Post a poem, entertain me! (May be NSFW)

BlackSheep wrote:

Yes! I feel like I'm in Zoolander, when they start doing the dance-fight!

I felt the same way, except I was thinking of the walk-off.

Hey Miranda
I'd love to talk with you, but I'm sad to say I will be in bed.
Temptation makes me want to stay up, and break bread with you.
Good times, enjoyment, thus easily I could be led.
I'm much to tired to be myself, only half of me would I be.
My other self would be gone till morrow.
My whole attention you do deserve, half of me will just not do.
Thinking of our rapport, a chance gone, missed much to my sorrow.
Anticipation, our next meeting if it be.

p.s. I'm tired, this is all my one half had.
I was looking forward to our chat but the world conspires through work, sun, and sweat.
I shake my fist at the world, but I do so from the confines of my comfy bed.

The programmer was having a tiff,
She even tried doing a DIFF.
Then she saw with surprise,
Right in front of her eyes,
She just needed another "End If".

If you guys can find any meat in doggerel Limericks, then have at you!

Here's one I wrote while screwing around in my grad school class:

Class in session out of sorts.

Lights darken and we desk creatures
Wilt where we sit, given such pardon
From one monotone hell to another.
Stop-motion scenes blur past
On a scuzzy whiteboard screen.
Attentions wander like Jews
Through desert panoramas filled
With sweet manna and myrrh.
Eyes rest lightly on meager gifts.

Boredom begets the baser desires
All things magnified by ennui eyes.
A need to touch the repressed;
A need to handle new frontiers.

Quick excited glimpses of a tomboy's
Frilly pink thong bursting forth from her pants
Desire to be seen / not seen.

A chipmunk cheek, pouty-lipped professional,
Skirted in black and white, a bamboo leaf print
That sways slightly over shapely smooth legs.

Frumpy cherub crowned with curly hair,
Whose gold cross sways hypnotically,
Pointing to places feverisly imagined.

The chinless vixen bathed in beige,
Hiding the swell of plum breasts beneath
The wrinkled unbuttoned plain green polo.

Nothing comes of wandering,
But a few minutes made quick.
Lights and attentions wane.
I need a smoke and a walk.

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for ladyboys.

Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

Though once I loathed to post a poem, I read
a post that bade me pause, perhaps recant.
It seemed that this Deserter had just said
that all things beauteous manliness supplant.

His avatar glared grimly through its shades.
Haiku form cut composition troubles,
but then eyes follow as the page cascades
effete and rocky: "Take me home, Bubbles."

No man denies our minds are not pure fact,
and contradictions wrap and fight themselves.
So thus we should forgive incongr'ous acts
Besides, we all know just too well ourselves

If poets rule o'er all things beautiful,
the foxes must to me be dutiful!

BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

Hm, your way's shorter.

BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

A poetry war
Fought with incorrect cadence
Is already lost.

a voice breaks the silence
but then i turn my head there's no one there
and when i ask my friends they only stare
where came my name is only empty air.

a plea for me to pay attention
to something never said.
resigned I lie, afraid to mention
the voices in my head

Deserter wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

A poetry war
Fought with incorrect cadence
Is already lost.

Meter and rhythm are overrated,
Pompous bits belonging to those
Overblown 'poets' and 'poems'
Striving to be snobbish
Little sonnet-eers and
Epic writers.

BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

A poetry war
Fought with incorrect cadence
Is already lost.

Meter and rhythm are overrated,
Pompous bits belonging to those
Overblown 'poets' and 'poems'
Striving to be snobbish
Little sonnet-eers and
Epic writers.

daaaayum, you got served!

BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

A poetry war
Fought with incorrect cadence
Is already lost.

Meter and rhythm are overrated,
Pompous bits belonging to those
Overblown 'poets' and 'poems'
Striving to be snobbish
Little sonnet-eers and
Epic writers.

Just watch it, sonny,
before I teach you pain of
metrical Female Doggo-slaps.

By the by, there's a great picture in the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry of a man who looks to be protesting, only his sign reads "FREE VERSE!" I can't find it on the internet, though.

wordsmythe wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:
BlackSheep wrote:
Deserter wrote:

Prose and poetry,
In fact, all beautiful things
Are for boys with ladies.

:D

Fixed.

A poetry war
Fought with incorrect cadence
Is already lost.

Meter and rhythm are overrated,
Pompous bits belonging to those
Overblown 'poets' and 'poems'
Striving to be snobbish
Little sonnet-eers and
Epic writers.

Just watch it, sonny,
before I teach you pain of
metrical Female Doggo-slaps.

By the by, there's a great picture in the Outlaw Bible of American Poetry of a man who looks to be protesting, only his sign reads "FREE VERSE!" I can't find it on the internet, though.

Puuuuhhhlllllllllleeeease.
Go thump that
bony
concave chest
with your
black ink-stained
crooked
little hand
elsewhere!

So we're calling out poetry
In a poetry thread?
An interesting tactic,
Demeaning both parties
Whilst stoking no fires
Bar those of semantics
For those that are feeling
The terrible onset
Of stinging defeat.

Deserter wrote:

So we're calling out poetry
In a poetry thread?
An interesting tactic,
Demeaning both parties
Whilst stoking no fires
Bar those of semantics
For those that are feeling
The terrible onset
Of stinging defeat.

The one who begins
With calls of 'ladyboys'
Has fingers pointed,
Directing wanton words
Toward the warders.
An interesting tactic,
Indeed.

I prefer wan ton words. They are much tastier.

I'm afraid this thread has gotten a little too silly.

IMAGE(http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f182/sfailey/180px-Graham_Chapman_Colonel.jpg)

It's really just becoming painful to read.

I second that emotion.

Okay, I post a poem with some rather explicit words, and no comments. But I take it that some people would like to leave Limerick Land (tm) and get back to some poetry. Here's another one I wrote when I was 22ish.

Canning Tomatoes

when I helped my mom can tomatoes this fall
she asked me to lift each half-bushel
on top of the step stool by the stove.
she stood over the steam all day
bits of tomato dripping from her elbows,
sweating over the boiling lids and jars,
the overflowing gray pots of red juice
we'll be thankful for all year
she assures me as she sits down
with me to take a break
and peel tomatoes, sip some diet soda
wipe her hands on a dish towel.

We want to get serious?

Then, with all respect, Roo, can I ask what your motivation is in eschewing punctuation?

I guess it's a "poetry should always be read out loud" thing. Line breaks can be punctuation. Pausing where it feels right to you can be punctuation. I really only put it in where I want a definite stop or pause. Even then...it's not always really that necessary. Poetry is what happens when someone reads a poem out loud, in my very not humble opinion. Every poetry class I took, whether as literature or a writing workshop, I always read everything out loud. everything.

So, I'm sparse with punctuation to allow for different readings. Or at least...I always told myself I was cool like that.

One of my favorite moments with my own stuff during college was during a regular poetry lit class, the professor had us bring in one of our own poems, copied them, everybody took them home and read them, and then came to class. I read mine, and people with some very strong opinions said I read it all wrong. After which, four other people read my poem out loud, in completely different ways, each of them stating that their reading was how to do it. I couldn't have been happier.

Ever been to open mic night? Poetry slams? I can tell you...there are some annoying freaking ways to read poems out loud. I was a vocal musician (i.e. singer who can actually read music, etc. etc.) long before I wrote poetry in earnest. I hear them like that, not necessarily always as a performance with an audience, but as...something that has to be audible, with rhythm, cadence (I'm not a fan of modern poetry having a regular meter), modulation.

Not sure I'm getting at the right explanation here. It's more like I'm writing sheet music open for interpretation, than trying to etch "THE WORD" indelibly in stone. if that makes more sense.

edit: now isn't that better than a flippant "poetry ain't prose, dude." Favorite poets to read out loud: Ferlinghetti, Ginsberg, Whitman. Not really in that order.

Interesting!

Even if I'm not as much of a vocal poet in that sense, I see where you're coming from. In fact, I really love ambiguity. I tend to feel guilty about it though, unless the ambiguity creates distinct interpretations. I often end up just feeling confusing -- that is, unless I intended to make the reader feel confused about the poem.

And you're right; there are some very annoying reading styles out there. I tend to have a conversational enough tone to my writing that it's not something that worries me too much when I read (I won't call it "performing" because I'm not that kind of poet).

Edit: I really like the way Ferlinghetti closes his poems.

I have found that in my writings (I don't really write a lot of poetry anymore) if I over punctuate and over return then people will read it exactly as how I intended.

Chiggie Von Richthofen wrote:

I have found that in my writings (I don't really write a lot of poetry anymore) if I over punctuate and over return then people will read it exactly as how I intended.

after alot of poetry workshop classes, I can tell you that the least artistic and interesting thing about a poem can be the poet's conscious intentions. One of the reasons nobody is allowed to preface the reading of their work. At all. No long explanations, so self-effacing "well, it's not quite ready and I meant it to be more blah blah blah."

some of the most interesting things that come out in poetry are unconscious on the part of the poet, and I can tell you it's nearly impossible to do a good job of editing your own work (unless you leave it in a drawer for 3 years, literally) because you're just too close to the work. Likewise, then, you're about the last person to know what's so cool about your own poem. Poetry, then, is more of a "put it out there in the Universe and see what happens" thing, than a long, detailed, rational explanation of all the intended metaphors, alliteration, juxtaposition, meter, word choice and all those great things. When I was actively writing, the best thing that could happen to me was that a poem would flow so freely out of my subconscious, so fast I could barely keep up with typing it, with no time to insert a dozen self-conscious or explanatory lines.

Half of editing someone else's poetry is cutting all of the self-conscious, explanatory, and rational crap out so you're just left with the expression, minus the intentional explanation. People tend to see the least interesting and least meaningful things in their own work. So generally....don't listen to the poet, just listen to the poem.

I guess there is a pretty huge gap in the mentalities of writing poetry and writing conversational essays. After I read your response I'm not even sure why I wrote my original comment in the first place.

You were describing how to make banana pudding and I was telling you how hot to get the grill before you started.

This is me being emo...

Stupefy My Slow Suicide

By the time you see this, it is much to late
My depression I fear was to great
Life, it did cause me to break
Miasma of everyday, and just heartache
All a nightmare, you cannot wake
Everything I will be, I've already been
It doesn't matter, this is the end
I'm sad today, nasty thoughts won't go away
This isn't real, but it is how I feel.
Just a mood in passing
Hopefully not a moment more, lasting

Roo wrote:

some of the most interesting things that come out in poetry are unconscious on the part of the poet, and I can tell you it's nearly impossible to do a good job of editing your own work (unless you leave it in a drawer for 3 years, literally) because you're just too close to the work. Likewise, then, you're about the last person to know what's so cool about your own poem. Poetry, then, is more of a "put it out there in the Universe and see what happens" thing, than a long, detailed, rational explanation of all the intended metaphors, alliteration, juxtaposition, meter, word choice and all those great things. When I was actively writing, the best thing that could happen to me was that a poem would flow so freely out of my subconscious, so fast I could barely keep up with typing it, with no time to insert a dozen self-conscious or explanatory lines.

I have to disagree. It takes a long time, and some serious work to get to the point where you can edit your own work effectively, but it is possible. And I think extremely desirable. You can't, as an artist, rely on your workshopping groups forever. Separating one's ego from the work is an essential step in artistic maturation, and allows you to see where the poem doesn't work, where you're going on too long, where you need to elaborate. I'm at the point now where I think I do a pretty decent job of it, although of course there's always something that the magazine editor wants changed.

I do agree that a poem isn't fulfilled until it's read aloud, though. Something that looks deceptively plain on the page can be intensely layered when spoken.

I haven't really written any poetry in about a year. This thread makes me want to start again.

Heh, I sort of agree with your disagreement.

For the casual poet, though, getting that editorial distance maybe even isn't that desirable. Depends on why they're writing the poetry. For me, when I was actively writing, the easiest distance was time. There's a really cool book called "Poetic Diction" by Owen Barfield that talks about two modes of writing/thinking/being. I forget how he labels them, but I would call them the analytic and the metaphoric. The idea is that you can't be in both simultaneously. The goal for writers is to be able to switch back and forth between these, when you want. That's a pretty damned difficult goal.

When I was high school (so like 20 years ago let's say) I went to a talk given by Chaim Potok (if you haven't read "My Name is Asher Lev" go read it) and it was one of the most amazing experiences of my teenage years. I had no idea that he was a sociologist or that his books have all these "BIG IDEAS" centered around what happens when one culture "clashes" with another culture. He just had all of these amazing insights and thoughts behind his work that I hadn't ever imagined. It really opened my eyes. I asked one question, "Do you have all of these things in mind as you're writing?" (cause, like, whoa it was alot of stuff he had in mind.) He laughed. He smiled. He replied something like, "If I did that, my books would sound like sociology text books. No, when I write, I'm just writing, creating, feeling."

For me, as a poet it's great to have BIG IDEAS and things as a framework for what you're doing (like all the Sappho stuff in my poem up there called Fragments, where I freely stole stuff from other writers doing Sappho things) but when you're writing you have to be in that metaphoric space. Being able to switch to an analytic space, and objectively edit your own work...well, you can probably get 90% of the way there. And it IS a good goal. I remember showing up to college thinking it was sacrilege to edit a poem I'd written. Heh. My poems kinda really sucked then. It's hard not getting attached to stuff, and feeling like you can cut anything.

I *would* argue, though, that the more autobiographical the material you write, the more you need some kind of real distance from it to even think about editing it. There are a number of professional poets who literally put their stuff in a drawer for 2 years minimum before taking it out to edit. Everybody works their own way.

In college, without the luxury of any kind of distance from my work emotionally or temporally...my little group of poet friends was just amazing. In the end, though, I enjoyed helping them much more than I enjoyed writing my own stuff.

I doodle with poetry, and art. My grammar sucks, and someone could probably write it, draw it, or just do it better than me. Doesn't stop me though cause I enjoy doing it. Plus it helps with boredom.

Scorn

Wanting this something with the gnashing of my teeth in grit.
This something that was my heart, but with a thought stops.
For never even if this something that was were to fall onto me completely.
My hunger of wanting this something would split.
I'd turn my back on this nothing.

I wrote this in the back of a Bradley CFV in kuwait. See above about "boredom."