[OT] Poetry
- Thread starter KDLadage
- Start date
Mark
CreativeMountainGames.com
The Mirror
As I sit and ponder,
Does it stare back, I wonder,
One reflective image of myself
Just an image that I see?
Or is it really me?
It doesn't look as if it needs my help
To reflect upon the glass,
A person that would pass,
For me, I think, in any time or place
Why don't you come on through?
Because, then I'd be you
And I know you wouldn't wish that on your own familiar face
As I sit and ponder,
Does it stare back, I wonder,
One reflective image of myself
Just an image that I see?
Or is it really me?
It doesn't look as if it needs my help
To reflect upon the glass,
A person that would pass,
For me, I think, in any time or place
Why don't you come on through?
Because, then I'd be you
And I know you wouldn't wish that on your own familiar face
Tetsubo
First Post
I've been writing on and off since I was twelve (I'm 38 now). I was a member of a poetry writing group for a time. It's how I met my girlfriend. Here is a piece that was inspired by Gamma World and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Industrial Butterfly
The beating of it's chromium wings herald the coming of spring
In the world of the nuclear winter and acid rain
It flits from girder to girder among the skeletal towers
Seeking a source of heat, of warmth, of life
It searches till it finds a scavenger amidst the ruins
Small and twisted of limb, but a breathing, living thing
It lands with a snowflakes kiss upon the sleeping form
And with infinite care lays a single egg on the survivors flesh
The egg secretes a paralytic poison through the skin of the chosen
Locking muscles rigidly in place like rusted ancient bolts
The chromium wings unfurl and she soars into the night
Secure in the knowledge her offspring will feast on it's host
To begin the cycle of life once again
In the land of the brave, the free and the nuclear age
Industrial Butterfly
The beating of it's chromium wings herald the coming of spring
In the world of the nuclear winter and acid rain
It flits from girder to girder among the skeletal towers
Seeking a source of heat, of warmth, of life
It searches till it finds a scavenger amidst the ruins
Small and twisted of limb, but a breathing, living thing
It lands with a snowflakes kiss upon the sleeping form
And with infinite care lays a single egg on the survivors flesh
The egg secretes a paralytic poison through the skin of the chosen
Locking muscles rigidly in place like rusted ancient bolts
The chromium wings unfurl and she soars into the night
Secure in the knowledge her offspring will feast on it's host
To begin the cycle of life once again
In the land of the brave, the free and the nuclear age
Barendd Nobeard
Explorer
OK, I haven't written any poetry in a while, but back in the dark ages, I competed on a speech team. A few tournaments each year would have "Original Poetry" as an event, so the first poems I wrote that were not for a class assignment were meant to be viewed as performance (10 minute time limit).
The four poems I wrote for competition were:
Your Mother is a Dishrag
Shopping Days
Splat!
and
Barbie Dreamhouse, Defender of the Universe
Another competitor liked Barbie Dreamhouse so much, she published it in her college literary magazine. She even added original drawings, which really cracked me up.
Two years ago, my daughter used Barbie Dreamhouse for a class poetry recitation. It was really fun to see her perform something I wrote.
The four poems I wrote for competition were:
Your Mother is a Dishrag
Shopping Days
Splat!
and
Barbie Dreamhouse, Defender of the Universe
Another competitor liked Barbie Dreamhouse so much, she published it in her college literary magazine. She even added original drawings, which really cracked me up.
Two years ago, my daughter used Barbie Dreamhouse for a class poetry recitation. It was really fun to see her perform something I wrote.
Grim
First Post
The Beast Within
Beast is fur and tooth and claw
Beast must feed his dripping maw
Beast must hund and kill his prey
If Beast is to see light of day
Half a monster; half a man
Now you join an occult clan.
Rays of moonlight change your form
Animal instinct becomes your norm
Strike is sun and feed in night
Shake the city with your bite
Lick the flesh of those you kill
Their pooling blood becomes your thrill.
Trapped by sin and evil ways
You hunt the Night and stalk the days.
Ritualistic rights of blood
Run rivers red through stinking mud
Join the hunt; run with the Pack
But never ever turn your back.
You can not flee this War of Souls
For the Beast within you grows and grows...
mmm.... werewolves....
I wrote that a few years ago, as a response to a poem my friend wrote called Pretty Pretty, about vampires. The rhyme scheme is exactly the same, especially the first four lines...
Beast is fur and tooth and claw
Beast must feed his dripping maw
Beast must hund and kill his prey
If Beast is to see light of day
Half a monster; half a man
Now you join an occult clan.
Rays of moonlight change your form
Animal instinct becomes your norm
Strike is sun and feed in night
Shake the city with your bite
Lick the flesh of those you kill
Their pooling blood becomes your thrill.
Trapped by sin and evil ways
You hunt the Night and stalk the days.
Ritualistic rights of blood
Run rivers red through stinking mud
Join the hunt; run with the Pack
But never ever turn your back.
You can not flee this War of Souls
For the Beast within you grows and grows...
mmm.... werewolves....
I wrote that a few years ago, as a response to a poem my friend wrote called Pretty Pretty, about vampires. The rhyme scheme is exactly the same, especially the first four lines...
arwink said:I have a couple of dozen published poems, and a thesis on poetics.
That being said, I prefer to think of myself as a reformed poet
No fair piquing our curiosity.. let's have some writing. I'm also curious about your thesis, if it's not too tangential for the thread.. I'll probably also be writing mine in this area, though I would call it not so much poetics as theory of consciousness -/- metaphysics -/- a Wiggsteinian approach to the problem of others' minds, ....sort of, anyway. 200+ pages is an awful lot of ground to cover, after all
.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
Fair enough. Haven't really posted poetry anywhere in a while, so this is fairly old. The thesis was fairly short as such things go, part of a two year bridge between my undergrad and PhD. Largely delt with the poetics of space, the blank page and representations of my home town. It got me to my PhD, where I've not ignored poetry in favore of something completely different
Johnson St, Southport, 9:27 PM
Under streetlight
starlight
grey moths and bats
we walk
Past the half-formed husks
of growing townhouse/units
Past the black front
of the abandoned corner store
Past the quiet faces
of houses sleeping
This place is dormant
between the hours of nine and breakfast
Arm in arm we walk
curious
about random-scatter
room lights peeking out
behind half-drawn blinds
To pass the time
we theorise:
See there
Someone’s in there
Some no-frills husband
generic brand wife
making time
for themselves
while the kids sleep
See there
that’s a granny flat
one-bedroom
one lonely guy
passed out on the floor
60 watts burning
See there
that’s the house of young guys
doleys, new start
first start really
settling in, three days before payday
Buffy, Dawsons, Ally McBeal
the best of mid-week programming
while they wait out
the absence of VB
We each cast three shadows on the bitumen
count the stars past the streetlights
The houses don’t give much away
but you can guess what they’re hiding
The street prefers silence
this time of night
nothing to hear but the slow beating
of the suburban heart
The air’s clear tonight
no petrochemical aftertaste
the sound of the surf
drifts in
from the other side of the Broadwater
Tonight, we walk Johnson together
Arm in arm
through the veins of suburbia
Johnson St, Southport, 9:27 PM
Under streetlight
starlight
grey moths and bats
we walk
Past the half-formed husks
of growing townhouse/units
Past the black front
of the abandoned corner store
Past the quiet faces
of houses sleeping
This place is dormant
between the hours of nine and breakfast
Arm in arm we walk
curious
about random-scatter
room lights peeking out
behind half-drawn blinds
To pass the time
we theorise:
See there
Someone’s in there
Some no-frills husband
generic brand wife
making time
for themselves
while the kids sleep
See there
that’s a granny flat
one-bedroom
one lonely guy
passed out on the floor
60 watts burning
See there
that’s the house of young guys
doleys, new start
first start really
settling in, three days before payday
Buffy, Dawsons, Ally McBeal
the best of mid-week programming
while they wait out
the absence of VB
We each cast three shadows on the bitumen
count the stars past the streetlights
The houses don’t give much away
but you can guess what they’re hiding
The street prefers silence
this time of night
nothing to hear but the slow beating
of the suburban heart
The air’s clear tonight
no petrochemical aftertaste
the sound of the surf
drifts in
from the other side of the Broadwater
Tonight, we walk Johnson together
Arm in arm
through the veins of suburbia
Last edited:
Tristissima
Explorer
Another one that's been in my head
Here we go with the other loud one in my head right now. I like it as prose poetry, no enjambment
The red light of the siren flashes on and off like the red light of the brothel where a ten-year-old girl knows no literature other than the scars on her body, bruises like an abstract painting on the canvas of her skin, remnants of bones broken and teeth lost, cigarette burns ancient on young budding breasts and we won't even speak of her pelvis, front and back. She reads these epic poems over and over every night, remembering the god-born heroes of her mythic history, lost in the millennia of crack rock, turning the pages in a daze of hazy memory -- her father, her brother, her priest at the Catholic school down the street.
I can hear the rich college kids who go to the Jesuit university by day laughing by night, filled with the fizzing and starch ancestry of beer, as the ambulance roars up to the door like bullets whispering through space, words given substance, defiant cry that I EXIST to the world and that MY LIFE MATTERS because it stopped another's and now that random victim must speak his last words through a mouth filled with blood because one of these soon-to-be scholars filled his with the last remnants of rotted barley like the crusted remnants of last night in that ten-year-old girl and now he is passed out on the floor, needing an ambulance and these are the people who brought pizza to counter-protest our four-day fast for peace and these are the people filling the seats at a Jesuit university, freely admitting that their biggest ambition is to make much bank.
I may not be Christian, but even a Witch can tell you that making much bank is not what the Jesuits strive to teach, nor is it what Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and all the true heroes of the world died for, but to these people, Barry Bonds is a hero.
But who is a hero to that ten-year-old girl? Because when you know no literature other than the abuse you have suffered, your only heroes are the rats and the roaches living in the mattress in your room at the brothel.
But that drive-by victims heroes have abandoned him as he melts into the matronly cement of the sidewalk. His body is discovered by two drunk college students -- one had taken advantage of a girl drunk far more than he and the other secretly lusts after him but fears the repercussions far too much to ever tell him -- who laugh and cluck their tongues at the evils of poverty as if everyone without a Lexus or a home is somehow demonic and continue on their drunken stumbling way to cram for their physics test this afternoon.
They will drink Jolt Cola to stay awake, but I am kept awake by the drug that is poetry, writing this stupid and unfair depiction of their antics, all so I can impress some people on the Internet, and as the colors of the sunrise flee the sky, fearing their abusive, drunkard father, I wrap my shame around me and finally sleep, troubled by dreams of a girl and bullets.
Here we go with the other loud one in my head right now. I like it as prose poetry, no enjambment
The red light of the siren flashes on and off like the red light of the brothel where a ten-year-old girl knows no literature other than the scars on her body, bruises like an abstract painting on the canvas of her skin, remnants of bones broken and teeth lost, cigarette burns ancient on young budding breasts and we won't even speak of her pelvis, front and back. She reads these epic poems over and over every night, remembering the god-born heroes of her mythic history, lost in the millennia of crack rock, turning the pages in a daze of hazy memory -- her father, her brother, her priest at the Catholic school down the street.
I can hear the rich college kids who go to the Jesuit university by day laughing by night, filled with the fizzing and starch ancestry of beer, as the ambulance roars up to the door like bullets whispering through space, words given substance, defiant cry that I EXIST to the world and that MY LIFE MATTERS because it stopped another's and now that random victim must speak his last words through a mouth filled with blood because one of these soon-to-be scholars filled his with the last remnants of rotted barley like the crusted remnants of last night in that ten-year-old girl and now he is passed out on the floor, needing an ambulance and these are the people who brought pizza to counter-protest our four-day fast for peace and these are the people filling the seats at a Jesuit university, freely admitting that their biggest ambition is to make much bank.
I may not be Christian, but even a Witch can tell you that making much bank is not what the Jesuits strive to teach, nor is it what Jesus, Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and all the true heroes of the world died for, but to these people, Barry Bonds is a hero.
But who is a hero to that ten-year-old girl? Because when you know no literature other than the abuse you have suffered, your only heroes are the rats and the roaches living in the mattress in your room at the brothel.
But that drive-by victims heroes have abandoned him as he melts into the matronly cement of the sidewalk. His body is discovered by two drunk college students -- one had taken advantage of a girl drunk far more than he and the other secretly lusts after him but fears the repercussions far too much to ever tell him -- who laugh and cluck their tongues at the evils of poverty as if everyone without a Lexus or a home is somehow demonic and continue on their drunken stumbling way to cram for their physics test this afternoon.
They will drink Jolt Cola to stay awake, but I am kept awake by the drug that is poetry, writing this stupid and unfair depiction of their antics, all so I can impress some people on the Internet, and as the colors of the sunrise flee the sky, fearing their abusive, drunkard father, I wrap my shame around me and finally sleep, troubled by dreams of a girl and bullets.
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