"underline" poems
The burning flowers underline the sunset and
Dash before the fire (k)night catches them.
Ripe berries cheaply
tremble
but hopefully their vitality won't burst the pulp pulsating
beneath.
Crumbling flowers
crumb the floor
And Prisms of catching silver refract rose quartz and petal
and crimson
dust.
Bejewelled in Scarlet,
the air,
as the (k)night approaches, grows colder,
Unsure of whether he will bring
solace or strife.
In his chariot
he flies faster than the bees which buzzed around the fruit flutes
in the morning and among the trumpeting bluebells.
Stars fleck the (k)night
like freckles
and the milky ways resins stain his spouting steams lovely.
The (k)nights kind onyx reaches his crescendo and the floating moon danced drowsily through the cloud's spiralled tendrils
Which diminish as dawn
approaches
so their Tentilcles
droop to crinkled tissue paper sheathed in pink.
And so the (k)night
rides on into
The frivolous sunrise.
The lowing, glossy calves
in sage beside the ***** fields
cast a beloved ambience
As though
we are safe
in the knowledge
that the sky will remain
forever
topaz and the leaves
forever emerald.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 4:05 AM UTC
How to start writing
How to keep writing
Write, write, write
Writing
Pick a subject for writing
Make sure you reference your writing
Write, write, write
Keep writing
This amount of words for writing
Plus or minus 100 word max leeway for writing
Write, write, write
Still writing
Quotes in your writing
Punctuation for writing
Write, write, write
Writing
Title for writing
Page numbers for writing
Underline, paragraph, CAPITALISE
Your writing
Margin your writing
Spell check your writing
Re write, research, rephrase
Your writing
Is this your writing?
Question your writing
Read
Hate
***** up
Start again
Your writing
Check your writing
Get a friend to check your writing
Panic, stress, just write
Your writing
****** writing
This will do, writing
Print, bind, hand in
Your writing
Write some more as you sign off your writing
Sigh
Feel sick
Crash
Sleep
Writing
Wait, wait, wait
Wait for someone to read your writing
Judge your writing
Mark your writing
Wait, wait, wait
Receive your writing
Read another's writing about your writing
Their writing, writing about your writing
To write whether the words in your writing are good writing
Therefore RIGHT writing
Or
Infact writing that ought not to have been written in the first place.
Now tell me
From this writing
And writing
And writing
And more writing
How do you write the words that you now want to be written?
Sep 4, 2018
Sep 4, 2018 at 7:09 PM UTC
Against the saturated
Horizon of dawn,
Loitering in the dark timbre
Of emerging consciousness -
Dissipating somnolence
And preemptive despair,
Tacitly adumbrate the
Yawning abyss.
Chastened by the cunning and
Lubricious nihilism,
Igniting fermented provocations,
Silent subterfuge; death,
By mirth - the inane;
Lament of the mundane.
Fallow paradigms, accretions of
The last gasp -
Evaporating empty liturgies
Of suspicion;
Charity and equanimity -
Lost in confinement,
Triumphant avarice bearing
Descendants
Of intransigence;
Wielding imperious
Schemes of orthodoxy.
Pollard fragments of
Silken tapestry,
Miasma draped depression
Abridging;
Conversely,
Permuted flurries of anxiety
Dislodge
The vestiges of meaning
That abide
In brazen equivocation.
Tributaries of dogma reach
Their confluence,
Watershed moment,
Numinous effusion
Streams naked epiphany,
The precarious vision -
A gesture of providence,
Certainty and contingency;
Gratuitously derivative, life
Equals choice.
Verdant branches of intention;
And opportunity the vine,
Live forward -
The pen, my voice,
Piquant conduit pouring,
Exuberant wine.
Footprints found in givenness
Underline,
Penumbrae of my soul;
Mirrored silhouettes,
Thoughts and words engender;
And in verse adorn
Fecund soil, Line after line,
The cosmos altered,
Continuum of permanence -
Artist’s art articulating
Essence of my imagination,
I proliferate, I design
Phrases unique,
Participation mystique.
Words creating world,
The apparatus of infinity
Heidegger, ontologically precise,
Language -
The house of Being,
Ineffable, Promethean
Literary devise -
Envisioning possibility,
And abundance to allow,
I occur
Inhabit
Manifest
Future phenomena
Experienced as now.
©2008 & ©2011 W.S. Warner
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 2:02 PM UTC
The first days of fall are always warmer than I remember. It just takes one cold morning to make me want the glare back. Now I'm looking for any reason to go outside before dusk begins to swallow afternoons. I'm checking the mail on a Sunday. I'm carrying a broken lamp to the shed. I don't miss July and its quite seethe. I miss the beginning. I miss not knowing when it would end. It's a slice of sponge cake, a half-erased underline left behind in a book that I can't put down. I'll go inside and read it until the pages begin to curl. My nails were made for digging into palms. I only ever want to stay when I know it's time to go.
Oct 5, 2021
Oct 5, 2021 at 11:13 AM UTC
You promised me love,
While you break my heart
at the crack of dawn,
You promise me happiness,
While you inflict a scar in every memory.
I beg , let me be your everlasting light.
While you fill mine with darkness.
I say, please love me in way I love you.
While you take pieces of my soul.
And I cry , cry for the seasons to change
There you are stopping the time.
Rounds and rounds of ticks .
Recycle on unrequited love
Every night at break of dawn.
You promise me heaven ,
While dragging me to the gateway of hell.
You promise me comfort ,
While making me feel empty.
I taunt, let me be your every lasting kiss,
While you fill my lips with hate.
I yell, let me be the one you come home to.
While you run away to her...
And I pray , oh I pray for the pain to swell.
There you are injecting me with anesthetic.
Swelling over and over this unrequited love.
Every crack of dawn.
I fight, so many lies underline in my mind,
While you spoke love into my heart.
I protest, there's no love ,
While you confess to me this what I deserve
I sway I sway I sway for another shot
Drink and drink because of this unrequited love
Every crack of midnight.
I beg , beg, to forget this everlasting pain...
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 5:23 AM UTC
Stand in an open field and
tear out
the pages of your favourite book
and leave them
to the wind.
Underline the words for people to
find and read and
love
and leave you to wonder if they
noticed them at all.
Dec 20, 2012
Dec 20, 2012 at 7:43 PM UTC
Never mind the headache, ma'am, I got no time for your wishin that you had another couple hours sweaty spoonin with me
These days I got high time
racing like underline
all the while the future words seem
as if they're repeating
much slower or bleeding
white into the rest of the page
I gotta go ta work
Never mind the simple kiss, the stranger smile, the holy art.
Never mind the needful hand, I hear all the words that you're speaking and I've spent years making them not cut into me.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 10:55 PM UTC
i inherited an entire library
full of books that offer explanations
as to why you are incapable of loving me.
the romance section was laughable,
giving me bullet point commentaries
as to why i am doomed to never
be loved or feel loved again,
reasons why i settle for beautiful boys who
enjoy my company because i'm quirky, cute, time killer material,
not anchored, solid, strong, soulmate material.
but that's just it, i guess, no one can deny it-
(everyone knows when they are in the presence of precariousness.)
the mystery section offered me nothing but
a full buffet of questions i already had,
questions that always seemed to give clues to future answers,
delicious questions that tasted sweet at first
then turned suddenly sour,
questions that made me understand the meaning
of a deceptive cadence.
(these books made me wish i didn't leave fingerprints
on everything i touch.)
the fiction section made me feel like a child again,
these were the books that reminded me why hope
is and has always been my favourite bedtime snack.
(these were the books that reminded me that just
because i couldn't make you love me did not mean
that i couldn't make believe you love me.)
since i've stepped out of my fins every step has made me wish
for the courage to throw myself into the sea,
to dissolve in an instant,
to be a daughter of the air forevermore.
(perhaps Hans Christian Anderson was the only person in the world
who knew just how much it hurts to be a human being.)
the self help section gave the illusion of answers,
the way a fortune teller with a foreign accent
doused in flattery and jewelry might seem.
i have spent hours of my existence with these books,
laying on my stomach, furrowed brow, fingers turning white
from clutching the ballpoint pen for dear life thinking
maybe if i just keep
underliningunderliningunderlining
things will start to make sense again.
(because, don't you know? the more you underline
the parts of your life that are relevant on paper,
the closer you are to having figured out your life so perfectly
you eventually will walk by these books wondering
which unfortunate person you should donate them to.)
i inherited an entire library
full of books that offer explanations
as to why you are incapable of loving me.
i think maybe there are some things
that we are never meant
to know.
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 9:49 PM UTC
I have been trying to think of ways to say 'I love you' on paper
without writing outside the lines.
There is much more to the way the blinds paint sunlight on your body
than beat up notebooks and chewed up pencils.
I make a lot of mistakes,
the kind that rubber only smears but doesn't erase.
I didn't mean to crumple your delicate skin like paper.
I know that paper comes from trees,
yet all the poems that make me think of you do nothing
to help me breathe, and your touch only proves
that my breath is easier to take away than you'd like to believe.
Forgive me for being comprised almost entirely of errors and mistakes and strikethroughs with red pens,
While you are so clean and refined.
I think of you in cursive.
Take my trembling wrists in your strong fingers
and guide me with a steady and patient hand.
Teach me to love you in bold print and I will underline it three times,
and again,
and again,
and again.
In my head, you are a million brainstorms thrown into waste buckets,
and if for some strange reason Helvetica is the only way to make you almost understand my thoughts,
then I am typing furiously and waiting for you to see them all.
All I ever wanted was to fill the doubles spaces between your fingers with my own,
even though sometimes you wish you could
backspace the words you didn't mean to say to me
while I pretend I don't remember them.
I have been trying to think of ways to say 'I love you' on paper
without writing outside the lines.
Then I ripped up the paper, scribbled it on a napkin,
and wiped the blood off my face with it instead.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 12:13 PM UTC
Microsoft "WURD"
slang font.
i know your type.
you like Arial.
you dig Arial Black cause there's no Arial White.
she wears a size 0.
invisible to the eye.
she's from Georgia.
print her out on white paper.
she'll be prettier than Courier New Times New Roman.
her Impact on Felix Titling will be extravagant.
she'll put him under a spell with her Book Antiqua.
you'll give up on her and take a train through the Terminal towards Tahoma in the "Golden State"
you'll come across Verdana who is a size 12.
bold as you are, you'll ask why she tries to underline her beauty by showing off her colon(:) .
and you ask her why women are always cranky before they get their period (.) ?
[arial, arial black, georgia, courier new, times new roman, impact, felix tilting, book antiqua, terminal, tahoma, verdana=different fonts]
May 28, 2010
May 28, 2010 at 1:14 PM UTC
Sid's Valentine Goodbye.
Valentine's Day - Sid woke up as
he had done for odd eighty years.
Hidden in a closet were her roses
and cheap card.
His thin ex-tuberculous wife was
already up, she had made tea,
laid the paper and opened the
windows for the stuffiness to exit.
Joe Loss was playing Moonlight on the
new thingy C.D and outside one
of the warders was moving about.
Sid kissed her on the cheek, lightly
but with feeling, presented his roses,
felicitations handed her the card,
she loved it.This was their sixty fourth
Valentine,
As usual Joan shed a little symbolic tear,
nothing too un-British and came to underline
her love for big Sid with another little kiss.
Speed cyclist, dispatch rider, Radar Sid
was on lazy boy with The Mail and char.
Paper open, tea untouched she gave him.
her usual restrained peck and realized.
He was still warm.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 9:09 AM UTC
And here in this windless hole, I sit and wonder where I had left that which mattered most to me under the starlit fields of Montreal. I crave it and yet wish to God that I had never been the man who held you close to me. Everything I had in my arms in the parking lot outside of that hotel dash turned dash residence. A messy room and a crowded cafeteria. A hotel dash turned dash residence dash turning dash memory. And here in this wonderless ******** in this airtight cabin of past fantasy’s design, the rent keeps piling up and oh the dishes are due. Half-finished paperback classics flapjacked on top of each other in this white shirt no sweat world with the sleeves rolled up. This pill form city with all the charm and magic of an after dinner mint. Take a walk with me, let me tell you about this dream I had.
It had wine
and white sheets and tables.
Paintings that I knew
but did not recognise,
gasping under the grip
of yellowing wallpaper with pink flowers.
It was hell,
hell I tell you.
waking up with fever thinking I was portuguese and that there were three of me
Remembering when you sat me down,
and told me who I was in all of
two paragraphs- underline this underline that.
Black and red LEDs in full contrast of the room turning real again.
All I remember is you.
Sep 8, 2010
Sep 8, 2010 at 10:23 PM UTC
I want to be your favorite book
I want you to write on my pages
and underline the passages
you loved the most.
I want to be that song you listen to
when you’re angry
and just wanting to calm down.
I want to be that show you can’t stop watching and can’t stop talking about with your friends.
I want to be those long walks at the beach where you love watching 44 sunsets.
I want to be your favorite mixed drink
that you can’t get enough of.
I want to be the bad hangovers that you don’t regret having.
I want to be the pain that’s worth it.
I want to be your newly washed sheets that you bury your face in.
I want to be your crazy Friday nights
but also your lazy Sunday afternoons.
I want to be your favorite liar,
your favorite scar.
That one wound you wouldn’t want to heal.
I want to be that loud music
you always dance to.
I want to be the words that you mean to say when you say them.
I want to be your bitter coffee
in the mornings.
I want to be the one to wake you up
and make sure you’re ready to face life again.
I want to be your favorite love story that you keep telling yourself.
I want to be your cozy rainy days and lonely summer nights.
I want to be all the times you said yes to something you never tried before.
I want to be your nervous laughter, your crooked smile.
I want to be the corny puns you tell.
I want to be your favorite film.
I want to be that urge that’ll make you want to make a film or write a poem or skydive.
I want to be your guiding light and your comfortable darkness.
I want to be your hope,
your sorrows,
your bad dreams,
your goals,
your nightmares,
your fight,
your heartbreaks,
your hate,
your love,
the things that make you
and break you.
I want to make you so happy,
you’d forget you were ever sad.
May 8, 2018
May 8, 2018 at 10:28 PM UTC
The closeness of heaven
Underline my pain
The Simplicity of joy
Senseless regrets
A tentative smile
Strolling naked
Where the suns sets,
A foregone conclusion
Arrives at the altar
Fear stood hand and hand
With her last kiss
Undeniable passion
See me through
The windows of my heart
Symphony’s of doves
Pushing the sun closely to ecstasy
The Tenderness of wings
Brought my inner self
Face to face with reality
Once her mind synchronize
With my invincible essence
Our thoughts became one
As the moon drop her last teardrop
Life became unbearable, the silent whisper
past through a nail on the
Other side of her realm.
Rony Joseph all rights reserved 2010
Nov 8, 2010
Nov 8, 2010 at 2:31 PM UTC
I'll pen for you a memory
if you'll but offer up your skin
and I'll trace my heart upon it
to carve initials in
my fingernails lightly
will then underline each kiss
for all or nothing is my promise
as you deserve a love like this
Feb 23, 2013
Feb 23, 2013 at 6:25 PM UTC
I'm circling the spongy surface of my memory,
Trying to underline the part
Where your touch became too rough
But I wanted you to pull my hair anyway.
Where you stopped wanting to touch me
But wanted me to continue touching you.
Where I am left standing alone, knee deep
In my fiery *****
As Plath would say.
A sad and broken piece of machinery
A rusty, wet tractor left in the wilderness
Asking the vines for some sort of final mercy.
I want to underline it,
So I know it was real all along.
He said, "I had a girlfriend
Who couldn't ***
SHE was SO ****** up."
I whispered, "that makes me feel
really good." I couldn't look at him.
I don't know if he got the sarcasm.
I don't know if I will get the,
No that,
Monster out of my mind.
Vines, please give me some sort of
Final mercy.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 8:11 PM UTC
emoticon smiles, crunch! leaves under boots are a shattered glass,
believe in the underline, yorkshire smiles at new york, you grew up and I accept that, son.
never over the beginning of the orange bullet casing. in Sandy Hook the deepest opposition faced mankind
that of the speed in which the modern world finds itself chasing chinese dragons in the bacteria floaters
of the eye, watching as they dip into ocean as if that were insane, but what's insane is to consider the
lost mind to be a mind that was lost in the beginning, you can't lose the mind, you can only find it within
its memory foam.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 2:02 PM UTC
You linger
as I lurk,
and we tie a bow with our thoughts.
Cuidado, cuidado!
A man so rare,
with lips so near...
How could I --
What could I do?
Cuidado.
You underline the thoughts I speak,
and sense the rancid smell I leak,
and climb the trees I once resided in.
Cuidado, I say,
But correr, I do,
It is not easy, when there was one, and now two.
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 9:22 AM UTC
I dip into the black scribbles in my mind
Jot it all down, scrawled out, erratically written
Bold, italicize, tangled, underline
My voice shatters in shambles, so I write because nobody listens
And the light behind your eyes flicker like candles
And my hands and head and heart stiffen
Your lips loosen and lift me, omnipotent like ***** and lithium
You wrap a string around my finger so I do not go missing
Because I fill from the inside with helium
The frame, feeling, flavor, follows me, lingers, always living
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 10:07 PM UTC
The way she underlines
her favorite parts in this book
says more than words could.
She never draws straight,
but scribbles little lines
that connect the syllables
in the same way
she etches her little things
one by one, piece by piece
into something worth reading.
I want to highlight
each beautiful characteristic,
underline with sharpie
so her imprint is permanent,
write notes in the margin
to ensure I never forget.
m.w.
Jun 22, 2014
Jun 22, 2014 at 12:48 AM UTC
Before uende tizi,usikule ndizi,that could make you feel uneasy,nowadays injili naspread bila bibles,the only player kwa hii game anacheza na bi-balls,hii si kujichocha ni vile skills nimeobtain kwa makocha,luku safi na maganji kwa toja,na hi I dunia ni ya sir God so kaa unategea downfall yangu my friend utangoja.
Art inatoka kwa heart,PETTY POET is about to change ile narrative imekuwepo,my lines are full of flavour kaa ni diss unapokea kichapo,ni heri uko mnaeza kula vako,huku kumekauka kuliko kichwa ya babu owino,na Jana na Leo mayutt daily ni kilio,promises hamfulfill kisha kwa mbulu unabrag venye uko na spirit ya kuokolea,zote mauongo,I wish ningekuwa na kalamu ni-underline na rangi iliyokolea.
Kama ni uhondo unatafuta songea,si kubrag ni course ya success nilisomea,daily nikiota nagrow ka mmea,kila mtu ana-views tofauti huwezi sikia nikikusemea,ukibehave abnormally tunakutreat normally,si wasapere pekee wanapenda mali ata mayoh utaskia wakisema no-mali,
Hii time short nimespend apa nilikuwa na blessings za mama no wonder sijastammer,kama nimekubamba scratch kwa tenje uniseti stage name sijaplan kuhama.
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Jul 15, 2020
Jul 15, 2020 at 6:43 PM UTC
She froze;
Not because of the cold weather,
But the stares burnt a hole
In her nervous system
So she froze,
Not because of the lack of blood circulation
In her tightening limbs,
But because the world felt like
It has to stop.
Some believe that,
If you breathe slow enough
You can hinder time;
She stopped time
For she was tired of twisting,
Carrying humans with her hands
Lifting their weights on her shoulder blades;
It was too exhausting
For her to be a carrousel
So she decided to become a rocket ship instead;
She -
Opened her arms wide
Creating sharp edges
To break through the wind,
With feet straight together
Like the rulers she used
To underline her name over every assignment
With little drawn hearts on top of the i’s
And circles over the e’s -
For her tendency to be perfect
Was a result of her fear of failure.
She was ready to be a rocket ship,
But she had no fuel in her gas tank
So she froze.
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 7:48 PM UTC
November rolled down I-90
into this town
with the year's first snow and wind
I closed my mouth
into a fading highway line:
straight, short, horizontal
as the grey stains shade its white.
It's Wednesday night
and the tunes inside my car
underline a quiet month
strained through these bars
"What's the score?" say apartment walls
empty seats tied with unreturned phone calls
It stood that way last I took the tally
on shivering walks' shortcuts through alleys
This is just another rut
walked into these roads
where my unabashed feet
and my aching toes
can save my face some embarrassment
when the bent skies straighten out this cracking pavement
Just a little while later,
look back to the Sun,
gonna warm my face in the Winter dawn
and shake off these somber streetsalt thoughts
caught
my friends on the rebound,
we'll remember now
caught
my friends on the rebound,
we'll remember now
I'll be fine again
come February.
Line my stupid fears up,
shade their eyes.
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 1:39 PM UTC
I'm going to underline your lips
as I start to watch your hips,
I'm going to highlight your eyes
Watch how they lighten up the skies.
I'll taste your mouth
and I'll head south
to the forbidden valley
between the hills of pleasure.
Kissing your peaks
Going on for weeks,
For your pleasure and mine
Baby, you make me feel so fine.
Your legs, they move,
move along the sheets
the pillows, and beyond
the noise of the streets.
Your breath so fast
Getting there at last
I'm here to hold you now
tomorrow and forever.
I'll make your cold hands
go hot, and witness
the pleasure you try to withstand
and still you want no less.
In the end so sweet,
I hold you near to me,
And you whisper:
"I love you"
And I say:
"I love you too".
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 4:23 PM UTC
Seeing guns as a right
means you must have one
to protect yourself
from others just like you
The illusion of opportunity
to make yourself wealthy
by dint of your own effort
when it's all just a lottery
Passing off privilege
as some born vocation
while your downtrodden masses
rot in poverty or prison
Say taxation is theft
to underline your greed
while you live on stolen land
hate those you put in need
Deny health care for all
because you don't need it
it's better they die in pain
than be obliged to the State
Exporting your dystopia
all around the earth
so the rich get richer faster
and the rest increase in dearth
Cynthia Pauline Jones 3/10/2013
Apr 3, 2014
Apr 3, 2014 at 6:43 AM UTC