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

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

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. Unfortunately, my meds work so well, that my Muse is undercover at present. 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

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 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.

REALLY!? You have an archaeology degree!? How cool! 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.

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.

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 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.

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.
Why can't we think of anything to talk about in chat?

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

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.

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.