Your Favorite Poems from fellow Lit-Netters

[Adolescent09]

Hello everyone and thank you for taking the time to view this.. I have undergone the liberty of posting this potentially interesting and immersive topic to praise a select few of the many poems in the Personal Poetry section which have drifted by into the furthest pages of time unnoticed and unappreciated. Several and even most authors of these great poems have discontinued their participation on the forums due to recieving little if not any recognition and although trying to bring them and their great talent back to the forum would be a futile proposition, I would like to post some of their works which have engaged me in endless ponder and admiration.. Please note that this topic does not pose as an accusation against any individual forumgoer here; nor am I endeavoring to give any segmented attention to myself or the author of any poem I display and extol in this topic. I have considered how busy the lives of lit-netters are and have taken into account that a lot of people here have better things to do than stick around the Personal Poetry section to read every little stanza churned by every other forumgoer. I am just as considerate as the next rational being.

Hence without further rambling along with my boring, lengthy and pretentious sentences I will let my impartial side choose the poetry which has piqued my interest and influenced me the most.

I would like you other Lit Netters to do the same by going here (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14). Whether it be work(s) produced just a few seconds ago or years back when this forum came into existence at around the 93rd page, I would like to see it posted here. However you pick the poems written by fellow lit-netters that interest you, I don't want your choosings to be based on favoritism..

For instance: OMG this poem was written by KennyDragon88. He's my best friend and he's so cool so let me just post his poem and maybe he'll post one of mine!!!11

I wouldn't really like to see that..

Ok so it's really time for me to shutup.. Here are a few poems that have really struck me:


Humpty Dumpty

Yet another journey
And one more bit of me left behind.
Glazier, in your rubbish bin
Are there no cracked mirrors
To reflect me as I am?
And allow me somehow to carry around
The pieces I can’t pack in suitcases?
-Sindhu




From North to South

From north to south

Cold and moveless
far-away Northland.
Below ancient permafrost
veins of life are throbbing
but they have been forgotten.

The ice....
covering everything.
The water, the earth, the air...
Large open ice fields
that are under the shield of ice.
Sources of life are trying,
trying very hard
yet they are frozen,
wrapped by ice
and the life will fade
waiting for warmth
that is not coming.

Cold...ice....
Snow...falling from the sky
and crystallizing.
Coming down
on a frosty ground.
Soft....white...
Cold.
Descending from the sky
so grey and cloudy...
There are no colours.
The sun is pale,
like a dispersed spot
watching the colourless world.
It is like a distant star
that doesn`t give light
or heat.
Like Sirius
or the North Star.

North....
Northern sun...
Northern lights....
Flashing in the darkest night,
in an eternal night...in a polar night.
Showing a colourful light....
the only light...
The cold light.
Stars among northern lights.
Shining...
Like the sun
that doesn`t give any heat.
Beautiful....like eyes
looking down
at the cold land.
The land is resting,
resting of life.
Peace, quiet....
Cold.

Lonely but peaceful.
No confusion.....
no thoughts
because the air is frozen
and doesn`t move anything.
The wind is just an ice crystal..

Frozen soul, mind, heart
like the Northern Maiden has
whose heart`s shield of ice
even Väinamöinen`s song couldn`t break.
Like the Queen of Ice
whose soul is cold
but who is powerful.
Noone can beat her.
Powerful emptyness
wrapped by icy air.
Peace...quietness...
Stability. There`s no storm
That could conquer the ice.
There is no confusion. Tranquility
reaching over endless snow fields.
Cold.

Suddenly
a lonely ray of light
has found the way into invisible
yet existing crack
in invincible shield of ice.
So insignificant
yet its heat
melted the ice.
The crack widened.
Gentle warmth
crept under the ice
warming the sources of life
and making them alive.
More and more cracks...
more rays...
less cold.....
less ice.
Melting the earth
and making the juices of life flow
that had been waiting so long,
hidden beneath the ice.

The water is flowing.
Slowly at first,
then faster, stronger
breaking the ice
and changing the face of the North.
Fading clouds
in the blue sky.
Colours. Bright colours
in the sky and on the earth.
Storm. Water raging
and sweeping the last large chunks of ice
that will disappear soon.
The golden sun
shining in the blue sky.
Plants springing.
Rain. Storm. Turmoil.
Confusion which did not exist in the cold.
Instability.

Life.....Bubbling life
Obligations.
Obligation to notice the storm
because it would be impossible not to.
Warm...hot...burning...
How to get away?
Panic!
There`s no way out. Must notice.
Must be.

The world has been unsettled.
There is no peace, no quiet.
Would like to go back....
back to the cold northland
where was the power. Control.
Longing...
Longing for frostiness and the silver shield.
Longing for the Northland....
If there hadn`t been that first ray
that seemed so meaningless
yet it was fatal.

Hope...
Where is hope?
The hope melted with the ice
leaving behind confusion.
An awful confusion...


The Quiet Night

Too far from the noise to the silence.
You bring the sample back,
But it can not be accurately analysed.
In the most time,
You were the sand beach
Which was submerged by the sea tide
Then exposed
Again and again.
The starlight with mother's patience
Softly washed the sand and the stones
And guarded you in the edge of the bed
When you were in the dream.
The sharp tsunami Cut scar
In the deep layer of the sand beach,
Which couldn't be washed off
Like the harm inside of the crystal lattice


You sometimes were a standing pedestrian,
You strode under the moonlight
without the footsteps.
Somestimes you hid in the shrubbery
And looked at the white sky above the head.
One person by yourself quietly entered into the temple
And listened to the sound from Heaven.
The day is the wildness,
The night is a room,
Stepping into the door of the dusk
You were changed into a shadow from an entity.
In the corner of the walls without the light,
You disappeared.

The hands of a clock in the midnight are moving,
Who is knocking the door inside of the clock?
The echoes reflect in the wildness.
You discover that
The scenes passed through
Become the dreamland in a flash.

Note to the Moderators and Admins...: I hope this topic doesnt go against any of the rules as I have read them all and have deliberated for some time now whether I should go along with posting this at all.. After thinking about posting this in the personal poetry section I realized that it was only meant for personal poetry and since this topic involves discussion surrounding other poetry I thought it would be more fitting to place it here since this topic is all about people who paint with words and the works that they create. I really think this topic could be grounds for some interesting, unbiased opinion on works that really deserve it.


If this topic goes against anything.. I'm sorry. But until then... Please people.. reply and post your faves from fellow Lits!!

[Niamh]

really good idea Adol! Great way to show our fellow litnetters what we think of there work. Heres a couple that i really like!
this ones Pendragons

Echoes From the Edge: Guilt

They never call, they never write,
The just assume “Hey, he’s all right!”
And “Besides, he’s not our problem, anyways!”
He tries. Sometimes he cries,
He says he’ll be glad when he dies—
It’s hell just to make it through another day.
They never write, they never call,
He wonders if they even think about him at all—
He bites his lips and tries hard to be brave.
So strange how the time makes the seasons fly,
And how often they make time to drop by—
The flowers always look so lovely on a grave…

D.L. Harris
© 7/26/96

Mir


I sold my life on Ebay
But nobody would bid
I put me up for 50 cents,
Shipping included.

“Free slave for life!”
The banner said,
“Great deal! All limbs,
A mind, a head!
We’ll even throw in –
Wholly free! –
A sparkling personality!
Need a helper,
Need a friend?
Here’s one on whom
You can depend.
Money buys you
Love for life!
She cooks! She cleans!
A wholesale wife!”

The auction stood
For seven days
No reserve price,
Or shipping plays
I checked for bids
To claim the thing
Sitting in
My packaging.
At last PayPal
Gave me the news:
Ten minutes left –
Now three, now two!
This life rose to
The list’s top place
As seconds beat
My heart’s quick pace.
With only moments
Left to spare
The bubble wrap
Caught at my hair;
Styrofoam peanuts
Blocked my view
But when I sold,
I somehow knew.

So here and now
I live my life
Not as helper,
Not as wife
But happy, because of
That day
When I bought myself
On Ebay.

and Princemyshkins one posted yesterday


The world will never have had
its fill of poetry.
When the last priest
is preaching the last
perfectly symmetrical sermon
to the last parishioner
poets will still be rhyming
lust and anarchy and
joy--the holiness of life
without God or politics.

[Pendragon]

Indeed. A wonderful ideed.

DebrahSue

Dungeons, Dragon's & The Phantom's Lair...


Dungeons and Dragons!
Ha! Let them beware...
Dungeons of Black despair...
The Prisons of our Minds...
If you Dare...
Come down to the Lair...
Leave all thoughts of the world you knew behind...
Angels of Music, Angels in Hell...
Opera Ghosts and Phantoms dwell.
The Ladies and Mistresses, Keepers and Guardians of The Phantom's Secret Fire...
Pursued relentlessly by the Twin Dragons of Passion...'True Love' and 'Lustful Desire'
In this fantasy your roles are quite clear...
for the Phantom's Music and the Angel's voice are all that you hear.
The Ladies of the Lair
Our Dark Angel takes care...
And in return...
We shelter and love the child in Erik, in whose heart Beauty does burn.
Role playing fun?
With our beloved Phantom?
Yes!....just a fantasy deem...
No more...No less...
But here I digress...
'Is all that we seem, or dream...
A dream within a dream?'... I guess!

Triskele

Echoes from the Edge: Love of Life

Tiptoes dance ever onward
Flickers of light, thought, love
Free eagles wings carry on
Leaving the heavy heart, alone
With its desperate loathing
Heartbeats in the dunes of Eden
Leave the guilt of past behind
Back with the sin of now, far away
Their presence demands answers
But weighted queries fade
Questions remain as mere whispers
To be dashed, on the lilting rocks
Of heavens bright chorus


Mother Hubbard

Strong As Clay

What do you see before you?
Am I a workhorse that tends your home,
serving meals and scrubbing surfaces until they gleam?
Maybe you see the Madonna,
babe at breast, nourish and comfort - maternal.
Or perhaps a great pillar
ready to bear more? Just cast it upon me.

A great many things stand here.
I have found my purpose,
my passion,
my strength.
I answer to many names.
I am more than I expected I would be,
but my feet are still made of clay



Pen

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/PuppyLove.gif

[motherhubbard]

Pen, thank you. Wow

[Adolescent09]

Man, I love everything Triskele does. That kid's brilliant.

[Adolescent09]

Countess is another great poet.. and writer for that matter.:




Feral Princess

Gray met gray on that misty morn
On the embattled fields of Ocracoke isle
As two Shetlands roamed their Shakleford Banks
In the shadow of a Silver Lake.

When Spirit joined in the famed Merlin
The two made four and four made eight
Till the salt earth quaked a hundred strong
In the shadow of a Lookout Cape.

But on that morn another mustang joined,
A finer stallion with a swarthy mane
A majestic steed that danced and preened
A glorious gait untrained.

He danced and preened like the Shadowfax King!
Till the crowd arose with glee
And Shackleford shook with astonished delight
as Arod bowed graciously.

For a brief moment in time
it seemed his eye met mine,
then he vanished as he came,
And I thought “Tis right
he’s left alone for such beauty
remain best untamed.”

On misty morns
Remembrance reminds
Of that place where
The horses run free,
Of this imperial prince’s
Flaunty show prance,
and I smile to myself gratefully

Vhaney is great as well. I don't think I've seen her recently though..


Trepidatious

Clouds

Clouds move across the palette of blue like dreams in my mind
Wind unseen driving
Changing form
Going from whence to where days are ever lined
With color and life and love not blind
They slowly trace their path under the sun
Moving together
Separate, yet connected as if one
Moody and dark at times
Other times brilliant with gold
Pouring out their tears
Below where others might know
That somewhere above
Moves life
Thoughts move across the palette of blue in my heart sending
Like brush strokes
On Vincent’s canvas
A Starry Night of contemplation and of questions never ending
With answers that elude reason
I think only for a season
Wherein life drives upon the shore of my being and leaves it bending
Not broken
Yet changing form

[Pensive]

What an interesting thread!


World of shadows

Sun is terrible
and so is the moon,
terrible and beautiful.
They shine
with a bliss divine,
that is not from this world,
not from the world of shadows,
not from the world of mine.

My world is just shadows,
faint and illusionary, no truth,
whatsoever,
no light,
whatsoever,
no love,
whatsoever,
no life.
Just death,
just sorrows,
just lies,
just shadows,
just me,
forbidden to breathe,
forbidden to drink,
forbidden to hear
forbidden to see,
forbidden to write,
forbidden to feel,
forbidden to live,
forbidden to love,
forbidden to dream,
forbidden.

But I breathe.
The air I breathe
is raven-black with all
the misery of the world.
Raven-black,
raven of death and sorrow,
raven of war and tears,
but still I breathe.

But I drink,
and all I can drink is dust,
dust and shadows,
deep shadows,
heavy with sorro w and blood,
thick and dark blood.
There is no wine nor water,
no clear and pure water,
nor wine that’s dark as Homer’s sea,
just shadows,
deep and dark shadows,
but I drink.

But I hear,
hear the crying of all world,
hear the cries of death and pain,
cries overrun with shadows,
thick and dumb shadows,
no music in my world,
just silence,
silence of the lambs,
silence of the innocents,
silence of the world,
silence of death,
crying silence,
silence full of pain,
of loud and soundless pain,
but still I hear.

But I see,
see the shadows,
see the darkness,
see the pain,
and do nothing,
just watch,
silently,
without a word,
doing nothing.
Shadows cannot do anything,
immaterial,
bodyless,
soundless,
heartless.
Go through shadow,
it’s defenceless,
it has no freedom,
it is cursed,
I am cursed,
but still I see.

But I write,
write dark tunes,
write with shadows,
write with blood,
I have got no ink,
all my soul’s just shadows.
May you have ink,
and light of mind to write.
I have not,
I am cursed,
I write with blood and shadows,
with big blobby letters,
with darkness of mind,
but I write.

But I feel,
feel the anger,
running through me,
like thick and fresh and warm and red blood,
wonderful blood,
blood of the dead,
and of those who, alive
walk on this land,
on this dark and forbidden land,
cursed land,
land of the shadows,
and darkness,
but still I feel.

But I live,
live the life of the cursed,
live the life of the sorrowful,
sorrowful and sad and cursed.
Everything I touch,
becomes cursed.
Gold of love,
changes in my hands.
Changes into lead,
lead of jealousy,
Silver of wisdom,
metamorphoses,
into worthless trash,
trash of ignorance.
Behold,
all those, who rejoice.
I will come,
and take away your joy,
and replace it with misery,
misery and harm.
Leave me alone,
for I wish no harm,
not the smallest of harms,
for anybody.
So leave me alone,
leave me cursed,
leave me forbidden,
but leave me at peace,
my dark and terrible peace,
peace, that You’ll be unharmed,
by me,
by the curse I bear,
by shadow I spread,
by the shadow I am.
Leave me my curse,
for I know nothing of life,
nothing of life without tears.
My life is cursed,
and forbidden and sorrowful,
and I bring harm,
but still I live.


And I love!
Behold, shadow loves,
loves the flame that cast him,
loves passionately,
loves forever.
Loves even after,
after flame is dead,
after fire has gone,
after sun has failed,
the flame and fire
that cast him.
Loves darkly,
love tainted with fear and hate
and sorrow,
but not forgetfulness.
For shado w is immortal.
Day dies and reborns each day,
but night is old,
old as shadow,
try to destroy it,
try to wash it away,
Wash with water,
wash with blood,
wash with pain,
wash with death,
it knows each of them,
and will survive,
and remember.
Shadow remebers,
remembers the light that once shone,
and dreams of it.

And I dream,
dream of the flame,
flame, that’s now just ashes,
greyish-black ashes,
greyish-black shadows,
greyish-black darkness.
I dream of a world,
where flame is greater than shadow,
where love is greater than sorrow,
where light is greater than darkness,
where life is greater than death.
I dream,
dream of illusionary world,
impossible world,
but my dreams are free,
free from my curse,
from my omnipresent curse,
free.

In my dreams,
I can be the sun.


I dream.

- Taliesin

This was the first poem that I read on lit-net as far as I remember (or at least one of the first ones), and absolutely loved the tone of it.


I sold my life on Ebay
But nobody would bid
I put me up for 50 cents,
Shipping included.

“Free slave for life!”
The banner said,
“Great deal! All limbs,
A mind, a head!
We’ll even throw in –
Wholly free! –
A sparkling personality!
Need a helper,
Need a friend?
Here’s one on whom
You can depend.
Money buys you
Love for life!
She cooks! She cleans!
A wholesale wife!”

The auction stood
For seven days
No reserve price,
Or shipping plays
I checked for bids
To claim the thing
Sitting in
My packaging.
At last PayPal
Gave me the news:
Ten minutes left –
Now three, now two!
This life rose to
The list’s top place
As seconds beat
My heart’s quick pace.
With only moments
Left to spare
The bubble wrap
Caught at my hair;
Styrofoam peanuts
Blocked my view
But when I sold,
I somehow knew.

So here and now
I live my life
Not as helper,
Not as wife
But happy, because of
That day
When I bought myself
On Ebay.

- mir

Another favourite of mine! :D



Carpe Diem (Greet the Day)

He wakes me up before the alarm clock rings
And I rub my eyes and groan and grumble.
But he shouts, "Hey, Dad! Let's do something!"

He goes downstairs, and starts to sing,
While wondering if I got any sleep for my clothes I fumble
He wakes me up before the alarm clock rings
He is off again, like a new fledged bird on wings!
I rub my eyes, and stretch, yawn and stumble
He wakes me up before the alarm clock rings!

Sighing inside, I try my best to keep up with his youthful days
Mouth ever ready to shout, "Keep out of trouble!"
But he shouts, "Hey Dad! Let's do something!"

Ah, wretched time! What a curse the passing years bring!
Now my son is the one watching a little one blow bubbles
But I remember how he woke me up before the alarm clock rang!
And shouted, "Hey, Dad! Let's do something!"

- Pendragon

Absolutely love this one! :)

---

I have come across some other interesting poems as well in these two years, but can't remember them at the moment.

[Adolescent09]

I sold my life on Ebay
But nobody would bid
I put me up for 50 cents,
Shipping included.

“Free slave for life!”
The banner said,
“Great deal! All limbs,
A mind, a head!
We’ll even throw in –
Wholly free! –
A sparkling personality!
Need a helper,
Need a friend?
Here’s one on whom
You can depend.
Money buys you
Love for life!
She cooks! She cleans!
A wholesale wife!”

The auction stood
For seven days
No reserve price,
Or shipping plays
I checked for bids
To claim the thing
Sitting in
My packaging.
At last PayPal
Gave me the news:
Ten minutes left –
Now three, now two!
This life rose to
The list’s top place
As seconds beat
My heart’s quick pace.
With only moments
Left to spare
The bubble wrap
Caught at my hair;
Styrofoam peanuts
Blocked my view
But when I sold,
I somehow knew.

So here and now
I live my life
Not as helper,
Not as wife
But happy, because of
That day
When I bought myself
On Ebay.

My.. Mir's poem sure is fascinating.. To think it's been posted twice already and this topic has barely even begun! Amazing..

[Niamh]

that was one of the first i read here as well and i was in tears from laughing! brilliant but like pensive it took me a while to find again. think it was page 25 in personal poetry.

[Adolescent09]

I find it far more profound than just simply comical. It's a truly great piece. It is also great how different people think though, because while you found it hilarious I thought it surreal and authentic. This really shows how different people think!

[Niamh]

I know what you mean! What really mad it funny for me( in a surreal way) was that all i could see in my mind was mir sitting in a box, wrapped up in bubble wrap and eagerly whating a computer!

[Debrasue]

Any one who knows me even a little would know how much I'm blown away by this poem...I Love It....thank you Motherhubbard!

This is my 7th poem. I wonder how many one must write to be any good...


Fear and desire

Where does this creeping fear come from,
and why does my heart pound so?

I feel your presence wrapping around me
like a warm, velvety cloak.

But, I am not comforted by your touch.
I find no peace in you.

I flinch, my mind recoils, my eyes dart for shelter.
Still, I want you to come closer - to speak to me, touch me.

I press in to inhale your musky sent,
although the thickness of your breath is suffocating,

I am held by some mysterious
compelling force, and the pull grows stronger

There is nothing of me left that is visible to the naked eye.
I am encompassed and long for more

Caught, I am caught. I can not get enough.
If there were an escape, I would no longer take it.

Who will save me from drowning in this corrupt desire?
You nor I have the power.

[Niamh]

i also vito that poem Debrasue!

Heres another one i really liked! Its by lilly adams.



Hark, turn your face upward to the night sky
which Nyx has spread her dark torn wings across.
The tears reveal glowing orbs up so high
and they shine brightly for the daytime's loss.*
Look closely and see the clusters of light
turn into a stunning great galaxy.
Softly fall upon your face stardust might
as the glowing stars sway and dance lightly.
Glowing blues, yellows, and reds leap as one
and too soon sadly must shrink and decease.
Mourn not: those cherished orbs are not done:
they shall return to shower Earth with peace.
For every death oh so grevious
a re-birth occurs which is glorious.

[Bakiryu]

I love these:



The Living Ghost

All alone in a crowded room,
Isolated by all
Accepting his doom
Multiple acquaintances, short and tall
Look through him like at a ghost
Look through him at the wall
Invisible in everyday apparel

Refrain

And every Friday night,
He dresses black with a mask of night
And as his gloved fingers dance
Over guitar strings
His sounds piercing like a lance
He screams his hate and rage
Through the speakers to the cheering throng
And now he realizes
He is still not seen

During the intermission
He undergoes fission
The lead singer stays in back,
While the person behind the mask
Goes about a personal task
Slipping silently through the crowd
He knew he still had his invisibility shroud

Refrain

And every Friday night,
He dresses black with a mask of night
And as his gloved fingers dance
Over guitar strings
His sounds piercing like a lance
He screams his hate and rage
Through the speakers to the cheering throng
And now he realizes
He is still not seen

He dons his face for the last time,
Hiding his mask under it
Upon leaving the stage his body collapses
With a flutter of falling clothing
His face and gloves fall away
Revealing nothing
Nothing to cast the slightest shadow


The Unbridled Flood of Power
I want strength
I want fire to blossom in my hand
I want power
To turn my enemies to sand
I want ferocity
To instill fear, in those so weak to cause fear in me
I want invincibility
To bring out the best in me
I want knowledge
To keep many forces at bay
I want stealth
To assassinate my foes while they’re unwittingly
Playing into my hand


Because I am bound by unseen chains,
twisting and tightening their grip around me
they all seek to control me,
why is their beast of burden me?
All I know right now is,
They fear me,
with all sincerity
they hate me
they hate me
and they want me to die
but let me tell you what
I’m am up here standing on this stage,
Tearing apart these chains with my strength
Burning them with my power
Drowning them as the tidal waters flow
With my phrases and metaphors so
Suffocating them in their own literal inadequacy
Speedily releasing my power into them
that they might know how dangerous my weapons of war have become,
burying them under any sort of literature possible.
Undying,
Much knowing,
Forcing them forward their fear showing,
Because there is a monster inside me,
he is hibernating,
waiting
watching as I grow
that one day my words will throw
the world into a state of passion
like a classical song
rising,
thrashing,
pulling those from their seats that may be able to see colors unseen
think in thoughts flowing through time that are too complex to be thought
speak in tongues undying, yet still gone
hear more than music,
apply their full energy potential into that one part
just before the crescendo
when feelings run strong,
swords, guns, and stones lie useless
as the roaring tumult of undying power washes over them
as if they would use all of their last energy to show what they hear
to let the world feel their undaunted power
so that the world will want what it cannot have
to put everything they own into that last crescendo
to hear
to see
to feel the music

[andave_ya]

Deleted by request of author for publication purposes. Sorry all!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hello everyone and thank you for taking the time to view this..

What a generous soul you are - and a true lover of poetry. I haven't been on this site all that long so without this thread I might have missed some of the earlier poems, amongst which I was espcially grateful for the ones by Countess, Lilly Adams and Jon1jt... Thanks

[Niamh]

i think this thread should be stickied before it vanishes into the inner abyss of personal poetry!

[Adolescent09]

What a generous soul you are - and a true lover of poetry. I haven't been on this site all that long so without this thread I might have missed some of the earlier poems, amongst which I was espcially grateful for the ones by Countess, Lilly Adams and Jon1jt... Thanks

Thank you, Prince. Unfortunately my topics always tend to die very quickly. I guess this attempt to bring up some unique poetry failed.

But thanks for all who posted..

[symphony]

i think this thread should be stickied before it vanishes into the inner abyss of personal poetry!
couldnt agree more! :p

Great idea, Adol.

I'll post in some of my favorites now, but since i havent read many and am hardly familier with all the great works hidden in this "abyss", i wish to post again, and perhaps again, in this same thread. ;)


First, Self Portrait by Virgil, cant miss this one!! :D

Self Portrait

The pencil shadows the face,
Rounds the head into a sketch,
The dark hair, the thin lips,
Features of a Roman bust,
Tied through DNA,
The blood at Cannae, victory at Zama...

What blood, what victory?
Does the mirror lie?
The face, fattened and graying,
Has never confronted a bayonet
Not even saddled arms upon the back
Or paraded upon a field.

Perhaps then the reflection is not a sketch,
After all, perhaps a schiacciato
From the Quattrocento,
Links of DNA reach there as well.

That figure on the left,
In sacre conversione,
That St. Francis figure,
Draped in rags with a skull cap,
Resembles the artist, touches and
Sooths hounds with upraised palms.

But St. Francis was a pauper
Passing up his coat to indigents.
What starveling life has pressed
Upon this face? You sip
Cabernet every night and
Whine about your taxes.

Possibly then this countenance
Could fit as a bronze head
Upon a majestic stallion,
A cavalry man, a statesman,
A gattamelata of Donatello?

What? Calvary, horse?
Don’t mind the saddle sores,
Statesman with a shriek,
More like un gatto malato
Sleeping on a chair.

The glass now shatters
Into composite fractions.

An irascible son
De quello paise d’o sole,
Narcissistic husband,
Abbraciatta with my honey pear,
Stoic and spoiled, lustful and laughing,
Adopted citizen and patriot,
Flourishing the flag,
Inseminating the garden,
Eagle and oriole from Brooklyn.


Dutiful and sinner,
Pius and pagan,
The caress of family on one’s back,
Petulant engineer, cleanly shaven,
Combative tactician, with that mustache,
A writer with eyes.

Does one have to crawl
Through Purgatory to bring
Oneself into syncretic form?

Then Jon1jt's Along a Pathless Wood:


| Deleted by request of author |


and loved Ampoule's and MotherH's last poem. (cant copy right now, will hv to go back and everything...)

I'm yet to dive into the depths of this rich section, still lurking on the surfaces, but soon...soon now...

[Virgil]

Thank you Symphony for picking one of my poems. :blush:

I always adore most poems by Riesa. I have called her on occaision the Poet Laureate of lit net. Here is one that stands out.


El Dragon Rojo
by Riesa

Stepping over a half-dead Mexican
with a gash in his skull,
we climbed the beer-slimed
steps with our gringo-go-ahead
through gleaming sideways looks,
Josés and Jorges on their
fifth Reposada greeting us
with oye!'s and shifty grins
As we headed towards the balcony
where others,
tired of whistle blowing servers
pouring poppers down virgin throats
drank cold limón beers on a Tijuana tweak.

Joel, with choirboy lips quoting
Dylan’s Tarantula while she’s off getting
beers and a round of shots,
gets drunk enough to ooze
secret pouts and lecherous sizzle
in my direction,
My fury fueling fiery laughter
and Amy back again with confused loyalty:
“Aren’t all poets deranged anyway!” she professed,
hardly lifting her starry eyes as I left them to their
Mexican night.

It’s true, I did take slow
enjoyment in novel thoughts,
and had a wildness buried beneath
a Christian-school upbringing
that poetry unearthed, but
his crooked coffee-bar look
and deviant intensity
gratified her in a way
I couldn’t touch.

I recall
out walking on a winter beach -
she invented a boy-man with an adventurous soul
and a fondness for cats and fine wine, with a touch
of enigma to him, just to keep it interesting;

But that summer,
instead of going home
to blueberry farms
and clam-chowder air
she followed him to a transient hotel,
where the two of them lived on
greasy-spoon eggs
and Colt 45,
her wrapping paper dream
distorted to brown-bag reality of
thrown whiskey bottles,
eggshell silence
and day old coffee
With ashes in it.

Last we heard he was in a Florida jail
for battering his pregnant wife;
and Amy’s number’s unlisted now,
but she owns a couple of tough tomcats
with Mafioso names,
and there is a man who,
like the shine of gentle rays
softened with sweet morning mist
cherishes her Olympia blue eyes - eyes that are
clear now, except for that slash of amber
that wasn’t there
that night at El Dragon Rojo.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you Symphony for picking one of my poems. :blush:

I always adore most poems by Riesa. I have called her on occaision the Poet Laureate of lit net. Here is one that stands out.

WOW! God bless you for bringing that one to our attention! - and God bless you, Reisa, for writing it!!

[Pendragon]

A few more:

From Prince M.

Sudden Proclamations

for Ed and Lesley Pechter

Let's not haggle over madness.
The seed will grow up
or down, as it pleases.
The heart of calamity's not there
but in waiting for that stranger
who is here, already waiting.

Clasp hands and come to the mountain,
you've planned to say to her
(the female to your male half-nature),
Bring mustard seed, and salt wine.


A pinch of craziness
salts the brain
and brings up the flavour of it.
You've been tasting it, alone
and bland, until you want to go mad,
but only love will give permission for that,
the heart making mischief, lop-
sided dancing with destiny.


If she were to come (at last
and at last!) you'd speak to her
with the thoroughly reckless wit
of the formerly hopeful in love,
who've almost resigned themselves
to baking biscuits and winter bread.

Kings (you'd pronounce), have suffered
Because of the lack of love,
And queens
Have issued sudden proclamations.
To wit:
Gather the nursemaids
Of sorrow, the seven ladies of grief
And their hand-maidens, Lust
And Double Tongue and
Seeming Innocence, and all the others.

Bind up their tongues with bitter
Spice and lay sharp poultices
Against their eyes. I am going down
Where none of you can attend me
To find the bright, false heart
Implanted in me long ago
And root out suffering.


I, the Queen, hereby declare:
The Queen shall suffer no more.

The Queen shall suffer no more.



J. Newman Sudden Proclamations © 1992

From Firefangled:

Independence Day — Bixby Bridge

-for Carol


What fear hides in our skin has no faith in steel or design.

Through years it moves like water colors in rain,
mingles itself in moonlight, and gravity has its way,
pulling us into the dream where we have no wings.

And then there is the retrofit crew, the rusted plates
that bark like some ancient dog as the car passes over them,
a blessing in a way, drowning the Pacific waves
that sound so much like rushing air or the last whispers
of the day as we fall into sleep, hiding in the ear
like the ocean in a shell, the dark closet of falling.

Below the magnificence of the coast is a postcard,
but strength does not come from the book of splendor,
it is the breath of independence that takes in the world
and floats the blue palette of the sea in your open eyes.

Firefangled

AndyDio's winner from the last Picture Poetry Contest:

In this Blood

In this blood is the power of the eagle
majestic and strong.
The beauty of the sun
glinting off gold tipped wings
as he turns to the sky;
so he was chosen.

In this blood
is the all seeing eyes of the
owl and the falcon
by day seeing the smallest mouse
scurrying through the brush
hundreds of yards away.
By night not the slightest detail goes by unseen;
so he was chosen.

In this blood
is the hunter in both
attacking prey and protecting.
Killing all enemies in his path.
A quick and silent death
awaits those who oppose him;
so he was chosen.

In this blood
is the beauty of the bluebird,
whose wings spread out in protection
over speckled blue eggs
and whose song fills the empty air,
and rejoices over triumphs;
so he was chosen.

In this blood
is the humbleness of the sparrow,
simple and lowly,
but fast and intelligent.
In this blood
is the peace of a hundred doves.
Taking flight and
ready to spread peace
to all around;
so he was chosen.

And he was chosen
to lead his flock
to bring strength, power
beauty, and peace to his people
He is The Chosen One
so he will lead
So he was chosen

AdoreroDio

Such great poets we have! A Best of the LitNet Poets Chapbook would be interesting!

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/PuppyLove.gif

[symphony]

Such great poets we have! A Best of the LitNet Poets Chapbook would be interesting!



Once again- couldnt agree more! :D

[Riesa]

I always adore most poems by Riesa. I have called her on occaision the Poet Laureate of lit net. Here is one that stands out.


Hey! believe me when I say I just came here to post these of yours Virg, swear. thanks so much for your ever kind words. and I dig the new signature!!! (looks familiar);)

Virgil's:


A Desert In The Heart

Through sage brush and ironwood
Brown dust floats so fine it seems
The entire moon’s dirt has been
Transplanted to this flat plane
Of sun and dry wind.

Sunset brings relief.
A man settles beneath
A canopied enclave with cold drink
With dust powdered on his jeans
Face burnt from day’s labor.

She amazingly replied,
But asked him not to.
“Why should she have the last word?”
He thought to himself,
Chapped lips recalling
Feminine mouth and breath.

Well, she was the woman,
And deserved that honor.

He decided to have a scotch.
No rocks, straight up.
It tasted good,
But it did not change anything.

He fixed himself another,
Dark-brown bite
Like a scorpion’s sting.

and my all time favorite of Virgil's based on Dali's Jesus painting:


The Rivet

A thunderous evening and the last moments of human marrow.
This is the moment that life severs to spirit,
That timber crosses to pole,
When positive and negative lose static opposition.
As the earth spins in perpetual motion
It spins along the axis of this cross,
Along the axis of this body, poor and beaten.
I am the mandrel of this world,
The cosmic rivet of all that is stone and mineral and gas;
The universe here is concentered.
Can corporeality end this way, so notorious,
So lapsed of bowel movements,
And flowing of fluids,
Not even to have the dignity of recumbence?
Soon, forty days or so, another transfiguration,
To wheat, to vineyard, to an aroused rose,
Proud and red and facing the sky.
Endemic to all, having been burned into flesh,
And ripped out of flesh,
What thoughts to raise? The two halves of this cross?
What words to say as one breaks from this?
Insuperable, solicitous, metabolous.

And what then? To circle back to life?
In passing out this bread and wine
The spinning world returns to where it began.
To return to the sea and hook once more,
The camaraderie of line and tackle,
Of fish and water, of flesh and blood?
No, the flesh is gone, but the rivet remains.
The spinning earth, the expanding universe,
The hills are fixed to earth.

those last two lines always slay me.

[Riesa]

and this:


My Own Seams


I walk further into my mind's darkness,
seeking refuge from duty, from life.

Give me time to recollect my being.
I need to piece my own quilt.

Upon completion, I will present myself to you,
not to be hung and admired
but to be a covering,
the warmth that you yearn for.

I will warm you.
But first I must bind my own seams.

(c)2007 Susan Sonnen

[PrinceMyshkin]

One I just came across in "And the word is"


Sinful Desires

He stood behind the counter, flashing his tricky smile.
"What can I get for you today?"
Thirty years later, she swallowed, and answered him.
She stood there like her great aunt Maude, starched and priggish,
"Your samples, please, I would like to see your samples."
Another smile, "But, of course."
She watched, without looking, as he knelt to gather a gadget-filled box.
When he arose she was saying something about supple knees,
But it was far back, behind her breath, behind her real thoughts.
Holding her pocketbook, she leaned slightly forward, "May I see? Can you place them on the counter here for me?"
His smile was different now, not from the bother, but from the care.
He watched her face as he carefully placed each fragile sample in front of her.
No sound left her mouth.
No expression changed her face,
But he was sure he saw her eyes well-up and the breathing in her chest stop.
He continued his explanations, his expert salesmanship.
She watched as he hovered over one exquisite piece and the nuance of his fingers made her say, "That one........yes, that one. I will take that one please."
"Let me wrap it for you."
When he returned, she had all of the bills straightened, all of the coins stacked in perfect order.
As he took the final payment from her, he could not help himself.
He touched her finger so very, very slightly.
She did not withdraw it like he thought she would,
But slowly, she gathered her bundle and said thank you.
"Thank YOU," he replied.
Not wanting her to go he quickly said, "Is there anything else?"
"No, not really." And thirty years later she said,
"I must rush home now and think about this."

[Bakiryu]

I love my dead poem by Pendragon:

Song rang through the prison camp this dawn—
And it wasn’t a Bohemian Rhapsody—
“I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law—
“Momma I hear them a comin’ for me.”
Dressed all in black with her hair dyed white—
She sat there proud in that crude little cell.
The guard said “It’s time.” She nodded. “All right.”
“Any last words before we send you to hell?”
She stood there proud, and she scorned them with her eyes,
“I stood up for the things in which I believe.
“I’m about to show you all how a true hero can die,
“Because you’ll have to kill me to make me bow my knees!”
The machine-guns fired like thunder from God’s very throne:
And the Angels came and took another Ninja Warrior home…

[the silent x]

thanks ryu for nominating me, i haven't seen this thread or i would have posted sooner

[Bakiryu]

You welcome, I loved your poem, so angsty!

[ampoule]

Oh my gosh, Prince. Thank you SOOOO much! :blush: You surprised me!

[lalaine]

Hi,

I am so glad to have found this site. I have always wanted to share some of the poems I have scribbled for the past years. Maybe you would also be interested to read some of my compositions and perhaps tell me what you think about it.

Thanks,
Lalaine

[Niamh]

Heres a wonderful sonnet writen by Petrarchs Love for the Form poetry comp. I think its fantastic.


Scene in a Home

Still life of a bowl of fruit and flowers
Painted on a summer’s day and filled with light,
The ticking clock telling the steady hours
As glowing dawn replaces the dark night,
A vase of spring’s first yellow daffodils,
An open book with half yet to be read,
The whisper breeze crossing the windowsill,
The gentle hand that strokes the resting head.

Deathbed where the hand grasps the sheets
With near skeletal frailty and the ear
Closes to the sound of the clock’s steady beat;
Eye closes to the memory from past years
Of little things enjoyed while she, in quiet hours,
Painted the still life of a bowl of fruit and flowers.

[Nossa]

I've just read Lost Hopes..it's very beautiful!

[Adolescent09]

Here is a unique one from firefangld (I hope I spelt that right) who is one of the latest lit-net members and one of best poets this forum has seen. Great stuff:


In morning’s last darkness I found you out
on your way home, under the full moon,
through the shroud of misty air. You did not know
it was me, the soft white night that enveloped you,
lying moist against your vibrant skin; it was I,
who could not speak, who drifted lightly to your lips
and gently rested there, then played and sparkled in your hair.
Caught within your motion, for the moment your captive there,
unseen you carried me inside your house, and I watched you
take petal from petal of clothing and could say nothing,
and could no longer touch you, could give no sign of love
you would see, but for one small tear, unnoticed on a chair.

Later, as you slept, I moved, silently, a thief enthralled,
through your room, feeling the residual warmth of your
clothing, touching what you hold dear, cherishing
each precious item as do you, becoming for the moment
the enveloped, letting you surround me as I had you.
For hours, hovering above the floor, so close with the fragrance
you had worn, like light against the morning breeze, I danced.
And then, glorious moment, I lie beside you sleeping there
and by your heat lost all form as I melded into you...
and slept as you slept, and breathed as you breathed,
and in the fading darkness, became the fabric of your dreams

[Pensive]

I've just read Lost Hopes..it's very beautiful!

I second you. It's a very good poem! :)

[Debrasue]

To Make a Poem

The poem understand is easy to make
Take you your heart which then you must break
A little sorrow then add and melancholy blue
I know it sounds silly but really it’s true
Once there has passed a right proper time
You sharpen your knife to begin in the rhyme
Slice the heart now in pieces so thin
Resemble they paper, That’s how you begin
Lay them out now and arrange them aright
(At times you must work this into the night)
Note on the edges some bleeding there be
It’s ink of the poem and the part of me
That flows from the hand thru the plume to the page
A poet I say and never a sage
The funny thing is the heart’s never used up
It flows from the hand and again filled in the cup
A Romantic is messy and bleeds rather well
When images of life on the pages he’ll tell
Yes the making of rhymes, is easy you see
It’s the living of life that’s the hardest for me

I love the poems that reflect the poet's desire and compulsion to write.

[Debrasue]

Adolescent09 wrote:

Here is a unique one from firefangld (I hope I spelt that right) who is one of the latest lit-net members and one of best poets this forum has seen. Great stuff:Yes, I agree....and I was moved by this poem!

[Adolescent09]

Dyingflame is a very deserving and unchartered poet as well. Permit me to introduce his talent:


I here stand up to defend myself,
with my every twisting thought
bearing its mark on your complaint-

It is time eyes are plucked out
to be placed into better places
and gaze into the hazy distance

of memories undamaged by trappings
of hollow rites carried out on pavements
of porn posters on small confused beds.

It is true that your marks define me,
my defiance infuriates the helpless child
within me who only I can preserve,

unlike you who have torn it away,
choked it to death with skin cream
on your now creased but healthy cheeks

where craters still cast pale shadows,
a barren pockmarked landscape,
leftover from the battle against acne.

I have seen the future set for me,
in my brother who drives two cars to work
and always gets the legal secretary’s number.

I have to be a first class actor every day,
but the child in me shouts against it,
and forces my hand to turn the volume on.

It is time that this war is brought to end, and the pains providing for “angst-ridden-maniacs who mash-buttons-and-stare-wide-eyed-at-multicoloured-screens like-zombies-high-on-crack-who-know-no-math-and-break-the-law” will be let free to speak, to grow, and plant a new tree.

And so I tell you-
together we have dissembled bombs,
drove rockets into outer heaven,
brought down the walls dividing us:

Why can’t we just stand and defend what our youngsters would have us die for?
Why should we just escape through these flaming woods on motorbikes?
And leave it all to burn in offices
While the moon we yearned to reach for aeons
crumbles behind us,
reminding us of its craters?

[Adolescent09]

Dramasnot is a beautiful poet. (both in looks and writing ability). But heck, we all know that. Here is one of her most recent in the Picture Poetry Contest I believe:


Tornado

Stillness is a melancholy comfort
Gone is the baby blue sofa and Sunday afternoon
a swirl of faded madness left me dizzy, waiting for you in the cold
Longing for your arms in wind chill
Left standing in a second-hand stand in Brooklyn
It was in your eyes I was alive, so real until that fatalist resolution whereupon so many problems
arose.
Left here torn, pale except for a bleak yellow complexion
Only these passing breezes flip my pages with swiftness not unlike your impatient touch
Upon being picked up again, I did not forget you
I leafed through my head
Only discovering we were
Blown away

[Debrasue]

Ohhh....this is spooky! I just now read Dramasnot's poem below...(thanks Adol!) And yes... it is an exceptional & beautiful poem! Without knowing I used some of her words & imagery in my own poem(submitted for the picture poetry contest)...to convey the emotions I was divining from the photo! I deliberately did not read any of the poems so as not to be influenced or discouraged... Drama's poem is far superior!

[Riesa]

One of the poets I admire most in this world, and have such desire to see published...
the one.... the only: Il Penseroso :)


Bumblebees

Thick black floating orbs,
Stretching in swift rotation
The garden routine,
To doze in petalled beauty
Having their fill of nectar.

What delight to be
Draggling in odorous bliss
Alike to the wind
In a wayfaring circuit
Abreast a personal whim.

Do these creatures know
The envy their motion stirs,
Or that their feeding
Burdens my listless brow
With a penitent emotion?

So unlike their arc
My accustomed position
Holds fast to shadow
And the cool interior
Of a slumberless dark.

[Pendragon]

Thank you, Ryu, for the posting of the "Dead" or "obituary" sonnet. I can't seem to stop writing them, so I'm glad you enjoyed yours!

Pen

[lalaine]

Here's another poem I'd like to share:

LADY IN RED

She comes in the midst of a Sunday ritual
Stooping in a flashy red dress as usual
A wooden stick she helds to lead her
A spot she chooses at the edge of a pew.

She settles down and sits upright
Reaches from her bossom
Securely wrapped in a cloth of red and white
A white-beaded rosary.

She pulls out what seems like the size of a playing card
With images of the Sacred Heart.
The plastic-covered scapular
She smothers with kisses
Before she finally wears it.

From a black bag that she carries
A black veil she pulls out and covers her head
She starts mumbling her usual litany.


So comfortable, so contented
Her distorted figure doesn't bother her
Attentively and piously she listens
To the preacher's sermon
As she murmurs word of praise.

This Lady in Red
Every Sunday I see
The same dress, the same spot
The same ritual
My eyes are glued everytime I see her
I am entranced with her strength, her faith
And just by her Existence.

[ampoule]

Which favorite lit-netter of yours wrote this? We should give him or her credit. There is so much to read here that I can't possibly go back and find it.

[lalaine]

Hi,
If you're referring to the poem Lady in Red, this is Lalaine from the Philippines. I wrote this when I was attending a Sunday mass with my family.
Thanks for reading

[ampoule]

Hi,
If you're referring to the poem Lady in Red, this is Lalaine from the Philippines. I wrote this when I was attending a Sunday mass with my family.
Thanks for reading

Ooops, sorry. I thought this is where we post our favorites of others.

[lalaine]

Oops sorry. I was supposed to post it in personal poetry.

[symphony]

Just came across this in the form poetry contest thread. Loved it. :)
By Bii:

Chemical Dreams

I fall awake from chemical dreams
absorbing the sleepy light of day.
Knowing that all is not as it seems;
wondering whether I’m here to stay.

I have a feeling about this day
the light is heavier than it seems.
The gathering clouds are here to stay;
billowing darkly around my dreams

Time passes slowly, or so it seems;
a wandering moment is here to stay.
Settling softly within my dreams
breathing the warmth of a summer’s day.

So here in this moment I will stay
cushioned within my chemical dreams.
No more to feel the cold light of day;
knowing that all is not as it seems.

[Bii]

Wow, thanks Symphony!

There are so many great poems on this site it's hard to pick one's to single out. I found this one from Il Penseroso particularly moving :

Birds in a Landscape of Air

Birds awaken from his sleeve
alive and fluttering
in a breeze,
beating strength against
his feathered chest.

At each stage of soaring
a lens is built to shear the air,
the glass refraction of an eye
clears raw pulsing clouds,
and shapeless a storm of air
bent by flapping wings
traces fleeting symbols
in lines across the sky.

The mirrored waves
struck by light combust
in shapes that spread
a drizzled spray,
land is reached by feathered
hands, plying currents
from the day.

[symphony]

The following is by Countess.

Ecomnium to the Glorious Romantic Era
Part Two of Modern Romantic Poetry... (also a work in progress)

ECOMNIUM TO THE GLORIOUS ROMANTIC ERA

Once upon a midnight dream I saw
Twin toppled towers astride a mottled moon
Which from below a dim-lit bower gazed on
Between two tree tops hung in wretched gloom

The arbor door cracked, revealed a somber sprite
Whose hollowed eyes bespoke some horrid tale
A tragic figure! This small frame all wrapped in white
Which hurried to the far side of the dale.

Before the armied forest she ceased her flight
Aside a weak Willow, its bleak face buried in the ground
Then stretched forth her hand, released some glinted gold
Spread forth the shiny dew-drops all around.

The gilded tears glimmered, shimmied grim unnatural dance -
A terrible twosome tango betwix the lunar haze
That pierced the darkness like a wicked wizard’s glance -
Then rose up - nay, grew - from ghastly flowers into graves!

“These are my children” she moaned or seemed to, for her lips stayed fixed
Like twins attached.
“An unearthly school, a mottled lot from another shore.
This one, a white albatross brought home, and this one, a black raven named Lenore.”

Lenore. At that name a diabolical pitch arose from below the freckled dust
A paralyzing sound, unutterable! No human word could form
The cacophonic cries that soared from that damnable ground,
Or shape the wraiths which ascended from that condemned shore.

With ghoulish countenances each, in turn, took a bow
And introduced himself, first Coleridge, then Byron and Yeats,
Poe recited a melancholic round while Wollstonecraft read verse
To Shelly and Johann Keats.

Then that cursed light whose advent heralds the sun
Stormed through the shade, across my naked cheeks
To peer below my peaceful, virgiled lids
And with grim reality, my dreamer’s dream erased -
NEVERMORE!
It's a poem that made me feel i want to write something like this when i grow up.


By the way, have anyone seen Adolescent lately? Where did he disappear?
No sign of Uncle Lar either!!

[Countess]

There are a billion great poems on this site, and choosing one is like choosing a flavor from amongst every conceivable variation of chocolate ice cream known to God. BUT, these two were the ones that touched me *today*, so I will post them *today*, with the understanding that tomorrow will undoubtedly bring another.

The first I liked for nature's imagery (it's reminiscent of the Romantic poets, esp the naturalists like Wordsworth or Byron):

This between-space...
This breath between steps...
shall offer thee a window on what has gone before.

Look back.
Sweep thine eyes over the greenness of the valley,
the deep forest darkness that has sheltered thee,
the watery expanse that has carried thee here.
Cast your glance across the breadth of experience
that is you.

This between-space...
This warm and quiet embrace...
shall offer thee a vision of the future.

Look beyond and remember
what has not yet come to be.
Take me in your arms.
Spin me around the back of the moon.
Feel the tingling of stardust pass thee by
as we dance on a comet's trail,
skirting along the edge of quantum depths,
dipping and gliding through the shadows
of planets not yet born.
Take my hand...come with me beyond the universe...
back to where we have yet to begin.

But for now....
all that you need is here
in this between-space.

.
cdn/24jul07

The second I liked because the author captured raw emotion and not only conveyed that emotion to the reader, but even induced the feeling in the reader with the power of her words.

If I use my voice
A voice so loud the young will cry and
the deaf will shield their ears,
so powerful that strength will crumble and
weakness will vanish
giving voice to inner thoughts.
Self expression.
It would be criminal, forbidden.
Submit, lie down
Hold your breath until you vanish
Still silence screams with force, a terrible force
Hear and see that there is more, I am more.

Mother Hubbard

[CdnReader]

Oh wow! I am VERY honoured, Countess. Thank you.

[motherhubbard]

I thank you too Countess. it is an honor

[Countess]

I also have wanted (for some time) to add this one, but I had to find it first. It's dedicated to the thread-starter, and it's his last poem here. I loved it when I read it, but I think perhaps it might not have been entirely clear for some, so I'm posting it here with my thoughts on it. Again, I don't know if this is what he intended or not - but it's my interpretation. He'll have to show his face to prove me wrong.

Appomattox

A poem dedicated to the end of the Civil War.

Surrender was the straw of hope
and took it up they did.

Surrender and hope are an ironical paradox. He points this out.

Battalion
vaunts up and rose but pomp
was clouded in.

Though they were defeated, the Southern forces maintained a sense of pride/dignity.
Author exchanges “rose up” for “vaunts up”, which suggests an internal rallying of said dignity. Contrasts use of “up” and “rose” (upwards motion) with “in” - uses “cloud,” a word associated with smoke - there was no external display of this dignity.

A flame lit immoral
befitting rise in passion,
leading rants on Yankees
to cook their pride in sin.

Utilizes “cooking imagery” (similar to battlefield imagery: flame lit, rise, passion, cook) to convey this “immoral” passion of pride. The irony is Southern pride is in itself a respectable quality, but the South was “in sin” in this instance, so their immoral, passionate pride was “in sin”.

Where mind at will
gives thought to fort and citadel
is built, a tyrant will annex
but feel his soul burn like cinders.

Lee’s main point was to protect and access his supply line, hence “gives thought to fort and citadel”. These supplies would enable the Southern forces to maintain their campaign. Author indicates his determination (tyrant) will prove him successful at achieving his goal, but at the expense of his soul burning in Hell.

A change of season

The two forces fought throughout the winter, but with the coming of Spring, Lee hoped to break free when the rains ceased and the road cleared.

and fortune brought
from middle-west,
a defense for right.

“Right” is a double-entendre. The Union V-Corps arrived and established themselves to the right of Union forces. Also, they were “right”.

His beared and booze
and jocund mood,
his native plights and tales so trite
deemed quite angsty and often rude
was the bloat of last resort.

Here “bloat” reflects Lee’s pride. “Beared” “booze” and “Jocund” are descriptive words characterizing his personality. Plights/Trite/Angsty/Rude probably refer to his statement: “All that is left is for me to surrender, and I’d rather die a thousand deaths”.

It was as though depravity
lost adopted sense
when barbarity gave rise
to squall,
that fell the Southern fence.

Here, the “adopted sense” probably refers to the Southern defense that the depravity of slavery was a necessary evil and a “God-given institution“, to support the Southern economy. Here the “squall” probably refers to the last storm of Confederate forces - upon arriving at a crest ridge, they discovered - despite their success - Union troops with the V-Force off to the right. No longer was the war about slavery, but about Lee’s ego and winning.

Entrenched was a mutual flag of cheers
when obdurate command surrendered

Grant, who had had “a headache” throughout the App battle, suddenly found himself “headache-less” once Lee surrendered. (No, I’m not joking).

Negro rights was given in future years
Hurrah for the boozed defender!

I don’t really know if Lee was a drunk, but it seems Adol thinks so. (-:

[stephofthenight]

by ampoule
i realy realy like this one


The day was heavy but her heart was light
as she stood marveling at the Water Tower,
wondering how it, amongst all the beautiful
buildings of that day, had survived the fire.

The day was heavy but her heart was light
as she skipped down Michigan Avenue
touching skyscrapers with one hand while
waving at sailboats with the other.

The day was light but her heart was heavy
as she trembled in the arms of the black woman,
clinging to the curb from which she had fallen,
marveling and wondering and skipping.

The day was light but her heart was heavy
as she longed for a name and a town,
hoping to place them upon the floral paper
that would hold her fanciest pen of gratitude.

But as she sat, staring out at the day,
She knew, in reality, both of their hearts were light.

[symphony]

I also have wanted (for some time) to add this one, but I had to find it first. It's dedicated to the thread-starter, and it's his last poem here. I loved it when I read it, but I think perhaps it might not have been entirely clear for some, so I'm posting it here with my thoughts on it. Again, I don't know if this is what he intended or not - but it's my interpretation. He'll have to show his face to prove me wrong.


Not to prove u wrong, but i hope it's about time he shows up his face since he hasnt shown it for quite a while now.
We miss u Adol, where on earth are u?!

[ampoule]

by ampoule
i realy realy like this one


The day was heavy but her heart was light
as she stood marveling at the Water Tower,
wondering how it, amongst all the beautiful
buildings of that day, had survived the fire.

The day was heavy but her heart was light
as she skipped down Michigan Avenue
touching skyscrapers with one hand while
waving at sailboats with the other.

The day was light but her heart was heavy
as she trembled in the arms of the black woman,
clinging to the curb from which she had fallen,
marveling and wondering and skipping.

The day was light but her heart was heavy
as she longed for a name and a town,
hoping to place them upon the floral paper
that would hold her fanciest pen of gratitude.

But as she sat, staring out at the day,
She knew, in reality, both of their hearts were light.

Oh my goodness, steph, thank you so VERY much. How wonderful it is to be encouraged.


And yes symphony...come back adol!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Has anyone added this yet? If not, why not - please explain. Yes you, I'm asking you. And if it has been added, can there be any harm in adding it again?
And again?




At Big Sur-from San Francisco Poems, for Gabrielle

You must notice the woman
in the photo, light blazer,
turtleneck, blue jeans, blonde,
but off your left shoulder,
where your hair falls on a lapel,
is the Pacific Ocean and a gray sky.

It is not a melancholy sky. The ocean
too is gray, with a hint of aquamarine
swimming to the surface.
They are like two mirrors reflecting
one another, each holding both
the image and the reality of the image
as its own. The mystery begins there.

Where is the small rock in the mirror
of the sky, the blemish with the spume of wave,
near the edge of what we see?
I still say mirrors. And if you told me,
the sky you see is not the sky,
I would say, enough of that! Look,
those enduring tufts of grass stand tall,

even though the vast Pacific seems to lay
its miles of rolling in a gathering of cotton
swirl along their petioles. And the grass,
with its panne embossing on the raw
cocoa silk of rock at the woman’s feet,
see how it gathers effortlessly beneath
the flame-stitch organza trim of alfilaria,
and the broach of quartz, so elegant
the way it nearly escapes the observer entirely.

My gaze falls then on your left boot,
fashionably cinnabar in this light,
in a perfect downward slope,
suspended over all of this:
the faux-verdigris of the Pacific,
the fire and velvet of the earth’s
late-afternoon camisole,
and the uncalculated batting
of her lashes over the ocean’s eye
as it gazes surreptitiously on you
balanced like sunlight on the pied boulders.

You will say this too is not the truth,
how your face is not the sun you wear
around your neck, your hair the wave-form
of the wind and not the wind itself,
perfect in its disregard, circling your right eye
that sees me for the instant of a shutter.
Almost unnoticed is the road behind you,
only a dash of road in the background
of your right shoulder, and the promise
of a road , so subtle in the cliffs beyond.

It is the road that led me here to this timeless
day, watching your smile, the beautiful
disorder in the cuff of your jeans, the fray
like tuft grass. Enough of this, you say.
But I will see your heart, a lioness in a waking
stretch, here or in some tropic isle, where
you dance in tiered chiffon, or in combed
cotton with a deck of cards, barefoot
on a Sunday much like this. The promise turns
its mysterious way along these ancient cliffs,
but what I will see and I will remember always
is the pre-eminence of you in the midst of splendor.

firefangled

[Countess]

I'll second your vote, Prince.

[quasimodo1]

{the verse of younger days} Into the Adirondacks (prose poetry format) Ankles in the gaiters, weight falling on vibram, trek in from miscivil nation,looking to widen the swath, sliping under wilderness, oblivion of muck stroll and cary all the grub, balancing top heavy, being thoughtlessly ready to fall, turn and crash, but make your backpack take the hit,alone and fit, yourself stay bright and nimble, the solo walk is grit and pain goes all along, then leaves the shoulders sore in three nights sleep and bivuac, you get your legs and sticks, you cut it from a birch at risk to be used impelling, push up to gain a foot, hearing a wounded bear, mistreated by canadians, with muzzle loading fire and arms, they are here for sport while you just want new york and seeking fresh exhaustion, really spent by night, lay down your head, ignore granitized bed, the hiker has unknowing dreams and wakes before a beam of light can split the trees, then treks ahead like all the trips, from trail to scree and footpath, the gravity is less, a lighter load with living, which wouldn't happen where; spends and pay, justifies each day, and makes,like sodders, hay.

[Niamh]

The following is by Countess.

It's a poem that made me feel i want to write something like this when i grow up.


By the way, have anyone seen Adolescent lately? Where did he disappear?
No sign of Uncle Lar either!!

i second this

[Granny5]

This is my favorite because it touches my heart. (I will admit to a slight bias)

The picture is old, faded in spots,
corners folded, fuzzy with years.
Look closely and you’ll see the faces are the same.
They are my grandmother and me.
Our two faces touching, and becoming one
in a spot on the cheek in front of the ear

Both faces are younger and
older than the years they have seen.
In each face is reflected the other,
one just beginning life,
the other nearing its end

This connection lives on
transcending time,
and thirty years later
our cheeks are connected still.

The great divide, the timeless eternity, the shadow
That moves between us like a vapor
does not separate our cheeks.

I am no different than her
just an extension -

reaching from the past into forever.

Reaching Into Forever by Motherhubbard

But reading all the beautiful poetry here is like having a new book of poems to open everyday. I'm so glad mother invited me.

[motherhubbard]

mom, you are biased- but I'm glad! thanks

[Pensive]

This is another favourite now:

Scarlet by symphony


Scarlet

It was in a sunny summer’s morn
That Mother gave her the paint brush,
“Paint away, dear”, Ma has said,
“Give the world its colors”,
And has flashed a smile.
Everything came
In colors
Ever
Since.


The summer was suddenly yellow,
The sun shone golden on the day.
The smile Mom gave was orange—
Dad’s words were crescent blue.
The li’l pup was brown.
The garden- green.
The canvas
Ne’er was
White.



Then
One night
Those strange men
In green stormed in.
Shouting loud harsh words--
Their voices- a dark teal,
Their actions- a dappled grey,
The huge black guns screamed in their hands—
A moment later, the world turned red.


Red
With death,
Stilled and hushed,
And marooned deep—
Mother’s frozen eye
Shadowed in red lashes;
Dad lay in a pool of red.
The li’l paint brush rolled on the floor.
The world was now a world in scarlet.

[symphony]

My! I'm honored!
And delighted. Thanks Pensive.

[symphony]

I dont know if this is the right place to pose this question, but since Adol was the one who started this thread, I'll go ahead.
Does anyone happen to know why he "left forever"? :( I, among many others, enjoyed his poetries very much and I'm sure this forum will miss him if he decides to leave.

[Niamh]

I dont know if this is the right place to pose this question, but since Adol was the one who started this thread, I'll go ahead.
Does anyone happen to know why he "left forever"? :( I, among many others, enjoyed his poetries very much and I'm sure this forum will miss him if he decides to leave.

Yeah Quasi and myself were wondering where Adol disappeared to also. Didnt he once say his mam usually drags him to like texas for a few weeks during the summer? could that be why hes away from here?

[quasimodo1]

Two missing members, I guess it is a forum and people come and go. The non-virtual life will drag any of us off for lots of reasons. I have an instinct about Adol coming back but never knew UncleLar that well. quasi

[Niamh]

but its not just them. I mean.... wheres nightshade and Schokokeks, and lote tree.

[quasimodo1]

To Niamh: We can only speculate but "vacation" season is upon us and the members you mention are hopefully on a beach or taking the great tour. Outside of sending a posse, I think we shall see their return. quasi

[symphony]

But Adol has this "Left 4ever" thing written in custom user title...that was what confused me.

Anyway, I earnestly hope all of them comes back in no time. :)

[CdnReader]

A "not-the-last-ever-poetry-post" from Bii.... I certainly hope it's not the last, because it is phenomenally beautiful. And if, heaven forbid, it did have to be your last, it would be phenomenally memorable.


Parting

Close the door when I am gone,
and breathe the air that bears
the scent of my passing.
Avoid the table in the hall
in case my fingerprints
meet yours; and chat about
past times as old friends
might do, on chance meeting.
Don’t be troubled by the hair
that weaves like tumbleweed
in all the corners; the mice
will take it, stuff it to the pillows
on which their children sleep,
and dream of cheese.
Forget my words, no more
will they reverberate around
these rooms; forget the
shape that my head
made upon your pillow;
forget the way I take
my tea;
and most of all
forget me.

[Bii]

A "not-the-last-ever-poetry-post" from Bii.... I certainly hope it's not the last, because it is phenomenally beautiful. And if, heaven forbid, it did have to be your last, it would be phenomenally memorable.

Wow! Thank you Cdn for your very kind and humbling comments.

[Niamh]

Yeay Sticky!:thumbs_up

[Niamh]

I just came across this poem by CDNreader and had to put it here. I just fell in love with it.



Sail Away

Sail away with me, my darling, to a misty distant land
We'll ride the waves together....walk the beach hand in hand.
There will be no need for artifice, nor pretense set upon
Masks will be tossed away, and new dreams will be spun.

Let the ocean bring us closer than we have ever been before
The relentless motion of the water upon this magical shore
The pale early mornings....the fiery moonlit nights
Dream with me beyond the horizon...let your spirit take flight.

Come with me, my darling....dream with me as we sleep.
Our love will rise unbounded, our roots will burrow deep.
We'll make a home near the water, palm fronds upon bamboo
We'll gather seeds for a garden, tend it lovingly, me and you.

Keep this dream with you, my darling....as we drift upon the waves
For what would we be without dreams to keep the world at bay?
Close your eyes, my sweet....build sandcastles in the air.
Let peace wash through your body....and remember the joy that awaits us there.

[CdnReader]

Oh, wow! Thank you SO much, Niamh! It's a HUGE honour to get posted in this section, and I'm very very grateful. :)

[Niamh]

Oh, wow! Thank you SO much, Niamh! It's a HUGE honour to get posted in this section, and I'm very very grateful. :)

I personally think it deserves to be here. Its just so beautiful.
(btw i love your avatar!)

[tinustijger]

I saw this in this thread: http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=909&page=14&pp=15

You cried

In my dream I caught your tear
In reality I stumbled,
Letting it slip through my fingers
And down it fell,
Joyfully like your laugh,
Tenderly like your smile
And, violently, my heart writhed
As its beauty splattered on the dirty ground
And, violently, my heart writhed
As its last sparkle died
And my heart broke,
With the tear,
As you cried

T.N. (Tue Nguyen)

I love it!!

[quasimodo1]

To Tinustuhger: I think this is a great thread and try to post on it when something poetic seems worthwhile. There may not be an answer to this, but just how would you pronounce your name? quasimodo1

[firefangled]

Has anyone added this yet? If not, why not - please explain. Yes you, I'm asking you. And if it has been added, can there be any harm in adding it again?
And again?

[B]

I have only been here once before and did not see this. Thank you, Prince, I feel very honored among so many of the poets I enjoy here and respect, present company very much included.

[kiz_paws]

I'd like to add my personal favorite (there is so many to chose from, but for today, this one really hit home with me):


On Laid Back Lane

A dusty gravel road crosses a low water bridge
over which flows a cool mountain creek.
I notice brownie’s scurrying for cover as
the truck slowly rolls across.

As I make my way up the hill and around
the bend a doe and its child leap a fence.
Stopping, I gaze in amazement how unaware
they are of my stare and wonderment.

Moving along I become almost hypnotized
by quick flashes of light and dark.
The setting sun spits rays through webs
of trees, leaves and limbs.

Shading the glare I nearly hit a roadrunner
as it hurries across the road.
This time there is no coyote to follow wanting
a quick before dinner snack.

The window is half rolled down allowing cool air
to refresh my sweating face.
A smell of fresh cut hay permeates the cab
and cicadas sing their thirteen year song.

It’s not far now, as I head down the valley to home,
I’ll go up one more hill, then a turn.
When I get to the top, there it is, just as always,
a golden globe making ready for its rest.

Up my path I think of my journey, of all the things
that I saw brand new and old.
I never tire of this trip; no it’s never boring or dull,
its just God’s way of showing off.

This is the work of Poppy. Great stuff! :thumbs_up

[Poppy]

Kiz, I can only say I am flattered especially since I am such a novice.
Thanks.
~Poppy

[kiz_paws]

There are many really beautiful haiku written in this site, we have such talented people here. But there is this one, written by our member, Unbeliever that I feel truly grips the meaning of a perfect haiku. Allow me to post it with a picture that kind of adds to it:


http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s122/kiz_paws/rabbitinsnow.jpg

Albino bunnies,
Sitting in a snowy field,
are invisible.Bravo, Unbeliever. :thumbs_up

[TheFifthElement]

This poem by Demian is just so beautiful.



Arianna pushes a dandelion on me-
I breeze by with some nodding amusement.
There are too many plodding clods to be
left prying plants from the mud:

How many bills have been paid?
When will there be enough time left to finish this?

Her hand presses a silver stream into mine and she says,
"Blow it away."
I step back and reach down.

Arianna smiles and reaches up--
"It's the wind, daddy."

"Yes it is, darling.
It's the Wind."

[Demian]

Thanks again!

[firefangled]

This is my favorite by Ampoule. There is for me her signature mystery at the end as if you happened upon the end of a conversation between her and someone unknown to you.

Eclipse

I like a little day time
Mixed into my night time,
The explosion of warmth and light
That comes when the sun's warmth
And the moon's and the star's sparkling light
Embrace each other.
They seem to cling to each other
Suspended in time,
But very slowly they pull apart
And float off into space.
Yes, sweet troubadour, all my life's a circle
And I do know why
Time keeps rolling by.

amp, December Fifth TwoThousand

[ampoule]

I could put it in a hundred different languages but they would all come out to say, 'thank you'. You are very kind.

[Virgil]

Ampoule, that is a great poem. I love the turn the poem makes we these lines:

Yes, sweet troubadour, all my life's a circle
And I do know why
Time keeps rolling by.

[Avalive]

Nice thread. I do love some of the poems here but I need sometime to recollect my memories of those beautiful pieces.

[Niamh]

This belongs here! love it!



We were born of sheep's dreams,
we were born of grass.
Neither of us is quite there
we are nought but dreams and gas.

So it hardly matters that I've killed you,
Chopped you up for stew and pie.
Because you my dear don't exist
Nor in point of fact do I.

Cackle! Hiss! Bubble and boil!
Umdiddle dee and umdiddle DIE!

We are characters in someone's brain
though I am not quite certain who.
But all that matters is-
It doesn't matter what I do!

Kill or steal, rob or lie,
if I don't exist can I die?

Tell yourself that you are real,
you will find that you are not
For we are all but fairy tales
From that green sheep that dreams a lot.
By Nightshade

[quasimodo1]

To Nightshade and Niamh: You sure are right Niamh, this does belong here. In fact it belongs published. Nightshade...you didn't just pass over that line, you high-jumped it. quasimodo1

[andave_ya]

That's fantastic!!

[Nightshade]

Wowie really?:confused: are we all looking at the same poem?!
Thanks abillion-gazillion anyways:D:nod:

[Pendragon]

You never told me you were such a wonderful poet, Night! Wow!

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/BlowaKiss.gif

[Nightshade]

Here is one of my favs I just have who wrote some of th older ones




a curse for the fraudster!

Investigations on its way,
I hope you have somethings to say!
I dont think it right what you do,
but dont you worry i've spotted you!
I hope someone catches you at work,
and locks you up you stupid jerk!



Go-Go
]I imagine
you think you look silly
dancing around naked
in the living room like that,
doing the
shake- shake-shake
to make me smile
It isn´t just men that lose their
breath you know,
and I wish I could tell you
what I want to do
without sounding like
pornography,
but then again
maybe you wouldn´t mind.


Isagel again On writing this ones called


I write
because I don´t have words,
I have pictures
and when
I can turn one into a sentence
a wisp inside my belly
makes a pirouette
and takes a bow.

[Niamh]

No really nightie that is a really good poem! And thanks for putting my curse here!:blush: I think thats the first poem of mine to be put here! feel honoured!

[firefangled]

Over one thousnd served

I hope no one has already done this, if so, it deserves repeating.

I would like to acknowledge Riesa for starting what has become such a pleasurable thread. That is the Cinquain thread.

Secondly, every poet who had contributed deserves to be recognized for these little gems and for giving to it such a long and interesting life. I hope I got everyone at least once. It is a lot of fun and good exercise.

Often I am in a hurry and cursing because I want to write or read poetry not go to work, but I have to have my fix for the day, so I can feel I have accomplished something this day, if only 2,4,6,8,2.

So, thanks to Riesa and all you have kept this going. Here is a sample:

Riesa

These words
are black and white
but bring color to mind
lemons, sun dried blue-bonnets and
red barns

Riesa

wheeee
a carnival:
prehistoric camels
leading dancing elephants dressed
in pink.

Virgil

Red barns
come across the
car window as one drives
across the Pennsylvania
country

inmyownworld

and fun
such a strange word
sometimes makes me wonder
if, maybe, Speaking's not pretty
at all

dramasnot6

I look
Past the beggars
Grime and caked blood
No importance ,I have deadlines
Pennies

Il Penseroso

Glory
glazes the eyes
of those to remember,
parchment no proper tomb to store
the dead.

Pensive

No tears
are killing me
they have no care for me
cruel tears do not hear anything all
brutal tears.

firefangled

is here
where heaven is?
she pointed to her heart,
yes child, heaven is where you are
always

Susan Sonnen

what bliss
is to be found
within a man's own home,
warmth, food, love and if he's lucky
good books

Susan Sonnen

Endless
journeys of hope,
well-worn paths of promise,
natural markers guide us through
life's maze

Pendragon

ever,
always exist:
never pass from life, but
remain eternal, without end—
no death

Pendragon

our grasp
exceeds our reach
so the dreams crash and burn
failure but another name for new
effort...

Whifflingpen

hoping
for untold wealth
I crossed the dry desert;
but lost the boundless treasure of
your smile.

Whifflingpen

I paint
gold on lilies,
I let my salty tears
Fall into the deep and briny
Ocean.

wyzguy

soft tick.
tock, too, quiet.
tick talks but listens not
and tock shocks when all talking stops.
alone

Adolescent09

again,
the stark voices
ripple frightfullly at dusk,
until a carpet, once more lain,
blots paths

AdoreroDio

what now
the young girl asks
staring out
across the sky of blue
she stops

Bluemauvey

Singers
Ululating
As the coffins lower
Their voices rise to silence birds
Like guns

kandaurov

I dream
of yellow skies
and ocre, spongy ground
of people able to sit and
wonder

Aunty-lion

expand
your horizons
look to other customs
in culture war noone can win
let be

Bii

Often
I look upwards
at the cerulean
sky; wondering how it became
so vast...

Bii

striped suits
with men inside.
Chalked white lines on charcoal
everywhere the eye can see, all
the same

motherhubbard

Effort
Simply trying
That’s all I ask of you
I do not expect perfection
Attempt

motherhubbard

Time now
To do those things
That you have long dreamed of
Take hold of the moment this time
Don’t wait

Symphony

At night,
When the distant light
From the lamp not so bright
Hits this parchment of mine, i write
Empty words...

Symphony

at peace
my beloved
twin-soul lies, shaded by
green grass and memories of years
long-gone

Enchanted

miss you...
two words define
the existence of our
relationship and yet remain
hollow.

littlewing53

to rise
again not yet
tomorrow comes quickly
appearing in neon shadows
colors

Jade Rain

Turning
The seasons change
Nature withers and dies
Spring comes and life starts anew
Rebirth

Jade Rain

How strange
The funny man
Wearing stilts and a wig
Makes people laugh but he is not
A clown

PrinceMyshkin

a sign
of certain mad-
ness is to fool around
with arbitrary poem forms
till dusk

PrinceMyshkin

to time
I will not cede
anything of my own
that surely dwells most deep and sharp
in me

CdnReader

inside
darkness exists
strength, courage and honour
are needed to drive out the fear
of life

CdnReader

laughing
spilling forth loud
no maintaining reserve
let the giggles overtake now
release

Ampoule

and fly
we must go high
bounce off clouds, touch the sky
the rainbow wants to tell us why
we cry

Ampoule

farewell
Andromeda
welcome welcome welcome
the female warrior now unchained
bright star

smartgirl

the door
mysterious
what is it doing here
why is it that i can't open
how strange

brainstrain

she knows
all and too much
but before she is done
the dark sky will burst forth anew
with truth

zargon

write on,
until day's gone
until night drapes its cloak,
over day and darkness, light, soak
all's black

mir

Life sucks.
Paint my room black,
Black for the pain inside,
Long hair, empty stare, call me
Emo!

Triskele

eternity awaiting us...
yet nobody
dares wait in this black place
chanting in tongues of pale wing angels
heaven

Uncle Lar

My love
of Life is based
on the many chances
one has to make better choices
right now.

[TheFifthElement]

^^^^^

firefangled this must have taken you ages. What an amazing thing to do, and what amazing poems. I will have to go now and write a cinquain :)

[Avalive]

here is an old poem by Amuse



our months
together/her
tiny heartbeats
fall from the scalpel
as i lay
vanquished in post-op
they are scurried into
the autoclave

what a lucky
thing to be
born a scalpel!
it will
shake itself
free will
never
see
or be haunted by
any hopes and dreams

...dreams last
night of
snatching
minis in bassinets
from wildfires
and overly tipsy
garbage trucks
with tons of
smelted goo,
from hammocks
nearly broken above
bald rocky ground-

but the scalpel,
you wonder?
ah yes.
the scalpel.

it will
traipse along
its merry way
go on to
save lives in
triple bypass,
repair
herniated disks and
remove polyps
as blithely
as it
removes beauty
(as aged women
attempt
to destroy crow's
feet and character-
to look Good!)

but i will always
remember the
heartbeats that i
never heard
the heartbeats
that i hate you for

that you couldn't
wouldn't let me keep.
...it must be nice to be a
scalpel.
it must be nice to be a
man.

[quasimodo1]

Long live the skillful, supersized and extended metaphor. Great work Amuse! quasi

[symphony]

[CENTER][I][SIZE="1"]
Symphony

At night,
When the distant light
From the lamp not so bright
Hits this parchment of mine, i write
Empty words...

Symphony

at peace
my beloved
twin-soul lies, shaded by
green grass and memories of years
long-gone



:eek: Cant even remember when I wrote them, must be way ancient (owing to the fact that one of them doesnt even follow the format :D ).
Thanks so much for taking the time to pick up all those great pieces and putting them together this way, it had to be done, and who else better than u? :)

[firefangled]

:eek: Cant even remember when I wrote them, must be way ancient (owing to the fact that one of them doesnt even follow the format :D ).
Thanks so much for taking the time to pick up all those great pieces and putting them together this way, it had to be done, and who else better than u? :)

I chose them for their beauty, Symphony. In this case it was so that I didn't even notice the form.

[Pensive]

:eek: Cant even remember when I wrote them, must be way ancient (owing to the fact that one of them doesnt even follow the format :D ).

At first, I was also perplexed. But by reading the start of firefangled's post thrice, I remembered having posted a poem in Cinquain thread.

Thanks a lot, firefangled for taking time to post these very interesting little pieces of poetry. :)

[CdnReader]

Over one thousnd served
Often I am in a hurry and cursing because I want to write or read poetry not go to work, but I have to have my fix for the day, so I can feel I have accomplished something this day, if only 2,4,6,8,2.

I totally understand this, Fire. And I agree.... I love the cinquain challenge to keep my pen honed, even on days that I don't have the time or inspiration for more.



CdnReader

inside
darkness exists
strength, courage and honour
are needed to drive out the fear
of life

CdnReader

laughing
spilling forth loud
no maintaining reserve
let the giggles overtake now
release


Thanks so much for including me in this long list of favourites. I'm honoured.

BUT!!!! If I may be so bold....

You missed somebody.... :(
I hope you'll allow me to correct this grievous error....


firefangled

I tread
toward the light
you can tell where I have been
the pieces of dream fall from me
like snow

firefangled

let go
you do not die,
no heaven or hell waits,
judgment does not hide in pure light,
you do

firefangled

just ask
your dog or cat
their opinion of love,
rub, rub, rub, sloppy, lick, lick, lick
‘nuff said

firefangled

silence,
like dark cacao,
velvet with a heartbeat,
the ascending and decending
ending

.

[firefangled]

Thanks Cdn. I appreciate the thought. I did include one of mine as one of many others who contributed. I do like the ones you found, though.

[Pendragon]

Over one thousnd served

I hope no one has already done this, if so, it deserves repeating.

I would like to acknowledge Riesa for starting what has become such a pleasurable thread. That is the Cinquain thread.

Secondly, every poet who had contributed deserves to be recognized for these little gems and for giving to it such a long and interesting life. I hope I got everyone at least once. It is a lot of fun and good exercise.

Often I am in a hurry and cursing because I want to write or read poetry not go to work, but I have to have my fix for the day, so I can feel I have accomplished something this day, if only 2,4,6,8,2.

So, thanks to Riesa and all you have kept this going. Here is a sample:

Pendragon

ever,
always exist:
never pass from life, but
remain eternal, without end—
no death

Pendragon

our grasp
exceeds our reach
so the dreams crash and burn
failure but another name for new
effort...

Wow! Fire, what a painstaking effort you have taken to honor your fellow poets. I really don't recall the first one, but the second one is fresh in my mind. You really deserve the praise for outstanding acheivment in taking the time to do all of this... http://www.cosgan.de/images/midi/sportlich/a040.gif Wonderful and thoughtful tribute to the cinquian thread.

Thanks so much,

Pen

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Four/DaMan.gif

[Demian]

I'd have to agree wholeheartedely--this cinquain that firefangled posted took my breath away! There's a lot of great talent here. I think that cinquain should be re-posted on a thread of it's own (has it?) so that it gets maximum exposure. Keep up the good work!

[Granny5]

This is just beautiful and sexy, too! I think is should be on this thread.
Stormy Sky you did an awesome job with this one.

Touch

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm stiff as an oak tree,
born with a straight bent of unyeilding bone
my body bereft of grace,
and i was once told,long ago by my mother,
a puppet would dance better
But in your arms ..
I bend.....
Like a slender stalk of wildflower
I bend...........
Upwards,downwards,sideways,
Like a blueflowered creeper,like wet clay
I bend

A finger on the small of my back
I arch........
a kiss on my waist
I curve.....
your teeth on my shoulder
I wilt.....
your tongue on my thigh
I stretch......
Your blatant ,brazen hands.....
your hands give me form.

[ampoule]

I do not want this beautiful poem by firefangled to get 'hidden'. I love this.

Hidden

She sings of pins, the mouths of birds,
among the sheets her mother hangs,
of wings which rise with night
and stir the air of dreams throughout the house.

Monsignor tells her, God hides in song,
and waits for her at the hour of death.
She is more direct with spirit things,
dreams of Kyries to feed the wings of sleep.

Father guides the choir, gives her scales
she evaporates in meadow larks,
and thrushes on the way, the room left quiet,
hushed and still like unnoticed rain.

The sisters give her pages, signed with clefs,
and birds in cages fluttering solfeggios:
she sets them free before their paper clouds
in a sky the sisters do not see.

She sleeps in sheets crisp with the day.
Like will-o'-the-wisp her breathing winds
around the bed, the chair and past the open sill,
as birds wait silently in the unfinished air.

[firefangled]

Thank you, Amp. I'm glad you liked it.

[dyingflame]

thanks for your kind words adol :)

[symphony]

This deserves to be here:

If I Were A Poem

If I were a poem—
Could my language possibly capture
The agony of a spirit
Trapped inside one’s own body?
Would the words tell the tale
Of how the madness has chained me forever,
My skills and my promise
Never to be fulfilled?
How the haunting of dreams
Mock me from the Night shadows,
The Lady I used to go to for comfort
Now a harbor for despondency and despair?

If I were a poem—
Lines laced with darkness,
Spider web tracings on parchment—
Soiled and blackened by age:
Who would pause in their daily routine
To brush away the grime of the ages,
And read with understanding
Meanings inscribed in my very blood?
Would they recoil in their horror
That such tormented lines even exist,
And toss the sad rags of my sorrow
Into the flames to be destroyed?

If I were a poem—
The lines would seem to be madness,
You might think me reduced to insanity,
Gone beyond any real hope.
Look past the dark glass’s reflection.
The distortion from the mirror of life—
There is a hidden peephole
You might have to search a long time to find.
Then things fall into perspective,
The shadows retreat and the light focuses on
The real person I am under the masquerade—
I am a poem—
Take time to read me, please…

Dale Harris
© 10/17/07

[TheFifthElement]

I agree symphony, a wonderful poem by Pen.

[Granny5]

These are three poems by motherhubbard that I am very proud of. The last is because I know my Mother would be proud. The other two are because they tell me she listened to some of the things I told her when she was growing up.
She grew up to be a pretty strong woman.



forbidden voice

If I use my voice
A voice so loud the young will cry and
the deaf will shield their ears,
so powerful that strength will crumble and
weakness will vanish
giving voice to inner thoughts.
Self expression.
It would be criminal, forbidden.
Submit, lie down
Hold your breath until you disappear
Still silence screams with force, a terrible force
Hear and see that there is more, I am more.

strong as clay

What do you see before you?
Am I a workhorse that tends your home,
serving meals and scrubbing surfaces until they gleam?
Maybe you see the Madonna,
babe at breast, nourish and comfort - maternal.
Or perhaps a great pillar
ready to bear more? Just cast it upon me.
A great many things stand here.
I have found my purpose,
my passion,
my strength.
I answer to many names.
I am more than I expected I would be,
but my feet are still made of clay



Reaching into Forever

The picture is old, faded in spots,
corners folded, fuzzy with years.
Look closely and you’ll see the faces are the same.
They are my grandmother and me.
Our two faces touching, and becoming one
in a spot on the cheek in front of the ear
Both faces are younger and
older than the years they have seen.
In each face is reflected the other,
one just beginning life,
the other nearing its end
This connection lives on
transcending time,
and thirty years later
our cheeks are connected still.
The great divide, the timeless eternity, the shadow
That moves between us like a vapor
does not separate our cheeks.
I am no different than her
just an extension -
reaching from the past into forever.

[Pensive]

If I Were A Poem

If I were a poem—
Could my language possibly capture
The agony of a spirit
Trapped inside one’s own body?
Would the words tell the tale
Of how the madness has chained me forever,
My skills and my promise
Never to be fulfilled?
How the haunting of dreams
Mock me from the Night shadows,
The Lady I used to go to for comfort
Now a harbor for despondency and despair?

If I were a poem—
Lines laced with darkness,
Spider web tracings on parchment—
Soiled and blackened by age:
Who would pause in their daily routine
To brush away the grime of the ages,
And read with understanding
Meanings inscribed in my very blood?
Would they recoil in their horror
That such tormented lines even exist,
And toss the sad rags of my sorrow
Into the flames to be destroyed?

If I were a poem—
The lines would seem to be madness,
You might think me reduced to insanity,
Gone beyond any real hope.
Look past the dark glass’s reflection.
The distortion from the mirror of life—
There is a hidden peephole
You might have to search a long time to find.
Then things fall into perspective,
The shadows retreat and the light focuses on
The real person I am under the masquerade—
I am a poem—
Take time to read me, please…

Dale Harris
© 10/17/07

That's an extremely well-written poem!

[AuntShecky]

Ampoule, your taste is exquisite, as is your selection,
"Hidden." Firefangled might be the LitNet's superstar.

[Pendragon]

Thak you, Sy and Pensy! http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Chicks.gif

I dunno. maybe those days off helped more than I thought. My poetry certainly went a new direction...

[scarlet pain]

come at dark depth
when water drops tune a lyre
and call it a rain.


come as my thoughts
when i think about you
and call it a dream.


come as my voice
when words make a harmony
and call it a song.


come as my sorrow
when a pearl arise from the sea
and call it a tear.


be my vision
when thousand colours dance together
and call it a rainbow.


be my shelter
when i live in you
and call it a home.


be with me
when i hide you behind everyone
and call it a shadow.


let your hand touch me
when moonlight touches the earth
and call it a heaven.


let your soul meet me
when true souls give birth to a story
and call it a history.


born as a sire of streams
and flow in my heart
then i will call it love.
-AHSIAM

this one's my fav and ofcourse there are more.........:)

[quasimodo1]

To Pen and scarlet pain: For what my opinion is worth, I think both of your poems are great. May I be so bold as to encourage just a slight bit of editing. quasi

[ahsiam]

come at dark depth
when water drops tune a lyre
and call it a rain.


come as my thoughts
when i think about you
and call it a dream.


come as my voice
when words make a harmony
and call it a song.


come as my sorrow
when a pearl arise from the sea
and call it a tear.


be my vision
when thousand colours dance together
and call it a rainbow.


be my shelter
when i live in you
and call it a home.


be with me
when i hide you behind everyone
and call it a shadow.


let your hand touch me
when moonlight touches the earth
and call it a heaven.


let your soul meet me
when true souls give birth to a story
and call it a history.


born as a sire of streams
and flow in my heart
then i will call it love.
-AHSIAM

this one's my fav and ofcourse there are more.........:)

thank you, thank you, thank you................ scarlet pain
i dont know how to thank you more. i am very much happy that my poem deserves to be your favourite. :eek:
moreover its my third poem that i ever wrote. i am really surprised and at the same time very happy. and i cant express how much.:D :D :D

[PrinceMyshkin]

Exclamation
Truth Is A Cracked Mirror…

This is not a poem,
Be silent and you will hear the cries,
Shut your eyes and see the tears,
Touch nothing and you will feel the pain--

This is a dirge
The rocks will not remain silent forever,
Mass graves cannot wipe away blood spilled
The voices return on the wind in the night asking why

Don't call it a poem
The whispers echo through time's fractured mirror
Always has it been that man destroys man
Misguided belief that it's just their destiny—blood never dries...

Voices of ageless sorrows...
Crosses line the Appian Way by the thousand.
At Masada they died without succor or hope.
Vald Tepes often dined while around others died by impaling.

The People’s voices rise in a death chant
From places like Sand Creek, the plains, and Wounded Knee.
Thirty-six sing as they are all hanged at one moment for “uprisings”,
Echoes of sorrow drift still along the Trail of Tears…

The voices sing on of sorrows unbearable,
Brother fought brother in many Civil wars… Antietam, Gettysburg...
We then thought we had fought the War to end all Wars;
But the shadows of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, and Ravensbrück had not yet grown…

This is a record of human agony,
The horror of man reduced to the grim beast inside.
Toss off the thin disguise of modern educated humanity;
Man becomes monster thirsty for blood of his own fellowman...

Call this whatever you want to--
Don’t call it a poem..

Pendragon
© 11/4/07

[Pendragon]

Many thanks, Jerry. I don't know if I am actually worth the honor, but I'm glad what I wrote touched your big heart, mon ami. Shalom.

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/Peace.gif

[amanda_isabel]

i wonder why i never got to open this thread before.. :(

i think this has been posted here previously, but i couldn't help myself! i wish i had the skill to write this beautifully.

In morning’s last darkness I found you out
on your way home, under the full moon,
through the shroud of misty air. You did not know
it was me, the soft white night that enveloped you,
lying moist against your vibrant skin; it was I,
who could not speak, who drifted lightly to your lips
and gently rested there, then played and sparkled in your hair.
Caught within your motion, for the moment your captive there,
unseen you carried me inside your house, and I watched you
take petal from petal of clothing and could say nothing,
and could no longer touch you, could give no sign of love
you would see, but for one small tear, unnoticed on a chair.

Later, as you slept, I moved, silently, a thief enthralled,
through your room, feeling the residual warmth of your
clothing, touching what you hold dear, cherishing
each precious item as do you, becoming for the moment
the enveloped, letting you surround me as I had you.
For hours, hovering above the floor, so close with the fragrance
you had worn, like light against the morning breeze, I danced.
And then, glorious moment, I lie beside you sleeping there
and by your heat lost all form as I melded into you...
and slept as you slept, and breathed as you breathed,
and in the fading darkness, became the fabric of your dreams

Firefangled


thank you, firefangled :)

[amanda_isabel]

recently read:

Saving a Place

China and cutlery
are washed and put away,
and I've remembered to polish the fingerprints
off the stem of the solitary wineglass
before placing it amongst its mates.

A cup of jasmine tea accompanies me
into my corner nook.
I can barely make my way there
without tripping over one or another
of the untidy stacks of well-thumbed books
that fall to either side.
The Great Gatsby is spread-eagled
on the ottoman, opened to page 84,
where the story has reached a revealing
within the emptiness.

But the book does not call to me tonight.

Instead I succumb to the beauty
of the snowfall, the surrounding scent
of the forest, and the utterly dark silence of winter.
I let myself sink into the comfort of my teacup
and the satisfaction of my aloneness.
I am overtaken -- for now -- by the peaceful knowledge
that I do indeed belong
here.

I allow myself a single moment
of missing what isn't here,
running my fingers gently
over the back of the extra chair,
touching the place where you
might rest your arms,
and, in so doing,
I save a place
for you.

.
cdn/26dec07

clearly, cdn deserves a spot here.. this is an additional, i believe! :)

[CdnReader]

Thanks so much, Amanda Isabel. What an honour! :)

[mukta581]

Tell me, my Heart, if this be Love

WHEN Delia on the plain appears,
Awed by a thousand tender fears
I would approach, but dare not move:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

Whene'er she speaks, my ravish'd ear
No other voice than hers can hear,
No other wit but hers approve:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

If she some other youth commend,
Though I was once his fondest friend,
His instant enemy I prove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

When she is absent, I no more
Delight in all that pleased before—
The clearest spring, or shadiest grove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

When fond of power, of beauty vain,
Her nets she spread for every swain,
I strove to hate, but vainly strove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

[PrinceMyshkin]

Tell me, my Heart, if this be Love

WHEN Delia on the plain appears,
Awed by a thousand tender fears
I would approach, but dare not move:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

Whene'er she speaks, my ravish'd ear
No other voice than hers can hear,
No other wit but hers approve:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

If she some other youth commend,
Though I was once his fondest friend,
His instant enemy I prove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

When she is absent, I no more
Delight in all that pleased before—
The clearest spring, or shadiest grove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

When fond of power, of beauty vain,
Her nets she spread for every swain,
I strove to hate, but vainly strove:
Tell me, my heart, if this be love?

This is a quite remarkable poem, so deft and graceful! Is it your own? I ask that because the theme of the thread is for favourite poems by others here.

[Taliesin]

I will stop screaming
if you tell me
the whole pi

by amuse

[amuse]

Thank you, dear Taliesin!

And you also, Avalive.

[amuse]

I am fond of Avalive's, mono's, blp's and Pendragon's poetry - here is one of Avalive's:





Untitled

If heart holds my life and the life unhooked from life
What's left in the pot of quenchless fire is fire
To burn and bring down everything to nothing
My last letter to the unloved world penned in those words unread
If words are only words, which belong to quill and papyrus
I have the skin of silk and a mouth of ink for you to take
Empty all I have like sweep the dust on the old shelf
Love me by a book with blank pages that wait for my touch
If breath hold my heart and the heart shrinked into a seed
What's grow in the earth of lifeless life is life
To slaughter and forget nothing but everything
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=4154&highlight=avalive

[schadenfreude]

These pieces are all absolutely extraordinary! I just spent the last hour or so going through all the poetry in this thread, and I am glad I did, because it provided me with the opportunity to witness the vast amount of talent and imagination in LitNet. I am astounded by the wit, eloquence and enchanting elements of all your poetry and I will have to start compiling a list of all my favourite poems (which will be extremely difficult, I must say) to post on this thread.

[PrinceMyshkin]

These pieces are all absolutely extraordinary! I just spent the last hour or so going through all the poetry in this thread, and I am glad I did, because it provided me with the opportunity to witness the vast amount of talent and imagination in LitNet. I am astounded by the wit, eloquence and enchanting elements of all your poetry and I will have to start compiling a list of all my favourite poems (which will be extremely difficult, I must say) to post on this thread.

What a generous, open-hearted post this is, which reflects the other side of the talent you cite, namely the appreciation so many of the lit netters express of these poems!

A poem may be good or even great as it is written, but it does not achieve its final apotheosis until someone reads and perceives it as good or great.

[mir]

I am, simply put, in awe.

I don't know why I never found this thread before. All of these are incredible!! I've been doing research the last few weeks for an English paper that I have to write on an American author, and have read hundreds of poems by many different poets - but now I just wish that I could choose one of you to write on! Firefangled's poetry, especially, dwarfs any of the writers I've found. I don't suppose you publish anywhere, Fire? Or live in America?

But I wish somebody would delete my poems that have been posted here; they're horrible in comparison :blush: I'm really embarassed!

Anywho, here's one I found recently that I loved so much I sent it to my parents back in the US:


She is playing frogs in the long grass,
rippling the reedy sea with a series of
jerky bobs
and dips.
I see her;
bubbling carefree,
her blonde hair splashing a path
that catches the sun like broken water.

If I followed it I would find her hunkered
against the ground, stained
every shade from green to brown,
all knees and jutting elbows,

and I’d watch her, as she watches creatures
weave amongst the grass,
greeting them broadly with a throaty croak:

‘Ribbit’ for bees in their striped pajamas,
‘Ribbit’ for beetles like pebbles dropped in water,
‘Ribbit’ for butterflies skimming the breeze,

remembering how I saw her for the first time.

How nerves, like the ultrasound,
pressed into my belly.
How I stared into the murky screen,
sensing movement
swimming just below the surface.
The nurse pointing out details
vague as smoke,
an arm,
a questioning spinal curl,
crossed legs, splayed fingers
the fast shutter of a heartbeat,
two flooded lungs like wide eyes
staring back at me.

How for days afterwards I breathed more deeply.

Now she cocks a curious eye
towards the pond, still as stone.
A pond skater grapples the surface.

I watch, breathless, as she leaps.

By The Fifth Element

[mir]

The thread seems dead. Was it something I said?

[kiz_paws]

Certainly not, mir!

Maybe this thread is overwhelming, because of its very nature? **scratches head**

Your chosing Fifth's poem was sweet, I loved the playful tones in it, too. :)

[TheFifthElement]

I am, simply put, in awe.

I don't know why I never found this thread before. All of these are incredible!! I've been doing research the last few weeks for an English paper that I have to write on an American author, and have read hundreds of poems by many different poets - but now I just wish that I could choose one of you to write on! Firefangled's poetry, especially, dwarfs any of the writers I've found. I don't suppose you publish anywhere, Fire? Or live in America?

But I wish somebody would delete my poems that have been posted here; they're horrible in comparison :blush: I'm really embarassed!

Anywho, here's one I found recently that I loved so much I sent it to my parents back in the US:


She is playing frogs in the long grass,
rippling the reedy sea with a series of
jerky bobs
and dips.
I see her;
bubbling carefree,
her blonde hair splashing a path
that catches the sun like broken water.

If I followed it I would find her hunkered
against the ground, stained
every shade from green to brown,
all knees and jutting elbows,

and I’d watch her, as she watches creatures
weave amongst the grass,
greeting them broadly with a throaty croak:

‘Ribbit’ for bees in their striped pajamas,
‘Ribbit’ for beetles like pebbles dropped in water,
‘Ribbit’ for butterflies skimming the breeze,

remembering how I saw her for the first time.

How nerves, like the ultrasound,
pressed into my belly.
How I stared into the murky screen,
sensing movement
swimming just below the surface.
The nurse pointing out details
vague as smoke,
an arm,
a questioning spinal curl,
crossed legs, splayed fingers
the fast shutter of a heartbeat,
two flooded lungs like wide eyes
staring back at me.

How for days afterwards I breathed more deeply.

Now she cocks a curious eye
towards the pond, still as stone.
A pond skater grapples the surface.

I watch, breathless, as she leaps.

By The Fifth Element

Mir, I've only just spotted this. Thank you so much, I am very honoured :)

[skasian]

Oh wow, Thefifthelement did you write that? That is such a sweet poem, reminds me of sugar coated cupcakes and toddler's mini dresses!

[Silas Thorne]

This is one of the most beautiful pieces of poetry I have ever read. Bravo, firefangled! Read it aloud. The colour and emotions will run through you:


Still Life by firefangled

I remember saying my last structured prayer,
you dead with the amazing flower sprays,
sunlight through the stained glass, brush strokes
across the white lilies like a canvas of Klee’s.

Man’s time dissolves in ashes, I repeated,
as the sun and clouds conspired to create
the red pulse over the cross of carnations
and through the veins of the marble floor.

No one planned the wild buttercups in that field.
I brought no bouquets, nor did I kneel, but lay
down in your golden days and painted you,
in my mind, relieved of all your hidden colors.

[alakungfu]

qimissung just posted this. It'e how I idealize my own relationship with my daughters.



On the Edge of the Sand


They were so awkward, in this mother daughter dance
One was the hard bright light of the noonday sun
And the wind and the lightening that formed the storm,
The other, the owl and the mouse on a midnight hunt, a dreamer
Who, book in hand, wondered and wandered
Through magic lands, a creature of the nightlit moon

She a raven who cawed fearful premonitions to the full moon
Who lured her love with her large dark eyes and a fearful dance
Who was born in one home, swore fealty to it, never wandered
Or wondered about the world, who left but came home to the sun
The daughter, fated to leave, to never come home, a dreamer
of dreams, yet dreamless, in the dreamtime, in the storm

Each loved the other with a fearful love, within a fearful storm
Each longed to touch, together, the silver rays of the moon
The mother never gave up on her wayward dreamer
And though she pined until she was shadow, she had the dance
She always danced with her lover, content together in the sun
While the other, fearful of the mirror that was her mother, wandered

And her mother, thoughts running this way and that, wandered
Into the land of “what if” and dwelt there long and long through storm,
Sunshine and shadow and wondered; and blinded, never saw the sun
The daughter, fearful of the storm, hid in the midnight moon,
Shut the door against the whirling dervish, and never learned to dance
Knew the contours of her midnight land, and there, a dreamer

Stayed; then one silver night a dreaming dance began, and the dreamer
Gave up the midnight land, and loved the sun and wandered
Nevermore; and the sun and the moon began a lovely dance,
Nevermore to be woebegone and caged within the storm;
Lovely, large, and luminous, she waxed and waned, but never moon
Did waver, she knew she loved the lion’s roar, knew she loved the sun

While setting, still glowing a lovely blushing rose, the sun
Still loved the moon with the passion of a dreamer
Knew she would make her way by the light of the fingernail moon;
Knew, with the fixed purpose of her heart, that she who wandered
Feared neither the importuning of her heart, the mirror, or the storm
But would stay awhile, and with her mother, dance

And so the dreamer stayed the storm
And happily wandered in her land of moon
To happily dance with her mother by the light of the midnight sun

[PrinceMyshkin]

I hadn't come across it yet where it was posted but will go there now to say more fully how marvellous I think it is.

Thanks for posting it, Alakungfu.

[PrinceMyshkin]

a_little_wisp;674272]

I am a Myth


Once upon a time, I lived.
Not just survived,
(As 'just surviving' is
Living off fried squirrels
Living in trees
And sh!tting under bushes),
Not only existed-
I lived.
I can tell you, first, that they elaborate
- “The multiple facets of your essence sparkle and glow with every turn.“ -
The battles were glossed over.
I cried, I bled, I held my beaten friends in my arms,
They held me-
Our armor clanking against
One another's awkwardly,
As we tried to stitch each other's
Wounds closed -
Truth be told,
I had no idea what side I was fighting on,
If there were sides,
If there are sides -
Or maybe we're all just fools
Slipping and sliding
Clumsily
Over one great, wet sphere-
(Those smooth roll-y things that people
Have in their front yard?)

The rare moments of sunshine,
The golden days –
There were never Golden Years,
No, they were lower-cased and
Played within a twenty-four hour,
Or less,
Period of time -
Were stolen or borrowed and never returned-
And in that, I must say,
I was a bit of a klepto.
But I existed,
And they were my battles,
And they were my victories
… And they were my losses –
And the embarrassing moments
Where I was unseated from my high horse
And had tomatoes smashed in my face -
I claim those too.


As I fade away,
And I will, because I must
For a time-
Because I must regroup,
Because I've lost my horse (I don't even have a kingdom
To trade it for
Go figure),
My sword,
My banner,
My wits,
And look like an idiot
Without them -
Remember me.
I leave no physical evidence behind-
I leave no sword,
I leave no sceptre,
No lock of hair,
No one Converse sneaker
Or comic book,
Or verse posted on the forum -
I leave nothing of any worth.
You may think me weak
For needing this,
For asking this of you,
For needing you--
Yes, I can be alone
Without feeling lonely,
But I am not worth much-
My worth cannot be determined-
Without people.

You thought I would be the best of them,
Lady-
Don’t give up on me yet,
Because I haven't.
You’re the only one who ever
Held my hands-
My sage, you were,
Your gnarled fingers soft
Against my long, ink-smattered
ones-
And looked me dead in eye-
Your gaze causing my
Bashful soul (poor thing,
It suffers from stage fright) to briefly panic
Before realizing that there
Was nothing to be afraid of -
And believed.

She cried out, "Why me?
I didn't ask for this,
I didn't ask for you to believe in me.
When I fall, I will fall that much harder,
And it will hurt that much more."

"Then keep your feet on the ground,
And your head just below the clouds -
Close enough to touch the stars,
And yet keep your wits about you."

"You ask a bird,
To become a giant,
And don't even offer the proper
Magic beans to make it happen."

I slip away now, into the mists -
Quite undignified,
As my boat has several leaks,
And creaks with every
Swell of a wave -
Wounded and battle-weary,
Conceding to the fact
That this battle-
Not the war,
The war ceases
For no man-
Has been lost.
I beg of you, though,
Remember me
The me of the golden days–
Immortalized by our laughter
And our pride.

At the heart of all,
In the cave,
On the green,
By the sea -
Waiting for the unicorns,
Most likely -
I existed,
The smallest of evidence remaining,
Kept to life by the hope
In your heart
That though we are but
Human,
Mortal,
And prone to burping,
And lying,
And dying,
Fighting our battles out,
Day-by-day-
At the end of it all,
We are remembered,

That at the center
Of a myth
There is truth,
And there I lie,
And from it,
Will rise again

If only you
Believe in me.
--And so every myth
Begs to be believed in.

"The point, gentlemen,
Is that they lived."
-Ever After.

[a_little_wisp]

Prince, I teared up, I'm not gonna lie.

I can't express to you the depth of how honored I feel. I really can't. I'm so pleasantly stunned. I'll write something to you in a moment.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Pending Approval

There is a church I pass on the way to town. 

Hoping to hit a red light (annoying the drivers
behind me) I break, lost in the sheer
esotericism of the cut glass pyramid 

atop the pitched roof. Not a wooden
cross with bloodstained skewers 

but a crystal volcano I swear hurls the
innocent, the forgiven and the virtuous
directly to heaven.

Turn up "Sweet Jane" for the hundredth time

"The whole world's coming to an end, Mal."
"I see angels, Mickey. They're comin' down
for us from heaven.”

and remember the way you kissed.
Outlaw lips daring the bullet
to holster the gun. Michelangelo’s
revolution on the chapel wall - an
angel posse gathering on the ceiling -

the light turns and I think of you there,

sensibly praying for the crusades to begin.
Waiting for just one sign that today is the day 

you take your place among the chosen
and drive on.

~Sophia~

[Virgil]

I really like this one.


I, Too, Sing of a Maiden
by Qimissung

I sing of a matchless maiden
who sat in a garden of roses
head bent,
quietly reading
when a moonflower vine grew up around her
crept round her feet
curled up her ankles
encircled her waist
twined itself through her arms and hair
a white petal resting on her cheek
at last the maiden sighed
moon and flower bloomed and glowed
and the night was arrayed with its delicate scent
the last page read, the moon set, book and flower closed,
and the maiden slept
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41984

[Virgil]

This is truely one of the great lit net poems. I adore this one:


The Poem Was Always Meant To Be Yours
by ~Sophia~

You asked for clarity and I released
a thousand white doves with ribbons
spun from my hair to lasso the sun.
But in the pure rays of streaming light
you saw only the shadows of charred
ravens pecking at your eyes.

You asked for the serenity of clear blue
ocean waters and I built an ark to sail
you around the world. Heaving,
you got seasick in the harbor.

You asked for the wisdom of stones and
I carved a temple in your name on a rocky
mountain top. Standing at the bottom
you said the elevation made you weak.

And when I’d run out of miracles
realized - you were the sorrow
I would never breach.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42457

[~Sophia~]

I am incredibly honored Virgil. Thank you.

[a_little_wisp]

I love a lot of poetry. People will mention 'Alone' by Edgar Allen Poe, and I'll dive off into a recitation. I'll swoon over 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and get sappy over Tennyson. I'll backspace out of nervousness dozens times when I'm commenting on Prince's, Qimi's, Firefangled's, or Silas' poems because they're so eloquent. Then, occasionally, I'll find something that touches me - me - that reflects... something about me.

~Sophia~ is an incredible poetess. Never have I read a poem of hers that didn't make me sit still and ponder over it for a good few minutes after it's read. She is brilliant, flexible, and what's more, she's so achingly real. I feel, each time she posts, like I'm taking a peek into those deep places of a person's mind that few people get to see, and maybe the true meaning is lost in the translation from mind to paper (it's all in perception, after all) but not the essence.

And so, without further ado, after serious ponderings:


Canary Monologue

I often have time away from your hands
to sit by the brook and babble to stones
looking back at me with dispassionate
curiosity.

Today the trickle is rather dull.
A stagnating conversation of small
sonar pings between pebbles

pale as the song of this meadow
caught in my throat. Muse, take me
with you when you drift past

ordinary. Show me legends stacked like
firefly colonies thick as the labyrinth above -
black as the graphite that weaves between

green rain and grenades, the erotic left and
the benign right - to where the canto shimmies
and even a bird with weak wings
can pierce the sky.

[~Sophia~]

Dearest Wispy, my fingers are fumbling for the right way to reply. They keep tripping over themselves to write thank you in a thousand different ways while my heart keeps beat but, nothing even comes close to the way I feel. Gratefully, my deepest... thank you.

[Riesa]

I love a lot of poetry. People will mention 'Alone' by Edgar Allen Poe, and I'll dive off into a recitation. I'll swoon over 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and get sappy over Tennyson. I'll backspace out of nervousness dozens times when I'm commenting on Prince's, Qimi's, Firefangled's, or Silas' poems because they're so eloquent. Then, occasionally, I'll find something that touches me - me - that reflects... something about me.

~Sophia~ is an incredible poetess. Never have I read a poem of hers that didn't make me sit still and ponder over it for a good few minutes after it's read. She is brilliant, flexible, and what's more, she's so achingly real. I feel, each time she posts, like I'm taking a peek into those deep places of a person's mind that few people get to see, and maybe the true meaning is lost in the translation from mind to paper (it's all in perception, after all) but not the essence.

And so, without further ado, after serious ponderings:


she's definitely got the touch, really beautiful choice.

[~Sophia~]

Riesa, came home from dancing salsa and saw your supportive message. I am floored. Thank you so much!!!!!

[~Sophia~]

Riesa, came home from dancing salsa and saw your supportive message. I am floored. Thank you so much!!!!!

[kevinthediltz]

Girl Talk

If I could speak to you - Frida, Léonor, Leonora - Margaret
I would fiery say your sibylline minds change me.

Those double jointed hips, diarized scars,
stapled nipples, retractable wombs

skeletons wired with explosives -

it was the fallout of you.
The heap of cleavage and clitoris.
Dirty laundry, dirty bombs imploding

the femme enfant only authorized
to live - to love between man’s while.

Clearly - giving life means taking life,
the quickening egg devouring its host.

I would tell you I have a new canvas
turned to the wall - the birth of death.

Remedios nailed to a bed, raptors emerging
two by two from the nest between her legs.

Fiercely - your sibylline hands rearrange me.


By ~Sophia~

[~Sophia~]

I'm so very flattered Kevin. Thank you! This poem is important to me and I'm grateful it touched you.

[qimissung]

Last night when I struggled to close the blinds,
I promised myself: “Tomorrow when I reopen these
I'll see clusters of evergreens and a cloudless sky
mirrored in an inland sea.” This morning’s yank
uncovered the same old stark cement,
same unobstructed view of disappointment
undisturbed, still parked there.

Magic thoughts ride horses wishing for a longer road,
which winds up looking at a dead-end. Change,
that engine of desire, stalls, chokes. It’s no
game, this life, yet we cheer it on, like fans
watching their team lose, season after season.
We tell ourselves next year will be different,
and all the while, we wait.

We're all lined up, it’s said, on the same shore; it’s not
supposed to matter which side of the lake we're on.
Next door to mansions, shacks should know their place.
In squalid cities, trash cans overflow
with the waste of crumpled dreams. Tidy
is the sentiment that failure and a lack
of success are not the same.

Who still believes that sarcasm has no soul
or sincerity necessarily has a heart,
when earnestly we're always told
we're not alone; we do not suffer alone?
For amid the dust of a darkened room
each one of us knows that we are,
and we do.

Being and not having is no curse, and hope
beats memory any day. Alive or not
there are some I once knew well, and some
I no longer know, yet still remember,
and others I have never met at all
but somehow know. With any of them
there’s nothing that I'd want to share –

–except the thought that next time they open
their blinds their sorrow-laden eyes will rally
with a brighter glimpse; and for you, this drink
from an imaginary well is on me, peeking
through a knothole in the left field wall. Let’s
raise an empty glass and toast the sky.
(You know who you are.)

by AuntShecky

In this poem, AuntShecky says she is asking: In a world of failure and squalor are we asking to much of hope and imagination?

I reply: not with poetry like this. Thank You AuntShecky; I raise a glass to you.

[AuntShecky]

Thank you, qimissung. I'm touched (in more ways than one.)
No really, thank you!

[Niamh]

That really is a great poem Auntie!!! :D

Okay so this is one that i personally feel belongs here...


PARENTS

Argue, shout, scream
Invade every dream

Walked out on the mother
Made me hate my brother

Uncaring, Unfeeling
Belittling, Decieving

Misinterprate, misunderstand
Really is a better man

Always working, never there
But however, pretends to care

Questions, Questions every day
How I wish she'd go away

Not her fault
She just dont understand
Just respond the best I can
See I'm not that kind of man

Dont discuss feelings
Dont discuss plans
Just sat with the knife
Cutting lines in my hands

Kilted Exile

[Virgil]

This is a great one from PrinceMyshkin.


Tumult was my table

Tumult was my table,
tohu-vavohu my daily bread.
Half my passion
was another man’s fatigue

and I was wandering,
wandering, down a road without a sign
where all the other travellers
were blessed or blind.

The din of life
was loud and overwhelming.
I heard it as if every orchestral player
was playing from a different score.

And I was losing half my mind
along with all the other travellers,
some of whom were blessed,
and some of whom were merely blind.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43649

[Lyn05]

Clueless
________________________________________
Sometimes it is nice when people do use complete sentences instead of SMS-language...

You wrote me
"I want U 2"
and all got confused

Mixed up

Do you want me to
do what?
What did you say last time?
Blow to the head

Did we talk about her?

Do you want me too
also
Placing me second
asking me to accept

I probably read way too much into this

I just hope
You are getting tickets
to their concert.



Don't know about you, but I really like this poem of Sapphire's!

[PrinceMyshkin]

It was in the night that I dreamed
And in the dreaming saw myself
Young and golden and free
I awoke smiling at my innocent self
And stepped unthinkingly across
The circumference of that life and this
A rope of evil binds me, breathes
Its excoriating breathe upon my cheek
Inhales my youth and cherished naiveté
Takes it unto himself as if he had the right
To step into my world with his cloven
Hooves and ill-gotten power and take,
And take, and take again, to exercise
His will, his hubris, his misbegotten soul on me
I will survive
I am strong
But this is not what my potters’ hands envisioned
And the little voice that says not this, no, not this
I cradle her to my breast very tenderly now
I wish she could forget
Unfortunately she can’t

How vivid and strong, Qimmisung!

[qimissung]

Thank you Prince. This wouldn't have been written without you (literally, as this was inspired by Prince's poem, "In the News Today").

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thank you Prince. This wouldn't have been written without you (literally, as this was inspired by Prince's poem, "In the News Today").

Holy smoke! Now I'm tempted to see if I can write one inspired by yours!

[qimissung]

To stop the dream now so soon and for what,
because we have forgotten how to dance
in quarter time? This is not us sleeping:
the lobster traps are empty, the past hides
in our breathing, a cough to right the dream
that floats in water like the wrinkled moon.
Look into the mirror of the sea, it peels
where the nets drag, the lobsters are dancing
backwards, in a quadrille, while dead champagne
gathers in the tide pools with fallen stars.
The mirror is a world that’s still a world,
though you turned your back and now it is changed.
There is a girl who is no more a girl,
cinnamon and wave, poor Alice, she stays
inside the games and puzzles, backwards talk
cellar the in rats the though and, she knows,
she mourns for what small things can make us glad.
You must step through the past, into the clear
reflection of the dance of hearts. Don’t think,
dance in this new world, as if you are dreaming.

by firefangled

I love the images created herein, the world reflected again and again, our perception of it changing with the blink of an eye and the small things that make us glad.

[AuntShecky]

This one, by Delta40:

Brian the Conkerer

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bits of string to the wood
where the conkers be
There you might find
Ye old chestnut tree

A small foot in the crook
lifts a boyish body high
Yucky grimy knees
scraped on every side

So go forth young Brian
wrap your hand around
the fattest horse chestnuts
to ever be found

Pluck from its bough
choicest of the wise
stow within your breast
Find you the biggest prize!

Oh Conkerer see others
scrabble at your feet
shake, shake the tree!
let them grab the prickly treats!

leap back down to the earth
and colour autumn best
with the ancient song of herald
throughout the golden forest

'Oddly oddly onker!
Brian has done thee proud
I have my first conker!
begone you beggarly crowd'

[blank|verse]

I Have a Butter Knife, and I Know How
To Use It*


All around this place bags abound –
white ones from the supermarket
and the dollar store, colored and clear
sleeves that the newspaper came in.
These bags are not toys! They're plastic,
and lethal. What’s to prevent me
from wrapping one over my head?

We've got a cabinet shelf full
of over-the-counter medicines,
little bottles with child-proof safety
caps, and capsules behind shrink-
wrapped bubbles you can't open
without a blow-torch in full flame.
But I wouldn't hesitate
to down the lot of ‘em. Maybe
I'll do fifteen Tylenols and die
of boredom waiting for
something to happen.

And there’s that oven that brags
that it’s “self-cleaning” but hasn't
lifted a finger since we've been here.
Still, I'm this far away from turning
the knob and putting my head in.
On the electric coil I'll broil
my nose to spite my face. A first
degree burn is worth the third
degree you'll get from the Authorities.

You hear me? I'm not kidding around,
not just whistling “Dixie” here, not that
I ever learned the song all the way through
or ever got the hang of whistling. I mean
it, though! You'd better watch your
step, Mister. I'm just saying.


*With sincere apologies to Dorothy “Resumé ” Parker

Effortlessly brilliant.

[breathtest]

I would have added this one, Blnk vrz, if you hadn't.

[Lynne50]

Has anyone heard about the scandal with the Oxford professorship of poetry. It seems that Derek Walcott was going to get the honor, but then another poet named Ruth Padel ( a descendant of Darwin), another candidate, started sending derogatory emails to try and smear Walcott. Seems Walcott had in his past a couple of sexual harrassment claims against him that were never prosecuted. Padel admitted sending the emails, so has taken her name out of contention and Walcott is completely uninterested now.
I didn't know poets could be so cutthroat. I guess we have to wait and see who will finally accept the post. I like the way the Philadephia Inquirer's writer, John Timpane, finished his column. " Stay tuned. Seldom has the poetic world known such suspense, or tasted such bile."

[PrinceMyshkin]

Has anyone heard about the scandal with the Oxford professorship of poetry. It seems that Derek Walcott was going to get the honor, but then another poet named Ruth Padel ( a descendant of Darwin), another candidate, started sending derogatory emails to try and smear Walcott. Seems Walcott had in his past a couple of sexual harrassment claims against him that were never prosecuted. Padel admitted sending the emails, so has taken her name out of contention and Walcott is completely uninterested now.
I didn't know poets could be so cutthroat. I guess we have to wait and see who will finally accept the post. I like the way the Philadephia Inquirer's writer, John Timpane, finished his column. " Stay tuned. Seldom has the poetic world known such suspense, or tasted such bile."

This raises the eternally interesting question of how and whether we should separate the artist from his or her art. Whilst I am far from wishing to defend Walcott in the face of the sexual harassment charges, in this I feel more distaste for Ms Padel in using that to disqualify a competitor.

But wouldn't your post be more appropriate - and more likely to get the attention it deserves if it were in the General Literature Forum, as a new thread?

[quasimodo1]

now that is the most non-poetic news I've ever heard, at least in those environs.

[PrinceMyshkin]

now that is the most non-poetic news I've ever heard, at least in those environs.



And yet, my dear Q.,
whom do we suppose write poems?
Is it only the saints
among us, in which case
how thin the anthologies might be!

Is it the men and women
of serene temperament
and hearts as broad
as some long, leisurely unwinding
line of verse?

Remember Baudelaire and his
toi hypocrite lecteur,
mon semblable, mon frere!

[quasimodo1]

to PrinceMyshkin: Now you know I love a dark poem as much as anybody; my remark is aimed at the lack of savoir faire in the "glorious" limelight, and hammering my Carribbean genious with such cheap shots. No, you're right...I'm not suprised. At least I/we are not degrading Joyce today...that's progress.

[PrinceMyshkin]

to PrinceMyshkin: Now you know I love a dark poem as much as anybody; my remark is aimed at the lack of savoir faire in the "glorious" limelight, and hammering my Carribbean genious with such cheap shots. No, you're right...I'm not suprised. At least I/we are not degrading Joyce today...that's progress.

Anyone who takes a shot at the ol' man, you send him or her to see me.

[PrinceMyshkin]

A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years


A Distance of Sixty-one Light-years

For fifty years my mother’s bones lay still
above the Mohawk’s blue and sun-streaked line.
They don't hear the wind whining up the hill,
no hopeful birds, nor cheerless songs of mine.

They wouldn't know the one she used to call
“the shy one in the corner of the hall.”
Long past her age, and with each July,
I've grown more gray and wrinkled (but still shy.)

It’s good she never sees in her repose
the deeper hole in which I've dug myself:
the stark result of dreaming, I suppose,
with half a century of dust left on the shelf.

It’s just as well that separation hides
the tacit disappointment on both sides.

[Lynne50]

Aunt Shecky
I don't think your mother would be disappointed. She would probably take much delight in reading your good poems.

Thanks Prince Myshkin for posting this.

[qimissung]

No kidding. It's letter-perfect, in tone and word.

[breathtest]

“Death and Oreos”

No good can I see in the world
Death and despair
Rape and murder
Sickness and famine
(Oreos on sale this week)
Three soldiers killed in a car bomb
Oreos sound good, come to think of it.


This poem by mutatis-mutandi really spoke out to me because it shows how easy it is to forget the horrible things in the world

[blp]

Girl Talk

If I could speak to you - Frida, Léonor, Leonora - Margaret
I would fiery say your sibylline minds change me.

Those double jointed hips, diarized scars,
stapled nipples, retractable wombs

skeletons wired with explosives -

it was the fallout of you.
The heap of cleavage and clitoris.
Dirty laundry, dirty bombs imploding

the femme enfant only authorized
to live - to love between man’s while.

Clearly - giving life means taking life,
the quickening egg devouring its host.

I would tell you I have a new canvas
turned to the wall - the birth of death.

Remedios nailed to a bed, raptors emerging
two by two from the nest between her legs.

Fiercely - your sibylline hands rearrange me.


By ~Sophia~

Yes, this one's incredible.

[DanielBenoit]

Unbelievable. . .. . .



Originally posted by quimissung
King Kong in Chains

The wide sky leapt above me like a salmon
finding its way upstream
The wind gently touched my face
with the delicate and deft fingers of a blind man
I knew the seasons and how they changed,
a sure knowledge I wore with my skin
And I knew not hunger, nor hungered
for more than I had, until I lost it
My string of pearls, unknotted, fell,
and rolled this way and that
Across the polished wooden floor
And even though I could hear them
And scrabbled on hand and knees
To find them, my search was fruitless
And I sat as daylight faded from my eyes
And my fingers grew useless,
My body no longer fit the space I lived in
And what I felt did not match what those around me felt
I became useless and hung from the side of a building
Far above them
And they were no more to me than ants crawling over and around
One another in an ambiance of unthinking industry
I hung there until my arms grew rubbery and unfeeling
And I grew desperate to cling to this brick and mortar,
Fighting to keep the fragile connection
Until my days were spent in an agony of wondering how long I could hold on
I dreamt that I held in the palm of my hand
a small delicate and fluttering thing
breathing all the life I could not find and looking
at me steadily
suddenly I could not breathe for looking
at the thing of iridescent beauty that lay in the hollow of its neck
my eyes absorbed its beauty
I could see, then, a shard of light among the darkened clouds
And even as I looked and wondered at it, I could not help but think
That if this small pulsing fluttering creature were to fall from my so great paw,
Would I go after it?
Or would I stay, smitten by the sky?

Qimissung

(for Pendragon)



There's too many to choose from, so I'll just choose one of the most effective of his "snapshots" ;)



Originally posted by PrinceMyshkin

Birds in adjacent cages
pondering
each other's dreams

[PrinceMyshkin]

Here I sit with baited breath
as your cracked dry lips part
to fess your secrets in death
pour forth from wither'd heart
that which you held from me in life

Now your voice husks weak
And my hand shall smother
Any words you speak
Shallow yet mysterious mother
padlocked woman, closed lipped wife

_____
Delta40

[PrinceMyshkin]

Unbelievable. . .. . .

Agreed! Qimissung is always exceptional, and



There's too many to choose from, so I'll just choose one of the most effective of his "snapshots" ;)

I overlooked your citation of this (one of my own favourites among my "Snapshots"). Thank you

[MorpheusSandman]

Here's a recent one that somehow has escaped many comments:


~Sand~

The breakwalled harbor
holds sea-locked lives
as docklines stretch, then sag,
stretch, then sag
on the moon-sucked surge.

Mary tends a seaside bar, mends wounds,
dodges brawls. She escorts
the drowned and found to their graves.
The drowned and lost
langour in her dreams.

Fuel-dock Harry
rolls out hose, tops-off tanks,
ices the holds. Corporate pockets
take the cash. Harry
shut it down one day
with a two-barrel blast in his shack.

Harbor master Jim, widowed
now, patrols the dusk-dim
moorings abob in his wake
as complaints of gulls
land on cormorants black as dread.
They dive, beak death
to minnows and silver needlefish.

Bouy bells clong and clang
socked in a shawl of fog.
A raft of kelp, with its crew of flies,
shades a shale-toothed reef
as I watch phosphorescent swells
pilfer the helpless shore,

and this saddens me at times,
as I walk the beach,
feel the sand,
the mountain it had been,
being pulled from around my feet
to lie forever beyond the light.

[PrinceMyshkin]

The house at midnight hums with consonants.
Particularly the air-handler’s lay
soothes me as seasons pass the windows―
summer slowly and winter’s frozen tracks―
I bless the steadiness of ems and ars.

Falls are less unruffled, they tic-toc on
gables, like some anachronistic clock,
a quick knocking in counterpoint, as oaks
forgo acorns in incessant metronomic drops,
and blown leaves brush against the windowpanes.

When in April comes the hour between the days,
a lull with lilacs from the dead ground grows
and through the open windows lets the ghosts in,
a redolence in all the rooms, almost seen
in moonlight―hyacinth, peony and rose.



© Copyright 2010


Firefangled

[MorpheusSandman]

Yeah, FF's masterpiece definitely deserves to be mentioned here.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Ashes To Ashes (Pompeii/Hiroshima)
ASHES TO ASHES

I [Pompeii]

Raddled with wine I stagger home, each step less sure;
the vibrant sound of Vulcanalia expands
and echoes off the tilting walls and heaving floor.

Outside the House of Fauns the brothel-keeper stands
watching mottled moon flame red across the sea;
the wrath of Jove a haemorrhage upon our lands.

My sight adrift, seeks flight, in panic, for Capri;
that sacred haven on blue Sorrento bay,
while dusk invades in ranks of cloud from Napoli.

The cateyes in the cobbles barely light the way;
oil lamps sputter, wind chimes frenzied in the breeze.
I touch the phallus set in stone and stoop to pray.

The stir of crickets threshing in the olive trees
too strident. I draw the drapes. In looming dark,
a broth of coiling fireglow flares across the frieze.

The rattle of the dog chains stilled; no howl, no bark;
in my corner, bowels voided, crouching low;
outside the world grows calloused, Pluto makes his mark.

My prayers snuffed out, remorse abandoned long ago,
my body lies oblivious, enshrouded;
eyes drowned in blossom, endless flakes of endless snow.



II [Hiroshima]

Monday August 6
1945 a d
8:15 a.m.

A bright new week
white blouse washed and pressed for school
birdsong on the breeze

Roll call and sirens
stifled thunder cracks the walls
we all rush outside

A death rose blooms high
hushed shadows then blaring heat
then hollowed silence

The world fills with white
blizzards of cherry blossom
drifting still drifting

My sandals melting
oleanders reaching out
withered and blooming

My hair band slips off
a white smile fringed with cropped hair
my scalp still attached

Kyoko burnt black
I search for her red barrette
then her eyes open

In class we drew cranes
white birds like folded paper
now wingless and scorched

My frayed handkerchief
holds two embroidered goldfish
red braids coiled in white

[Delta40]

Tongues of sharp-winged sadness take me.
Unkempt, unsandalled and unclean,
I wander whirlpools in the waiting dark,
following false beacons
that bold and bitter moonlight
burn before me.

I can't believe I have never noticed this thread! I miss reading Silas Thorne

[PrinceMyshkin]

Ditto. I don't recall if I've commented on this particular poem before but it's a marvel of forceful economy. Bravo!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Bangkok
I have loved her,
cleaved from the rice fields and now sprawling endlessly,
a muddy river flowing through her belly,
now tinged with red.

I have been held by her well into the morning,
dreamed of nothing else but her decaying breath,
and the flower markets bustling through the night
on the verge of closing.

I have spent endless hours wandering the alleys,
discovering her exotic secrets,
and I have felt inside her a tangible suffering,
the wasting lives, and the coming violence.

But this is a land of free people
who will not listen to dictation.
And if she must paint herself once more
then let her color be red

just as a single staff colored the Nile.
A single crimson bead now rests on my fingertip
as dusk refracts towering silhouettes against a fiery horizon,
and a ruby net trolls through the Andamon sea.

She is no stranger to storm.
When lightning cracks her sky, it shatters the towers,
the monsoons tumble and rise in the streets,
and the city trembles, alive.

In such a place, one must not acknowledge fear
or tears to regret the lives that could be,
once lost, lost forever, but the vibrancy of a golden dream
dances with bats along the canal tunnels.

Awash against her flooded riverbanks, what little hope can we have
when backs are bent and bodies graying in the streets?
Only that quiet red light lifting over the city at dawn, the fleeting knowledge
that we have tried and lived our lives as they should be.

And when finally that day should come
let her sit and dictate my color to me
and she must know from where comes the crimson bead on my finger,
and see how I have crushed it against my cheek.

[qimissung]

Very good choices, Prince!

[PrinceMyshkin]

I never learned to ask,
"How are things in your grandmother's village?"
in any foreign tongue.

I can say,
"Show me your hands, or I will kill you."
in several languages.

But, somehow, it is not the same.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I CANNOT HATE

The spear of dawn serrates the sleeping hillside
smearing lurid spills of light across its darkened pelt;
this haze like steaming perspiration,
undercurrents deep beneath its sleek and heaving flanks
throw ripples through the rock,
a stamp-mark on the coal dust,
horns caged in by twisted towers
framed by ragged beams of daybreak.

My father sprang intact from these cold rocks
and now lies fossilised in those same strata that gave birth to him,
embedded in the darkest tomb a man could choose,
no breathing space in there,
his corpse impressed from toil then crushed by time.

I cannot hate these hills outside my window
any more than I can hate the waxing sun,
although its light brings suffering to each new day.

To hate those hard, black mountains,
curse that glinting devil with its drooling maw,
its sharded teeth and gloating grin,
is to deny my father dignity;
his choice to scrape and claw his living
from those cherished rocks.

I cannot hate these hills outside my window
any more than I can hate his stubborn pride,
his split black nails and gritty tide mark,
blisters blue from blast not friction,
heaps of rusted slag piled high with cold despair,
the waste, the tainted streams,
the gravity of air.


A continent away
another mountain, barren, treeless,
scarred by craters
pestilent with jagged bones and rotting flesh and bright red clay;
an alien landscape scalded white with heat and hatred.

That hot white sun a galaxy away,
a sun that scorches every breath
and burns each shadow into glaring light
and etches tear-stains in the bitter salt;
its touch as sharp as any gutting blade.

I cannot hate the villages;
he wrote and told me all about them, see;
the stench of burning dung and garbage,
peasant farmers smoking flimsy roll-ups,
playing dominoes ‘til sunset,
watching football on their satellite tvs.

They did not choose to lose their fields to battle,
had no wish to watch a war outside their door.
Their hills are just as innocent as ours;
they had no choice but watch him suffer,
writhe with muted fury
as their valleys carried back and forth the echo of explosion,
shredding pity in a screech of helpless desolation.

I cannot even hate this war that made me proud to be a mother;
why demean the boy’s ambition,
fighting for another’s freedom that was never his to sanction?

Torn to dust beneath an alien desert sun:
the tainted scent of war deodorised
then helicoptered here from Helmand.
brought back home inside a flag-decked coffin;
surely better that
than held to ransom in a coal mine,
ever out of reach but never out of sight.

[Pensive]

Along Comes Charlie by Jerrybaldy

I once knew a girl, called Dill
who loved to slap strangers on the face.
That was her thing,
she would slap them, then giggle like a little girl.
She wasn't pretty, though I think she once was.
Slapping was after all, a dangerous past time.
Her face was a mass of scars
Old yellow ones and angry new red ones.
But I loved her.
I loved to stamp on strangers feet.
That was my thing.
She called me stampy.
I never called her slapper.
We were a perfect match.
On the street, or in the mall, we approached strangers,
Dill slapped them and while they gasped,
I trampled their toes.
We lived together during these happy days.
But we took a few hidings.
We were never intimate.
If I ever tried, Dill would slap my face
and I would crush her little painted piggies.
But I loved her.
Then along came Charlie.
We found him kicking butts in the park.
We became a three piece.
Charlie's kick up the bum,
became our finale.
I think I lost out as the middle man.
Dill would keep her piggies out of my reach
But was forever bent over for Charlie,
winking over her shoulder,
that he should give her a kick.
I dont see either of them anymore.
But I have met Mary.
She loves to pull wigs from bald men's heads.
That's her thing.
Sometimes we have to search all day.
But, oh, the payoff.

[Delta40]

I CANNOT HATE

The spear of dawn serrates the sleeping hillside
smearing lurid spills of light across its darkened pelt;
this haze like steaming perspiration,
undercurrents deep beneath its sleek and heaving flanks
throw ripples through the rock,
a stamp-mark on the coal dust,
horns caged in by twisted towers
framed by ragged beams of daybreak.

My father sprang intact from these cold rocks
and now lies fossilised in those same strata that gave birth to him,
embedded in the darkest tomb a man could choose,
no breathing space in there,
his corpse impressed from toil then crushed by time.

I cannot hate these hills outside my window
any more than I can hate the waxing sun,
although its light brings suffering to each new day.

To hate those hard, black mountains,
curse that glinting devil with its drooling maw,
its sharded teeth and gloating grin,
is to deny my father dignity;
his choice to scrape and claw his living
from those cherished rocks.

I cannot hate these hills outside my window
any more than I can hate his stubborn pride,
his split black nails and gritty tide mark,
blisters blue from blast not friction,
heaps of rusted slag piled high with cold despair,
the waste, the tainted streams,
the gravity of air.


A continent away
another mountain, barren, treeless,
scarred by craters
pestilent with jagged bones and rotting flesh and bright red clay;
an alien landscape scalded white with heat and hatred.

That hot white sun a galaxy away,
a sun that scorches every breath
and burns each shadow into glaring light
and etches tear-stains in the bitter salt;
its touch as sharp as any gutting blade.

I cannot hate the villages;
he wrote and told me all about them, see;
the stench of burning dung and garbage,
peasant farmers smoking flimsy roll-ups,
playing dominoes ‘til sunset,
watching football on their satellite tvs.

They did not choose to lose their fields to battle,
had no wish to watch a war outside their door.
Their hills are just as innocent as ours;
they had no choice but watch him suffer,
writhe with muted fury
as their valleys carried back and forth the echo of explosion,
shredding pity in a screech of helpless desolation.

I cannot even hate this war that made me proud to be a mother;
why demean the boy’s ambition,
fighting for another’s freedom that was never his to sanction?

Torn to dust beneath an alien desert sun:
the tainted scent of war deodorised
then helicoptered here from Helmand.
brought back home inside a flag-decked coffin;
surely better that
than held to ransom in a coal mine,
ever out of reach but never out of sight.

My thoughts to this one, too!

[dafydd manton]

There have been some superb poems on this site, but "I Cannot Hate" is, to my mind, one of the very best if not THE best!

[Delta40]

Dark Love by Jerrybaldy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our shared tattoos,
sank our love beneath the skin.
We scabbed and scratched together,
rainbow hemorrhages,
spewing over white linen sheets.
We pierced each other,
with matching holes,
and chained our holes together.
We cut each other,
and kissed,
with the lips of our wounds.
We swam in sheets
of blood and love.
Penetrating the wounds,
with wet fingers.
Sinking in pain.
Drowning in despair,
to be combined.

[PrinceMyshkin]

My thoughts to this one, too!

Message 191 came out looking as if it were mine but of course it's by Hillwalker.

[zoolane]

BUNKING DOUBLE GYM

Imprisoned in this cubicle
the smell of wee and cigarettes
‘Advanced Techniques’ and toilet duck
that weeping cistern on the wall

My eyes clamped shut
I contemplate each heartbeat
running through us both like wiring
palpitating as you scent the sea perhaps
a flood of brine
my insides out

A tiny jellyfish of red
reeled in to land
and laid to rest in my adidas bag
with all my other junk
my tic-tacs and my chap-stick
my pencil case and tamagotchi

Dad tried to drown some kittens once
a home-brew fermentation tub
the brick inside the sack
I held my breath then held it under
‘til the gargling bubbles rose no more

And now that squawking bell for double gym
it sets my teeth on edge
I hang around the changing rooms with Emo May
who had verrucas
waiting for another suicidal day to end

I dump it in that rubbish skip
outside ‘Miss Selfridge’
stepping into ‘Mothercare’
to say one prayer before I leave

Then in my bedroom late at night
my teddy-bear hot-water bottle clamped between my thighs
I draw an entry in my diary
a special picture for today
the 5th of May
a tiny doodle of an alien

I think best our friend Hillwalker best because is deal with taboo subject and special when come to poetry.

[zoolane]

By Skia.


Ya gotta be skitz bruv!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Walkin thru da halls,
I lol at all these pussy's
all da divvs wid dere notebooks,
dere bags n shizz.

I scoff at dem,
askin if dey wan beef,
dey fink dey is funny
when dey reply,
nah I wan chicken,
ha, dey were chicken
when dey ran off,
afta a giv em a chase,
innit.

Ah,
dere's ma boi's
chillaxin wid the homies,
sparkin up a beefa,
a hope dey gotta roach,
an some spray so da prof's dunna smell it,
but,
Ya gotta be skitz bruv!
he betta not be chattin wid ma gyal,
oderwise,
dey aint gonna see dem xbox again!

[zoolane]

Great Time of London



I

Hobbes' Leviathan
Determines for us all
Life in the state of nature is
Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

Cromwell agrees;
His spiked head rots
Atop Westminster Hall.
The future death mask
Of simple, unwitting souls.

II

Death docks in the
Foggy Thames.
Church bells toll
To a gruesome arrival.

Blood engorged fleas
Trade the backs of rats
For Mankind as host
To yersinia pestis.

Apothecaries cry alarms
Penny for a healing charm!
Sprays of rosemary
Hide their sickly cheeks.

Appearances of patchy black skin.
A child’s compulsive vomiting.
Misguidance slays cats and dogs
On corpse infested streets

Countless unknown poor
Rot at the deserted palace door
As Charles II seeks sanctuary
Under an Oxford Weeping Tree.

Labour mills grind to a halt
Tools idle, without trade.
Handfuls of posies to noses
But they all just fall down


III

In answer to the cry,
Bring out your dead,
The fearful living few
Pile corpses on a barrow.

God’s plague pit at Aldgate
Digests another cartful
Of Bleak Black Death.
As scavenging birds circle.

While Newton solves the puzzle
To the theory of gravitation
Somewhere in Pudding Lane
A smouldering oven flames…

[Silas Thorne]

This is still one of my favorites, from the great poet Firefangled, called 'Still Life'. I only wish I knew his name so I could get in contact with him or buy magazines or books with his recent poems, since he is gone from Litnet. This poem almost brings tears to my eyes whenever I read it:

Still Life

'I remember saying my last structured prayer,
you dead with the amazing flower sprays,
sunlight through the stained glass, brush strokes
across the white lilies like a canvas of Klee’s.

Man’s time dissolves in ashes, I repeated,
as the sun and clouds conspired to create
the red pulse over the cross of carnations
and through the veins of the marble floor.

No one planned the wild buttercups in that field.
I brought no bouquets, nor did I kneel, but lay
down in your golden days and painted you,
in my mind, relieved of all your hidden colors.'

Firefangled, posted on Lit-net in February 2009

[Robin Koykka]

Woodland’s Gift



By Robin Koykka

October 22, 2010



He carried tools into the forest

Where majestic pines now stand

And prayed in thanks for what he’ll take

Those mighty giants grand



On the floor of woodland moist

As he looked up to their heights

He felt the years those might boughs

Protected through the nights



Many fowl of heavens rest

They found shelter in her arms

Wind, and rain lashed upon them all

Below protected from the harm



With his aim and mighty swing

His axe sinks into the grains

It’s tears and flesh away they fly

His steel the forest tames



No other noise is now heard

The birds are quiet the deer are still

As timber falls down to the earth

Directed by mans will



Work begins to shape the tower

That lies upon the woodland floor

It’s limbs are gone it’s bark removed

For what is there in store



Little ones lost their home

They wonder where it’s gone

It slowly vanished on the wagon

Where it was set upon



Into the shop it is placed

Where hands now shape its form

And silken garments dress it up

As if to keep it warm



The grains now polished fine

Brass handles are put in place

And decorations are all around

A pillow in its place



Another prayer now is heard

As tears fall on the wooden burl

And placed inside for safe keeping

A lid closes on a little girl



They carry her into the forest

Where majestic pines now stand

And give thanks for the protection there

Among mighty giants grand



On the floor of woodland moist

He again looks to the heights

And thinks of when they’ll meet again

While she’s protected through the nights

[AuntShecky]

This recent notable posting by Hillwalker belongs in this thread because it is a finely-crafted example of showing rather than telling:

OFF-SHIFT

Off shift this late at night
I drag the empty shadows in behind me
silent key then slip the bolt
my hibernating she-bear purring
touch her face to check
she’s there
her lair a mound of crocheted blankets

I take a vodka for my strength
and one for Lena
one for Babu and the saints
then pick up Mishka from her basket
feel her flexing claws like pinpricks
seize her scruff
and sense her heart like claustrophobia
thumping
deep enough to set the tumblers rattling
on the drainer

I pull the blinds
and marvel for a moment at the April snowstorm
melting into flecks and fireballs
sense the sliding weight of stolen sky
tilt closer
masking all perspective
clouding skeletons of sycamores across the Prospekt
feel the acid deep inside me
kick against the womb

I crawl between the sheets
slide clumsy hands around her swollen belly
press my thighs against her sleeping heat
embrace the tidal furnace
longing for the maelstrom
hidden deep within her molten core
a clenching clutch to choke this dread
and hold at bay the coming day

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Bravo - and brava!

[Jack of Hearts]

Surpassing Experience by TheEarthIsRound

Consciously a world is outside
Clocks are ticking,
Cars are running,
Breaths are taken in,
Birds are chirping,
Earth is turning;
Atoms are transforming
Energy transfiguring,
While I take thought on
This cup of Tea.

I put myself into
The system of the tea,
The system of matter,
Of materials, of physics.

But that wouldn’t matter at all-
Clocks may not be ticking,
Earth may not be turning...

As we speak.

Sometimes it is an elegant gesture,
A leap of faith
To know you are not alone.
To know you are collective
In the system.
But sometimes,
It isn’t selfishness or ignorance,
That the only thing matters
Is not the system
But my cup of tea.
Without inferences
Or references
To what is and what not.

To silence of language,
To emancipate from imagination
Assumptions, and false security--
The aloneness and the unity.
The world outside
The world inside
Outside and inside.

As we speak.

[Jack of Hearts]

SNOWFALL by hillwalker

The white noise of winter has settled all around us

We trawl the river bank for clues
fog-mist forest glades
pine trees laden with blossom
stooping once too late
one careless moment as my shoulders become tinselled by one branch

Fresh scuffs of greenery
where you scraped and foraged
and here and there a brief chicane
of boulders not quite dormant

We pass a fishing perch bedecked in white
a diving board to arctic dreams of basking whales and ice flotillas
and upstream in a sudden startling gasp of sunlight
watch a single fish leap out to snatch the day
when I thought all the world asleep bar you and me

I tread more cautiously
along the filament of sky
where reeds are flattened
crushed by sleeping clouds

And far beyond the pristine white encroaches on the loch
each single grain of ice embedded in a galaxy of giddy light
yet mottled at the edge in brittle grey
and cracked across in places

The cloven tracks of your insomnia
lead right to the edge
that swatch of night
without a single gleaming star to guide us home
so I keep mirroring your moves
one step closer
one step closer
one more step
and for good luck…..

[Jerrybaldy]

ouroboros (epsilon dub) by Weltanschauung

my god!
my money! my house! my car!
my hair my shoe my face
my credit! my bill!
my phone my meds my food my head
my work my kids my back
my dog my cat my fish
my balls my tits my legs
my tits my tits my tits your tits
your tits your thing my thing
my god!

[Jack of Hearts]

"Springtime Limerick" by moonbird

The sunbeams are strings on my fiddle.
I play you an intricate riddle
of sweet little tunes
on gay afternoons
and chord with the chickadee’s whistle.



"Heartstring Guitar" by moonbird

For all her life, she’d watched from afar.
Avoiding love, she nursed an old scar.
But once she slipped, left her heart ajar,
Releasing the music of her heartstring guitar,
And as it sang, in drifted a star,
Small and twinkling, it had drifted far,
Following blindly its guiding north star,
And the little star played on her heartstring guitar
A song both sweet and faintly bizarre
That put the notes where words usually are,
And the door to her heart stayed forever ajar,
Playing sweet music on her heartstring guitar.

[quasimodo1]

Jerrybaldy: This is excellent, unexpected and more than just humorous. I really like it. q1

[Jack of Hearts]

An untitled poem by weltanschauung (from ‘ouroboros (epsilon dub)’)

you're so genuine
under the wallmart original's remake of renaissance classics.
you're so smart
under the haircut and the blue spectacles.
you're so pretty
under the glitter and gold supersized underpriced cover-girl kit.
you're so talented
under the canvas of visa-mastercard-paypall.
you're so pure
under the baghavad-gita topless bikini.
you're so bright
under the stellar five-pointed cardboard.
you're so true
under the six-feet king-size best reviewed innerspring.

[Jack of Hearts]

"Eatin' Sounds" by firefangled

Stop by here sometime,
where the frogs and the crickets
wake up my neighbors
(she has ten poison fingers
and he’s moonfaced with rickets).

Come here summertime,
when it’s thick in the thickets,
night has its own plagues,
bullies kickin’ they legs
feelin' the gray heat of briquettes.

Down near the rushes
singing blues to black water
fingerin’ her notes,
pale like lillies she floats,
missus full moon with otter.

What’s your darkest desire,
and I’ll play you a sad song
made from young willows
and a worn breath from spring,
while cookin’ some croaks on the fire.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hamina's Lost Head

by Delta 40


In the bland room
to the left of the library
Hamina is guided by sure hands.
She bumps into cream walls
half circle tables halted by
navy patterned carpet squares.
Hamina lists to the right
and behaves as if one leg is a whole
metre longer than her little finger.
She snorts and hoots at the circle
of old ladies buried in craft materials.
The carer steers her round with one hand
while she holds her toys in the other.
He-ll-o Ha-min-a
they say, as if greeting her this way
will help her understand their kindness.
Whee!
Whoop!
Hoo!
My, you're happy today arent' you?,
Odd shaped Hamina shuffles toward each lady,
smirking, contorting her face impossibly
while her neck struggles to move however it chooses.
Her naked barbie doll with only a brain stem left
is slammed against the table.
Good Lord! What happened to her head?
Oh, she lost it somewhere along the line, I think
Nor-tee Ham-in-a!
Bad Ham-in-a!
Hamina sniggers and bends the naked limbs
till they are as misshapen as she is.
She rubs the stem nub between
crooked fingers and
rocks back and forth in time,
then she squeals so everyone winces.
Someone mutters underneath their breath,
Knit two, purl one, drop a stitch.
Hamina whacks the headless tanned body
against the table once more.
Sit down Hamina and have some
of Jan's homemade pie
She plunges her fingers into
the sticky tart
and eats like a two year old.
Strawberry jam is smeared
across Barbie's molded breasts,
her curvaceous legs
then one carefully placed red blob
on the plastic brain stem.
Hamina reveals her decayed chalky teeth
and nods - almost knowingly.
She licks the node,
where the head used to be,
like a lollipop.

[Delta40]

lol. Hamina is a pretty grotesque venture!

I can see my house from here by Jerrybaldy

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

'I can see my house from here'
I said to Sally, as she lifted her skirt
to pee on the dandelions.
I took a dead one
and told her the time,
it was fourteen o'clock.
I held a buttercup
and the glow on her chin
told me scientifically
that Sally loved butter a lot.
I picked her a daisy
and counted petals
of she loves me
she loves me not.
The summer sun was burning
the tip of her nose
and her freckles
were ablaze
on her cheeks.
She gave me her gum
and I tasted
the sweet warmth of her spit.
' I can see my house from here, Sally'
Her lopsided smile was unimpressed.
She dragged me to a bramble bush
and we scratched and we bled
as we kissed.
We climbed the big oak together
and sat upon its bough.
The sky was misty orange now
and we held bloody hands
as our features faded out
with the light.

It is a wet Sunday
I have walked to our oak tree
and it is ageing so more gracefully, than me.
I can see our house from here, Sally.
I am coming home.
__________________

[Delta40]

This poem by Princemyshkin is heart rending.

For my daughter

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

whenever she might happen to see this
If I were to look inside
at the wristwatch in my heart,
if I were to look inside
and say: ‘It’s time for us to love each other,’

I’m afraid she might reply,
“But, Dad,
we haven’t synchronized our watches.”

[Pensive]

I can see my house from here by Jerrybaldy

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I picked her a daisy
and counted petals
of she loves me
she loves me not.

Simply beautiful! :)
I will have to add this one in my favourites too!

[Jerrybaldy]

I came here to post MM's poem and just saw your entry. Thank you very much.
Jerry

[Jerrybaldy]

just noticed you were quoting Delta. Thanks Delta. If it werent for MM I may never had known x

[Jerrybaldy]

Have An Accident? by MystyrMystyry

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I remember - don't fully understand

Heart of Glass on the radio

Roaring from the tunnel

Interstate 49 in the fast lane

Which had slowed to a crawl

I recall the noise before impact

Couldn't tell you what it was

Cops everywhere two megaphones apiece

'Move along! Nothing to see here!'

They were wrong - plenty of seahorses

And octopusses drifting across the landscape

Somehow the Pontiac had become airborne

Crashes through the windscreen of the first Big Mack

Which suddenly stops, allowing the Ferrari to

Cruise underneath, losing its lid and scooping

The Beetle up and over the bridge

While the rest of the convoy rear-ends itself

Into a compressed accordian

Bloodied bodyparts strewn for miles

A muffled howling from the Gypsy caravan

Reveals a fortuneteller had swallowed her

Crystal Ball - her flying wig worn by a soaring toucan

The man dressed as a crocodile

Runs around on fire clutching his ears

The blue-eyed buffalo gazing down from the hill

The girl with her head stuck in a bucket

Tapdancing to an imaginary rhythm

One fireman waving his arms while stuck up the ladder

The other spurting water up and over

The astronaut trying to gather his scorpions

Into the hole with a wooden box around it

While being booted in the butt by an irate goat

The submarine stuck upright into the embankment

The rhinocerous in the tree

Silver knights on clydesdales plodding to the joust




The storm breaks just then - a fork of lightning

Ripping through the stray airship which bursts into flame

And spirals downward toward the horizon

As the cooler-than-cool retired detective arrives

'Everybody just keep calm -

'I've seen this sort of thing before...'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last edited by MystyrMystyry; 04-10-2011 at 07:29 AM.

I love this. It makes me want to write.
JB

[MystyrMystyry]

Thanks JB - First time up here I think :)

For this week mine's already established:


Bix

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke
(March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931)

It was said of Bix
That his Cornet spat out notes
Like shooting bullets at a bell
And his solos sounded as sweet
As a girl saying yes.
Bix Beiderbecke was simply the best
He was at the birth of hot music
His light illuminated
The jazz age
His Cornet accompanied
The roaring twenties
He was a romantic legend,
The young man with a Horn
But in keeping with the character
Of the very best of youth
His flame burned very brightly
But equally it burned quickly
And like the most beautiful star
He burned himself out
All too soon
Bix lived for the jazz
But died for the booze

[Jerrybaldy]

The Drive
by Delta
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

She tried to stop
her husband from leaving
so she hung onto the windscreen wiper
and side mirror till he got hungry.
He pulled over at a pizza joint
and after straightening her hair,
they licked breast milk ice cream
off the bonnet of the car.
They watched a man strip naked
in a field across the road.
He covered himself in cow manure
then jerked off into a wad of tissues.
Inside, Gino hollered ‘Mama Mia!’
when he saw the face of Jesus
appear on a 3 cheese pizza.
Everyone oohed and ahhed
then rethought their diet.

[Delta40]

Thanks for the nomination. I hate writing poetry (I think its poetry) but I can't stop either.

Sock puppet says: Read poetry and then you will know!

[MystyrMystyry]

The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn

by

Dark Muse

My Lady Icarus
rose like the black-checkered
queen and set your sights
too high,
with the world already
tilting beneath your feet
you sought to reach
what even fate could not bestow.

By night's shadow
you weaved your own
wings upon which you
believed you could fly
endlessly, unrestrained,
but even you, moon faced
beauty, where women could
only hope to reflect
the light of men,
was scorched by passion.

Wanting more than
the scraps that were given,
world-shaker
how your pale fingers reached out
to touch
what should not be touched
and you were burned
by lust and ambition
for not even you
could hold the sun between your hands
or thighs.

For how can he,
golden crowned
with the world before his feet
know any but the love of self,
how he has always
burned through the hearts
and beds of women,
until nothing but ashes were left.

For one brief
glorious moment,
you thought you had conquered
all, and you beheld
the universe,
but it was too all consuming
as a bird on broken wings
you fell into the depths
of darkness forever
cast from his light.

[Delta40]

Pillow Talk

By Blank Verse

And turning to me you would say
how sometimes you wished that a morning,
or even a whole day,
would drape itself over the clothesline
like a bedsheet or king-size duvet,
so you'd be able to beat the life out of it
if things hadn't gone your way.

[Jack of Hearts]

'Pecking Order' by hillwalker

In these boreal days, upon the cusp of solstice,
spare a thought for all the birds who scavenge here for crumbs of solace…..

the humming bird from far Cathay,
her shimmer like a gemstone in the pelt of winter

the turtle dove from Central Park,
her cooing ever poignant, ever soothing to the troubled brow

the feisty kookaburra, chirruping and cursing at the brou-haha,
the tiny warbler dancing in the margin, never heard but never far away

the Cockney sparrow, vibrant, sparking,
never bowing to the posturing of bullfinches or woodpeckers

the firebird, a phoenix seeking bright ascendance,
lily trotter, feet upon the water, Dylanesque as ever
then a puff of dust as roadrunner goes past in snakeskin boots

and here’s the speckled starling, oft neglected,
mimicking the gods yet with the nerve to shhit upon their shoulders

and on a distant perch, the cockatiel,
his measured words as close as birds can get to being divine,
his every squawk as wise as Socrates

while on the strand, the solitary heron, slow to settle,
fixes eyes upon the waves that scrabble for the shore

the patient vulture enters from the shadows, poised to probe
the rotten carcasses of those who perished on the barbs of criticism

havoc cried aloft upon the wing, a hawk a-hover on the lilting wind,
with talons bared yet tipped in velvet

all eclipsed by looming shadow from a mightier wingspan,
hooded eyes attuned to form and syntax,
scattering seeds and peanuts as she hits the table…..

but alas too late to make a difference
as that ruddy kitty-cat emerges from the fireside; all is quiet, all is calm.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have a quibble with this
"the rotten carcasses of those who perished on the barbs of criticism"
because it's the one place I could see where Hillwalker stepped aside from the avian world to comment - indeed, to judge - the human one. Apart from that what a triumphant parade this is of noticing and honouring these bords.

[Jack of Hearts]

An untitled poem by PrinceMyshkin




Between the scramble
in your mind and the slop
in mine we could assemble us
a stew of an unusual kind.

[everyadventure]

Mood Swings, by Delta


Sucking in the cool jet of oven gas
gives me little comfort.
While an egg boils on the stove,
the grease stained door sticks into my ribs.
This will never work, I think.
It's like trying to catch piss with a sieve
and the toast is bound to pop up before I pass out.
I fill my cheeks one last time, while remnants of logic scream,
Who will butter the toast dummy?
I try to imprint my face in the yellow block on the table.
Hard and unrelenting, I realise nothing will soften its core,
not even my wheezing, noxious breath.
I reflect on the odium of misery that I have spread throughout my life
and scrape all hope of eggs and toast into the bin.
A sleepy eyed child in Pooh Bear pyjamas appears by my side and tugs at my apron.
To be sure the radiant sun bursts through even the darkest of clouds!
He-wo Gwan-ma. Me hungwee.
From above, two bowls of Cornflakes rain down like a gift from God.
Feasting on life's heavenly crunch, our mirth is the milk of such joy
that we tumble to the floor in a furious tickle match.
Tomorrow I swear to do better.

[Delta40]

:blush: and :cheers2:

[Jerrybaldy]

I agree, this is a Delta masterpeice and one of my favourites

[Jack of Hearts]

"That Time" by hallaig

Do you remember the English girl you met,
spent a week with, that July in Spain?
She seemed your alter-ego.
Brown as fish, you haunted that place,

young enough still to playact
in the garden with its antique swings
and old blooms tired with heat,
though in the afternoons, fanned

by that sudden wind, you prismed the pool
like nereids. She left a pink fishing pole,
thrown haphazardly down for you
on a brown tiled floor

while outside mountains boiled
and time slowly skewed.
A pink fishing pole, something briefly gained,
something lost for good.

[hallaig]

I am honoured. Thank you kindly.

[Jack of Hearts]

"Recognition" by dyne7

Sometime we borrow things
forgetting where we put them.
You watch your daughter
late at night, when she is
in the deepest stages of sleep.
She shifts. Turns. Repeats.
She wants something to hold on to,
like the former prize fighter
next door who shadow boxes at every gathering,
the effort spent on your high school what is love
assignment when a minute was too much,
the hug you gave your second father when only
a smile was needed,
the amount of shampoo you poured in your spouse’s hair
when only a drop was enough.
Daughter, soap in the hand, clothed light,
it’s all the same to you.
To the youngest, we are like gods,
fully grown, fully human.
The colder it gets, the less we see our shadows,
the reminder—snow angels with her,
and the one snowflake that landed in the middle
of your head, where her moth-wing lips kissed
at the moment of its falling, the line of demarcation,
the separation of all things good and evil in you.
Love is recognition, is what you wrote.
Recognition. Like the look your father gave you
when you asked for a pen to complete the assignment,
like the look your girlfriend gave right before
you asked her to marry you,
when you breathed frost in her ear,
and said her name.

[Jack of Hearts]

"Cordova" by dyne7

Hurt. So simple a word. Esther says in Cordova, dreams are like liquid,
tangible, a colossus. So what? Fondness. That is what ends us.
Ask Isadora. Isadora and her scarves. She knew. Her scarves leapt
from that carriage door in search of something that would crush them.
Isadora. So simple a name. And those constellations that bore witness
to the slackening of her neck? They know us through and through,
see everything we do.

_____________

The night my grandfather died, they watched.
An unthinkable number of years it must have taken them to see me.
But there they were. Andromeda in her chains. And Cetus, you great brute,
would have her devoured like the air of our final hour. You were there too Draco.
Were you not hungry? Hercules needs those golden apples more than you know.
The moment is now, Horologium whispered. I already know, I said. Latin tells me so.

_____________

The wolf Lupus paused for that. Even Perseus took the time to pay his respects,
refusing suicide. Days later, the funeral. They came again,
eyes flickering like the vigils of the dead. Scorpius, Tulcana, Vulpecula.
Even the shadows of memory must be tampered with,
allowed to blemish our body.

_____________

Light is not all that is needed, no matter what one thinks.
The press of some unidentifiable clothing like Hiroshima ash. What is it from?
The Cordova of youth knows, threatens to tell us all our life.
The promised fields of ontology our fathers hinted at when we were still virgins.
It is said that in the Plains of Asphodel, the dead eat flowers.
Flowers here. Flowers there. Rooted in all of us, siphoning
what we know, what we think we know, spiraling to blossom.

_____________

And like a tape in constant reverse, I see the indigo-purples and greens
of his eyes, newly closed, newly blessed. The sudden flash, the double exposure.
The open curtain, the morning light, persisting, traveling impossible miles
to show me the muted form of my grandfather.

_____________

A week later, the burning came. The collecting followed.
Then, the latch in my father’s hand opened, and out came the former him,
exfoliating, purging me like soap. When I was young,
I thought that if someone cut me, I would bleed ambrosia sweeter than honey.
Later, the salt of some inner beach stung me here and here, showed me
the mortality of youth.

_____________

Somewhere, all of us will be minted on some giant coin, reading IT HAPPENED.
At that hour, we’ll realize the nicest flowers we give, are to the dead.
And the ones for the living? They’re nice too. But they tend to hunker forward,
unable to remain erect, like tiny, crucified children.

[Jack of Hearts]

Revisions (a collection by dyne7)


Revisions

As a boy in Dachau, the memorials of dead
gone for generations were everywhere.

German chocolate dripped off my lips and stained
the walkway like the blood of the dead*

once stained the rows of henbane and belladonna
in the fields around us.

But my eyes always drew back to the wall—
the polished marble wall showing the names of bloodlines.

Stein the carpenter. Goldberg the farmer. Eckerman the girl next door.
Kaplan, the young boy who loved to read.

My reflection covered them all. For moments, they lived through me.
The pictures above those names? They envied me.

And so I wiped away the dust darkening their faces,
the pollen of our dying.

That’s what we are after all, doppelgangers of ourselves at every turn,
revisions of each other, word economy of the gods…

Older, we sense this. Nobody to tuck us in, no stools to reach
that colder light in the pantry of us all.

And that wall at the camp? It was razed.
Likewise, the porcelain seraphims lining the entrance,

and the ashes of mourning littering the hills of flowers
whose roots stamp out the faces of the dead.

We are memory over and over.


Traces

Like the color of flowers in darkness,
so are the traces of the dead,
filtering among their absence like
the roiling veins of the human body,
the marred opals of our being.
The reminder—crumbs on church floors—
flour coating the grainy faces of Christ
like the dust on moth wings,
dispersed among us like your father’s
ashes among the Aegean. But even
your father knew the unspeakable
truths that are voiced among*
the dead—the apple juice*
you once spilled on his old coat,
the one blank line*
you left alone in Sunday’s
crossword puzzle, and
what was it, just what was it
he always said about your hair?
The darkest color of them all.
Try telling that to your mother,
a painter nonetheless, crafting
her unspeakable story
onto the old canvas in her study,
the human condition forced upon its surface,
the linen seemingly hating her for it,
the Golgotha of her hands
crafting the Jerusalem
of her life.



Blood Lilies

The two men burdened with the task of telling
this wife that her husband had been found dead
were never the same afterward,
spoken nightmare released from their lips
like the barb of a wasp, the pooling
of everything that followed.
He had been found by the river,
body turned to the side, white shirt streaked
with blood, reverse of the blood lilies
lining the shore of the water.
They had no more. Nothing more to say,
nothing to offer her for the loss.
The dead do not bargain, do not trade
at any sign of someone capable of joining their own.
And these men kept their distance from the inside
of the house, not wanting to disturb the children,
not wanting to be the filaments of the fallen,
whose power descends through them
like the light of a prism.
They went home, going their separate ways—
one, to a prison to visit his father.
The other, to a bar in the suburbs to drown
out the synapses of his brain firing,
alcohol dulling his breathing,
postponing the return
to what keeps him going—his own family,
his harness from sleep.



Chemotherapy

Hard work will set you free they would say to you.
God rests here, no motion needed—Lazarus rises
dizzily, to fall again, to rise, to fall. You
would sooner remain here, the former you abandoned
like cicada husks on trees. The incoming hour
encroaches like the dark, sways inside like motion sickness.
That alluring black sky you admire is the coat of God,
ruler of galaxies, promoter of all time.
That mercurial brine below laps at your feet—
recedes—comes back, goes, comes back.
Every finger moved, every lip touched, every thigh
worshiped is the mirage you think you see.
Like freckles on a face, like dark grain
on old film, like those spots that bleach
can’t remove, we’re cindered here, graffiti of the cosmos.
Once, your mother lay with you whispering
I’ll do anything. You’re my whole life.
And the proof—a photograph on the wall
of a young, hairless boy grasping a bucket of broken
shells and sand, and the blue canopy of earth
above him, big enough for all of us.
We, the archived of the living, the footnotes of the dead.





Control


I had taken her in from the rain.
Driving away from another fight
with my wife, I saw her by the road,
soaked, red dress clinging to her
the way that rose petals will sometimes
cling to the water’s surface, hair tressed
over her cheeks like the flaws of midnight,
groceries in hand.
Just some young lady. And the gentleman
in me just could not stop, felt compelled.
She would not tell me her name,
but she invited me in anyway.
And as I sat across the room from her
as she made us tea, I didn’t say a word.
I let her talk about all the things in her life
that she once had control over.
I learned about the job that let her go
and the mounting bills, her grandmother’s funeral
and the lack of lilies—her grandmother’s
favorite. She told me about her third
miscarriage a few weeks before,
the damp blood that awoke her,
the noise that no human should ever have to make…
I realized then that I had heard enough.
The midday light broke through the curtains
as I moved closer to her,
and the patterns of the fabric
pressed their monograms
of shadow over my body.
And I took her, this stranger,
this woman I did not know
into my arms, and felt her press
her face into my shoulder,
like the pigeons of the city who love each other,
and escape the rain together.






The Nameless

On the marble porch
added on after the homes
waltz with Hugo—the lotion of dusk
drenching us, family game night
went off without a hitch.

I was eight, and a real estate
tycoon to boot—with my
lion’s share of every house, hotel and
avenue I’d ever want.

My mother’s sundress matched the
bruising sky, and like a conductor
in 2/2 time, my father spread
butter on the last of his dinner bread,

hue like the cold light
the chandeliers emitted within
the house.

“Bedtime kiddo.”
I didn’t listen. I kept bargaining
to be with them for just the
next moment longer, and the next,
and the next—

until I drifted off to the
baritone voice of Nat King Cole.

What’s worth knowing slips
between the nameless, and
my fingers curling on the Boardwalk,

my mother, her hair now mussed
from the humid Carolina air,
took me inside the house with the
tenderness only parents know,

and careful not to brush
the porcelain salters within
the house, took me upstairs
and placed me in my bed.

Eyes adjusting to the dark,
artificial stars glowed,
revealing the glass model
of the human circulatory system
on my night stand.
In that moment, I was safe from corruption.

All that before the funeral the week later.

I was born for this I thought.
And careful not to slip around
the muddy edges where the waterlines
crisscross grid would soon cover
her bones, my father and I helped the*
pallbearers lower her casket into the ground.

In shock, I ran away as fast as
my young legs would carry me,
past the front gate reading
Let the dead bury their dead,

towards something inhumane,
something rotating us into
the soil of everyone.




The Difference

It’s mid-afternoon in April,
and Llewellyn and I had been
walking for hours.

He wants the best casket for his mother,
but the shops here don’t quite have
what he’s looking for.

Hunkering down on this bench,
Llew says something about how quiet
it is right now, and I can’t argue that.
This time of day, light precedes the dark,
and the cosmic blood of sky halos over us.

”Cremation”, he says.
I’m confused. But he tells me she hated crowds,
and that death probably wouldn’t change that.

I don’t know if it’s the right time,
if it’s for me to say,
but I tell him anyway. I tell him
there are moments where we find
ourselves in the rawest of places.

Here, the dead swirl around us,
and their briefer selves play
with crayons darker than black.

Sometimes, the most vivid colors
one can know are the ones that
remain nameless, the ones without verbal
fingerprints to deter us from searching further.

It has become awkward, and we both know this.
And like a death’s-head moth taking flight,
he stands and walks a few yards away from me
and lays down, arms and legs spread wide.

I think he gets it now. From here, he’ll reach
that place we all fear to go—the divide where
subtraction has become the only addition
we can ever know.

This is when I recall my old father.
And how a young boy waited for the first
sign of his old man, by the arrival of his
shadow on the porch blinds.

And how wiser now, sees nature
in the most cartoonish of ways—like a
touring rock star shooting heroin, and in this—

becoming his next word, breath, twitch,
processing the next surge he takes like an
antibiotic,

and how smiling grimly, sees his latest
groupie offering herself to him with
a tramp stamp that says Bella Luna
in a blue like the arteries of her body,

everyone else lying around him
like Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’, and he


wonders where he left the prophylactics.

[PrinceMyshkin]

We spend the day picnicking
on the grounds of Threave Castle
in the shadow of lichened stone
and agreeable ghosts.

We watch our children
darting through foxtail and oat-grass,
summer-brown and quick as rabbits.
How did we spawn such creatures,
these tangle-haired girls, so wild and free?

"Let me paint you," he says,
and I laugh, gesturing to the castle ruins,
hulking and solemn against the blue-violet sky
of a steeping storm.

"Och, no," he says,
tugging at the yellow ribbon sash
of my eyelet summer dress.
"Aren't you the sight?"

The wind stirs,
sweeping off my straw hat,
skipping it like a stone
across rippling grass.

My sash is between his fingers;
it unfurls when I rise,
caught by the wind like a kite.
This is the scene he will paint:

A woman with wind-swept hair
wearing a smile of dismayed delight
and a white dress that gusts about her knees,
hem billowing upward

as if to follow
the silken stream of sunlight
set loose against churning sky.

[Delta40]

I agree. This is one of EA's best for sure.

[Delta40]

By Hillwalker

The Trespass

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE TRESPASS

This is my beach;
this strand of white
unsullied by another’s words,
unruffled by the morning breeze,
unstained by rouge of blushing dawn,
all evidence of last night’s hectic fever
ebbing with the tide.

I wipe the grit of sleep aside
and search for rhyme beyond the green-stone point
where hulks of rusted rock
lie sulking, anchored to the deep.

I watch the day unravel,
picturing the palette’s tilt
as dabs of summer sunshine
verdigris the shallows,
spilling bands of burnt sienna,
persimmon, sinopia and icterine
across the flawless canvas of the shore.

This is my beach
and yet I give each season leave to make its mark;
then note the scars and scabs of storm,
the dazzling spray, the gulls' reluctance to draw near,
or snowfall where it frills the shoreline...

But
today some other force intruded on the scene
with nerve enough
to pad across this virgin sand,
to scribble verse in stilted lines
and daub a patch of jazzy pink,
enough to break the spell of solitude;
five toes one heel
paired off in symmetry,
two feet so small
my hand could hold both imprints
in my palm.

I came too late to see
her spindrift hair tied back,
or hear the squeal of shock,
or watch the grin spread wide as prairie sky;
the child at play
among the wreckage of my inspiration.

[Varenne Rodin]

"Recognition" by dyne7

Sometime we borrow things
forgetting where we put them.
You watch your daughter
late at night, when she is
in the deepest stages of sleep.
She shifts. Turns. Repeats.
She wants something to hold on to,
like the former prize fighter
next door who shadow boxes at every gathering,
the effort spent on your high school what is love
assignment when a minute was too much,
the hug you gave your second father when only
a smile was needed,
the amount of shampoo you poured in your spouse’s hair
when only a drop was enough.
Daughter, soap in the hand, clothed light,
it’s all the same to you.
To the youngest, we are like gods,
fully grown, fully human.
The colder it gets, the less we see our shadows,
the reminder—snow angels with her,
and the one snowflake that landed in the middle
of your head, where her moth-wing lips kissed
at the moment of its falling, the line of demarcation,
the separation of all things good and evil in you.
Love is recognition, is what you wrote.
Recognition. Like the look your father gave you
when you asked for a pen to complete the assignment,
like the look your girlfriend gave right before
you asked her to marry you,
when you breathed frost in her ear,
and said her name.

I love these Dyne7 poems. Where is Dyne7?

[Jack of Hearts]

An untitled poem by hillwalker

Crosby, Stills and Nash,
two beards and one moustache

[Bar22do]

By Last Chance Creek

Last Chance

There's a place in the woods
where the air is cool and clear,
distilled by waterthrush song.
Sunlight sieves through aspen leaves,
stippling the water of Last Chance creek.

This is where huckleberries hide,
growing plump in the underbrush
of shadowed hillside.
We spread my quilt here,
beneath the spell of spindling trees.

You read Thoreau aloud,
and the thrush ceases its song.
The forest listens to your voice,
words formed gently and exhaled,
as trout bubbles in a stream.
I think awhile of Love...

When the light grows watery,
you pluck plump berries
and feed them to me, one by one.
They are firm and sweet,
inking your fingertips a tender purple,
the shade that shows
below the surface of sleep.

[PrinceMyshkin]

What an inspired choice! Congratulations to Bar for selecting it and, of course, to Everyadventure for composing it.

[Delta40]

I can still smell the lavender in my hair
from sleeping in the field that night,
my hands wrapt about the belly of the Earth,
I swear I could feel a heartbeat.

The moon shone like a secret lover,
quiet, yet bright, never wishing to disturb
the poetry that breeds
in its softest spotlight.
He gently swaddled the hot, tall grass
in an elegant gown,
reassuring his position as the Muse,
as I reached out to him with both palms forward.

Stretching, waxing, waning,
my limbs tousled the wildflowers, as the
sweet, humid air filled my lungs.
It was
thick like honey;
one of the richest gifts of the universe,
disguised in simplicity,
and wrapped in innocence.

I warbled like a morning sparrow, aching for the presence of
a lover, a muse, a friend, but all that was left for me to find
was the soft but steady ambivalence
of the Universe.

[Jack of Hearts]

"Butter on the Harp" by munkinhead

Pigboy Crabshaw
came through Moab.
I heard him
on the scarp.
Not some
cyber-bifurcation,
but with Butter
on the harp.

I heard them there
quite clearly,
it was Pigboy's
mournful wail,
with Maria
on the high notes,
like a comet,
and a tail.

Some might say
it was the mescal,
or a remembered
happy dream,
but I am sure
that it was Pigboy,
the way the guitar
screamed.

[Jack of Hearts]

An untitled poem by YesNo


There was a little birdie
Who dropped a little turd. He
Heard clearly every word he
Was not allowed to say.

And so he dropped another,
On sister and on brother,
On daddy and on mother.
He got us good that day.

[Silas Thorne]

:smilielol5: That is great! Reminds me a little of 'spring is sprung the grass is ris, I wonder where the boidies is'. Terrific use of rhyme! :biggrin5:

[Jack of Hearts]

'Plumber's Block' by hillwalker

A dodgy drain at Number 8,
extension rods all laid out straight,
my rubber boots, my yellow pail,
my mug of tea and ‘Daily Mail’.

Then bam…
I stop to roll a fag;
the smell of methane makes me gag,
my fingers fumbling for the wrench
to close the valve inside the trench,
the spanner useless in my grip,
my ‘muse’ has given me the slip.

My brain’s become a marble block,
my body misaligned in shock,
I’ll never lag a pipe again
or handle polypropylene;
without a paddle up the creek
I just can’t face another leak.

[virgo27]

Ah, love this one. Well crafted.

[Delta40]

Hours

You keep coming, eyes shined to perfect blue,
sometimes dirty grey, or green strewn with gold,
when reflected in a pond, at noon.

I still pirouette with you and the next, in April,
in June, but how poor the contents! all is said, dreamt of,
seen --- old! repeating, copied, never really new.

Truth pulses for its own hidden sake,
nowhere and yearning for boredom. But you,
stiff and relentless,

are always the same at noon, at four,
or under the sun days’ ghost, the moon.

And my spirits sink low, begin to prowl around,
barking about my heels,

I’ve just chased them away, like yesterday,
but they are back, back, growling -

and as you'll pop your dull eyes tomorrow
among the milling city smelling of the day before,

I’ll send them all on you, your lids will fill with rain,
and you won’t watch me rise and escape

into silence, the unmeasured, the new.

[Bar22do]

I'm so touched. Thank you Delta for appreciating my modest efforts. With gratitude, Bar

[Jerrybaldy]

Out of this world pizza By Delta40... read on imaganeers and admire...


We could drive through the night
in your salary sacrificed car,
the electronic red glow
from the controls and meters
remind me as if I'm in space
so I lay back and imagine how easy
it is to be in cruise control, high above the Earth.
We shoot past the stars in search of the best pizza.
My Captain tells me screw the traffic
because I will love it and him when we get there!
After a few light years, we glide
to a smooth landing at the finest Interstellar Pizzeria
in the whole universe.
Inside the robotic waitress points us to
an escavated relic of a sign which reads:
Please wait here to be seated
while she wipes down tables
and the auto chef spins and flips bases
to Enrico Caruso's L'elisir d'amore
We are bound to obey the caligraphic order
because of the laser beams blocking our path.
Suddenly, the waitress looks up and transmits,
2200 hours. Sorry folks, we are now closed. Goodbye!

[paulanderson114]

I experience when was in plane,

Through the rain I dash to board the plane,
About the weather to the blonde FA I I complain,

Her answer that “It’s like that everywhere” has me worried,
The net said no rain so no umbrella with me I carried.

Up on the bulkhead a bit misleading is this sign,
Definitely no business class this seat of mine.

[hillwalker]

Hi there - I think you rather missed the point of this particular thread (it's for members to post their favourite pieces written by other members).

As for your own attempt - I'm afraid it's doomed even before the ink has dried on the page.

Back-to-front expressions like 'to the blonde... I complain', 'no umbrella with me I carried' and 'misleading is this sign' are dreadful, presumably twisted in order to maintain rhyme.
Do you talk like this? I'm guessing not. So why not write using your normal language and expressions?

My advice - forget about rhyme and read lots of poetry to get a feel for how it's supposed to be written...

... and when you have more to post on here begin a new thread of your own. Good luck.

H

[Jack of Hearts]

Untitled by prendrelemick

Cold, cold beauty,
Pristine and pure,
Ringed with glittering ice,
Haloed with borrowed light.
Perfect.

We see you now,
Framed and displayed,
laid bare to our fatuous stare,
But you remain aloof and lovely,
As only a cold beauty can.