So...I'll do it too...

[Koa]

I see that many people are posting their own stuff here. That's simply great. I'll do that too. Showing and sharing is still hard to me, but i fin it easier with total strangers than with people i know and are truly around me...so...this might be the place to go! For the moment i'll start from thing i've already shown somewhere else, then maybe i'll reveal some other stuff, if i feel like it.
Shame i haven't writtne anything decent in many months, so it will have to be old stuff...

Feel free to criticise, but don't hurt my poor little low self-confidence ;)

Here they'll be...

[Koa]

I dream of many imaginary men
I need all of them
but when i get dressed
I think of the only one
who has given me so much

But every effort
to get closer
saw us falling from higher to the ground.

And i'm always in a fight
between an impulse to normality
and the eternal madness of my sky...

We'll never understand each other
this human condemnation:
too many sensibilities
too many conceptions of love.


19/10/02

[Jay]

Now YOU read my mind? I like it, Koa :P .

[firestarter]

hello koa, i really like your poem, i was wondering if maybe you could tell me whats behind it.
firestarter

[firestarter]

hello koa, i really like your poem, i was wondering if maybe you could tell me whats behind it.
firestarter

[Koa]

hello koa, i really like your poem, i was wondering if maybe you could tell me whats behind it.
firestarter

Well...uhm...why not... :oops:
This is the last slightly good thing i've written.

The situation: I've had a weird crazy love story with a boy...i had left him at the time (exactly like now...i mean, i left him in october, then it started again...and i left him now again...ehmm...), but i couldn't get him out of my mind, even if i knew (and know) that he's not the one for me, at least not the man of my dreams...hence the first stanza...the kind of man i want, the man i had wasn't maybe what i wanted, but he gave me so much... Even if being 'close' seems so hard at times...

Then...in the same period, i had known another boy, we had a date...but i didn't like him...though he could represent what i should have/ should be (the impulse to normality), instead of my 'eternal madness' (the story with the other boy was simply crazy, as it was a long-distance relationship). But i chose the madness...

Well the end is just a thought about human relationship...i think it's so hard for people to understand each other (well, impossible to understand 100%...)...my boy had a different wat to love from the one i've always seen in another couples (maybe it was part of the cultural difference)...but the other one had another different conception again (well he was belonging to another culture again, despite living in italy)...etc...

Ok it's a bit long, but you asked for it...;)

I wonder tho...sometimes i think that my 'poems' are too naive...too plain, i don't know how to explain, but maybe it's just because they're obviously very clear to me...

[firestarter]

wow, you know, i had just gotten out of a relationship with this guy and all together i had broken up with him in a total of three times, and everytime i broke up with him i couldnt stop thinkning about him. its weird because, he was everything you could ask for in a guy, strong, smart, cute, very caring, sensitive, but at the same time there was something about him that made me turn away. hmm
firestarter

[Koa]

Oh so you're a girl too...i thought you were a boy (or maybe you're a boy who likes boys, why not...)

Well mine instead...i know he's not exactly what i want...but maybe i couldn't get more anyway...well who knows, i'm in a state of total confusion!

[firestarter]

well yes, it may be hard to believe but yes i am girl, and i do like boys a lot. i am still a little confused as to how i managed to break up with the one guy that i have ever dated that has never done me wrong. i dont know, i have pretty messed up taste in guys though, so yeah, lol.
firestarter

[Koa]

are you sure you aren't my lost twin? ;) my taste is more than messed up...well all of my mind is rather messed up lol...

[b]

Hello Koa,

Your poem really intrigues me. It is not only very romantic and personal, but also quite philosophical and meaningful, I think. Let me explain my thoughts line by line, so you really know what a reader thinks:

"I dream of many imaginary men
I need all of them

(These two lines make me immediately think about a certain aspect of (wo)man's nature: the uncounsciously formed fantasies about men that you have in your dreams. In your dreams you search for the perfect men, that can give you all the love and happiness you need. These two lines imply that this poem is very personal and about some of your romantic experiences - perhaps out of the dream - that are not yet revealed.)

but when i get dressed
I think of the only one
who has given me so much

(This is were it get's really personal. When you wake up, leave your dreams behind and get dressed - also symbolic for becoming conscious again - you think of one man - THE man? -, that actually loved you. Leaving all the imaginary men behind, you think only about the one that actually gave his love to you. Here it seems that you have found your happiness and don't have to seek all the imaginairy men anymore.

But every effort
to get closer
saw us falling from higher to the ground.

(Now the tragedy emerges. The one man that loved you, the one man that gave you the love you wanted in your dreams, can't reach you: whatever you try to unite your lifes and love fails. Your unconscious whish to find the perfect man wasn't forefilled and you realise you have been to naive. This is of course caused by the problem of human communiction and of the paradoxal relationtionship between the consciousness and the uncounsciousness that dominates human nature. We think love can solve those problems, but - pessimistically written in your poem - it couldn't.)

And i'm always in a fight
between an impulse to normality
and the eternal madness of my sky...

(This is my favorite part of the poem. You - in search of your man again - are always facing the contratiction between the problems of love and the usual life, how stupid it may seem to continue it. "and the eternal madness of my sky: very poetical and lyrical. I love it!)

We'll never understand each other
this human condemnation:
too many sensibilities
too many conceptions of love.

(This part is the conclusion to the poem. It is rather sad and pessimistically and you seem to give up the search and fight for love. But one I can tell, not only because of the use of words but also because of the things you said in the lines before, that you are just to romantic to stop.)

:oops:

[Koa]

OOOOOOH :oops: :oops: :oops:

Well B. Bloom, i like your analysis...i think it's quite accurate... and if you read the explanation i wrote for firestarter, you can see the personal side of it more clearly... (i'm not someone who usually talks about personal things but...well...in this case i didn't mind...we're talking of poetry, not of me ;))

I'm also very flattered about you saying that you like some lines... i thought the 'eternal madness' etc didnt sound so original... I usually see my poems as too naive and too 'flat', but it might be just because, being mine, i know what's behind every word and they lose a bit of magic...
By the way...i'm mostly pessimistic in what i write, this is not even the worst example of that... ;)

Thanks anyway, i consider it a big honour to have had an analysis of that (by someone who seems to be rather into literature, am i wrong?)

A little question now B. Bloom: where's your signature from? Dante?

[b]

Hello Koa,

My signature is indeed from Dante. I chose the first four lines of one of his poems that he wrote for La madonna di pietra, "the stone lady". If you want to read the poem, and find out about it's meaning and why I have used it, you should try http://www.italianstudies.org/poetry/st1.htm .

Do you really live in Verona? I have been there last year, with my summer vacations. I really loved it there: the delicate Italian culture - or what I have seen of it as a Dutch student - seemed to me as one of the most passionate and virtuous around the world. I had no time to explore the whole city, but I at least saw the oppurtunity to be absorbed by the late-afternoon atmosphere of Piazza dei Signori - I bet you know the statue of Dante - and other great and inspiring places.

When I went to the opera festitval (in l'arena) I felt I didn't want to leave the city and go home, back to the rain. But before I went home, I visited Venezia, the city that inspired me enough to write one of my most appreciated story's - unfortunately written in Dutch. (I am working on an English translation...)

I was wondering: the poem that I commented yesterday, haven't you actually translated that from Italian? Or do you have any poems written in Italian? I don't speak or write Italian very well, but I can read it - just like Latin - and because I think that your poetry is the best when you write it in your native language, I hope hope that you will give me the honour of reading it.

[Koa]

oooh you're dutch!
yes i live in verona, piazza dei signori is one of my favourite spots! i've never seen the opera but it's impossible not to notice when it's on...so many people! i'm going to a concert inside the arena next june, it must be a wonderful atmosphere from the inside!

That poem i posted, as many others, was written in English. I have stuff written in italian as well, but i don't like to translate things...i've tried once and it was frustrating....
When i was 15 i used to force myself to write in English...the only good that came out of it was that i improved my english trying to express things...but from the poetic point of view, it was unnatural (and they all ended up in the recycling paper bin ;)). A couple of years later, i started again, writing in italian this time, and only after many months i started wrting in english too. I just follow the inspiration, i write in the language that comes first to my mind. Lately i've been writing more and more in English, probably because i'm using the internet a bit too much ;), and surely because of my crazy story with an english boy (a rather tormented story that inspired quite a lot of things, tho my inspiration has been blocked for a few months now...) so i'm getting used to think in english.

[b]

When I was sixteen, I also began writing in Engish. In the beginning it was a bit unnatural, but when I started to spend my time online, it worked out much better.

But my best proze and poetry is still written in Dutch. I am trying to translate it, but since that still is too unnatural I have decided to write my new poetry in English from now on.

At the moment, I don't even notice the difference between reading an English poem and a Dutch poem any more. But the differences between my native language and the most beautiful langague that I know - Italian - are still too big: I can't write in Italian yet.

I was hoping that you would let me read some of your Italian poems - if you have enough certainty about them to do so.

ps.

(What do you think of my new signature? I came past it in a list of Shakespearian quotes. Kind of funny, if you place it in the context of this post and my Avatar!)

[Koa]

I was hoping that you would let me read some of your Italian poems - if you have enough certainty about them to do so.



Right- well, i don't know. I might look for something and send it to you in a private message, but i won't promise it. I'm still rather shy about most of my stuff (and i must note, maybe the things in english scare me less, because a different language creates a 'distance', while my native language still gives me some kind of deeper sense...)

It feels strange that you choose to write in english. i consider it a mistake having done that when i was younger... I'm probably some kind of Romantic, i believe in the power of pure inspiration ;)

Eh eh you new signature fits suits your avatar perfectly :). I've changed mine too- more literary, and less rock-style ;)

[b]

You are absolutely right. :oops: I have also such a romantic vieuw about language. So my poems which include my deepest feeling - such as love - I can only write in Dutch.

But one of my hobbys is to 'play' with language. My poem that you read (at the post "sensation of symbolism") is also - partly - such language-game.

I actually hope that my Enlish-fluency becomes so good that I don't notice the difference any more, but... on the other hand it is much more romantic just to write my love-poems in the language with which I think about love...

[Koa]

(are we going to reply to each other all night? ;))
Well sometimes i feel it easier to write in a language that it's not mine, exactly because of the distance i was talking about, and english is the only language in which i have enough fluency to express myself rather freely. I wrote a couple of things in french just because of the sound, i've tried in german a few times but never managed to... I always think of some mixed stuff in 2 languages or more, but it never came out..maybe one day...
(before you start wondering, i'm some kind of languages freak, that's probbaly my biggest passion)

[b]

(If replying is more intersting that sleeping or reading... ;) )

and... I am a language-freek too. But my biggist passion is - next to writing, reading, (making music), philosophy - life, eventually.

[b]

Hello Koa,

I just sent you a private message, including one of my poems.

[Koa]

I replied to your private message, hope it works correctly cos i've used some colours ;)

[american_bad_angel1407]

I really like ur poetry Koa..I will comment and critize later because I only have 2 minutes..lol.. there's that TIME thing again!! :D :rolleyes: :P

[b]

Yes, indeed. The TIME.

Poetry is supposed to be timeless. My life isn't, though.

[american_bad_angel1407]

I feel ya! oh, sorry, there goes that slang thing again.

[Koa]

Lol- hey, im not banning slang from the world! I just find it's a bit too much when it involves your whole speech... ;)
(I'm not sure about what you meant by the way ;))