poetry thread!

[Korts]

Hey guys. I wrote one in English. I need a second opinion, this is not my language of choice. (Updated for revision)

Spoiler: Overgrown

you planted a rose bush
in the garden of my heart
and left it there for me to tend
not your best decision
to be fair

it's nice you left something behind
but you were supposed to be the best of us
and I don't even know where the shears are

hell it's been five years
since I even went outside

I didn't feel like breathing
air weighed down
by your scent
and I thought
it would just wither
if I had a longer drought--

well five years of heat waves
and harsh winters later
I feel tired of this climate

I feel like spring showers
and watching the sun rise again
and I want a well-kept backyard
someplace to have people over in

--and I didn't expect the ivy
to grow in recent weather
much less all over the roses
the clingy bastard--

anyway
this is getting long
and I have to get to work
cleaning up our tangled mess

there is no glove thick enough
that I won't feel your thorns
but I'll pull them out one by one
until my heart lets go

[Korts]

--every little race car dreams
of growing up to win
of checkered flags and champagne showers
and endless press junkets

of running perfect times and lapping stragglers
of three-second stops and half-minute leads

of putting the power down
on infinite straights with
adrenaline-shrunken balls
flapping in the headwind

of flying through chicanes
and hitting every hairpin's apex
without ever locking wheels
or cutting corners

--every little race car dreams
and one day wakes in pole position

only to pop a tyre on the kerb
or slowly lose traction
and plunge helpless off the track
as the safety car conga line
gaily waves goodbye

waiting for a pit crew that will never come
a sputtering and groaning engine
spins its wheels in the mud

[Quilford]

Boo I can't believe how excellently unpretentious Korts' metaphors are. When you're extending them across an entire poem basically it's a really hard thing to do for them not to sound forced, and you pull it off so well. I wish I could write like that.

A flight of angels
sang Hamlet to his rest.
I don't think I'm getting that,
personally.

you planted a rose bush
in the garden of my heart
and left it there for me to tend
not your best decision
to be fair

Remember Carol?
You liked Carol,
Carol likes me,
and my stupid pamphlet said
by month six
I had to do something
with someone.
(I waited a few more days
in case she was looking at a calendar.)

Also, these are really excellently punchy

[Quilford]

I've been all over this poem recently. It's by Mark Strand, a Canadian-born American poet who sadly died last year. He wrote a lot about death and anticipating death and this is one of my favourite poems of his along those lines, because I just love the imagery so much.

An Old Man Awake In His Own Death

This is the place that was promised
when I went to sleep,
taken from me when I woke.

This is the place unknown to anyone,
where names of ships and stars
drift out of reach.

The mountains are not mountains any more;
the sun is not the sun.
One tends to forget how it was;

I see myself, I see
the shore of darkness on my brow.
Once I was whole, once I was young . . .

As if it mattered now
and you could hear me
and the weather of this place would ever cease.

[hitogoroshi]

I guess what I saw today
was a little truck
with a little roller
pressing down a bale of grass
by the highway.

I guess we must have
torn the prairie up,
brought in dirt and concrete,
and finally unrolled a neat little bundle
to bring in some green and cover up
the scene of the crime.

I guess without the weight
they would have unfurled the roll of life
that had been torn and tortured and packaged
and it would have forgotten the lessons of its mothers
on how to put down roots
and just whimpered in silence,
stupefied.

I guess the stuff growing next to it,
was grass, too.
It lived in the margins no one owned
and it was proud and tall and brown
and tipped with diamond arrowheads
that would never allow themselves
to be smothered in fabric.

I guess if I was to walk on each in turn,
I would first glide across the green smear,
and then I would bend the tan stalks with my passing
and they would cut my feet in rage,
erasing my path behind me
as they sprang back into form.

But I know that the spears
will always be more beautiful,
because they were never made to forget,
and they were never meant
for me.

[T S O]

whoah hito's poem is fucking incredible

[Chevre]

It's cheesy, but I love Mary's letter from Silent Hill 2 as a poem:

In my restless dreams,
I see that town.

Silent Hill.

You promised me you'd take me
there again someday.
But you never did.

Well, I'm alone there now...
In our 'special place'...
Waiting for you...

I also love

There was
a HOLE
here,
It's gone now

[hitogoroshi]

The Codeless Code just celebrated its 200th case with a fantastic poem I really want to share:

Code: Select all

You might
not know
that long
ago

most words,
when new,
came two
by two:

    you / me,
    aye / nay,
    he / she,
    we / they,

    girl / boy,
    yang / yin,
    grief / joy,
    out / in.

This is,
you see,
our ten-
dency—

treat all
in sight
as black
or white:

    yes / no,
    old / new,
    stop / go,
    false / true,

    live / dead,
    here / gone,
    tail / head,
    off / on.

No place
halfway.
No shades
of gray.

Just hit
or miss.
Just that
or this:

    strong / frail
    smile / frown
    pass / fail
    up / down

    quick / slow
    luck / fate
    high / low
    love / hate.

But if
you dare
to look
with care—

to stare
foursquare


at each allegedly opposing pair,


fully aware
you must distrust your every instinct, and forswear
that inborn, implusive tendency
to impose binary simplicity—

then eventually
you may see

that almost nothing
is wholly one thing or another.

For words—like floats and ints and bools—
are merely tools,

providing only crude approximation
for the facilitation of communication.

And any string of words, however nice,
at best is imprecise,

while at worst may be tragically misleading
(and that includes the sentence you’re currently reading).


So here’s
my rule:

don’t think
in bool.

Leave cer-
tainty
to cir-
cuitry

(unless
you trust
the world
is just ...

    sane / mad,
    short / long,
    good / bad,
    right / wrong,

    left / right,
    all / none,
    day / night,
    oh / one).

[quadz08]

SO GOOD

[Psyche]

if poetry died as a genre i wouldn't even read the article about it

[vonflare]

There once was an X from place B;
Who satisfied predicate P;
Then X did thing A,
In a specified way,
Resulting in circumstance C.

-Limerick template

[vonflare]

Spoiler: post 32

The Codeless Code just celebrated its 200th case with a fantastic poem I really want to share:

Code: Select all

You might
not know
that long
ago

most words,
when new,
came two
by two:

    you / me,
    aye / nay,
    he / she,
    we / they,

    girl / boy,
    yang / yin,
    grief / joy,
    out / in.

This is,
you see,
our ten-
dency—

treat all
in sight
as black
or white:

    yes / no,
    old / new,
    stop / go,
    false / true,

    live / dead,
    here / gone,
    tail / head,
    off / on.

No place
halfway.
No shades
of gray.

Just hit
or miss.
Just that
or this:

    strong / frail
    smile / frown
    pass / fail
    up / down

    quick / slow
    luck / fate
    high / low
    love / hate.

But if
you dare
to look
with care—

to stare
foursquare


at each allegedly opposing pair,


fully aware
you must distrust your every instinct, and forswear
that inborn, implusive tendency
to impose binary simplicity—

then eventually
you may see

that almost nothing
is wholly one thing or another.

For words—like floats and ints and bools—
are merely tools,

providing only crude approximation
for the facilitation of communication.

And any string of words, however nice,
at best is imprecise,

while at worst may be tragically misleading
(and that includes the sentence you’re currently reading).


So here’s
my rule:

don’t think
in bool.

Leave cer-
tainty
to cir-
cuitry

(unless
you trust
the world
is just ...

    sane / mad,
    short / long,
    good / bad,
    right / wrong,

    left / right,
    all / none,
    day / night,
    oh / one).

That is literally the best poem I have ever read

[Quilford]

Personally, I think it's a bit too cute with form. Opinions!

[T S O]

Love.

[T S O]

Trying to get this thread going again; recently read Invictus for the first time, and was struck by it.

Spoiler: Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

[DanceClass]

https://socialnumber.com/discussion/multiple-choice

[hitogoroshi]

Today I saw a million trees
spread like the tide along the peaks below
raise their voices together in a single scream:
"Remember you are solitary."

"And young", grumbled the cliff face,
glaring down with ponderous quartz brows.
"You have seen little, and you will see little.
You poor and temporary thing."

I stood upon the mountaintop
and felt my head grow light as Earth
grasped the air a little less tightly and smirked:
"I will give you a small cage, and you must stay in it."

Tonight I heard the wind whoop and holler,
pounding against my tent and demanding to be heard.
"Take this message back:
You are small, and I am large."

But I am a son of the fire-stealer,
and I do not bow my head so lightly.
The spark that I shepherd within my soul
was not a gift from you.

Perhaps you can be the breeze that blows
across my embers.
But if you dare to keep your air from me
I will smolder still.

I am solitary?
You stand inches away from others,
mute and unknowing,
until I see you together and call you brothers.

I am young?
Your age means nothing more
than the newest second of your life
until I speak to your atoms and call you old.

I am imprisoned?
Withhold your breath of life
and I will bring my own from below,
as I carry the waters of history in my cells.

For we are the clever and the thieves
who gave you meaning in our taking.
And I will give you respect,
but I will never wait for permission.

We have told you that you inspire us,
and you have printed that boast in letters
a mile high, from sea to sky.
But do not grow vain.

For soon I will point my lantern home,
and your words will be obscured
by the darkness of my passing.

[hitogoroshi]

I'll sing to my sorrow
until it's tomorrow,
just long enough to rest
it's broken wings.

then I'll set it free,
let everyone see
what sweet songs can come from
such ugly things.

(You cooled in the shade
that my body made,
but you must want to know
what tomorrow brings.)

[Quilford]

Oh man that has a great rhythm hito

[hitogoroshi]

Hah, it's funny you mention that. This poem was "inspired" by Laura Stevenson's "Every Tense", but not in a conscious way based on the words or anything. It just came to me while I was listening. So I bet you're hearing some of Every Tense (specifically the part starting around two minutes)

[hitogoroshi]

Once there was some nothing
living deep underground
behind walls thick enough
to keep out the world.

It looked up in the sky
and where it hoped to see itself
there were instead a million stars
shining defiantly on.

So nothing made light
and scattered it around the world
so it would cover up the patterns
and bring about darkness
the way only light can.

It was nearly finished
when it looked up again and saw
those lights being launched skyward
making it impossible to count
how many stars were real.

But still it smiled its nothing smile.
"Now it will be easy to tell
who in my domain
sympathizes with starlight."

"Yes,"
said a voice up high.
"I suppose
it will be."