A challenge to all who like to write poetry!
 

If I can do this so can any of you!

I write everyonce in a while
when something gets into my head
I should have pen and paper at my nightstand
because it usually comes to me while in bed.

A man can lay his head down
and dreamland comes right away
a woman tends to think of everything
that has happened thoughout her day

My poetry can not be compared to Shakespeare
They are not literary works of art
Its simply tidbits of my life
Spoken from my heart

You don't have to look for a deeper meaning
Or what I am trying to say
It's out there for all to see
Just as plain as day

Thanks for asking Ellis, I have'nt actually written anything since before Christmas!
Challenge to all who like to write.
Maybe I will copy this and open a new thread!!
Virginia
:lol:

Ah, poetry...
 

Geez, I haven't written any poetry for a few years ;) Love reading it though, especially Pablo Neruda. What images he paints with words! Highly recommended.

Here is one I like that I wrote back in 2000 for a woman I was madly in love with...

I want my poetry to be a beat
creating a dance I want to bring you into
a fire that warms and cleanses you
Letting my voice be a troubadour's
warbling in the woods
praising beauty and chivalry
Pinning your colors to my armor,
I'll go on and on in fairytold fervor
I feel magic all around me
and guides whispering in my ear
as I beat at the brambles with a shining sword
engraved with your voice's words
I climb the glass hill
looking upwards as I find sure purchase
on my way to the waiting sky
I have a burning flame for a heart
my beaten one now ashes fallen away
and my eyes see far
and my hand is steady
as I climb

I think the Muse visits me the most when I am tortured in love :devil:

Berkshire
Awesome!
Now you, really have a way with words!
Beautiful!
More, more, more!
Everyone can do this, lets hear it!
No one will laugh, unless it is funny of course!
Virginia

I have one too. It's also been a very long time since I have written anything. This is from 1998, my senior year in high school. I have lots more, but I'll pace myself. Have to see if any of it is worth bringing into the light. :)


Where Poets Go To Dance

I want to dance with Sylvia Plath
Drink iced mochas with Anne Sexton
Compare notes and life stories
Songs and tears, loves, fears
Discuss suicide attempts and
sad failing love stories
I want to touch the hands
Of the women that inspire me
That remind me of myself
I, the troubled artist
Starving for a piece of peace
I have sung the Ballad
Of Anne's Lonely Masturbator
And many times have I dated
Kissed, and made love to Sylvia's Daddy
All that is left is to join then
In the tradition of beautiful writers
And sing their sad song and dance
With them... where the poets go

Lizziness, thank you, that was wonderful. Communing with our favorite poets, what an idea. Did you share this poem with people in high school? If so, I bet some were scared by it, considering both Sexton and Plath commited suicide...

Who are your other favorite poets?

I wasn't familiar with Anne Sexton, though I had heard her name, so I read about her on the web a bit, and read the poem you refer to. Some great lines in there, like breaking like a stone, voice like a flute. She really had a gift for metaphor.

Wow! You girls are amazing! Those are wonderful!
I haven't written any poetry since high school, but it's still around somewhere... I'll see if I can dig it up. ("dig it up" is about right. heh heh)

Sarah, like you, I write my best when I'm miserable. :lol: Unfortunately, my meds work so well, that my Muse is undercover at present. :D Still, better to be excessively happy than dead? ;)

Ellis, thank you sweety poo! Good luck with your poetry excavation. Need help? I have an Archaeology degree :lol:

And, yes, it is without a doubt better to be excessively happy rather than dead! I'll take happy over glooming about in morose darkness any day of the week, having had more of the latter in my life :sunny: I just wish I was more inspired to write/draw/create art when HAPPY dammit! Why does it work that way?

There must be some happy-go-lucky artists out there. Besides Mary Engelbreit. :devil:

REALLY!? You have an archaeology degree!? How cool! :smoking: I'd love to be on some dig, spending the day flicking a little brush.

Mary Engelbreit isn't an artist. shudder. She's a drafts-woman. :lol:

I have trouble even READING anything deep and heavy when I'm on meds! :( It's very disappointing. If I didn't have kids, I'd go off the meds, but until they're safely on their own and don't need me, I figure I'd better preserve their lives as well as my own. :lol:

Berkshire - I also write most when I am miserable. Most of the people I knew in high school wouldn't know what a poem even was, unless I read them Dr. Seuss :) I didn't share with very many, mostly just my amazing Enligh teacher and some online friends. I think back then, it kind of was a way of saying that I wanted to join them, so... yeah. Nobody got it, which is probably good because it kept me from an institution. *LOL* I'm better now though, and I can't for the life of me write anything anymore. I've tried. A combination of drugs (antidepressants and otherwise) is mostly what I blame, though I think that it is a lot easier to find things to write when you are unhappy. I don't understand people like Poe who only wrote when he was under the influence of drugs. It totally sapped me for all my creative energy.

Some of my other favorites are Alan Ginsberg, his poem "America" is my alltime favorite. Jim Carrol is good but most of his poems are about drug use.Mostly I have favorite poems rather than poets. Like Kenneth Koch did a poem called "Variations on a Theme by William Carlos Williams" which is great poking fun at him. What about you?

okay, well, i read through my piles and this was the only other one I came up with that should see the light of day.

Routine Lives

Dancing wild and free like the popular girl in school
Smiling pathetic fake teeth and diseases
that ooze from her fingertips like smog
I watch from the rooftop of a small suburban home
As 50 men with 50 picket fences drive to work
In their Volvos and their wives kiss the 2.5 kids
Good-bye as the bus shuttles them to school
When everyone is gone, in their routine lives
We make love on my rooftop, 'till our very own
Picket fence falls down
I moan and cry out your name as the Avon lady
And her poodle named Peaches visits my mother
We are the only ones that are untouchable I think
As we lie and watch the sun rise high
Warming out naked tired bodies

We will do it again tomorrow





and as a side note... just why is it that every poodle I've ever met has been named Peaches?

Yep, I swear. Courtesy of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, 1993. Minored in Classics with a focus on Mythology. Idealized Indiana Jones.

I have spent time on a student dig with the trowel and tarps and drawing maps, in Old Deerfield, Mass. I found lots of cool stuff, including a VERY old spearhead from the Early Archaic period, about 9,000-8,000 years ago. Used to have a zerox copy of it as my little souvenir but cannot find it now in my archaeology records :cry: I really enjoyed the discovery part but not the dry (SO DRY) academic texts I had to read on theory. Shockingly I did not get through my planned Ph.D. program in grad school because of this aversion to coma-inducing writing!

Now I'm a cube-dweller and I stare at a Mac all day and design real estate postcards. Hmm. Weird. Life change due soon I think! For a long time, I was thinking Art School, but now I'm thinking Nurse, with a focus on natural healing like homeopathy and earthy crunchy stuff like that. I've found that I really get into helping people get better, and researching what could help them... and have had some very cool things occur when I self-treated myself for junk like shingles.

Yeah, I have been struggling with depression for a while. Since I was a teenager I think, heh! Lately I can't even bring myself to watch sad movies. Or horror movies. I go for the ha-ha fluff rentals mostly... anything not to upset my wee brain. :lol:

Um, since this is a Poetry thread, here is another one for your reading pleasure ;)

Jazz

Blue gels over the lights
Chrome shimmers on lacquered pine
Taut steel strings pressed, shaking
Silk cuff glimmers with ebony link
Music, like osmosis, spreads
under chairs
into soda bubbles
Blending with the notes outdoors
through the open door
Honks, hiss of tires, slow breezes
Skyscrapers swing,
pressed by invisible fingers.

Wow, you ladies are fabulous! I don't think I've written poetry for it's own sake, but I like what I'm seeing.

Sarah, where in old Deerfield was your dig? That's not too far from where I work. And have you ever checked out the "hermit holes" in our area? They are very mysterious - stacked stone-lined holes in the earth that are covered over with sod. There's a few in Leverett and thereabouts. I took a tour of them at one point, and no one really had a theory as to who built them or why. My intuitive thought was that they were sweat lodges for journeying, but there's no evidence as to thier use, that I've ever read about. Very interesting.

I'll make a short effort, since this is a poetry thread...

Haiku - my love on a hectic day

Too busy to think
Of taking shelter in you
Without wistful smiles

Hey, that was fun!
Solarmama

Interesting how you can start a topic (like poetry), and it develops into something else. Depression and archaeology. :lol3:
Why can't we think of anything to talk about in chat? :lol:

It's fun to have a conversation, and then remember you're supposed to be posting poetry - gets the creative juices flowing!

I
am not
a
P
O
E
T
.

At least it's creatively spaced... well it was when I wrote it, but the post flattened it! Sigh.

SolarM

Welcome all poets! Come one, come all!
 

Well then, Ms. Ellis, where is YOUR poetry, hmmm? *tapping fingers on desktop* Too bad there isn't any School Marm smilie ;)

Here is another one for y'all. And it combines Poetry & Archaeology... see this is just a big ol' tie-in! You knew it was coming. :lol:

Gold in Darkness
Delicate fragrant cigars
like mummies' fingers
rest on a shining table
gleaming silver lighter beside them
Men in white linen suits
ease back into soft chairs
Contemplating the terseness
of a rapid telegram
sent from an arid fantasy land
where the dead hold their wealth
buried in drifting dunes
Air breathed long ago
now swirls around
the cultured invaders.

Lizziness, your "Routine Lives" is really excellent... I'm sure you got more stuff that should see the light of day :) Diseases that ooze from fingertips like smog... and all those identical stylized families... very cool imagery.

I looked up online some of your favorite poets/poetry, thanks for sharing! I'm such a dork, that was the first time I really read Ginsberg!

Drug use never really inspired me either. Though I remember trying to write a coherant "lab report" on the use of acid one night, while tripping. Wonder where that got to, ha! Probably lost in one of my moves. Or not... Boy, if I ever get hit by a truck or something, my family is going to have some interesting reading at their fingertips.

A few of my favorites are Pablo Neruda, Rumi, Mary Oliver. I really need to get back into exploring poetry. I got books just crying out to be read! Oh, and I love haiku too, so thank you Solar for yours!

Solar, the Deerfield archaeology dig was at the E.H. Williams home site. Have not seen the hermit holes, your "sweat lodge" theory sounds very reasonable though :)

Okay, you gals have inspired me to share some of my own. I wrote this one many years ago when I was high on love. Now, I'm just a cynical "spinster" :lol: but I think it's still my favorite work.

"Grow Old with Me"
Stay beside me
Hold my hand
Walk along through this troubled world
Hold me
Kiss me
Always keep me safe
Together
Two of us
Who knows what the future holds
Family
Wealth
Dreams come true
Rocking chairs
Front porches
A home of our own someday
Babies
Grandkids
Waking up to you every morning
Sickness & Health
And wrinkles
But you're still gorgeous
In my heart
In my soul
You'll always be
Love me
Til the end of time...

Grow old with me

That's lovely, Becqris. :) Thank you for sharing it with us.

Sarah... Gold in Darkness is very cool. :smoking:

A little bit 'o Pablo Neruda for this Sunday...
 

Ok, this isn't one of mine, but I love his imagery. His love poetry is stunningly gorgeous also, very tender and full of knowing details.

This is from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Nice copy since it has the English translation on one side and Neruda's original Spanish on the other.

Some Beasts
(from Canto General)

It was the twilight of the iguana.

From the rainbow-arched battlements
his tongue like a dart
plunged into the greenness,
the monastic ant-swarm walked
through the jungle with melodious feet,
the guanaco, thin as oxygen
in the wide gray heights,
moved wearing boots of gold,
while the llama opened his guileless
eyes in the transparency
of a world filled with dew.
The monkeys braided a thread
endlessly erotic
along the shores of the dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and scaring off the violet flight
of the butterflies of Muzo.
It was the night of the alligators,
the night pure and pullulating
with snouts emerging from the slime,
and out of the sleepy marshes
an opaque noise of armor
returned to the earth it came from.

The jaguar touched the leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma runs on the branches
like a devouring fire
while inside him burn
the jungle's alcoholic eyes.

The badgers scratch the feet
of the river, sniff out the nest
whose throbbing delight
they'll attack with red teeth.

And in the depths of the all-powerful water,
like the circle of the earth,
lies the giant anaconda,
covered with ritual mud,
devouring and religious.