¤ milky moon ¤

It strikes me as funny that such a crowd shouldn't share its poetry. Clearly we all have a knack for it - listening and comprehending is the most difficult part - so surely we must have attempted some of our own? Bare your soul here in verse, share the wealth of your experience with those perhaps less fortunate. I'll start us off with a few of my own; if you're not a poet, you should be. Put key to notepad or pen to paper and compose! The English language is yours to do with what you will. Here are some of my most recent poetasties:

A Memory

A memory: the sculpture! Yes, caressed from air,
such beauty there, such beauty where
no gaze could linger, no lip abraid;
and such a face, such eyes
that never could the sun (the mere sun!)
the mere sun, which I despise,
erase; not an atom could the sun erase,
nor the lip snag - no;
and his hands, which were soft hands,
pale hands with burden of cloth,
in his hands where the cloth fell -
by my cheek, where it fell -
there, on the Dirt, spilled a lie,
a little false sliver of dark on Her
back, which arched under a feather sky.

Here is his shadow, all around me;
all around me lies the cloth in ease,
cotton-clouded swaddling cloth;
but where the sky? where the Dirt?
Here, as I emerge (and cannot release
that swaddling cloth, lest I tremble without
that swaddling cloth); here they are
(O how the fingertips coldly sieze,
O such feeling, to be flooded with cold)
as I emerge, blindfolded, blinded with ease;
and there he is, and there the sky,
but nothing else. Where everything else?
Crack and break and ruin (please
let there be nothing else)
and him and the sky, and nothing else.

There he is, naked, nude,
warm stone; mundanely hewn - am I not ashamed?
But my eyes: I see him; blinking I see him, veined
with red, madness and mess rock-blotting red, red as a beast,
red as skin and red as nerve; red with lust and hunger;
"act, do"... and there the loss,
where a star falls from his eye and splashes in the Dirt;
there he is alive; disgusting, alive; naked -

there, the sky. So empty, sky,
where lost shapes reel, and missing hues,
and the grass's gulp, the dry bleach,
where the dying hiss rustles
over bones, and the shapes of bones,
charred there into the earth
(amidst crack and break and ruin)
in black light-ink; where the sky whistles
not seed nor tune, not relief; no,
too slow, the sky, to spin them out.

What fossil am I? Here (where the Dirt is warm, still warm;
and the sky light, lighter than before) where I see - how I see! -
am I wrapped in sinew, and bound in bandage,
and creaking and peeling and bloated with air.
And here do I, act, do, inch into the distance;
there the green plays in the sky, flickering in the world's walls,
there the fly and the bird,
there the blood, trickle from cut,
there they play and draw me on,
ignored, and I ask: "Tell me:
do any of you grow?"

Mask

Among a heap of broken images
sits a gilded mask,
raven's feathers framing
framed eyes, every glint
either love or hatred,
mirth or a tear,
which there I break,
once in a blue moon,
to mend with glue
with the rising of its splendour
in the despised Sun.
O Lord, O poet,
singer, whatever else
may hear me,
say that my gaudy enemy
will never again mock me
from behind the hills,
say that my indignity
is over, that the prostitution
of my faithful soul
might be brought to its close.
Lower the curtain, I pray,
and let the mask,
as it falls, reveal only
a smile.

Sorry

Well, I've embarrassed you and I again
in recollection of what has passed:
the only witnesses,
the morning dew on brash weeds
feeding on the damp stones
which impressed themselves
upon the downturned soles
of my bare feet;
the coils of smoke
which rose from lips
(which once,
before permitted memory,
had purpose)
and vanished, blushing,
into the scarlet air;
the smoldering butt, discarded
in a pampas:
all fleeting and silent.
Still mind,
permit; still heart,
never repent:
with which three words
I may not speak,
brim and overflow.

On Being Ill

An illness, insulate,
has seized my breast,
swelling to burst from its
tiny sample,
hungry, hungry, to feed
on my each limb,
on its warden,
on each fellow
prisoner, swelling
to consume. A contagion,
'controlled', fills
my no-man's-heart,
entrenched and, muddy,
shrinks from the
dust, kicked up
over it by scraping hooves
of rolling eyes, frothy mane,
bared teeth.
How could bars restrain
such a force? How could I,
weakened as I am,
weary of this mess,
keep safe the key?
Imprisoned in a prisoner's
prison, have mercy,
lay down, safe
and warm in my arms,
in my arms.


Now that all the pretentious poesy's done, I invite you to share your own.

i, too, am a poet. I must bring my book over, and transcribe it.

Ode to Joanna
Oh Ms. Joanna Newsom,
some say she is quite gruesome
she claws endlessly at her harp
and never fails to look real sharp

&
Milk and Honey
Calling for a long lost friend
though my mind can't comprehend
ever changing is the tide
fickle; as are you and I

I haven't written anything since the angsty days of being 15, so won't be participating, but I would argue that poetry that is easier to write than it is to read and understand is just bad poetry.

I would argue that poetry is the expression of one's suppressed psychosis: metaphorical language is intuitive and based wholly on one's subjective experience, because what is a metaphor other than a voluntary delusion? A psychotic episode or a hallucination throw up all of one's subconscious associations; essentially the mind constructs a metaphorical reality. Even the most referential and well-planned poem, then, is difficult to write only due to the obstacles which the poet places in the way of their goal: metre, rhyme, structure, etc.; and the content contained therein must come naturally or otherwise ring false.
Has anyone ever entirely understood The Waste Land, or A Season in Hell?

I love poems. My favorite poem of all time is richard cory.
and Chris Hagen wrote : the sweetness of the springtime rain runs right down the window pane/ in someone's yearbook. It was later revealed he was Ted Bundy.
I love poems about me:

For Sara by K. L. Ward
You sifted through the dregs, right?
Pulled me softly by the ears through the ash pile
that often develops in our industrial southern gopher hole.
The light that split this tarry birth canal asunder,
through which all hope of existence lay,
shrouds itself in neon beaded hair and pomegranate lips.
A mammalian life so precious, it absorbs all surrounding light
to illuminate like a lightning storm masked by innumerable doves.

Speak nonchalantly about spaces foreign to mine.
I tremble in religious tantra to the melody of your words.
The lightness of their intoxicating vibrations,
the lover's caress to my shielded eardrums.
Your invisible hand movements like spiritual magnets
grasp at the goodness in me, the shards of.
I rue love that turned me one desperate and cold.
Turn me now into a creature pf angelic congruence.

Once a troubled youth with fault lines for hands,
my stronghold is a face like no other
a collaboration of brass and irreplaceable ruby
amidst that face, a figure I long to hold,
to unscath, to purify, to disrobe.
Despite the thorns that strangle my thoughts,
I yearn for your specter to enter my heart and know
I truly love all that you are.

O! the advantages of seeing a poet.

I love poetry, it's a great way to express. love reading everyones poetry here, keep it coming I sometimes write hateful poetry about people I have loved and lost, perhaps another time :op

meh, I like my poets British and to the point rather than over-wordy and pretentious. Heaney. I like Heaney.

Isn't there an inherent contradiction in the idea of poetry that isn't verbose and complex? A poem is a more verbose and complex medium than plain text, and if a poem expresses something that could be expressed in plain text it must be unnecessarily verbose and complex, i.e. over-wordy and pretentious. The only way a poem can not be over-wordy and pretentious is if it justifies its existence as a poem by the nature of its content.

all poetry is full of pretense, for it pretends: "we have art so that we don't die of the truth." - nietzsche

I can give freely, lavish affection.
I can let go, though slowly.
I can be no-one to anyone, as long as
I am someone to myself.

Sorry on the fly poetry.

The thing is, with the advent of literacy, rhyme, rhythm and metre are no longer necessary. Their purpose was to aid memorisation. The first poetry was epic poetry, which was so long that it could only be preserved through the use of mnemonic devices and even then only by a few specialists. Now that we can just write them down and anyone with a basic education can preserve them from infancy to the grave, there are two reasons for their inclusion: to show off one's skill, or as another layer of meaning. Rhyme or rhythm for rhyme or rhythm's sake contributes nothing to the intellectual depth of a poem.
My point about a poem justifying its existence as a poem is that that's the only way that a poem can't be pretentious. If you carried out mundane conversations in verse, people would think you pretentious.

I don't write poetry I write short stories. I guess I could post them up but there doesn't seem to be a big interest in actual comment or conversation of work here; just arguments about what poetry is and people showing their own stuff :x

Well, this can just be a thread for all things literature-related. Discussion of literature, sharing literature, etc.

a poem must be: "just like a womans skirt, long enough to cover the subject, and short enough to make it interesting"

Joie De Vivre

Sing a song in your
Virtue.

Time it. Time it
Well.

I’ll see you tomorrow
And we will hope for another time in the
Windy day.

Ok, if I can't say that I don't like poetry that is over-wordy and pretentious without it resulting in over-wordy pretension, I'll sum up my views with:

I like things that are pretty, feel pleasant on the tongue and inspire thought of some description.

'What a beautiful face I have found in this place
that is circling all round the sun.
When we meet on a cloud,
I'll be laughing out loud,
I'll be laughing with everyone I see.
Can't believe
how strange it is to be anything at all.'

of course that's a song, but Jeff Mangum's lyrics are a pretty good example of what is, to me, perfect poetry. To sum up beautiful and complicated ideas concisely and gracefully takes far more skill than does prattling on endlessly using big words and fancy punctuation.

Well, needless to say, I disagree. I also think argument doesn't have to be hostile.

Call it discussion. S'all good that you disagree, just giving my humble opinion on things.

A poem is just a magic box
With something deep inside
A key will often open it
Ooops i guess i lied

dwain