POETRY

[Sass]

Your soul and mine,


They were never friends.


Each stood on the edge of the world and tried to hang on,


And each soul’s reaching met with the other’s.


So we held on to each other and hoped,


Hoped that circumstance could heal,


That it might become real,


That the light we created might shine warm in our chests,


That the warmth might turn to fire and swallow us whole.


The fire never came, though,


And even if it had, we were never a whole anything anyway,


We were just grasping at the edges of the world,


And holding on never was much of a bond in the end.


Is it the end?


I don’t know.


My grip is stiff and white-knuckled after all these years,


Letting go hurts,


And I think a part of me is part of you now,


Although that’s probably a bit theatrical for now.


Now is when we try to sieve the years,


Sift through them to find the gold dust,


To work out how to do this and why we want to.


Do we want to?

 

[Blue_Eyes]

ODE TO THE SUN

I may need your light to survive,
but to ultimately thrive
I must feel the kiss of a subtle
breeze upon my petals.
I must feel cool rain as it seeps
into the soil at my feet.
Otherwise, I'd wither in despair
beneath your fiery glare.

 

[4gottenLoreKali]

Here's an original. It also could count as song lyrics if one so desired to set them to music. (You could probably get Linkin Park or Katatonia to be the backing band. ) Just consider this an advance warning that this one may be triggering for some people, or at least a little depressing. Or, depending on your standards, it may just be cringe-worthy.

"[NAME CENSORED]'s Song"

Upon first sight on your essence divine
I had hope for a life renewed.
What I could not foresee in my swamp of a mind
Was the despondency caused by you.

Every second that passes by
Is another one without your presence.
Every second, bit by bit I die
Forever entrapped in discontent.

This beautiful soul is what cast me into Hell
A Hell of my own obsessed creation.
I clamor silently, a hollow, weeping shell
My every attempt at reaching out, damnation.

These waning scraps occupy every second
Of my aching hours in solitude.
How I desperately wait for you to beckon
And for this summer of hate to conclude.

I mourn the thought of us being together
And sharing a single heartbeat.
Instead, here I sit, knowing that never
Will I escape this trap of defeat.

 

[gonzerd]

No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. Ant the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

(Dead Poets Society, 1989)

Thought this should be here.

(via wallflowerbloom)

 

[StephF]

Well done, enjoyable !

 

[Blue_Eyes]

Nice post, gonzerd.

 

[Aspergirl4hire]

When I am deep in the abyss, the only thing I can read is poetry. There is no misery that the Chinese poets have not written about; bitter, sour, resigned, and finally wise, however they begin, the poets arrive at this end: this too shall pass. We all die, but we get to choose how we die, and the challenge to all humanity and to every individual is simply this: be self-aware, knowing that you will die.

Elephants recognize elephant remains, and may be aware too, but not many others.

And when I am held by the wind itself and cannot fall, the only thing that can fly with me is poetry, but the writing of it and the living of it is what happens; in the time of Happy Art and zombie-for-a-special-interest, only poetry can help me say anything I need to say.

 

[wyverary]

Thought this should be here.

(via wallflowerbloom)

Aaah, now you've made me determined to re-watch this film! I love Peter Weir...Master and Commander is one of my favorite movies.

 

[gonzerd]

"62% of suicide attempts fail because the person is discovered before death sets in."
Maybe if they ever had the time to be alone long enough to let the crowd die down, they wouldn't have tried. You can't kill what you can't find.
Just let us be.
Everybody wants to be a hero.

"I won't be intimidated by some washed up toddler, face down on the beach."
Our immigration policies are so successful we've had to pass a law to jail anyone who dares to speak up about them.
"We have plenty to be proud of."

Copyright restrictions.
Playback has been made unavailable in your region.

"Hey, suce moi, sale pute de merde!" Renaissance Street, 2:49 am, the end of summer.
The beasts are back in town; the leaders of tomorrow.
Such class, such jubilation.
Can't beat a college education.

Wild hoards of restless cock reaching for a thousand glistening cunts all twinkling in the sky.
"Meet the high potentials."

The world, happening, right outside this window.
None of it is real.

Where the f*ck am I anyway? What is this place?
And who's this stranger looking at me from the mirror?

A white porcelain lamp, a broken china vase, blue flowers, naked, no shade, salvaged from last night's city wide brawl, throws ominous black spectres high upon the wall and ceiling.

This isn't a Kerouac novel, Jack.
Everything known is borrowed, all the rest is stolen.

Pick your role, always dress the part, and never, ever, act your age.
Got to get me one of those suits.

Probably best to avoid the authorities.
Old chinese wisdom.
A foggy notion.

Clouds of Jane make the beaming light of the beat down blue silver moon shiver and shimmer.
A savage drum sounding in the distance. Soon the rains will come.
Good company.

Visions of Mary, visions of Zelda.

A weeping willow, its leaves wiping away my tearing woe as I rush through its sweeping vines, clearing my mind from all this nothing.
A wooden desk, made out of real actual wood. To stoke a fire, for warmth, for heat, for all my haunted dreams.
Nothing burns like a well cultivated sense of fear and existential deprivation.

Partners in crime.
Head to head as we f*ck our way back into sanity.
Long to do, time.

A graveyard right before dawn, a forged cross.
A white dress hanging from the arms as the winds weave through the mud stained lace.
The scent of roses blooming.
Sweet depravity.

 

[BIMOG]

When I used to write poems, I wrote this one...


Alien faces

They're all around but not like me

I wear a mask and try so hard

To learn their words, the things they say

To copy faces, games they play

Subtle failings mark me out

But still I try to be like them

So hard to whistle, tie a lace

Alone I knot and not again

And purse my lips to no avail

And all the effort, borrowed smiles

Make no difference, emphasize

That I am different, don't fit in

'A retard from the loony bin'

I'm much too stupid, much too bright

I don't play games, don't want to fight

I come from someplace, not from here

A stranger in this stranger land

A place called Normal in a tongue

I don't quite speak or understand

Rock my head and count the tiles

Upon the ceiling or the lights

Which sweep across the twilight skies

A cosmos in a grain of sand

That they don't see or comprehend

Safe in my world, my perfect place

Behind the mask that hides my face

And from the windows to my soul

The lights shine bright, but no one’s home

 

[Tom]

My green beans shimmering in the moonlight
How did they get outside anyway?

 

[granolaturtle]

Something I wrote a while ago...

A stirring glow fell across the street

In the bitter wind, above the sleet,

It was then that we supposed we’d meet

Where the floods approach the sea



You stared into the water, counting every stone,

Through the murk of brackish tone,

The light of shells and treasures shone

In the murk of lonely souls



There was a bridge here, did you know?

It collapsed long ago,

Covered now beneath the flow

Of the ocean salt



And if you were to find it again,

Would you find me here as well?

The wind had taken me, and then,

I rested for many years



I long to see your face,

Gaze closely at those eyes,

And warn you to embrace your fears –

Lest you spend a thousand years

Drowning in the tiding’s rise.

 

[CiJo]

I love the poetry of e e cummings:

I Have Found What You Are Like by e e cummings

i have found what you are like
the rain,

(Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of green thrilling light
with thinned

newfragile yellows

lurch and.press

—in the woods
which
stutter
and

sing
And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
your kiss


And this is one of my favorite poems ever:

As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

 

[CiJo]

What age was I?


When I started working?

Helping her from a chair,

washing dishes in the sink,

always too small.


Legs churning on my bike,

newspaper delivery at five am,

to the howls of coy dogs at dawn,

ready to kill me.


She said it was a good job,

cleaning motel rooms of vomit

with broken glass in the bathroom

eyed with glee by the owner's son

out of the corner of his eyes.


They had locked wards

with the most violent cases,

tied to beds and fed with a spoon,

flinching when they tried to bite my fingers,

where I slept with no lock on my door.


Snoring drunks at the tables

at the corner of ontario and fairmount,

vomit there too,

head swiveling round for danger

on the way back.


Ticketing clothes in a factory,

mothered by the italian women

who pushed me into the office.

I liked the factory better.


Endless years of typing, filing,

and coffee served in high heels,

as an office trophy shiny and new.

Men whistling, honking, smiling,

trying to reach out to touch me.


Higher learning,

no real comprehension of the

pathways thru doors,

with leering professors who

looked at you with greedy eyes.

Wondering what I looked like

with my naked ass in the air.


Never understood what they saw

or sensed about me,

i’m no Marilyn or Ursula

or Bridget, yet;

at fifty older men

still leer in the grocery.

And I want to smash their faces

with a hammer.

I love this. Did you write it?

 

[Mia]

I love this. Did you write it?

Yes I did, thank you.

I also like ee cummings as well, one of my favourites is; "anyone lived in a pretty how town".

 

[Sass]

I will sleep through the first minute of the new year,

Through the lights and bells.

The bell jar does not toll for me,

(See what I did there?

Of course you did,

I’m not that smart really),

I will sleep, and hope that the fabric of time,

And its frayed, corrosive friend-not-friends,

Don’t mind a seamstress with fingers that stutter,

And shine with blind resilience,

Even while they make a mess.

I will sleep through the fray,

I will stitch it into the same pattern the last year tore,

With the light in my eyes.

I will sleep.

 

[qwerty]

Ode to a Nightingale
BY JOHN KEATS
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

 

[StephF]

A Haiku about Winter.

I wake, reluctant
Too cold to get out of bed,
but I need to pee

 

[qwerty]

A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself — and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can decry
Its own concenter’d recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

—Lord Byron, Prometheus

 

[tree]

What I made, using this tool:
http://www.had2know.com/arts/random-poem-generator.html

Spirit is a scintillating paw.
All seas fight sneering, sneering seas.
The scintillating cat quietly desires the claw.
The claw purrs like a sneering fur.
Furs rise!
O, willingness!

Nonsense is a sneering sea.
Meorrr, adventure!
Why does the claw endure?
Prrrrrowwwwl, adventure!
Adventure is a scintillating tail

Why does the cat endure?
Nonsense, adventure, and spirit.
All cats
love
desire
fight
kill
hunt
sneering with delightful fangs

Claws rise like sneering seas.
Willingness, playfulness, and nonsense.
Why does the fang purr?
Never love a tail.
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