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emilylou06
01-26-2008, 11:00 PM
The man that no one notices,

he sits on a bench in the mall.

He sees time waste before him,

and the blur of faces passing him by.

He notices everything; everyone.

the color of the little girl's red shoes,

the bickering between the married couple,

the happiness of two new parents,

young friends who are invincible to the night,

the homeless man that comes in for warmth.

He never says a thing; just sits and watches.

Life intertwines throughout his soul,

and every being that passes holds a story untold.

With every glance his way he smiles briefly.

Sometimes they are returned, but mostly not.

He understands that this is how the modern world is.

No time to smile at a stranger on a bench.

Who sits still as a stone in peace and rememberance.

Remebering a time when days were longer,

nights were quieter,

and life was worthwhile.

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

A little girl with red shoes passes by a bench in a mall.

she sees that it is empty and she wonders why.

She remembered a man sitting there one day.

he had smiled at her, and she had returned it.

He had been a nice man,

not like her daddy, nor anyone she had ever known.

He had looked like santa,

jolly and chubby with inviting eyes.

But that smile,

She missed that smile.

Maybe when she got older she would sit on that bench.

And look at the world with different eyes.

Maybe she would see what that old man saw.

The pain, the anger, the intoxication of beauty in an ugly world.

Then she would watch all that she missed...

pass her by again.

PrinceMyshkin
01-27-2008, 07:21 AM
"Only connect..." wrote E.M. Forster and though it might seem like the humblest of things we can do, it is surely of the essence of being part of the human project. Unless we connect, we cannot love. And unless we love, we do not grow.

And you have certainly connected here with each of those two!

Logos
01-27-2008, 09:48 AM
Lovely poems emilylou06, welcome to LitNet :)



"Only connect..." wrote E.M. Forster .... Yes that's a great quote/idée :) Here is the context from Howards End (http://www.online-literature.com/members/forster/howards_end/) (1910);


It was hard-going in the roads of Mr. Wilcox's soul. From boyhood he had neglected them. "I am not a fellow who bothers about my own inside." Outwardly he was cheerful, reliable, and brave; but within, all had reverted to chaos, ruled, so far as it was ruled at all, by an incomplete asceticism. Whether as boy, husband, or widower, he had always the sneaking belief that bodily passion is bad, a belief that is desirable only when held passionately. Religion had confirmed him. The words that were read aloud on Sunday to him and to other respectable men were the words that had once kindled the souls of St. Catharine and St. Francis into a white-hot hatred of the carnal. He could-not be as the saints and love the Infinite with a seraphic ardour, but he could be a little ashamed of loving a wife. "Amabat, amare timebat." And it was here that Margaret hoped to help him.

It did not seem so difficult. She need trouble him with no gift of her own. She would only point out the salvation that was latent in his own soul, and in the soul of every man. Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in
fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.

AuntShecky
01-27-2008, 05:47 PM
Although the specificity of your pieces, the "whatness" is
refreshing, you may want to try to work a bit on the poetic
form of your lines. They read (and sound) like prose.

Welcome to this network. I wish you may happy experiences here and that we all can learn from each other.

Aunt Shecky

emilylou06
01-28-2008, 01:29 AM
Yes.. it is supposed to be in prose form, yet I don't know how to do that. I was never taught the specifics of how to write poetry. I just don't like the rhyming aspect of it. How is a prose poem formatted?