Poets' Corner

[GirlyMan]

(05-09-2011 05:53 PM)Zatamon Wrote:  It was a hot summer day and I was driving on a country road, in the middle of a swampy area and there it was, almost at arms-length, just floated up from the marsh and seemed to hover in the mist. One of my truly spiritual moments.

So be it.

[SecularStudent]

Oh wow, you guys have got a lot of talent (a whole hell of a lot more than me ^.^).

I'm a bit of an amateur poet, but most of my poetry is crappy stuff I wrote as a teenager Here's a couple that are a little more recent though:

All the world's a stage, and we,
Merely players, play our roles
As we please. There is no great
Puppeteer in the sky; no
Shakespeare behind the Globe; no
Prompter cuing lines, for there are
No lines to behold. Some players
May still read - from an aging,
Fading script, sure - but they need not.
There is no audience beyond the stage;
No one to judge the merit of their
Prose, nor measure the metre of
Their lines. Following a script is just
A waste of time.
Beyond the stage, behind the curtain,
What awaits these players is
Mere-ly oblivion; of their characters,
The death of their careers. Learning lines
Will not extend their lives; the theatre
Door is open - exit at your time.

- This poem was inspired by Jaques' famous "All the world's a stage" speech in As You Like It -


Life is like an ever-moving pen
Across a page; you can control
It to a certain extent, but
You cannot stop it or let go.
Every mark made cannot be
Undone by any hand or wishful thinking,
Yet you do not have time
To pause and contemplate
Your next move; you just move.
The pen can flow across the
Page in graceful arcs or fall
To the habit of repeating
Circles within circles within
A house in the cold, but you
Always have a choice to make
The circles pretty. You cannot
Write off the page or it will
Never be read. I write in blue
Myself and my work stays on the page;
My work is my life scrawled
In pretty lines that must
Resemble something abstracted.
After all, that is what modern
Art is all about. Life, modern
Life is moving across the page
Sans pen, but leaving tracks just the same.


Oh and, @bemore: I barely ever give titles to my poetry either, though in my case it's 'cause I suck at coming up with them. Only rarely do I find a title that fits well enough with my poem that I'll title it.

[Zatamon]

(06-09-2011 09:58 AM)SecularStudent Wrote:  I'm a bit of an amateur poet, but most of my poetry is crappy stuff I wrote as a teenager Here's a couple that are a little more recent though:

Hi SecularStudent, I liked both of them very much -- found myself in perfect agreement with the thoughts expressed and the flow of the words was almost mesmerizing. They were also very concise, expressing a lot of intriguing thoughts with the minimal number of words, which is the hallmark of good poetry.

One comment: you started every line with a capital letter and it disturbed me (most of them fell in the middle of a sentence) until I reread them, ignoring the capitals, then it made perfect sense. Sometimes word processors do that to you (capitalizing the beginning of each line) but we shouldn't let them dictate to us.

Thank you for sharing them with us.

[Peterkin]

something from my distant, distant youth:


There must always be dragons who
obligingly drop dead
at the right hero's feet.
There must always be enemies,
conveniently in the wrong
and weak.

There must be gods
after somebody's blood -
prayers and swords
to open gates
and make rain fall.

Nobody wants to be real;
nobody wants to be
just another biped,
scrounging for roots and love.

It's not enough
to feed our children;
it's not enough to know for sure
where the stars will go next.
It's not enough to be alive
or even to be safe and out of pain
and to sleep warm.

There must always be goats
to burn for our vicious pet gods.
There must be gods
to make us great,
that we need not be good.


Okay, Zatamon, you finally broke down my resistance. Hope you're happy.

[Homunculus]

I claim amateur status as well, but this is one of my better ones.

Shock moves in as the world goes mute
Painful is each breath
I call out desp'rately into space
But none answers back 'cept death

My fingers taste the blood below
But my eyes no longer see it
My throat it catches that last request
And my lips they cannot free it

I'm so afraid, but a hand grips mine
I grasp it with all my life
But I cannot know, that hand I hold
Is the one that held the knife

[Zatamon]

(06-09-2011 10:29 AM)Peterkin Wrote:  Okay, Zatamon, you finally broke down my resistance. Hope you're happy.

Yes, Peterkin, I am very happy, even though you blew me away!

[SecularStudent]

(06-09-2011 10:15 AM)Zatamon Wrote:  Hi SecularStudent, I liked both of them very much -- found myself in perfect agreement with the thoughts expressed and the flow of the words was almost mesmerizing. They were also very concise, expressing a lot of intriguing thoughts with the minimal number of words, which is the hallmark of good poetry.

One comment: you started every line with a capital letter and it disturbed me (most of them fell in the middle of a sentence) until I reread them, ignoring the capitals, then it made perfect sense. Sometimes word processors do that to you (capitalizing the beginning of each line) but we shouldn't let them dictate to us.

Thank you for sharing them with us.

Thanks for the compliments ^.^

About the capital letters: I write most of my poetry with a pen and paper actually. It's just an obsessive habit of mine to use conventional capitalisation in most of my poetry

[Zatamon]

PS.

Your poem, Peterkin, reminded me of my all time favourite poem by Polish Nobel Lauriet Wislawa Szymborska.

Here it comes:

The End and the Beginning - By Wislawa Szymborska

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone has to trudge
through the sludge and ashes,
through sofa springs
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at clouds.

[bemore]

The words I am about to put are not my own.........there not actually what people would immediatly deem as "poetry"......they are not from poetic sources.

I wont say where there from.......if you wish you can put some/part/all of them into a search engine and you will find out if you feel you need to........but first just see the words for what they are, without judging them from where they came from.

I hope you understand what fear is before you have to feel it.
I hope my neurosis don't rub off on you.
I hope you always have enough to eat.
I hope you're never bullied and I hope you never bully others.
I hope you find love.
I hope you don't die before your time.
I hope you don't blame yourself for things that are not your fault.
I hope you're always playing your tape and I hope you'll visit me when I'm old.
I hope you are true to yourself.
I hope that rejection doesn't stop you loving.
I hope you never experience war.

What, are you come to teach me?
Well, would you want 'Philosophy' or 'The New Wayne Rooney' ?
Will it be poetry that lights your eyes?
Mine are shining and my tears flow free...
Oh my son, what have I done?
Brought perfection to this world of confusion heedlessly...
Now you're the one feeding me,
Because I never knew love like this, endlessly reaching back through eternity that I can clearly see in your face when you smile at me and grab my finger.

I stare at my reflection in the mirror:
"Why am I doing this to myself?"
Losing my mind on a tiny error,
I nearly left the real me on the shelf.
No, no, no, no, no...

Don't lose who you are in the blur of the stars!
Seeing is deceiving, dreaming is believing,
It's okay not to be okay.
Sometimes it's hard to follow your heart.
Tears don't mean you're losing, everybody's bruising,
Just be true to who you are!

Brushing my hair, do I look perfect?
I forgot what to do to fit the mould, yes!
The more I try the less it's working, yeah
'Cause everything inside me screams
No, no, no, no, no...

Yes, no's, egos, fake shows, like WOAH!
Just go, and leave me alone!
Real talk, real life, good love, goodnight,
With a smile, that's my home!
That's my home, no...

[GirlyMan]

(06-09-2011 09:58 AM)SecularStudent Wrote:  There is no audience beyond the stage;

I find that profound.

(06-09-2011 10:29 AM)Peterkin Wrote:  There must be gods
to make us great,
that we need not be good.

I find that profound.

(07-09-2011 07:53 AM)bemore Wrote:  It's okay not to be okay.

I find that profound.

(06-09-2011 10:31 AM)Homunculus Wrote:  But I cannot know, that hand I hold
Is the one that held the knife

But I should've known ...


It would be nice if I could add something profound myself someday instead of just recognizing it. Ah well.