Taos' Poetry Slam

So....I'm a poet. Sorta. I've written poetry since I was a little kid. I never really pursued it beyond something that is a hobby and a form of expression for me.

I love poetry though and I know we have alot of great writers here so I was thinking maybe I could get a topic started where we share our poetry with each other!

Forgive me if I'm missing a "poetry catch-all" but a forum search didn't turn anything up.

I'll start by sharing a poem and I'll add a poem a week or so to try to keep things going.

Or....the topic will be utterly ignored and I'll just let it fade away in dignity. I know poetry isn't exactly en vogue these days.

This isn't a topic for critique per se' but if the author wants feedback on their poems that's cool. I just want this to be a topic where we share our creativity instead of playing word police.

Maybe the best place for advice, critiques, etc would be private messages to the individual to avoid any hurt feelings.

Anyway...I am a firm believer that poety is good for the soul so here we go....

This poem I wrote about five years ago. I was driving the 70 mile trip home after having visitation with my 2 year old (at the time) son. Since he was so young and visitation had just been worked out I had to have my visits on a Sunday afternoon in a Chuckie Cheese's or at a park and after a few sweet hours I would head back to my oh so lonely apartment. Perfect angst for poetry!

Sun Running

I'm homecoming
sun running in concrete grooves
chasing moods with nothing
but something moves
in beauty so stunning
bending my rules
with dubious cunning
when time finds me riding
the centerline crying
in mute tears subsiding
until new fears come dining
on raw stomach lining
I'll lay blame on missed timing
and
off-rhyming love poem lying
to both of us while knowing
the onerous truth that most of
our youth was denying the
fact that you can't fake abuse
an obtuse proof that nature
beats nurture but you stand aloof
and the further I go the more we both...
lose.
I grip the wheel tighter and try to
think higher on planes where profane
games are played and we slaughter
the brave and make minimum wage
to stave off the rage of this unfulfilled
page of our unionless babe and the grave
of our innocence lost on that day.
I could say many things and draw
concentric rings to explain what went wrong
but the songs still the same cuz the
beat it don't change 'sides you never did dance
and I never could sing.
Being alone isn't easy when
there's nothing to please me
By escaping potential disaster
I'm greasy with sweat and
the death of my hope that intention
and meaning are more than a joke
and with time and patience
I could fashion a rope
we could climb to a place
where we knew how to cope
we could find a new life
shed the old, and elope
But alas that is fiction that
friction erodes and the tale
is instead one of anger that goads
both of us down many dangerous roads
Of need not of love and our passion explodes
til we bleed on the rug and have sex in the tub
still we fail to wash clean the wrongs we have done
or shake the sixth sense that's somethings undone
and our hugs became shackles and our tongues became guns.
Now I run from the sun as it sets in the west and I fly
towards the clouds to seek solace in rest
where the crickets can't find me 'cuz silence is best
when I think of the days before we first met
They say it's a lesson that I needed to learn that you don't know what's hot
until you've been burned but a lesson's no lesson when choice ain't concerned
and we're creatures of habit as you might have discerned.
So I'm sun running
homecoming
with nothing left but my
visions...so stunning.

~Taos

PS: Critiques, thoughts, and any other kind of input are always welcome.

That's pretty awesome TAOS. Love the rapid fire rhyming. Not a lot of people can do that; even less can make it make sense. You do both. Brings to mind some of Saul Williams' stuff, specifically off Niggy Tardust. Set that piece to a raw beat, do it in a spoken word style, and that would SLAY.

Here's three of mine:

No Title

These words are one of my
great lies.
I pretend
oh I have always pretended they
were mine
I stumble among the smaller lies
as this night falls and
of my pretenses likewise
your voice begins.

who need no hope to
hunt here who
love me
I retreat before
your question as my own
through old branches who
am I hiding
what creatures that should not
be raised against the night
crying its truth at last.

No I who
love you
and always have
find while I can
some light to crawl into
maybe.
I will never answer
though your dark lasts as my own does
and your voice in it without hope
or need of it
calling what I call calling
me me You
who are never there.

Words

You ask for them
You need them
want them

I give you mine
words
words
talking, breathing
get out
you say
in words
with your eyes
as your body turns away

I face your back
Your words
ring ring
in my head
ring ring
"Hello?"
Silence...
no one there
to listen to
words

My tongue is sharp
I told you the truth
words
that you did not want to hear
words
that did not want to hear you

"Hello?"
I say
Would it be better
more pleasing
for me to give you
only the w o r d s
that you want to hear?

I sat quiet for so long
waiting, planning
the right
words
which ended up being the wrong
words
even though they were the true
words
Should I have used other
words
Did I misplace the
words
Could you not handle the
words
that poured from my mouth
when the right moment finally came
for me to shower you with my
words
and tell you
what I should have
oh so long ago

I turn around
You speak...
ring ring
your words
are silent
"Hello?"
your face is blank
your mouth is moving
but all i hear
words
ring ring
and all i can hear
words
ring ring
I would rather not hear
words
ring ring
"Goodbye."

Nails

I gave you my sorrow to hang on your wall
Like a calendar in one color.
I wear a torn piece on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

Between no place of mine and no place of yours
You'd have thought I'd know the way by now
Just from thinking it over.
Oh I know
I've no excuse to be stuck here turning
Like a mirror on a string,
Except its hardly credible how
It all keeps changing.
Loss has a wider choice of directions
Than the other thing.

As if I had a system
I shuffle among the lies
Turning them over, if only
I could be sure what I'd lost.

I uncover my footprints, I
poke them till the eyes open.
They don't recall what it looked like.
When was I using it last?
Was it like a ring or a light
Or the autumn pond
Which chokes and glitters but
Grows colder?
It could be all in my mind.
Nothing seems to bring it back to me.

And I have been to see
the same film over and over.

I started one awhile back, had a few posts, but it died on the vine. Keep posting though, I do enjoy reading poems.

Edit:

Here's my stuff I posted awhile back. I'll save everyone the pain of seeing it twice.

http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/3...

Love it, TAOS. I agree that it would be awesome with a beat...

I wrote this one a while back and it seems seasonably appropriate.

budding

The trees are chanting to themselves.
budbudbud
Even at night I can hear them, shoving
sap around, gnawing the earth. They are getting
while the getting is good,
eating sunlight, sh*tting air, gearing up for
the coming orgy of summer. Leaves open
like hands begging. Later it will be seed pods,
gravid and sexy, but for now, they concentrate
on the foliage, intense as any mammal that
has its desire in sight.

Grief

My grandmother used to cut
the crusts off, pour milk out whole
and creamy. The vinyl tablecloth,
brown and yellow daisies, the underside
soft as kitten chin. I remember
I once took a pair of her earrings from
her dresser, put them in my pocket.
When my mother asked, she said
she'd given them to me. That kind
of love, forgiving
everything.

Fatherly Love
"What is love?", TheArtOfScience snorted,
"My daddy, he wanted me aborted."

Untitled Tanka

A forgone verdict
Fresh cologne on salty skin
A dead man alone

The blind woman holds the scales
Life, liberty, timely death


Untitled Free Verse

Juice, I remember it well
Violet box adorned with wondrous art
Of contents believed inside

I find myself drawn to Haiku, or the American version thereof. Here's a couple I wrote:

Forty five minutes,
The close of another work day,
And the longest of all.

Grass, golden like straw,
Crunches and becomes as dust,
As I walk the field.

I haven't written anything I've been happy with in a while, but I have some older stuff here.
"Three Denominations" (#5) is a double acrostic (the first letter of each word spells out another poem, the first letters of each word of that poem spell out something else) which I am pretty proud of just for the sake of the mental gymnastics involved.

"Thread arise!" said the necromancer, "I've made a version of Three Denominations using twine."