quote:My mind drifted towards you, Allen Ginsberg, as it is wont to do,
I liked most of your poem, Pel, but this line actually made me laugh out loud.
The rest of it's pretty good, even if it's trying rather hard to wear its allusions on its sleeves. (I'd dump the "Keatsian" descriptor attached to the beggar, for example.) There's nothing wrong with exposing your influences, especially in poetry, but some of them are a bit too transparent. (And there's a diminishing rate of returns: when you quote a poem that in turn quotes a poem which quotes a poem, how far are you from the original inspiration?)
Out of interest, how do you feel about the "worldplay" thread?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Yes, well, the poem was inspired by a combination of main three things, an actual night out in Athens, T.S. Eliot's Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Allen Ginsberg's Supermarket in California especialy the idea of Allen Ginsberg being with me like Whitman was with him.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Perhaps I was dropped on the left side of my head, because I feel as though words are pus-like fluids seeping out of my ears, and not a single decent one can be retained long enough to flow out of my fingers and onto the page. Sometimes I put my ear over my keyboard in a vain attempt that they'll leak on the keys and that the prose will write itself. I'm far too unfortunate, though, because whenever I do so, all I end up with is scrambled French and German. Is it possible to cultivate my words in a jar, and run them through a centrifuge?
Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
No Title As of Yet I am not a Horatian character, such heroic blood flows not in my veins, I am a cynic, plain and simple.
A cynic cannot be a poet, so I have been told, “go, write novels, there is room for pessimism there.”
“But a poet must love, like Martí loved Cuba, like Dante loved Beatrice”
I fear I love nothing, nothing but myself. I see myself in the mirror of humanity a distorted image that still looks clear I reach, it reaches back Between us a pane of glass.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Yes, I think so too. Actually, I tend to oscillate between deep cynicism and profound humanism. The former is a much easier position.
Thus, I present
The World's Shortest Prose Poem There is cynicism and there is humanism and between them are synapses.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Here's my first new one in years. Let me know what you think (oh yeah, girls suck).
Waiting
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
Fingers drum erratic beats on the sofa’s side while the digital clock traps weary, darting eyes.
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
Ambulances driving through my brain give sick hope; rebutted by growling knots lodged within my guts.
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
My head whips round to face the telephone, willing it to life, but it sits silent and accusing.
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
My legs begin to shake, so I leap to my feet to continue my march round the coffee table. The concrete foundation lies exposed in patches, staring up through the worn carpet. I curse the man on the television screen for laughing at me. I begin to quicken my pace, while my hands tug at my hair. The muscles in my legs ache. Sweat beads on my brow. I collapse…
back onto the sofa to resume my solo upon it’s threadbare side, which echoes through til dawn.
posted
We had an assignment for our birthing class. Write a poem to the placenta.
It takes a villus
The placenta is a special place A disk-like installation It means “flat cake” It can’t be faked Except in Science Fiction.
Derived from not-so special cells Early in development It builds a sack Prevents attack And handles all procurement.
The chorionic villi too Have their special purpose They flesh us out, And flush us out Thank God they’re semi-porous!
Bathed in drops of mother’s blood The villi set the rules For passing gas Increasing mass And grabbing molecules.
Up and down umbilicus All this stuff is flowing The baby grows And never knows How this organ keeps it going
Lasting all through 9 long months The placenta stays the course A final push It all goes squoosh And no-one shows remorse.
Come let us sing placental praise For despite the many ouches, Without it we’d be laying eggs Or growing kids in pouches!
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
hmm, I think my poem got buried on the last page, so I'm going to repost it. Anyway, here it is again, brand spanking new (first new one in a few years in fact). As always, your criticism is welcome.
Waiting
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
Fingers drum erratic beats on the sofa’s side while the digital clock traps weary, darting eyes.
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
Ambulances driving through my brain give sick hope; rebutted by growling knots lodged within my guts.
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
My head whips round to face the telephone, willing it to life, but it sits silent and accusing.
Pinky, ring, middle, fore
My legs begin to shake, so I leap to my feet to continue my march round the coffee table. The concrete foundation lies exposed in patches, staring up through the worn carpet. I curse the man on the television screen for laughing at me. I begin to quicken my pace, while my hands tug at my hair. The muscles in my legs ache. Sweat beads on my brow. I collapse…
back onto the sofa to resume my solo upon it’s threadbare side, which echoes through til dawn.
posted
upon the changing season of my life i find myself proud.
two years time plus earnest hard work yield progress i myself stand in awe of from a confused girl to a confident woman i feel a completeness i didn't realize i was missing
taking time for myself i learned who myself was and what it took to learn that was only hard till i'd started. i have become my own best friend, confidant and supporter... a far cry from the previous role of worst enemy
i have become that much closer to being the person i'd like to have people think i am and realized that i had become an ocean of doubt and negativity whose tides have gladly changed
now set on this path i intend to move only forward while using the past as a reminder of how far i've come remembering past mistakes just long enough to learn from and celebrating success with an eye always toward the future...
upon the changing season of my life i find myself proud.
posted
Bob, that is the greatest poem I've ever read about a placenta. That praise should be in no way lessened by the fact that it is the only poem I've ever read about to a placenta. Between the rhyme scheme and the playful irreverance, you managed to make a placenta seem "cute" (which is no small feat).
Posts: 748 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I saw her standing, in the shadows of the night With golden blonde hair and blue smile She had a low cut corset, as sure as you can bet I quickly glazed o’er her profile
She’s my warcraft girl (world of warcraft girl!) I’m her warcraft guy (world of warcraft girl!) Never had one before! (a world of warcraft girl!) Hope she don’t ask why (world of warcraft girl!) She’s my warcraft girl, my warcraft girl.
I asked for her heart, in exchange for my shield She told me to throw in my sword I agreed to the trade, and we went on a raid I was hers when she let out a roar
She’s my warcraft girl (world of warcraft girl!) I’m her warcraft guy (world of warcraft girl!) Never had one before! (a world of warcraft girl!) Hope she don’t ask why (world of warcraft girl!) She’s my warcraft girl, my warcraft girl.
Now I am her man, ‘though she leads the clan Least thats what I let her think I still run the show, when I battle our foe It’s my call that we all wear pink
She’s my warcraft girl (world of warcraft girl!) I’m her warcraft guy (world of warcraft girl!) Never had one before! (a world of warcraft girl!) Hope she don’t ask why (world of warcraft girl!) She’s my warcraft girl, my warcraft girl.
Posts: 9754 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
Romantic Notions of my Youth “No finiràia il dizùn dal timp?” “Will time's hunger never die?” — Pier Paolo Pasolini, from “I dis robàs”
Here dwells Christ the Tiger, sleeping in the cave-corner cages, rusted columbaria of our collective mind.
Like Dervishes, we turned in tightening gyre, inward-eyed scholars, ink fingered, truth’s pages, fire-eyed with steel sword to cut the serpent tongues that lied.
My friends, we set cross-legged neath Bodhi trees, reading mystic, Gnostic, Sufist scrolls, seeking truths in some distant past, Boethius, Benedict, ben Eliezer: we could not think (what to know?); we tried to feel.
We, Apollonian figures on Athenian frieze studied our mosaics and El Greco— iconographer, iconoclast —in great cities of stalled subways, crumbling castles and falling minarets, all unreal.
Monks, with bells and gongs, and trees bore witness to the passing time. Time stood still, and yet, in darkness, slid like sleds on the Archduke’s hill the dikes shattered, the Ianiculum taken, the docks lie beneath the Zuider Zee.
Here stand I, old man, blind seer, poet with strainéd rhyme and labyrinthine reason, laid bare in limitations, yet more strainéd still, look back with false remembrances, to the flowered crags of Arcadia, when I knew me.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Hmm, Prevert wrote a poem about Breakfest that reminds me of yours:
quote:Il a mis le café Dans la tasse Il a mis le lait Dans la tasse de café Il a mis le sucre Dans le café au lait Avec la petite cuiller Il a tourné Il a bu le café au lait Et il a reposé la tasse Sans me parler Il a allumé Une cigarette Il a fait des ronds Avec la fumée Il a mis les cendres Dans le cendrier Sans me parler Sans me regarder Il s'est levé Il a mis Son chapeau sur sa tête Il a mis Son manteau de pluie Parce qu'il pleuvait Et il est parti Sous la pluie Sans une parole Sans me regarder Et moi j'ai pris Ma tête dans ma main Et j'ai pleuré.
quote: Breakfast
He poured the coffee Into the cup He put the milk Into the cup of coffee He put the sugar Into the coffee with milk With a small spoon He churned He drank the coffee And he put down the cup Without any word to me He emptied the coffee with milk And he put down the cup Without any word to me He lighted One cigarette He made circles With the smoke He shook off the ash Into the ashtray Without any word to me Without any look at me He got up He put on A hat on his head He put on A raincoat Because it was raining And he left Into the rain Without any word to me Without any look at me And I buried My face in my hands And I cried
posted
Here the tao of now: Lose yourself in the present, Not in yet-to-comes Nor in might-have-beens. Treasure this time now, for all Moments are fleeting.
Posts: 413 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Avatar300: Here the tao of now: Lose yourself in the present, Not in yet-to-comes Nor in might-have-beens. Treasure this time now, for all Moments are fleeting.
Here's to the Te of today: Let life come, hold it tightly Push your death as far away To be born again every day Live your life for now, let Tomorrow never come.
I'm sorry to piggyback off your poem. Let it be said that yours inspired mine, a spur-of-the-moment type of thing.
Posts: 155 | Registered: Nov 2006
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My life would be a desert, save For fountains shared with you. My spirit, parched and caked with dust, Seeks out your morning dew.
I then, at parting, thirst again Until I see your lights Marking oasis waters in My lonely desert nights.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Something happened and I let you in. There's this thing that happens sometimes when I kiss you that makes me have to breathe in and then the rational part of my brain and my heart start yelling.
So I stop.
But not before a little piece of whatever it is that you are makes its way into whatever it is that I am.
My rational self screaming because even my heart knows it's probably going to wind up broken in those places I breathed deep and welcomed you into.
I still wouldn't trade it. Sometimes heartache is worth it. The beauty's in the journey not the destination. Just enjoy the ride.
Posts: 1355 | Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
The scent of a ship seeking harbor, a shallow field of Sea-World strollers, a broken pearl necklace in the blackberry sky,
Kites dissolve in the napalm sky, a jeweled mist sifting through the shadows, the sight of thunder over a shallow grave,
Flying leaves in the dancing wind, black hands moving like crow wings, hot tears like liquid fire.
Flying leaves seeking harbor jeweled thunder, broken grave napalm tears like the dancing wind
Sifting scent moving like shadow in blackberry strollers hot with mist the sky dissolves under fire
A ship moving with hot tears sifts through the dissolving shadows. Fire pearls in Sea-World’s graves breaks the crow, flying above the napalm thunder.
Posts: 681 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
this is a poem I wrote for my dad on Father's Day:
My father can make few things in the kitchen the whirl of hard counters and ripe fruit sensory overload to his engineer's mind but on Sunday's when my mother has fallen fast and soundless into bed he strides through Napoleon in a white shirt and tie first the bread, thick and brown, lathered with sweet cream butter The cheese now sliced by sword and his determined shaky hand the smell of the dirty griddle rises through the house, last weeks' sandwiches now burnt on he slaps his babies down, spanking the griddle for some misdeed it sing sizzles into the afternoon air and calls us in. We have never heard of Waterloo.
Posts: 16 | Registered: Apr 2004
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Half-lit trees by the chapel shake at their leisure, knowing they have centuries left. The music is all right but I still wonder when was this ever enough to please me?
I imagine your thoughts in parallel: What other world was Cape Cod, where one of my fingers on your arm was enough? You chewed a curl of hair then and I was proud in a way more private than sex. Thought of leaving a different taste in your mouth. Will I ever?
Never ever, for all I know.
But despite all I know I mean to show you this someday in five years before tumbling on top of you, my five-year-old words touching you like one finger did.
There is construction happening outside my windows...
Woken one morning to the sound of beeping heavy machines and Trees being quite unceremoniously ripped out of the ground.
It was, is a horrible sound. Much like a tooth being torn out of gums, magnified by a googolplex. Is that what the sound of Children having a Grass fight sounds like to the ants?
The view is not the same; Will never be the same. Where once was a sea of green, brown and at times yellow, red, orange; At other times light green and whitish, changing like the tides... now more resembles a chain-link fence.
Nature giving way to man's incessant need to destroy in the name of... in the name of... What?
The view's not the same. It's more like a puddle made beautiful by a long ago oil leak.
Where you let go of the agenda ("Leave my trees alone!") and just bare the imagery of the scene, you succeed well enough. I love the image of the teeth being ripped out. You do have a lot of different elements in there, however, which can make for a kind of overload.
Your last line-- "I miss the Sea--" doesn't work because the water images in the stanzas previous are not strong enough. I know you say "sea" and "tide" and "puddle" but I need more association with them than just words in order to justify they last line.
Does that make sense?
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Saw a cop eat a bullet for a girl, They were sitting in a coffee shop. Muzzle flashes like flags unfurled Kiss that girl, that cop.
But there's neon tonight And an itch in my jeans Howl beneath the baroom lights And wish that I were clean.
Can't stay sober in this riot, Not for a cop, not for a dame, Not for God would I stay quiet, Here and now, I drink the blame.
But there's neon tonight Outside the bedroom door And all of Eros is alight, I go walking 'cross the floor.
Saw a kid drift into space, He must have thought that he had wings. Drifting sunward, I saw his face, And I heard that poor boy sing:
There's no neon tonight, That I'd trade for the sun You're all locked inside those lights, But I'll see you when you're done.
Eros Blues, pt II
When the hammer comes down, baby, who you gonna love? When the other shoe drops, baby, who you gonna love?
He's a sweet sweetener man, yeah, but I've got a better plan, I'm going to take you downtown, find the underground Ride that midnight train, and scream your name, Make your love like a whip, and I'm kissing your wrist.
When the hammer comes down, baby, who you gonna love? When the other shoe drops, baby, who you gonna love?
It's a jingle-jangle world, in a hurdy-gurdy street, So it's strange, baby doll, there's only silence 'neath my feet. Where are all the jangles, and hurdy-gurdy men? I'm kissing your wrist, love, and I'm pulling the pin.
When the hammer comes down, I'll be your only love. When the other shoe drops, I'll be your only love.
My love, we'll explode, and noise will eat the night, Jingling, jangling trains, and names that shine out bright, It's a light, it's a light, light that strikes me like a fist, When we fly into darkness, I'll still be kissing your wrist.
When the hammer comes down, I'll be your only love. When the other shoe drops, I'll be your only love.
I read the one that Bob Scopatz wrote for the placenta, and it reminded me of a poem I wrote earlier this year while I was still pregnant.
Distanced
I can not see you yet Though you inhabit my dreams and fill my body with your own yearnings. I keep waiting to see that swell of my belly to tell me that you are coming. I wait, are you real or am I still asleep?
I can not hear you yet Though your complaints rock my stomach as if I were on a boat. I keep waiting to feel your quick movements to assure me that you’re well. I wait, but instead I am greeted with silence.
She tells me as I lay still the image on the screen is you. So small as you move about, Suddenly you are real. She tells me that you’re strong While I listen to the hushed thumping I close my eyes and imagine, At once you have a voice And I am reassured.
Posts: 701 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
This is the first poem I've written in, oh, years.
There's always been a clunkiness in my poetry that makes all the rhymes feel forced. It was interesting for me to read this, when I finished, and see how the patterns that bug me about my writing haven't changed since middle school.
The Wind that Blows (the Last Leaf from the Tree)
Crashing cold From Northern lands Biting steel To riven bands I madly scream From out my cave To seek the weak, The fool, the brave
It cannot last This idyllic pageant Our joy, tho' now full, Can last but a moment Our colors now bright Tomorrow must wane To glory we’ll cling But fast nears our death bane
A breeze, now a gust We tremble and quiver With a sigh, the first falls And floats down to the river Two more, then still more In droves now they speed We have but resolve, No hope can there be.
Blood red with dead husks Our tree’s roots now are crown’d. Save me, all have fallen To the frost-hardened ground; Alone now I face The brute force of the storm, Awaiting the moment I too will be shorn.
I square to the teeth Of the red-muzzled wind Tho’ fain would I fly As the fleet-footed hind. Once more I surveil My storm-ravaged land And having done all I stand.
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If you came in today you might ask me why I let my plant die. I would tell you I bought it full grown from the hardware store, And I never really taught it how to live. You, though, your three faces, my faces, smiling from my desk, I coaxed from the soil, And sang to, and fed the best of what I had. You, who thrive and therefore fill my heart, Would in your abundance sorrow for a poor green plant That shriveled on fluorescent light and tap water And no kind words. But I, with a thumb that is green for you only And black for all else, Am content to let my plant die.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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I've started many things without finishing. Tales of knights and kings, hand carved wooden rings, songs that no one sings: many things.
These tasks are well begun and start out fun. But well before I'm done, each task I shun, every one. And yet I've won.
The devil's in the detail and so I quail. What would completeness entail, but that Lucifer would prevail? To finish would be to fail.
Aloof above the demonic grind I keep my mind. Infernal knots not to unwind, my efforts are the purer kind: I keep my skill set unrefined. From hell enshrined.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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Flowers for Hitler I’m Sorry Words wasting in a tin can In some bunker In Berlin. I have a flower A solitary bloom of colour and life That found it’s way through A tempest of human indifference And I think I’ll give it to Hitler So he can see before the end How he could have made a difference.
Domestic Gravity That night, When he followed the mosquitoes Who had found their way to your body Hoping to follow their lead. He pulled a beach rose from the sand Thinking to coalesce its beauty With chemical charm But you refused his tribute Saying “I dream my own dreams and have no need for tired symbols of times when to be a woman was to be a flower. If you must find something to pluck, then let it be a rose plucked for the rose’s sake and not your own.” But the petals of that multifoliate rose Were no less numerous for having fallen through the mire of domestic gravity.
Posts: 959 | Registered: Oct 2005
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posted
Trix ---- Silly rabbit, tricking us kids. I mourned for you - your endless want. The box - empty. And you - a lie.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I gave that to Chris on our first Valentine's day together.
