Import contagion,
Fetters of benignity
Doubt and indecision
Into ******
Cognizance,
Fallow spirits
Seep fumes of decay,
Credulity bleeds a human stain.
Social edifice, inoculated
Heirs of neurosis;
Palpable, sensual pain
And transience, though
Tacit - remain,
Our haunted history,
The blind hyperbole,
Maudlin
Forbearance, this haven,
A portrait
Of immaculate condition,
Nurtured with precision
Under sterling pretense.
Provincial domicile -
House beautiful,
Savage irony -
Unseen treasure
Innocence unabridged,
Faces, tiny creations;
Compliant vessels
Wounded,
While modernism murmurs
Its promise.
Brave New World,
In a late model sedan,
Domestic ranch on a
Corner lot,
Suburban natives,
Silence means security.
The misunderstood
Speak louder -
Consumerism beneath
Unvarnished ambition,
Never could
Repair the brokenness within...
© 2011 & 2018 W. S. Warner
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 5:38 PM UTC
Beams of light explode over the soft sand,
i can feel the warmth on my face as i sit on the beach,
sinking softly into natures warm bed.
The light seems to turn everything it touches
into a glowing ball of light,
as if god himself is smiling down at the dawn of a new day.
The beach is deserted apart from a few seagulls
that seem to share this enlightened appreciation.
I grab my board and walk slowly towards the sand,
my feet sinking into the grains,
feeling the consistency change as the water laps at my ankles.
My wetsuit keeps me surprisingly warm
as the cold water rises slowly, and i close my eyes,
holding my board under one arm.
I smell the salt, the fresh air, this is what beauty is.
I wander in, losing myself in this new environment.
I duck quickly underwater wetting my hair and face,
floating weightlessly in the water for a second,
before rising, feeling fresh as i grab my floating board and straddle it.
Leaning forward, i can seeing fish scatter
as the first wave washes over me
like a tilde wave of emotions and stress,
i wipe the slate clean,
i am the tabula rasa and this is a new day.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 1:43 AM UTC
Everything begins
As a blank slate
Just so is Life
Like an artwork or a masterpiece
Magnificient as it is
Like a poem or love song
Beautiful as it is
Begins in a blank slate
Just so is Life
With perfect melody
Of personalities and experiences
Variety of tunes
Of knowledge and skills
Colors burst in each blank of slate
Magnificient
Beautiful
Life will be
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 9:23 AM UTC
I was sick of being a woman,
sick of the pain,
the irrelevant detail of ***
my own concavity
uselessly hungering
and emptier whenever it was filled,
and filled finally
by its own emptiness,
seeking the garden of solitude
instead of men.
The white bed
in the green garden--
I looked forward
to sleeping alone
the way some long
for a lover.
Even when you arrived,
I tried to beat you
away with my sadness,
my cynical seductions,
and my trick of
turning a slave
into a master.
And all because
you made
my fingertips ache
and my eyes cross
in passion
that did not know its own name.
Bear, beast, lover
of the book of my body,
you turned my pages
and discovered
what was there
to be written
on the other side.
And now
I am blank
for you,
a tabula rasa
ready to be printed
with letters
in an undiscovered language
by the great press
of our love.
4.9k
Who else in this inhumane edifice
can dance while the suspecting eyes stare
at his moistened armpit?
Pathetically unknowing music uplifts not just the soul but the intellect.
Who else got the fire in imparting?
or …
did theirs even start a single spark since then?
Who else brings out the best in these hopefuls?
It’s all the worse and worst that they see.
And you think San Pedro would be pleased
when you gloat you made all the priests, doctors, and engineers?
Woe to you who humiliate the chair by your indolent butts
while uttering kindergartenous blabbers you claim to be education!
Then you get all you want while tabula rasa remains tabula rasa.
And you
You seated on the higher chairs!
Why don’t you trample down awhile
and put your cataracting sight to use
before it even brings you to the death of light.
Has anyone of you even heard what your god told to Pontius Pilate?
Ha! The you-have-no-power-over-me’s have always been impervious to you bigots!
And you say to your kin let me handle it.
When it is delayed and their impatience grows
you see they’ll leave.
Did you ever fret about deadlines
of bills, of matriculas, of debts?
What do you feed to your clan? Feeds?
Get Ripley’s here!
Oh how divine to utter all the Fs!
©Glenn L. Sentes
February 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 5:41 AM UTC
Curious, oh so curious
Like a new born canvas
Eyes with the blankest slate
Ready to be coloured in
Born with the adventurous thirst
Of finding the perfect medium
Wander and wonder, my child
Try different shades and textures
Learn to speak a thousand words
To build your own inner picture
Nov 20, 2018
Nov 20, 2018 at 8:52 PM UTC
A blank slate, nothing.
Can it exist?
Point to it please.
The best I can do is
make something
from something.
A blank piece of paper
a fold just there,
another just here
Became a swan.
Paper origami.
From nothing came something
But how I wonder?
Minds greater than mine
play with this puzzle.
A blank piece of nothing
a fold just there,
another just here
Became a universe
Stellar origami.
May 13, 2011
May 13, 2011 at 11:41 AM UTC
No use whistling for Lyonnesse!
Sea-cold, sea-cold it certainly is.
Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead-
There's where it sunk.
The blue, green,
Gray, indeterminate gilt
Sea of his eyes washing over it
And a round bubble
Popping upward from the mouths of bells
People and cows.
The Lyonians had always thought
Heaven would be something else,
But with the same faces,
The same places...
It was not a shock-
The clear, green, quite breathable atmosphere,
Cold grits underfoot,
And the spidery water-dazzle on field and street.
It never occurred that they had been forgot,
That the big God
Had lazily closed one eye and let them slip
Over the English cliff and under so much history!
They did not see him smile,
Turn, like an animal,
In his cage of ether, his cage of stars.
He'd had so many wars!
The white gape of his mind was the real Tabula Rasa.
2.8k
Transplanted to these '...fruited plains...', grandpa,
One of Gaia's fruits, what was his twinkle among
The countless stars? Here, millions have come
To stay, imbuing us with their place of origin,
Their souls dancing, flying, in a universal way.
For over 60 years Americans to be came through
Ellis Island, headed to who knows where West,
My grandfather, Uru, which means hero, a Fin,
One of three who left a concentration camp that
Fifteen thousand entered, did too, to NYC, NY.
Following freedom's beacon, its first light he saw,
The Statue of Liberties still unscorched torch, thanx
To Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, and the French. Of
Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom and a
'...Tabula ansata, a tablet evoking the law, upon
Which is inscribed the date of the American
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776.'
The broken chain of tyranny lies at her feet,
Upon a pedestal, wherein etched words are,
From Emma Lazurus' sonnet, 'The New Colossus',
Which may rise again, only if we embrace them:
'...Her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'
Only 151 feet tall, she will ever stand taller, or
Be turned to dust with us, all of humanity and
Large mammals, as well as the Earth, tragic
Members of extinctions annals, if we don't stop
The permanent altering of weather cycles through
Overuse of fossil fuels, the degradation of the
Earth's orbit around the Sun. We can walk in
Nature's abundant balance again, humane beings.
Still, she gives hues to the vast canvas of what
The Big Apple, and its beautiful mosaics' art, can be.
I shine only because he, a Merchant Marine, did.
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 2:06 AM UTC
. . . . . . .
. .
. . . . . . .
i would like a space marked out
wherein in silence i'd observe my sacral auguries,
and insularly divine
amid mid-dawning light contingencies,
to sweep a magic sweep for sunrise-
-tabula|_|rasa
and find, founded in a flout: a sect beyond sects
to section self sectionless~
inwrought helix interhelix nest~
and there reside attentively
()blinking() s l o w ...ly
in rainbow eyelash quiver flow,
arrows soaring ' ' ' ' ' 'centerly
to pin
each
whirl
of dream,
of sleep,
mneumonic residue,
prehensions right or wrong clear through --
symbological goo, too--
all too evidently called
from out an obvious deep
oblivion of plenum om,
or so it's said it's seen
in clear eidetic percept room
of alter overmInd of mindstuff's tomb [*]
and form of selfish altar drama gone and soon
for looking in or out or neither both
oblique, about aboutness-mirror zoom~
to which what spectionism halves
behaving in a twofold twining intro free: the finest of the fine:
insight-interred intuited sign
quiescently, albeit doubtfully at times, benign
.
.
.
.
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 4:32 PM UTC
Cheers from inside the catacombs of just-alive vagabonds & miscreant self-delusions of sagacious sabotage & pyrrhic moonscapes, brandishing our eternal return
a tabula rasa for respect & character - bottoms up, too. Mona Lisa
Shroud of Turin, ******* on a trunk. Gamble 66
for trays, dealing steam carrots.
Gag reflex to polite televangelists giving viewers auspicious immunity.
Habits cede to Power, acquiesce to Power, love power.
Peculiarity can recognize & organize to displace.
Something suspicious may run amok , antithetical to the divide & conquer trite.
Defeating paragons, i , Plumed Serpent of release & capture beats, borrowing color from a skylark in forever-flight, conjure remedial winds
Guide inimical bows subsumed in a cosmo-prole dew against the fasces of a few.
Apr 7, 2010
Apr 7, 2010 at 10:20 PM UTC
There is a darkness in the depths of the heart,
A darkness so consuming and overwhelming,
Able to govern the entire human existence: mind, body and soul.
It is ever evolving to deceive its victims,
To pull them by their toes into utmost insanity,
Utter unhappiness and painful disposition.
This darkness pervades all,
Eludes all and in doing so,
Corrupts the ever-pure tabula rasa of the innocent.
The innocent turn dark.
But in their darkness,
For every smile and laugh,
There must be good,
There must be happiness,
There must be light.
It is this light that shines through a heart of darkness,
That is able to pervade through the charred sanctities of life,
That can create the slightest keyhole in a resoundingly locked door,
That gives the will to continue,
To search,
And to live.
In every person's heart there is a candle.
A source of light,
A source of happiness
And of serene peace.
Yet,
*It is only able to serve those who light it.*
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 10:14 PM UTC
In my first life, I died
The year I turned 25,
And now that I’m in the hours before I taste my second,
I want to make it all the way to
28.27 years
cause when you divide that by 9,
You’re left with pi.
And because the universe isn’t just a
Straight line, you’ve got to use a formula to get around,
Get all up on that pi d because piety just
isn't logic enough for me, where even the repentant
Are told they’re going to burn in purgatory, sweetheart, please.
Being alive and feeling was
sometimes hell enough for me.
In just a few hours before I’m sent through that
Tight tunnel,
I want to be judged by the god of
3.14159, the baker that made me
Mr. Blueberry Buddah
Master in the art of reincarnation.
I want to be birthed **** with just a dab of pure whipped
cream for a soul,
Drizzled sweet with the blood I never watched my
mother bleed for me
on the morning of my second birth.
But I gotta say, this bardo shit's pretty odd,
Here the sky ranges in color gradients too specific like
“violent salmon” all the way to “lukewarm smoothie”
But once I get out, I know things will be strange,
owning a life that’s not quite mine to lose.
And even though I’ll have no answer to give, I desperately
Want someone to ask,
Stranger, tell me, how did it feel?
Theoretically, I’ll respond,
Well, I was kicked back into some ancestral dream
To meet everyone I will ever be, everyone
I have ever been and
Once I’ve met all of them,
Everyone I will never meet again.
And they'll ask,
Friend, is that why babies take so long to be born?
Yes, its because they’re shaking hands with the universe
On the way out of the womb.
At least, the one who will reach nirvana
After this life cycle circles through.
Lover, if I were to meet you again, will you remember?
Does your soul still have my story
Etched on it somewhere,
Or will you be washed clean of me,
The tabula rasa upon which Locke never wrote?
I won’t remember you, but
I have faith that you’ll find me,
Even lifetimes grow apart after too long.
It’s all about the company you keep because
They never stay.
And if that should happen, well,
We just met each other in an inconvenient life.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 2:26 AM UTC
It still haunts and keeps me anxious when silence comes in the form of uninvited guests at night, invoking the sense of melancholy deeply; like a salt rubbed on a fresh wound.
Part of me still wishes to turn back the time and rewrite the story, part of me aches for TABULA RASA~ a state of blank mind.
And part of me is still reeling on the nightmares which was my reality; while I was still trying to hold a grip over my sanity.
Monster exist in humans and sometime they're insidious like cancer. They eat you slowly while you're still unaware of the symptoms that you had to compromise with. The more you compromised and adjusted, the more it gave them the chance to deteriorate your worth.
I wore a smile and wore my mask of resilience so well that silently I bore the pain, while I was dying inside, yet nobody could see it with naked eyes.
And yet, I was blamed for all the repercussions I had to deal with.
And while the monster lurks around freely, I still walk on the path courageously, with fear but I'll keep walking on, even if it means to be alone.
Freedom is a lonely road.
👣
May 11, 2022
May 11, 2022 at 1:08 PM UTC
Somewhere along the way the
silver threads that embroider daylight with dreams
have melted, losing architectured edges and I find
these days it's harder to tell whether I'm
even awake at all.
Trance chaos, but curiously calm,
considering and sleepy.
My corridor is long but I
have no reason to hurry.
Broken lamps against the walls
dusty apartments to spiders and fluff.
No lightbulbs.
Only husks of maybe
once upon a time ideals.
There is a familiar light of
gossamer gold murmurs over me
I've been here before and
there isn't much farther left to go.
Incandescent airspace
pulsing like a living heart
rising, ebbing, coaxing me on.
The lamps are a silent vigil to my journey.
Again I am here at my tabula rasa.
The door is laid with bricks, sealed by my own earthly hands
Will not open! Will not open! Un-opening door.
And as far as I've ever come.
Light all around, fleeing from robinred tetris brickwork.
Intimate, tantalizing, maddening
Bone aching Mystery.
Yet. Yet. Yet. Yet. Yet.
I yet.
Yet again.
I am here.
Crossroads. Yield to trains.
There is no last stop until I
play cartographer
and circumnavigate
Wasteland concepts. Swamps of muted wishes.
Until I put my broken lamps back together
I am here.
Wandering,
waiting,
a ghost.
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 3:57 PM UTC
Daylight to look out a window
and midnight to see into one.
Say some name three times
at a candlelit face, a flashback
to fear at such a young age.
These were stories that were told
to us by older brothers and sisters
during our weekend sleepovers.
We're mirror images of them
no matter how old we grow.
Children playing in the snow
in the coldest of northern winters,
making a snowman, giving a name,
topping him with a black-ribboned hat
and an added lit cigarette to allow
easy passing of a lampless evening
faced an overbearing, light-speckled sky.
The image passes away in the day,
everything melted to bring spring
anew to the streets and city pools.
Clean them out, remove their stories
from the past year for the new ones
to come. Crop your face to bring light
back in and to tabula rasa our crevices.
Spiderwebs and crows feet.
Let your frame pass into the attic
to lean on your dusty, keylocked journals
and that 19th century armoire
that has no place in your place anymore.
Tell me those stories, tell me your stories.
Tell me your stories, and I'll tell you mine.
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 7:17 PM UTC
I call upon their harmony
They honor me with artistry
The pupils of Apollo's
Lyre resonant inside of me
Calliope adventurous,
Intrepid in her recklessness
Emboldening my will to lead
The unenlightened on this quest
Through Clio's scrolls of history
My oracle clairvoyant
She has graced me with the vision
Of the future sky chatoyant
And a buoyant sea of Euterpe
All floating through the lyricist
That synchronizes all of this
Into a metamorphosis
Evolving as Erato's love
A heart as soft as silk
A dove, tabula rasa thirsting for
The Mother Gaea's milk
To rise from Melpomene
Masks of tragic flaws of Icarus
For I divine the comedies
Thalia simply can't resist
Polyhymnia, Terpsichore
My rarest of expressions
Still reveal themselves in forms
Of spirit guide possessions
When Urania in cosmic bliss
Transports me to the stars
Reborn again to join them
As Mnemosyne's memoirs
Aug 30, 2017
Aug 30, 2017 at 1:11 AM UTC
Those who fight,
Surrender
When memories of a tainted past
Collide with fear of the future
Finding themselves wishing
They were oblivious
To certain things
If not everything
To obliterate that which
They are privy to
From their core
For their psyches
To be a blank slate
To be written
And re-written
By their own hand
" To author their own souls"
Feb 18, 2014
Feb 18, 2014 at 2:40 PM UTC
The machine turned black as the power
went out. Slowly returning to our natural
origin of birth.
My mind went blank. White. A tabula rasa of
sorts. Now she said as we entered the field of our
own existence. The familiar pulsing sensations
that made its way through my body pushed me forward
into this strange world.
Rotating fields of energy greeted me on this
new plane. As if entering a new universe opened
up both body, mind and soul. So did it expand our
certain sense of who we are as individuals.
There is a certain acknowledgment of discovering
the strange and abnormal, without leaving one's
place. But through the act of leaving the body,
and using one's mind to achieve new boundaries,
our souls enhance in ways we cannot comprehend.
May Jeff Buckley's soul and song live on...
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 1:32 PM UTC
Morphing Memory
I sit, and watch, and wait
For the time, the place, the date
In a tree by the whitewashed gate
The moment more than a minute late
Stuck in a horrific scatterbrained state
As if insisting an ingress interest rate
Risking return to a tabula rasa slate
No longer the proprietress of prized real estate
Solely searching for the squandered second to relocate
Eternal anticipation for a sudden soothing spate
Fluctuating failure that hopefully time can eliminate
Desire to keep things straight and communicate, lifting this worn weight
May 2, 2011
May 2, 2011 at 4:55 AM UTC
"You are what you eat"
until one day you don't
and that's what you become
n o t h i n g (beautiful?)
your cognitions like broken clock cogs
s l o w s l o w s l o w (perfect?)
tabula rasa is the body unbefouled by
nourishment (enemy?)
And the walls are washed white
Nature sickly perverts vitality
The cornucopia becomes a conspiracy
To sully your porcelain
e m p t i n e s s (happiness?)
hypoglycemia makes you shake
but not as hard as eating a whole meal
Can one person be so myriad?
This identity could not possibly fit inside a body.
Dreamer. Comedian. Thinker.
Friend. Musician. Writer. Smiler.
Lover. Wisher. Runner. Fighter.
Bulimic.
And there it is: ugliest of all words.
This identity could not possibly fit inside a body,
and you see, it doesn't.
It breaks it.
I don't know how
but
I will win
Apr 29, 2012
Apr 29, 2012 at 3:26 PM UTC
Ruptured heart does not want to in this heed.
You've already gone so far away
and even echoes have ceased to return
my deserted screams .
I'm reduced to a trip to Tabula Rasa
and back with nothing, nothing in between.
And if my slate could be wiped pure and clean
you still to me would more mean.
Oh, what agony! Oh, what pain!
Do you think you could forgive me
for letting you break my heart
again?
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 11:56 PM UTC
Phantasmagoria, I was preached, is sin:
To clutch to dreamlings is ill-will;
To ponder about freedom is misanthropy,
But to succumb fosters good- will
An iota of irenic coexistence, fugitive,
Washes away rebellious thoughts? No!
Men, remains of flesh, tricked, eros,
Follow their desires, where the go?
‘Son, to this earth belong we, transient
Creatures are we; have to dwell on ‘their’
Wishes, weak, weary, a love-in, common-
Touch; ‘they’ have teeth and scare.’
Worm’s eye view, attainder, yield,
Stop! Cul-de-sac! Walls! Apartheid Walls!
High! Not enough to thwart efforts to
Seek freedom, e’en via blood rainfalls.
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 7:50 AM UTC
Dead Wood
Clear out the Dead Wood
Make a clean sweep
Cut to the cwic
Find the life, the green
Bend like the sapling
Sea oats in wind
Blue-grey sky against green
Clear the way for new growth,
new beginnings
Sunshine
Honey bees
The sweetest sting
This emergence of spring
Initiate the clean slate
Tabula Rasa
The clean brain
Empty heart waiting to be filled
Empty body, purified
Porcelain vessel
This lit house, strobe glow
Light departs & returns
Light Hope
The new, crisp, clean chapter
Leaf unfolds
Unload the dead weight
Remove the baggage
Discard despair;
Teary eyes & brooding faces
Heavy hearts & dark places
No more
Fight the pain, & rotten words, rotten jests
Grating on nerves
All darkness depart, darkness spent
Dry the river, pack the nest.
Clear the dead wood, shove aside
Kick of foot, kick up dust.
This is your new fresh breath.
This is your new fresh life.
Drop the rotten & decaying hues
Bruised azul, sick blue
Burn the wood, the rotten words
Let smoke banners furl & uncurl.
Tears wiped clean
Clearing ashen faces
Tears drying out
All sad traces.
Celebrate the gone & the gain
A new dawn day begins
Welcome in
Fresh new love
Sea foam or yellow-green,
The color of trust
The color of love
Nov 8, 2017
Nov 8, 2017 at 12:40 AM UTC