POETRY

[Lady Penelope]

Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a favourite of mine:

I step across the mystic border-land
and look upon the wonder-world of Art
How beautiful, how beautiful its hills!
And all its valleys, how surpassing fair!

The winding paths that lead up to the heights
Are polished by the footsteps of the great.
The mountain-peaks stand very near to God;
The chosen few whose feet have trod thereon
Have talked with Him, and with the angels walked.

Here are no sounds of discord, no profane
Or senseless gossip of unworthy things -
Only the songs of chisels and of pens,
Of busy brushes, and ecstatic strains
Of souls surcharged with music most divine.
Here no idle sorrow, no poor grief
For any day or object left behind -
For time is counted precious, and herein
Is such complete abandonment of Self
That tears turn into rainbows, and enhance
The beauty of the land where all is fair.

Awed and afraid I cross the border-land.
Oh, who am I, that I dare enter here
Where the great artists of the world have trod -
The genius-crowned aristocrats of Earth?
Only the singer of a little song;
Yet loving Art with such a mighty love
I hold it greater to have won a place
Just of the fair land's edge, to make my grave,
Thank the outer world of greed and gain
To sit upon a royal throne and reign.

 

[Lady Penelope]

Oh, you who read some song that I have sung -
What know you of the soul from whence it sprung?
Dost dream the poet ever speaks aloud
His secret thought unto the listening crowd?
Go take the murmuring sea-shell from the shore -
You have its shape, its colour - and no more.
It tells not one of those vast mysteries
That lie beneath the surface of the seas.
Our songs are shells, cast out by waves of thought;
Here, take them at your pleasure ;
but think not you've seen beneath the surface of the waves,
Where lie our ship-wrecks, and our coral caves.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

 

[LookingforMe]

I like to write in a journal when trying to sort out feelings and wrote this a few years ago about my social anxiety.


*Faulty Connection*


When you look my way
I lose my breath
I tremble and shake
I get hot and red
Frozen
I won't look you in the eyes


For if I do you'll see my truth
Raw and dear
Ashamed and broken
Gripped by fear
I push you away
As to keep you from here


You'll have to leave
Never to return
In a state of wonder
Crazed and confused
Feeling my burn


You'll never know
How much I longed for you
Or the sadness I'll bury
In the depths of my soul


I didn't mean to be so cold
I didn't mean to be so cold

 

[LookingforMe]

*FML*

Gave it a go

smiled to look pretty

weakness seeped in

exposed it's not witty

I’m told Life

will always change

hold on, hang tight

yes it’s strange

your just an illusion

no God put you here

no Life is random

the people cheer

Certainly your life

means something my dear

Don’t give up

be grateful and nice

keep on playing

rolling the dice

But I’m so tired

weaker now still

Can I not

just take a pill?

 

[Isabel/Ez]

TW- references to bullying
Credit to Amy ‘Dolly’ Everett(1 May 2003-3 Jan 2018) for the title and line “Speak Even If Your Voice Shakes”

Speak Even If Your Voice Shakes

One word/that’s all it will take/just one little word/ four letters two sounds/ one word that will save you from this hell/ one word that will pull you out if their grip/but how can can I speak when my voice shakes/ maybe I just have to say it/ maybe how I say that one little word doesn’t matter/as long as I say it/ so I will speak, even if my voice shakes/ because if I don’t it won’t stop/ if I stay silent they win/ so I will speak even though my voice shakes/I will speak for myself and for those who can’t anymore.

 

[Fino]

There's a poem I read at least ten years ago that was something about making an impact and it used a lot of imagery like earthquakes and thunder, and I've never been able to find it again. I know that's not nearly enough information, just thought I'd throw that out there.

Anyway I've loved this one since I was fourteen. The first verse I've read like a million times. I'm not sure why, it just seems so beautiful to me somehow.

Elm
BY SYLVIA PLATH

For Ruth Fainlight


I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?

I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches?——

Its snaky acids hiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.

 

[Daydreamer]

On a cold winter night, there was a single cry, no one stopped.
Everyone merely passed by.
No one else could see what that child saw in the corner of their eye, darting across the sky.

Stars shone sharply in the form of a dancing woman, her lively eyes hiding under a disguise.
A masquerade mask embezzled with constellation jewels.
She seemed to move to her own rhythm, inventing her own rules.

Everything appeared so real.
From the flicking candlelight, to the evening meal.
Plenty of riches to steal.

The child looked up at the scene, with a hint of distaste.
He couldn't help thinking that it was all such a waste.

A fairy-tale place, taunting him, a dream he could never obtain.
There was no glory, or hint of fame.
His fate doomed to remain the same.

Forever left in the rain.

 

[watersprite]

Housecleaning

Pieces are snapped
Flung at the wall
Boots crush
The shards pierce my eyes with sadness

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

I never could get poetry, never read it, just not my thing . lyrics in songs, not as important as the melody.

 

[jleeb05]

I wrote most of my poetry in college. This was inspired by a conversation I had on the greyhound bus while on my way home for Winter break.

How Quickly We Become Strangers Again

A long bus ride on my way home.
He sits next to me and I smile.
We talk, just to pass the time a while,
but for a moment his words make time stop.
He tells me of exploits in the Amazon and his fondness for the guitar,
I dream of him strumming some cords as we sit under the stars.
But I know that when this bus ride ends how quickly we'll become strangers again.

We talked of college,
We're both in school.
I told him how mine was a place for the notoriously uncool.
I imagine us holding hands in the town square,
Walking through the grass with no shoes, our feet bare.
We talk politics and I tell him my dreams,
and for a moment it's like our hearts be in sync,
our souls flow in the same gentle stream.

The bus ride ends as I arrive home,
and once again I am alone,
His words evaporate in the cold air.
All that's left is his empty chair.
I sigh for I know the fantasy is dead,
the one that had for a moment danced in my head.
As I leave the bus terminal I see him once more,
I smile but he doesn't notice and heads for the door.
Maybe in some other life we could have been friends,
but how quickly we became strangers again.

 

[jleeb05]

Sigh, I wrote this after meeting the person who would become my greatest love (to this point)

The Poet’s Line

My love cannot be captured in the poet's line.
It cannot be understood by the rational mind.
It's larger than can be constellated in the astronomer's stars,
It’s more valuable than any metal for which Earth's beauty is marred,

The artist's palette cannot paint what isn't seen.
The sculptor cannot etch what seems only a dream.
A doctor doesn't know what twists my stomach in knots.
Alas, my illness cannot be cured by some silly shot.

It cannot be solved by the mathematician's equation.
It cannot be equaled by some scientist's mad creation.
Because in a world of technological advances,
Where there is little mystery that still entrances.
Where every work of art has been seen and consumed,
Where man has swam the deepest ocean and walked the moon,
What profane fool could even dare to explain,
Why I know I'll never be the same?


And I wrote this at the end…

The Hope Tree


Glorious are the leaves that crown the tree.
Even in death a sight to see.
Exploding in a brilliant dazzling array,
When the sun disappears and the sky turns gray.

But what happens when the cold winds start to blow?
And lofty leaves lose their golden glow?
From the tree that gave life they fall from grace.
Where on the cold earth their beauty is defaced.

Mauled and mangled by the traveler's foot.
Browned and blackened into slimy soot.
Fallen leaves are nothing more than fragile shells,
Lonely monuments to the life they once held.

On an old tree hunched and scarred by silent pains,
One lone leaf is all that remains.
I had dreamed that one day we'd sit under its shade,
And you'd hold me as I carved our initials with a sharpened blade.

In the fall of our love it still stands proud.
So soon to be enveloped in a wintry shroud.
I watch as the last leaf finally slips to the forbidding ground.
Where in the sky's raining tears, it drowns.

 

[jleeb05]

Wrote this when I was literally begging God/the universe help me understand the reason for all my romantic and social failures…turns out that “reason” was autism

If I Could Find A Reason

If I could find a reason,
Make sense of this coldest season,
Maybe then I could bare the lesson learned,
But the futility makes my stomach churn.

If I understood what I did wrong,
Then I could accept this fate prolonged.
To watch the coldest hearts succeed,
While this one continues to bleed.

Locked within a chest within my chest,
Free whatever hope I have left.
Let me feel that greater joy,
Retire for once these dirty ploys.

Must you kick me down to prove me strong?
Break my heart to show I'm wrong?
Must I feel every injury twice as hard?
Reopen every wound to prove I'm scarred?

If you could let me be for just one moment,
I'd take all that I am and own it.
Greatness within may require a man of stone,
But I'm not ready yet to walk alone.

Just for a moment let me be weak,
Provide me that of which I seek.
Let me feel those lips and taste the fire,
For once let me feel something higher.

But if not let me find a reason,
Make sense of this coldest season.
Give me something to help me cope,
And I swear I'll surrender this last hope.

 

[Valya81]

Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear
by Gwendolyn MacEwen - Refer to: Canadian Poetry Online | University of Toronto Libraries | Gwendolyn MacEwen

Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have every cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
Is is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
and in the long light,
Breathing.

I love this. Thank you. It explains a lot for me

 

[heaven777]

mushrooms, by sylvia plath

overnight, very
whitely, discreetly,
very quietly

our toes, our noses
take hold on the loam,
acquire the air.

nobody sees us,
stops us, betrays us;
the small grains make room.

soft fists insist on
heaving the needles,
the leafy bedding,

even the paving.
our hammers, our rams,
earless and eyeless,

perfectly voiceless,
widen the crannies,
shoulder through holes. we

diet on water,
on crumbs of shadow,
bland-mannered, asking

little or nothing.
so many of us!
so many of us!

we are shelves, we are
tables, we are meek,
we are edible,

nudgers and shovers
in spite of ourselves.
our kind multiplies:

we shall by morning
inherit the earth.
our foot's in the door.

 

[musicallessness]

my first poem i ever written

Alone Said the Boy Having Love

 

[Trophonius]

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -

 

[Kalinychta]

mushrooms, by sylvia plath

overnight, very
whitely, discreetly,
very quietly

our toes, our noses
take hold on the loam,
acquire the air.

nobody sees us,
stops us, betrays us;
the small grains make room.

soft fists insist on
heaving the needles,
the leafy bedding,

even the paving.
our hammers, our rams,
earless and eyeless,

perfectly voiceless,
widen the crannies,
shoulder through holes. we

diet on water,
on crumbs of shadow,
bland-mannered, asking

little or nothing.
so many of us!
so many of us!

we are shelves, we are
tables, we are meek,
we are edible,

nudgers and shovers
in spite of ourselves.
our kind multiplies:

we shall by morning
inherit the earth.
our foot's in the door.

I love Sylvia Plath. Today she’s kind of a joke, dismissed as a depressed feminist, but she’s actually one of the most talented and influential poets in history. She was a marvel.

 

[Kalinychta]

“Darkness” by Lord Byron

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

 

[Trophonius]

The Second Coming, by W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning of the widening gyre
The falcon cannot her the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony if innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely The Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body, and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow tighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, it's hour come round at last
Slouches toward Betlehem to be born?

 

[blue_bird]

Tonight I can write the saddest lines - Pablo Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tries to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.