Brings back memories. A fine poem, Doc.
Live and be well - H
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Brings back memories. A fine poem, Doc.
Live and be well - H
Long time, no see, Doc. #200 is an evocative word picture, an eloquent reference to the theme that nature can often soothe and compensate for the day-to-day troubles human suffer under artificial economic systems.
Hey, Hawk & Aunt, thanks for saying hi, and for your kind words.
I don't come in that often these days because I finally decided to give a novel a serious try. Unbelievable how much work it involves. I'm sticking with it, though, just so I can say I did it. Even if it never reaches any shelves.
Good health to all,
DH
Hey Doc, thanks for this touching offering. I sip your English, so beautiful, with thirsty eyes! Thanks for sharing. Good luck with your novel! You'll do it!
Best to you,
Bar
Good luck with the novel. Hope it makes you as rich as this poem.
Hey fogey,
this thread contains some of the best poetry ever put on this forum.
J
DocFart,
Where are you hiding? Put more in this thread.
J
Crete is pah-tick-yewly a standout. Always wanted to go to Crete. Couldn't figure out how to do it, though. Maybe you have to swim?
J
PS Come back 'ere Dawk.
Well slap my arse and call me Bethesda, I'm still here?
================================================== ==========
Something has to be written
For feelings feeble and fleeting,
For out-of-the-blue glances,
For out-of-the-blue tears,
For moments that explode into liquid silver
Too soon,
Too soon,
For inaccessible heartbeats and secret breath sounds,
For bunches of tastebuds igniting at the touch of whisky,
For keyboards typing strong words, of love, of hate,
For yellow discs on navy velvet lighting up the basement,
For ice-cream that melts in the hand
Like yesterday's childhood memories:
Something has to be written.
Something inconclusively horny:
A self-fulfilling prophecy hiding in a huge cake
After far too many
Wasted cigarettefuls of time.
Great to see you posting poems again, Doc!
Couple of comments re: #209. Ever hear the song "Speak Low" by Kurt Weill)? The song uses the phrase "Too Soon, Too soon" to a similar effect. Because the lyrics are so haunting, I thought Weill's usual partner, B. Brecht wrote them. Good thing I looked it up online--the guy who wrote the words was none other than Ogden Nash!
Also, can you think of some equivalent yet less familiar phrases to substitute for "out of the blue" and "self-fulfilling prophecy"? Dropping "-fuls" from "cigarettefuls" would sound less awkward. Other than that, the meaning in this piece is resoundingly clear.
Now, write and post some more!
I loved it! And yes, it is great to see you posting again. You tapped into the senses beautifully here Doc.
What Delta said :)
Hey! Get back 'ere.
J
My dear friends,
So nice to see you all still here. I stay away for a long time, then come back to read your kind words. Sorry about that. Don't think I don't think of you all. :)
Can someone give me a good old occasional whipping with the cat-o-nine-tails, though? I'm worried my head's getting too big.
DH
Envisaged Sunday Night Roleplay
There is a breath
Going on back there -
Only now did I notice it.
Punctuated by violent heartbeat,
This is an iambic-pentameter breath.
"To God I pray tonight he sees me not,"
It breathes.
There is a breath
Going on back there -
And I can hear it.
I can see it.
I liked it.
Hey, Miyako, thanks for liking it, *and* for your original message which I *did* have time to read before you deleted it, so niah-niah-niah-niah-niaaaaaahhhhhh.
DH
Tuesday Night, Working Late
Home.
Office.
Home office.
Homeopathic orifice.
Homophobic oratorio.
Official harrowing.
Officious hoodlum.
Office home.
Office.
Home.
You're right on rut,
on rut and rote.
I see your rut.
Let's call it wrote.
No one writes poetry quite like the ancient Greeks.
J
I see a DocHeart posting as a welcome treat on here.
I like the word play and the sonics of "Tuesday Night, Working Late."
Homophobic oratorio.
J
Listening to Herbie Hancock Doing His Thing
When alone at night, poetry makes sense.
Gone are: the voices, the grins,
The phonecalls, the pens.
Gone
Are the day's fake skins.
This keyboard, darkened, is a female heart.
I lay my fingers on it softly
And feel it pulsate.
It is the space bar pushing my thumb -
Ah!
It is the space bar pushing my thumb.
The words writing me have so much to say
So many letters rain on my face.
I swallow them. They throw me out.
They make me walk naked in the street.
Still here. Still walls around me.
But dear darkness, don't go just yet.
Stay for one more drink of love and wonder.
There is time yet for the sun
To rise on schedule.
Hi Doc,
I rely liked "Envisaged Sunday Night Roleplay" except for S1 L3 "only now do I notice it."
With the latest offering, "Listening to Herbie Hancock Doing His Thing" I'm not sure about the rhyming. In the first stanza it sort of sets one up to expect it, but you abandon rhyme in the subsequent verses. Grins and skins rhyme ok but sense and pens don't quite work as end-rhymes, yet they're close enough to be slant rhymes, as, indeed, is the "ns" ending between grins and pens. For this reason it's not quite working for me. An entire stanza of ins and ens! On the plus side I love the last line, "Gone are the day's fake skins", though I feel the verse should be a quatrain, A more satisfying rhetorical sequence would be to use gone at the beginning of all three lines which would also establish a very strong rhythm, but of course then it would really need to be maintained throughout the poem, so I can see why you haven't done this. Incidentally, you don't need the colon after the first gone.
I'd be inclined to rewrite the first stanza, losing the rhyme, to make it more in keeping with the rest of the poem. I'd also stick with quatrains all through, except for the middle lines.
In S2, the "darkened," plonked in the middle of the first line, feels unnecessary. What is it supposed to convey? The shadow of your hands hovering over it, perhaps? However, it feels awkward to me and I feel the stanza reads better without it.
The end of the last stanza, apart from not being a quatrain, is over-extended. You just don't need the "on schedule." I'd leave it as, "There is time, yet, for the sun to rise."
It is an atmospheric piece, though, and definitely takes (or sends) one somewhere ;) Good to read you Doc,
Live and be well - H
Hey Dear Doc, it's been ages...
Love your latest poem very much, its almost kabbalistic way of you being revealed by words (as if) independent of you, though coming from within you, as if an intuitive (female) voice whispering to you about you, sharing with you your life's unfolding (?), as words come, as the night progresses... So subtle.
For me, "darkened" has its place in the line, as it enables the transformation and later provides an address to your call for "dear darkness" to tary...
I'd too lose the final "on schedule", for it'd strengthen even more the ending which, for me at least, is not without reminding Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises," whether consciously or not...
The poem is restrained (in description), but so generous through its freedom away from schedules and phonecalls!
Thank you, I'll return to this one again.
Bar
At parts, this poetry is unbearably beautiful, to where your eyes have to peel from the lines as not to take too much in too quickly.
Put the women down, Doc, and put new poems up.
Do I cry for you,
Or for the Years?
You know the Years I'm talking about.
They danced past us,
Barefoot on the beach
And left us scorching in the sun
Freezing in the snow.
They were funny Years,
Fast like escaping rabbits,
Full of unspoken love
And postponed embraces.
They killed you
And made me
An attention whore
On the Literature Network.
Mother, I promise you,
I weep not for the Years,
But for me.
I'm being selfish again,
Just as I was when pestering you
For another coin
For the Space Invaders machine.
Stay, wait for me.
I've booked the first flight home.
You've left now. Goodbye.
We're smithereens in an explosion,
And you went out before me,
As one might have expected.
When my sparkle too is extinguished
I'll look for you in the ash.
Should I find you, be ready:
I'll beg you for your blessing once again.
You are here, Doc! And with this sublime poem... I dare not ask if it is a recent beverement. Your poetry defies Years, and this poem is a blessing you beg for...
"When my sparkle too is extinguished
I'll look for you in the ash"
Thank you,
Bar
"When my sparkle too is extinguished
I'll look for you in the ash."
Beautiful. Sorry for your loss, Christos.
J
Beautiful poem, DocHeart.
Hello,
would it be possible for me to post one of my poems here again at a
different corner of this forum ? My poem is at least dystopian by it's language
of mind concept from the final days of WW2 out of the perspective nihilistic
fatalists had sometimes in their bunkers. It is definitly not my propose to idealize their
politics, or ideology. I am german, but I am not a racist or something else like that. I only
intend to make their kind of symbolism visible by the thoughts and feeling that kind of war is
able to produce in form of metaphores and allegories created with their own inhuman language
hidden behind their form of paganism and rituals. So it evokes a dark, nearly apocalyptic atmosphere of
fear, madness and their concept of valid sacrefice til death is no longer far away. These words here, can be perhabs
something like an idea, what my sense is, in terms of a psychological meaning. I think that should be enough for a preface.
I really hope that nobody will blame me for my form of art. It is not political in any way.
Kind regards
August Guelfen
I would be interested in reading your poems. You might want to start a new thread where you can post your poetry.
Wake up, old man!
J
Time to come back!
J
'Years/ Fast like escaping rabbits'
Wonderful! :)
It is a great line.
J