Poetry

[Dissident]

Im not such a big fan of most poetry since corny love usually monopolizes the themes, but i do like some others about different subjects.

Maybe we could share some poems we like here and discuss them.

The following is by Pablo Neruda, and i think expresses the nausea that the modern world sometimes causes. This is a translation from spanish, i would post the original too but it would be too long.

Walking around

It happens that I am tired of being a man.
It happens that I go into tailor shops and the movies
All shriveled up; impenetrable like a felt swan
Navigating on a water of origin and ash.
The smell of barber shops makes me sob out loud.
I want nothing but the repose either of stones or wool.
I want to see no more establishments nor gardens
Nor merchandise nor glasses nor elevators.
It happens that Im tired of my feet and my nails and my hair
And my shadow.
It happens that I am tired of being a man.

Just the same, it would be delicious to scare a notary
With a cut lily
Or knock a nun stone dead with one blow of an ear.
It would be beautiful to go through the streets
With a green knife shouting until I died of cold.

I do not want to go on being a root in the dark, hesitating,
Stretched out shivering with dreams,
Downward in the wet tripe of the earth,
Soaking it up and thinking, eating every day.
I do not want to be the inheritor of so many misfortunes.
I do not want to continue as a root and as a tomb, as a solitary tumble,
As a cellar full of corpses stiff with cold and dying with pain.

For this reason, monday burns like oil
At the sight of me arriving with my jail face.
And it howls in passing like a wounded wheel.
And its footsteps toward night are filled with hot blood.
And it shoves me along to certain corners and to certain damp houses
Hospitals where the bones come out of the windows.
To certain cobbler shops smelling of vinegar;
To streets horrendous as crevices.

There are birds the color of sulphur and horrible intestines
Hanging from the doors of the houses which I hate.
There are forgotten sets of teeth in coffee pots.
There are mirrors which should have wept with shame and horror.
There are umbrellas all over the place and poisons and navels.
I stride along with calm; with eyes, with shoes, with fury,
With forgetfulness.
I pass and cross offices and stores full of orthopedic appliances
And courtyards hung with clothes on wires
Underpants, towels and shirts
Which weep slow, dirty tears.

 

[BulimicMind]

That one's really good considering it's a translation from another language. I've always been a fan of language-specific nuances like rhymes and things for some reason.

By far my favorite two poems are Kubla Khan (By Samuel Coleridge):
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.


And Written-In-Red (By Voltairine de Cleyre):

Written in red their protest stands,
For the gods of the World to see;
On the dooming wall their bodiless hands
have blazoned "Upharsin," and flaring brands
Illumine the message: "Seize the lands!
Open the prisons and make men free!"
Flame out the living words of the dead
Written-in-red.
Gods of the World! Their mouths are dumb!
Your guns have spoken and they are dust.
But the shrouded Living, whose hearts were numb,
have felt the beat of a wakening drum
Within them sounding-the Dead men's tongue—
Calling: "Smite off the ancient rust!"
Have beheld "Resurrexit," the word of the Dead,
Written-in-red.
Bear it aloft, O roaring, flame!
Skyward aloft, where all may see.
Slaves of the World! Our cause is the same;
One is the immemorial shame;
One is the struggle, and in One name—
MANHOOD— we battle to set men free.
"Uncurse us the Land!" burn the words of the Dead,
Written-in-red.

 

[Aphasia]

No post is too long good for good poetry.

Anyway, here are 2 poems from William Blake

The Poison Tree
I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole,
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree.

*untitled*
I mock thee not;
though by thee I am mocked
Thou call'st me madman
I call thee blockhead

 

[Dissident]

Blake is interesting.
Here is another one by Neruda, i think we can sometimes relate to it, does this happen to you too?:

We Are Many​

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.​

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.​

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.​

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?​

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.​

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.​

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography. ​

 

[CowSavior]

*untitled*
I mock thee not;
though by thee I am mocked
Thou call'st me madman
I call thee blockhead

Haha.
Story of my life.

 

[loveofreason]

Kubla Khan - always loved that one!

Neruda's work is new to me. I like it.

Pleased to read these selections, when I have time I'll find some of my own favourites to add.

 

[Linsejko]

Wordsworth wrote the only poem I ever accidentally memorized;

I heard a thousand blended notes,
while in a grove I sate reclined
in that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did nature link
the human soul that through me ran
and much it grieved my heart to think
what man has made of man.

.L

 

[loveofreason]

This poem by Sylvia Plath has stayed with me since I read it over twenty years ago:


Mushrooms

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

 

[Aphasia]

Pity she died young.

Haiku about computers I remembered from an old copy of Reader's Digest (searched for them just now):

First snow, then silence
This thousand dollar screen dies
So beautifully

With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.

A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
Into a simple stone.

You step into the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.

 

[Thread Killer]

Corny love poetry? lol. The stuff I had to study in college is heavy duty intellectualism. I think poetry can cover a wide range of thinking styles and perceptions.

Anyways, one of my many corny love poems:

I stand before a landscape so empty,
rendered dry and deserted without remedy.
The vindictiveness of man leaves a scar
on the earth's face, its incision wide and far.
And here I stand gazing at its edge,
its testimony of the futility of any pledge
to harbor peace when in man's heart is war
and in civil war the fabric of civilization tore
and here we are breathing our last
while today in history our future is but the past



(yesterday's, haven't furnished it much)

In somber introspection dark recollections emerge
From that deep and dank pool of black,
an estuary underground where sunken ships
of barnicle eaten frames lie submerged
'neath the weight of consciousness's blanket
though gold coins and gems reside
in steel chests so many in those vessels sunk,
So many memories of gain and loss,
of friends and foe, victories and woe,
lie hidden and untocuhed beneath
bottomless waters of the undergroud,
deep in the caves that touch the open sea,
deep down in sunken sepulchres,
in locked down caskets of chests.

Lurker

No name, no image, always hiding face
no voice be seen, on the edges gleens
but casts his gaze into the noisy waters
learning, observing, taking time
to understand the psyche of the band.
Lurker he is, a ghost of data
anonymous entity, an unheard name,
he looks down despising vanity and fame.
Never the elitist, never the populare
He values dignity in knowledge
for the rest is passing air.


(and I'm just picking on the OP, but seriously, read Wallace Steven's, Ezra Pound's, and especially T.S. Eliot's stuff. I think a lot of ya would get a kick out of it if you like analyzing stuff that INTps might appreciate.

 

[loveofreason]

Blake is interesting.
Here is another one by Neruda, i think we can sometimes relate to it, does this happen to you too?:

We Are Many​

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.​

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.​

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.​

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?​

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.​

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.​

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography. ​

For times I've dwelt over nom and the power of naming things. I think, obliquely, that it is related to that which the poet describes.

Anyway, I'd been wanting to say that I do relate to this, very much so... that I feel swamped with identities and wish so much to call upon "the truly me". That when I write, somehow it is this "truly me", but I never meet them, never intersect with them... and that yes, when I want to speak of it, when I study it, it all reduces to geography - a matter of here and there. I'm asking where? but the reality cannot be spoken. I cannot own up to the shifting self in any language that does justice to it.

I've hesitated because it can be put no better than the poet has expressed. Which illustrates the enduring power of poetry. The power to take the inexpressible and give it voice.

The more I read this poem, the more lucid it (and I!) become(s).

 

[Dissident]

Thanks for sharing that, im glad you liked it. Like you said there is not much to add to what it says, i think that it can take most of our lives just to arrive to a point in which all of our faces combine in one in peace, if even posible. Maybe all of those aspects of us are really us, and not a bad thing, and the trick is to know when the brave is needed and when the "coward" with "a thousand tiny reservations" could save us from a desaster. Articulating and balancing all of those aspects of ouselves would be something to work on (is this improving our undeveloped functions in MBTI terms?).

 

[Mischz]

Warning to a Lover
by Gilbert Koh

Every time you try to change me,
We run the risk I might.
Two questions darkly cross my mind,
So let them cross yours too –
Could you really love another me,
And would he, you?

-

A local poet. My sig is an excerpt from one of his poems called "Critique".

 

[October]

My favourite poem by my favourite writer:


"The love song of Alfred Prufrock" by T.S.Elliot


Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair -
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin -
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all -
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all -
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all -
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet - and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all" -
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all."
That is not it, at all.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor -
And this, and so much more? -
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


^
The last three lines are my signature as well.

 

[nooli4]

My favourite poem by my favourite writer:

"The love song of Alfred Prufrock" by T.S.Elliot

I love that poem too. It is amazing! This is my favourite verse:

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous -
Almost, at times, the Fool.

It's so clever with the Shakesperean references at this point and the general hesitation and indecision in all the poem is something I can relate to.

 

[loveofreason]

From an Australian poetress, Judith Wright.


The Old Prison


The rows of cells are unroofed,
a flute for the wind’s mouth,
who comes with a breath of ice
from the blue caves of the south.


O dark and fierce day:
the wind like an angry bee
hunts for the black honey
in the pits of the hollow sea.



Waves of shadow wash
the empty shell bone-bare,
and like a bone it sings
a bitter song of air.



Who built and laboured here?
The wind and the sea say
-Their cold nest is broken
and they are blown away-



They did not breed nor love,
each in his cell alone
cried as the wind now cries
through this flute of stone.


****
It was written about the landscape of Port Arthur, the ruins, but I read it when I am filled with the sense of our own prison and internal desolations. Coberst's thread Freedom: Fragile Fiction put me in mind of it again, for which I am thankful because when the silence clamps down it helps to have the voice of a poet speak for one.

 

[Jordan~]

Emily, by Joanna Newsom.

THE MEADOWLARK and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
set to the sky in a flying spree for the sport of the pharaoh.
A little while later, the Pharisees dragged a comb through the meadow.
Do you remember what they called out to you and me in our window?

There is a rusty light on the pines tonight;
sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow, down into the
bones of the birches, and the spires of the churches, jutting out from the shadows;
the yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks, and the bale, and the barrow—
and everything sloped, like it was dragged from a rope, in the mouth of the south below.

We've seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey.
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away,

from that snow in the nighttime,
just going and going

and the stirring of wind chimes
in the morning
in the morning

Helps me find my way back in
from the place where I have been—

And, Emily, I saw you last night by the river.
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water—
frowning at the angle where they were lost and slipped under forever,
in a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror.

Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water.
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger—
though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades, loosed in December,
I promised you I'd set them to verse, so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor's just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite's just what causes the light,
And the meteor's how it's perceived;
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void, that lies quiet in offering to thee.

~

You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I'm in;
threw the window wide, and cried and amen amen amen.
The whole world stopped to hear you hollering.
And you looked down and saw, now, what was happening:

The lines are fading in my kingdom
(though I have never known the way to border them in);
so the muddy mouths of baboons and sows, and the grouse, and the horse, and the hen
grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen.
And the mail is late, and the great estates are not lit from within.
The talk in town's becoming downright sickening.

In due time, we will see the far butte lit by a flare.
I've seen your bravery, and I will follow you there

And row through the nighttime,
gone healthy,
gone healthy all of a sudden,

In search of a midwife
who could help me
who could help me,

help me find my way back in.
There are worries where I've been.

Say, say, say, in the lee of the bay
don't be bothered.
Leave your troubles here,
where the tugboats shear the water from the water
(flanked by furrows, curling back like a match help up to a newspaper).

Emily, they'll follow your lead by the letter.
And I make this claim, and I'm not ashamed to say I knew you better.
What they've seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter.

Let us go! Though we know it's a hopeless endeavour.
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined, and hold us close forever.

Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with
a sky that is gaping and yawning,
there is a song I woke with on my lips,
as you sailed your great ship towards the morning.

Come on home. The poppies are all grown knee-deep by now.
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow.
Peonies nod in the breeze,
and as they wetly bow,
with hydrocephalitic listlessness,
ants mop up their brow.

And everything with wings is restless, aimless drunk and dour;
butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
My clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines—
Come on home, now! All my bones are dolorous with vines.

Pa pointed out to me for the hundredth time tonight,
the way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light.

Squint skyward and listen—
loving him, we move within his borders:
just asterisms in the stars' set order.

We could stand for a century,
staring,
with our heads cocked,
in the broad daylight at this thing:

Joy,
landlocked in bodies that don't keep—
dumbstruck with the sweetness of being,
till we don't be.
Told: Take this.
Eat this.

Told: the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor's just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.

And the meteorite's just what causes the light,
And the meteor's how it's perceived;
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void, that lies quiet in offering to thee.

It's a song, but it's poetic enough.

 

[Omniarevelat]

ah, great poem! last time (& first time) I read it was 11 years ago, but I've always remembered that first line & the felt swan. Sadly, I understand the poem much more now than I did then...or is it, fortunately I was lucky enough to not understand it so well back then as I do now.... I'm happy you happened to post it & I happened to read it! I'll have to post a poem tomorrow, yay! (Do you like Kay Ryan, the new Poet Laureate?)

ps how far south are you anyway? I'm actually from way south myself. Been a while.

 

[Dissident]

Im happy I posted it, and you read it too then

I honestly didnt know Kay Ryan (the fact that Im as far south as Argentina may have something to do with it), but I like what I could find online just now.
Im looking forward for your poem.

 

[eudemonia]

I'm generally not a great poetry lover, though I'm a great fan of Blake. However, I connected with this poem by John Clare at the age of 16 and it has never left me. Clare is a nature poet - again, something I don't particularly relate to - but this poem is something else.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest -that I loved the best -
Are strange -nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, -
The grass below -above the vaulted sky

 

[Omniarevelat]

John Clare

I'm generally not a great poetry lover, though I'm a great fan of Blake. However, I connected with this poem by John Clare at the age of 16 and it has never left me. Clare is a nature poet - again, something I don't particularly relate to - but this poem is something else.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am, and live with shadows tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest -that I loved the best -
Are strange -nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept;
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie, -
The grass below -above the vaulted sky

what a lovely poem!!! so glad you posted it...

 

[Omniarevelat]

Im happy I posted it, and you read it too then

I honestly didnt know Kay Ryan (the fact that Im as far south as Argentina may have something to do with it), but I like what I could find online just now.
Im looking forward for your poem.

Argh! I wrote you a looong reply with Kay Ryan poems & everything and just apparently lost the connection as I was trying to post it & it seems to be gone.... Will re-reply to you as soon as I have more time & am done pulling my hair out or...well something less destructive....

 

[stercusaccidit]

For some reason, and despite its religious themes, I have always liked The Destruction of Sennacherib by Lord Byron. Possibly for purely aesthetic reasons. I just love the way it sounds...

I
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.

II
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass'd,
And the eyes of the sleepers wax'd deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there roll'd not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.

III
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpets unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!


Also am a big fan of Sylvia Plath. My favorites are The Applicant and Two Sisters of Persephone.

The Applicant:

First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,

Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand

To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed

To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit----

Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

 

[Kidege]

I heard this poem in a song years ago. They'd kept most but not all of the verses. Here's the full version, in my translation.

by Gabriel Celaya

POETRY IS A WEAPON LOADED WITH FUTURE


When we expect nothing personally exalting,
But we beat and keep going beyond consciousness,
Fiercely existing, blindly affirming,
Like a pulse that beats on the darkness,

When we stare directly into
The vertiginous clear eyes of death,
We tell the truths:
The barbaric, terrible, loving cruelties.

We tell the poems
That widen the lungs of those who, suffocated,
Ask to be, ask for rhythm,
Ask a law for what they feel excessive.

With the speed of instinct,
With the lightning of prodigy,
As a magical evidence, the real becomes
Identical to itself.

Poetry for the poor, poetry as necessary
As the daily bread,
As the air we demand thirteen times a minute
In order to be, and while we are being, give a glorifying yes.

Because we live by force, because they barely let us
Say we are who we are,
Our songs cannot be a sinless ornament.
We are hitting the bottom.

I curse the poetry conceived as a cultural
Luxury by the neutrals
Who, washing their hands, circumvent and evade.
I curse the poetry of those who don't take sides, sides until they're stained.

I make mine the fault. I feel in me those who suffer
And I sing, breathing.
I sing and sing, and singing beyond my personal
Pains, I become wider.

I'd like to give you life, provoke new acts,
And that is why I measure what I can do with my technique.
I feel like an engineer of verse and a laborer
Who works with others Spain in her steel.

This is my poetry: a tool-poetry,
And a throb of the unanimous and blind.
This is it, weapon loaded with expansive future
Pointed to your chest.

It's not a poetry thought drop by drop.
It's not a pretty product. It's not a perfect fruit.
It's something like the air that we all breathe,
The song that gives space to what we carry inside.

They are words that we all repeat feeling
Them like ours, and they fly. They're more than what they mention.
They are what is most needed: what doesn't have a name.
They are cries in the heavens, and they are acts on Earth.

 

[FusionKnight]

A poem written by a high school senior in Alton, Illinois, two weeks before he committed suicide, from http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue5.htm.

He drew... the things inside that needed saying. Beautiful pictures he kept under his pillow.
When he started school he brought them...
To have along like a friend.
It was funny about school, he sat at a square brown desk Like all the other square brown desks... and his room Was a square brown room like all the other rooms, tight And close and stiff.

He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, his arms stiff
His feet flat on the floor, stiff, the teacher watching
And watching. She told him to wear a tie like
All the other boys, he said he didn't like them.
She said it didn't matter what he liked. After that the class drew.
He drew all yellow. It was the way he felt about Morning. The Teacher came and smiled, "What's this?
Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing?"
After that his mother bought him a tie, and he always Drew airplanes and rocketships like everyone else.
He was square inside and brown and his hands were stiff. The things inside that needed saying didn't need it
Anymore, they had stopped pushing... crushed, stiff
Like everything else.

I'm amazed nobody's posted Lewis Carroll yet.

The Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

A couple by Shel Silverstein. These just give me the shivers every time I read them.

Where the Sidewalk Ends

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

Forgotten Language

Once I spoke the language of the flowers,
Once I understood each word the caterpillar said,
Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings,
And shared a conversation with the housefly
in my bed.
Once I heard and answered all the questions
of the crickets,
And joined the crying of each falling dying
flake of snow,
Once I spoke the language of the flowers. . . .
How did it go?
How did it go?

Picture Puzzle Piece

One picture puzzle piece
Lyin' on the sidewalk,
One picture puzzle piece
Soakin' in the rain.
It might be a button of blue
On the coat of the woman
Who lived in a shoe.
It might be a magical bean,
Or a fold in the red
Velvet robe of a queen.
It might be the one little bite
Of the apple her stepmother
Gave to Snow White.
It might be the veil of a bride
Or a bottle with some evil genie inside.
It might be a small tuft of hair
On the big bouncy belly
Of Bobo the Bear.
It might be a bit of the cloak
Of the Witch of the West
As she melted to smoke.
It might be a shadowy trace
Of a tear that runs down an angel's face.
Nothing has more possibilities
Than one old wet picture puzzle piece.

The Little Boy and the Old Man

Said the little boy, "Sometimes I drop my spoon."
Said the old man, "I do that too."
The little boy whispered, "I wet my pants."
"I do that too," laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, "I often cry."
The old man nodded, "So do I."
"But worst of all," said the boy, "it seems
Grown-ups don't pay attention to me."
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
"I know what you mean," said the little old man.

 

[EloquentBohemian]

Leonard Cohen was my first deep taste of poetry. My introduction to him was his album Songs of Leonard Cohen in 1968, which prompted me to find his written work. He has always been close to the top of my list of Poets and in my opinion, I consider him to be one of the few remaining true Romantics.

This poem is one I return to often to savour its imagery.

You Have the Lovers

You have the lovers,
they are nameless, their histories only for each other,
and you have the room, the bed, and the windows.
Pretend it is a ritual.
Unfurl the bed, bury the lovers, blacken the windows,
let them live in that house for a generation or two.
No one dares disturb them.
Visitors in the corridor tip-toe past the long closed door,
they listen for sounds, for a moan, for a song:
nothing is heard, not even breathing.
You know they are not dead,
you can feel the presence of their intense love.
Your children grow up, they leave you,
they have become soldiers and riders.
Your mate dies after a life of service.
Who knows you? Who remembers you?
But in your house a ritual is in progress:
It is not finished: it needs more people.
One day the door is opened to the lover's chamber.
The room has become a dense garden,
full of colours, smells, sounds you have never known.
The bed is smooth as a wafer of sunlight,
in the midst of the garden it stands alone.
In the bed the lovers, slowly and deliberately and silently,
perform the act of love.
Their eyes are closed,
as tightly as if heavy coins of flesh lay on them.
Their lips are bruised with new and old bruises.
Her hair and his beard are hopelessly tangled.
When he puts his mouth against her shoulder
she is uncertain whether her shoulder
has given or received the kiss.
All her flesh is like a mouth.
He carries his fingers along her waist
and feels his own waist caressed.
She holds him closer and his own arms tighten around her.
She kisses the hand besider her mouth.
It is his hand or her hand, it hardly matters,
there are so many more kisses.
You stand beside the bed, weeping with happiness,
you carefully peel away the sheets
from the slow-moving bodies.
Your eyes filled with tears, you barely make out the lovers,
As you undress you sing out, and your voice is magnificent
because now you believe it is the first human voice
heard in that room.
The garments you let fall grow into vines.
You climb into bed and recover the flesh.
You close your eyes and allow them to be sewn shut.
You create an embrace and fall into it.
There is only one moment of pain or doubt
as you wonder how many multitudes are lying beside your body,
but a mouth kisses and a hand soothes the moment away.


And a short one of my own:

In memories

I did not need your permission to love you.
nor your recognition of its existence
or of mine.
No enchantments
nor polished potions.

That you were there,
as was I,
did love occur.

Consciousness of love
by the turn of the tone of light,
falling like snow-petals
across ivory ice of your cheek.
the swan-curve of arm
to wrist
to nail-tip.

The slow sphinx of your Egyptian eyes.

If only you had trusted to leap.
If only...

 

[Anticitizen]

Poetry?

Do you enjoy poetry? Can you provide examples of poetry you enjoy?

I will begin with a short poem by the architect Hugh Ferris that I like:

“BUILDINGS like crystals
Walls of translucent glass.
Sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.
No Gothic branch: no Acanthus leaf: no recollection of the plant world.
A mineral kingdom.
Gleaming stalagmites.
Forms as cold as ice.
Mathematics.
Night in the Science Zone."

I like his architectural designs as well. More information on the man here, including his sketches: http://barista.media2.org/?p=3084

 

[Madoness]

YouTube- "The The Impotence of Proofreading," by TAYLOR MALI for you all to have a few laughs

 

[figaro_black]

"The love song of Alfred [J.] Prufrock" by T.S.Elliot

[...]

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

[...]

Generally I do not like poetry as much as I like to read other things, but that poem is one of my absolute favourites especially the stanza above.

Another poem I like is Andrew Marvell's:


"To His Coy Mistress"


Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the flood,
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires and more slow;
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning glow,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may,
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.


It is not the same kind of elegance as found in Eliot, but it always makes me smile and laugh.

 

[Kidege]

Way to go, Figaro. This one's by Goethe and the last two lines crack me up:

TO HIS COY ONE

Seest thou yon smiling Orange?
Upon the tree still hangs it;
Already March bath vanish'd,
And new-born flow'rs are shooting.
I draw nigh to the tree then,
And there I say: Oh Orange,
Thou sweet and luscious Orange,
I shake the tree, I shake it,
Oh fall into my lap!

 

[Kidege]

A fragment of Neruda's Autumn Testament:


I had been approaching hatred.
Its tremors are a grave thing,
Its notions are dizzying.
Hatred is a swordfish,
It moves in the water, invisible,
And only then you see it coming,
And it has blood on the knife:
Transparency disarms it.

Then, why should we hate
Those who hated us so?
There they are, under the water
Stalking and crouching
Preparing swords and oil cans,
Spider webs and dog webs.
It is not a matter of Christianisms,
It's not a prayer or a tailoring,
It is only that hatred lost:
Its rigid plates have fallen off
In the market of poison,
In the meantime the sun comes up
And we go to our work
And to buy our bread and our wine.


(I don't like Alastair Reid's translation of this bit. I'm going for sense before prettyness but tried to keep the rhythm)

 

[Dissident]

Hay un thread para hablar alemán, tendría que haber uno para español también!

(random comment, sorry)

 

[Kidege]

@Dissident:

I know, I clicked in "Post Quick Reply" while I was still translating.
But yeah, a Spanish thread would be nice.

 

[Snail]

​

For the Young Who Want to (by Marge Piercy)


Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

​

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.

 

[Jordan~]

@StercusAccidit: Ego, quoque, Sylvia Plath amo.

 

[Kidege]

I'm so theologically overwhelmed tonight...

Our father who are in Heaven,
Full of all kinds of trouble,
With a furrowed brow
As if you were a vulgar and common man,
Don't think of us any longer.

We understand you suffer
Because you can't fix things.
We know the devil doesn't leave you alone,
Deconstructing what you build.

He laughs at you,
But we weep with you:
Don't worry about his devilish laughter.

Our father who are where you are,
Surrounded by disloyal angels,
Sincerely, don't suffer for us any more.
You have to realise
that gods are not infalible,
and that we forgive it all.

-Nicanor Parra, 1969.

 

[loveofreason]

ahhh... that has opened a new window for me.

 

[Weneolan]

Really glad to have encountered Neruda here. I'd never heard of him before, and his work really resonates.

I ran into this one sometime during high school, I think, and I've always rather liked it since...

-----

The Bearer of Evil Tidings - Robert Frost

The bearer of evil tidings,
When he was halfway there,
Remembered that evil tidings
Were a dangerous thing to bear.

So when he came to the parting
Where one road led to the throne
And one went off to the mountains
And into the wild unknown,

He took the one to the mountains.
He ran through the Vale of Cashmere,
He ran through the rhodendrons,
Till he came to the land of Pamir.

And there in a precipice valley
A girl of his age he met
Took him home to her bower
Or he might be running yet.

She taught him the tribe's religion:
How, ages and ages since,
A princess en route from China
To marry a Persian prince

Had been found with child; and her army
Had come to a troubled halt.
And though a god was the father
And nobody else was at fault,

It had seemed discreet to remain there
And neither go on nor go back.
So they stayed and declared a village
There in the land of the Yak.

And the child that came of the princess
Established a royal line,
And his mandates were given heed to
Because he was born divine.

And that was why there were people
On one Himalayan shelf:
And the bearer of evil tidings
Decided to stay there himself.

At least he had this in common
With the race he chose to adopt:
They had both of them had their reasons
For stopping where they had stopped.

As for his evil tidings,
Belshazzar's overthrow,
Why hurry to tell Belshazzar
What soon enough he would know?

-----

And here's a silly little thing that I went and called Oneirology. Sometimes I try flinging myself into prose when I feel at a total loss for any means of expression.

-----

Once I wished to be a bird
If only just to fly
A life apart, a life away
A whole world to deny

However, now I'd be a bird
To see the world arrayed
To know the truth, to feel the wind,
To watch time's slow parade

The auguries inherent
When observing such a view
I long to see, and long to be
And flight I thus pursue.

 

[merzbau]

Fierce hunger reigns within my breast
I had not dreamt that this whole world, crushed in the hand of God, could yield such bitter essence of unrest
Such pain and sorry now hath hurled
Out of its dreadful heart, unsealed.

Each sobbing breath is but a cry
My heart strokes mels of agony
And my whole brain has but one thought:
That never more through life shall I, save in the ache of memory, touch hands with thee, who now art nought.

Through the void of night I search
So dumbly crying out to thee, but thou art not
And night's vast throne becomes an all stupendous church
With starbells knelling unto me
Who in all space are most alone.

And hungered to the shore I creep
Perchance some comfort waits on me from the old sea's eternal heart
Alone from the solemn deep, far voices out of mystery
Seem questioning: why we are apart.

Wherever I go I am alone
Who once through thee had all the world
My breast is one whole raging pain
For that which was, and now is thrown into the black where life is hearled
Where all is not, nor is again.

- William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918)

 

[merzbau]

08/02/05
reality shifts bends distorts according to latest stock predictions world market shares propaganda operation tactics careful craft of manipulation brought by our masters and we the slaves left alone to overpower the all consuming depth of empty hollow in our souls and nothing can deceive us because we live in a world of beauty and happy faces smiling because they are afraid not to smile then is there a lifeless feeling of widespread malice and decay hate in all of us that we cloak to merely consume the time that it takes us for nothing to happen in a state of development arrested by the ones that hold the reins.
each one of us private prisons held captive by each other. your thought meaningless compared to another's opinion we have the same dialogue rolling around in our minds reality is reality consensus do not explain do not comprehend reality it is spelled out for us why bother understanding it yourself just take the already explanation shut up be happy shut up fuck shut up eat and sleep shut up consume and reproduce shut up..

and consuming our corpses we smile gormless attitude dictated by the flickering electronic screens one by one we are silenced minds destroyed by the device of honing raw stone to crafted block crafted in their image and they stand to deform try to explain why we must cause suffering untold spit on those below and praise those above rightness of mind and rightness of action and rightness of soul only we have no soul we have what they give us we have entertainment we have filling we have democracy we have choices between void and null.

///////

 

[loveofreason]

True

But somehow... knowing that others know... and can articulate the matter... only increases my despair for being human.

...which means you have succeeded in creating emotional valency. Good start.

 

[merzbau]

thanks.. any valency was unintentional, it was just a stream of consciousness thing, really. but i did like how it sounded as if a person with some talent might have written it (on an off day).

 

[brain enclosed in flesh]

I'm going to follow Seducer's artistic lead and toss a couple of poems on here- look out, Wordsworth!


It gets better every time we talk


It gets better every time we talk.

I think our words must be hands

smoothing out a rumpled sheet.


It was better when we talked.

I think your silence must be a cat

pissing on the aforementioned sheet.


It was better when I didn't write.

I think my letters must be the horse's head in The Godfather

bleeding all over that guy's feet.

_______________________________________________________________

Birthday

You left me here, next to the coffee grounds

The cereal box sleeve, the wadded Kleenex

The orange peel, ball of hair, cotton swabs

Chewed piece of fat.

Swaddled in a plastic bag, baptized by beer backwash

Here I am.

Don’t feel guilty, it’s not so bad.

Whoever came before you must have had a birthday

Because I’m lying on a mattress of bubble wrap and tissue paper.

There’s plenty of fresh air to strengthen my lungs

And have you ever seen such a view of the sky?

The pigeons circle in clusters, a never ending mobile

Their gray waves lull me to sleep.



(Can you tell I never write poetry? )

 

[Jordan~]

Mine are all in a thread in the Hand Made and Blogging forum.

 

[motrhead]

I have not written a rhyming poem since high school. I wrote one verse of prose ten years ago (again my first since high school)and thought it was corny.One weekend morning about two months ago, while laying in bed, I felt the sudden urge to write. I wrote three poems that day, and have written quite a few more since. This will be my first public offering since school, so be gentle but honest with me.

The Birds

Birds outside my window wake me
with joyous orchestrations,
the coos of doves, and croaking starlings'
cacophony of exultations.
Unseen songsters arias,
call end to my sweet slumber,
proclaim their thanks, return of day
their host I cannot number.
The song of robin rings out, and usurps the cocks first crowing,
whilst morning glory wakens in the light of new dawn's glowing.

 

[Android]

Your poem Motrhead, brought to mind one of mine. I write a lot of nature related poetry.

Bats at Dusk
Back flat
on rusty leaves
and black dirt
Grey clouds
filter through
alders, firs, and cedars.
Eyes closed
I can just barely hear
the echo pops
like high-pitched
bubbles bursting.
The bats have again
replaced the birds
with the subtlety
of their song.

 

[loveofreason]

You're talented, Brain. Write more.

 

[walfin]

This calls for an INTPf poetry brawl!

 

[desolaze]

Dear cat

Can I touch you? Can I hold you? Just for one moment.

Thanks, that was the best feeling ever.

Yeah, I'm rather lonely. It's very sad indeed. I don't know why. Maybe it's meant to be like this. But it will come out right, no matter in what way.

I like you. I can hardly imagine you telling me the same. I would become emotional.

Of course, that's alright. But it's so sad. I'm only thinking of what I myself desire.

Thank you so much. I'm going to fall in love with you if we continue like this.

You eyes look like jewels. They just do. Maybe that's not so special, but it's worth mentioning. Your voice is interesting as well, like I've never heard before.

I don't care. I don't care because you don't seem to care. That's sweet. I mean... you know. It doesn't matter right now.

I'm going to get me a coffee, want something as well?

 

[Kidege]

CK made me do it. Okay, not really. Here's some Omar Khayyam, translated from a Gerard Guasch Spanish translation:

5

Since nobody here can guarantee a tomorrow,
Turn joyful, for a moment, this heart ill with love.
Drink wine at moonlight, oh, my moon, since this celestial body
Will look for you tomorrow, and perhaps, will not find you.


Khayyam--> Rezvanian ---> Guasch ----> Kidege version:

61

From the nadir of Earth to the zenith of Saturn
I have solved all ordinary problems.
I untied, with discernment, all the tight knots
Save one: Death.