Post your best poems for critique, and I'll tear you a new asshole (I'll also tell you if/where it's any good). I'll try to keep up with everybody if this takes off.
I like the critique threads going on but those are usually 2/3 prose.
>>7456816
working on it now, it might take me a moment
>>7456816
First thing: it's 2015, not 1975, turn off the MS Word auto-capitalize at the beginning of each line. It makes for easier reading.
There's a fair bit going on here. My main criticism is that it's way too wordy. L1-4: do we need to know about the "nameless third?" I don't think so. Just close the blinds, everyone understands the significance of closing the blinds. Now, there's some weird conflation going on here. It's night, but you're having sex. Each of those things implicitly weakens the curtain gesture, because now it has two reasons for being performed instead of one.
Hardly anyone ever describes sex with panache, and I feel your description lacks charm. It's very physical: "slide," "teeth, "tongue," "meeting" (and this whole ships business is sort of a cliche--two ships passing in the night). In a novel, a character has to open a door to make things happen. You can't jump forward in time. But in poetry, you can. Yet I feel that your sexual description is doing this, opening a door. It's performative and unnecessary. "Our bodies surge," for example, is so pedestrian, such an erotica kind of line. I think you can do without all of that.
Moonlight and blessing make for a good pair. The pair is weakened by "hazy," an unnecessary adjective, and "blows," a poor verb for describing light.
The "Portholes" sentence is doing the same kind of sexual description, "glide gently," "rounds and curves," "coverage and comfort." Sticks and stones is a cliche or at any rate a banality.
There's a huge run-on sentence that begins at "Pausing for breath" and ends at "air around us." It shouldn't be that long. At one point your clause break is confusing because it's so short and easy to miss--"in the might-have-been past AND frozen things melt." Chop this sentence into manageable pieces. Then toss out all the pieces that are not necessary to the poem. "Energy" is a worthless abstraction. Don't be cute: don't say something like "maintain your smile" or "few places we'd rather be than in bed" or "melt in our warm open bellies."
It's a good ending but it's marred by the usual pitfalls. "Abstract previews" is literally a double abstraction. Abstractions are bad, delete this. The sentence goes on with too many clauses and we can't hold onto the whole thing until the end. The final clause should be its own sentence. It's a good ending.
Have you heard of stanzas? They would help the piece, in my opinion.
Trapped hallways of the mind
Labyrinth of numbness
Nothing but tired-out thoughts surrounds this tomb
Nothing but a decaying voice which seems as distant as mortality is to a young child, yet volumes everything else in it's wake:
"act"
It says
In a gentle, soothing, content way
But as the voice travels the sullen halls of thought
Passing through rooms flooded with dullness
It slowly decays to a whimper and disappears.
I've posted this on three critique threads without a single response. Hopefully you actually pay attention to this, anon.
Choral quietude:
a song sung to
an empty church —
the singer stands nude
proud
at the altar.
Licked lips look liquid
flowing free beneath
plastic wrap shimmering
in sunlight’s seat.
I can hear her voice
tickle her throat as it
leaps through her lips.
Hot breath blowing hair
from my forehead to the air
pushed towards the heaven
from which she summons her song.
Her stomping feet and
thunderclap hands
vibrate through pews.
Adam and Eve felt no
shame at their humanity
blowing in Eden’s breath
until they sunk teeth
into fruit flesh.
Bless them.
They were right
before they knew what
that meant (if it means anything).
This singer
(this girl)
her tones touch me.
They sink into my skin
choose to stay and
stick up all the hairs.
She gathers my
torn-up memories
sews them into a
Sunday Suit
and pulls me to
God in a trance.
I want to waltz
with her at the altar and
dip her into the song.
>>7457467
>I can hear her voice
>tickle her throat as it
>leaps through her lips.
sudden jump into 1st person subjectivity feels wrong.
the stanzas im about to quote seem superfluous or awkward:
Adam and Eve felt no
shame at their humanity
blowing in Eden’s breath
until they sunk teeth
into fruit flesh.
Bless them.
They were right
before they knew what
that meant (if it means anything).
This singer
(this girl)
her tones touch me.
They sink into my skin
choose to stay and
stick up all the hairs.
-------
pretty good desu
>>7457478
>the stanzas im about to quote seem superfluous or awkward
What about them seems this way? Can you explain? Do you mean they should be cut completely or altered?
>sudden jump into 1st person subjectivity feels wrong
I agree -- that stanza and the one following it were added in haphazardly after a workshop in my creative writing class, just to satisfy the requirements for a final portfolio submission. I think I'm going to change that stanza to:
Her voice tickles
her throat as it
leaps through her lips.
>>7457467
pretty good anon, I like it.
Only poem I've ever written in English:
What makes a man wake up one morning
And feel that a thousand years have elapsed?
Why are long-forgotten aeons evoked
while contemplating a crumbling wall
Lit by the obtuse rays poured
From an ephemeral autumn sun?
My time at school was an unhappy time
Tumult and turmoil I shall convey with rhyme.
Dear reader, heed this tale of regret
And use it to your own success beget.
What is school but a cage to house the young,
Before they bend to world's will? Feces are flung,
As children jest as wild beasts or apes;
The expense of others are their japes.
The cruelest minds belong to those
Who do not write with prose, appreciate the smell of rose,
Or any other flower. Who heed not nature's laws,
And do not question society's flaws.
Such are the young. And as they roam the Earth
Naive and infant in their tribal mirth
They suffice to the basest of desires:
Vindictive vengeance, self-service. All are liars
With above all else a need to rule, to dominate,
To wreak havoc upon the objects of their hate
Which they do with strength of arm and blow of fist
Under the fury of the crimson mist.
I found myself involved in such a fight
One day, and to resolve my plight
I summoned forth such strength I knew not I had:
I fought with fury as a demon mad.
Afterwards my mother to me spoke,
And listed all the bones which my foe broke.
And from the step of punishment my mind roamed free
As I reveled in some ruthless glee.
I told her from that step that I cared not,
And that it was a punishment ought not forgot.
And so my doom was laid upon me from the stair
She said 'You're moving to your auntie and your uncle's in Bel Air.'
I whistled for a cab, and when it came near
I saw the license plate said 'Fresh'; there was a dice in the mirror.
If anything, I'd have said that this cab was rare,
But I thought 'nah, forget it. Yo homes- to Bel Air!'
I pulled up to a house about seven or eight,
And I yelled to the cabbie 'Yo homes- smell ya later!'
I looked at my kingdom: I was finally there
To sit on my throne as the Prince of Bel Air.
>>7457308
Full punctuation would help. You've got punctuation in some places but not others, which makes the piece confusing. When you write in punctuation, you are forced to write in complete sentences, which helps the logic of a poem tremendously. With that out of the way, let's get to a few flaws.
Equating the mind to a labyrinth is a cliched move.
The second iteration of "nothing" doesn't follow the grammar of the first. In fact, that line is not grammatical--the "nothing" is the subject, but doesn't have a verb.
POSSESSIVE "ITS." NO APOSTROPHE.
Gentle and soothing are two words that are performing the same image. Soothing is better--get rid of gentle.
The ending is quite wordy. You don't need these adjectives and adverbs: "sullen, flooded, slowly." It needs to be shorter and punchier. Overall, I get that you're describing the hesitation to act, but you're slowing the poem down both at a language level, with your adjectives and adverbs, and adjectival / adverbial clauses, and at a subconscious level of content. Look at the words you're using: "trapped, numbness, tired-out, decaying, distant, dullness, decays." These are making the reader less receptive to your poem because a reader sees them and thinks, "does the author know what he is talking about? Why is he describing everything in such monotonous, dreadful language?" A poem needs to be sharp, if not outright witty, to have an effect. Its words and its argument need to ring true immediately. Your language choices serve to dull the poem.
i woke up this morning
and thought
do i like this earth
no
fuck this earth
fuck this gay earth
>>7456697
Palms are sweaty
Knees weak, arms are heavy
Vomit on my sweater already
Mom’s spaghetti
>>7456885
How is the curtain gesture weakened because it means two things?
>>7457467
that is really good actually
>>7458658
Not the OP, but I think the more elementary fourth-wall puncture question for me on that initial passage was why does the window need both blinds and curtains?
>>7458658
because it means the narrator closes the curtains to block everything, because that's what you do at night, but now sex is just one of those things and loses its importance. I don't know if that's a good description but it's the way I feel about the piece. Also, there is a good point in >>7458693
Do you like Pie?
No, why?
I love Pie
Then Die
>>7458676
>>7458168
>>7457478
Since you guys liked Choral quietude:, I have another one you might like.
Eat your nails with
gnashing teeth and
makeout lips. Stare at
nothing, or
everything, or
both, with
eyes shut to nighttime
streetlamplight.
Blow smoke slurped from
a bummed cigarette — only
open your eyes when they
are drowning in the carbon
monoxide cloud.
Because when they’re open
you feel the earth’s tilt,
its spin, and you feel it
all over.
It hits you hard
in your skinned skinny jean knees.
It hits you harder in your chest.
You are bruising, my love.
You are bleeding, and breaking.
Is it you? Is the pressure
heavier than your fragile
eyelids can handle?
The smoke rises and
eases your burden,
lifting the corners of your mouth
with your glass eyelids.
I never know — are you
crying, or laughing?
Breathing, or dying?
Everything at once, or
nothing at all?
Do you feel when you
sleep? Do you dream?
While your brother
punches in plaster, while
your mother oozes regret,
while your father thinks
of leaving, do you dream?
While you lie face in pillow,
does the pressure destroy hopes
of leaving your breaking body?
Do you want to leave like your
father? Do you need something
other than this tilt, this imperfect
sphere of blue drowning and green suffocation?
The green is rotting to asphalt grey, my love,
the blue is rotting to trashbag brown.
And you feel it all over.
You feel it.
Oh December, oh December
you are a bitter month
with your cold wind
i can't stand outside naked in the rain
trust me, i've tried
Oh December, oh December
your nights are so long
with you i think I'll always be alone
you make me want to hang myself
you make me think i can't love anybody
Oh December, oh December
i don't know what to give my father for Christmas
He has more money than i ever will
What can you give a man like that?
I'd give him July if i could
Oh December, oh December
I don't know why I'm writing you
you bitter bastard, you never write back
i think I'll stay in bed today
it's so warm there
nobody can see you in the dark
is that why you're so cloudy and dark?
You don't want to be seen, do you?
what's the matter, December?
are you ugly, obese?
were you born with a cleft palate?
do you have some thyroid deficiency?
I don't care, December
your problems aren't mine to solve
maybe you should see someone
I'll give you my doctor, he's really good
he got me through December
>>7458391
goddamn you will smith
>>7458768
Critique this and i'll critique back
>>7458184
"A thousand years" is a bit melodramatic. So is "aeons." You have a good image here, a crumbling wall, but it doesn't fit with the introduction you've given us: a man waking up. Is he waking up in front of a castle? Or are you transporting us to a different scene altogether? If that's the case, you'll need a little more logistics. It's too sudden a shift. At the end, you get wordy: "obtuse, ephemeral, autumn." Obtuse is unnecessary. Ephemeral is overused in bad poetry, and it doesn't do enough in this poem. It merely tells, it doesn't show. And autumn and autumnal are also overused to describe suns. Why not say how the sun's rays are disproportionately low for this time of day. Autumn is telling again, instead of showing.
The poem needs more work and more substance. Don't worry about being poetic with your language, i.e. adjectives and tack-on clauses.
Wind rattles the trees
Like the sound
Of the pills that
Bounce around in my blue
Backpack.
I toss my
Yellow raincoat
Collapsed on the desk
Arms fallen
In a pose so baroque,
Sipping from the rumbling rainfall
Of Kanye’s 808s.
Sheena is a punk rocker. Sigh!
Nothing ever goes as planned.
Vanishing Point
(-for David Markson)
I make a fish sandwich and I
sit, park benched, and eat it,
alone as the gravestones
where great great grandfathers,
are also never visited, closer
now than ever to their rainbow
view above, unconcerned for blue
light screens and earbuds' white
cry they have been replaced by.
Hands, pecks, bushels, drams,
the chain, the league, the talent; the
standard candles now make demands
in pixels kilometers long, angstroms thin.
Shakespeare and Chaucer might shake
hands but could not understand
each other, English having reached
its fill of war, trade and French bits.
We are all about thumbs now, see
the pretty girl about to fall in the
fountain for lack of looking? Counting
characters instead. Not an actor,
a movie star. Her erolalia
could use some work. Should
the peaches be eaten, we
know, now, the day, though
darker, is not all lost. Rather
say that, mis-mementoed, today
still is less mori than forgotten. Will
any of us be so lucky?
Kings of apple barns singing
in their sky blue chains don't begin
to count toads' earned runs: Too few
memories to bother to ask them
why it is we are dying.
>>7456697
I basically never write poetry but I had some feels the other day at the planetarium and decided to try something short:
at the planetarium
wandering forlorn among the glass cases
buttermilk sun of the late afternoon
hits the glass cases of relics
you can see yourself older now
realize the distance
your face over the medals like a hologram
remembering your childish dreams of space
and those few who unlike you
had the right stuff
to not grow up entirely
I know it's shit, feel free to rip into it because I've never tried poetry before so I have no self-esteem attached to it.
>>7458768
The apostrophe to a month or season is a bit dated, and the "Oh" declaration is definitely antiquated. Most of the poem is just laments addressed in this apostrophic manner: "your nights are so long, you make me want to hang myself, you never write back, are you ugly, obese?" etc. etc. It's too much.
And I don't understand what you're getting out of personifying December like this: "I'm writing you, you bitter bastard, you never write back." First, describing something cold as "bitter" is a cliche. Second, your personification doesn't do December justice. It's too unconnected to what December actually is: it is not a pen pal...
And then this business with insulting December with cleft or a thyroid deficiency is absolutely loony. It seems only to give yourself an occasion to say "your problems aren't mine to solve." But it seems that you are the one with the problem with December.
I don't know what to make of this poem. It doesn't make much sense, and the language is not poetic, but petty and accusatory. If you want to write about seasons and months, read poetry on the subject. I recommend Philip Larkin's "Spring."
>>7458931
Not OP, but I liked "buttermilk sun" and the reference to the right stuff. Don't be so hard on yourself!
Also, "realize the distance" is interesting because the poem is partly about space travel, which covers a lot of distance.
However, what the poem is saying for the first time is just too obvious.
At morn — at noon — at twilight dim —
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and wo — in good and ill —
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee;
Now, when storms of Fate o’ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my Future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
>>7458768
Do you read a lot of Allen Ginsberg? You seem to be emulating his voice.
>>7458972
>>7458891
The B alliteration in L4-5 doesn't really work for me since "bounce" is not a good word. The pills make a good image. "I toss my yellow raincoat collapsed on the desk arms fallen" does not read as grammatical. Fix the sentence.
The diction changes after the second stanza. The third stanza is again not grammatical; "sipping" needs a subject.
I like the ending, even though I don't understand it. In fact, I don't understand most of this poem. It needs punctuation and grammaticality.
>>7458973
i wrote it with America in mind
yeah, im a fan of his
>>7459057
Thanks for the critiques, and I'm glad that you enjoyed some things. Don't you think that a poem can have incomplete sentences?
>>7459084
I gave this advice to someone else, but it applies to most everyone. Writing in complete sentences forces you to write in complete thoughts. It also eliminates any possible ambiguities, such as "collapsed" either modifying the yellow raincoat or describing the narrator. Basically, good sentences clarify your language, and that's never a bad thing.
Anger be now your song, immortal one, Akhilleus’ anger, doomed and ruinous, that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss and crowded brave souls into the undergloom, leaving so many dead men— carrion for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done. Begin it when the two men first contending broke with one another— the Lord Marshal Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus.
>>7458972While I pondered, weak and weary, why the trolls would bother weakly, bother weakly to derail this thread of yeoman verse once more,
a voice did hail me, yes, it did indeed assail me, me with no concern but to critique the OC here in store. Quoth the voice - trollpost no more.
>>7459098
I feel like you're treating poetry editing like you're editing prose. Shouldn't poetry be full of riddles, puzzles, striking uses of language that throw you off?
I didn't intentionally write "collapsed" to be an ambiguous modifier. However, I looked back at the stanza, and I was delighted by that accidental ambiguity. I'm not saying that I think the stanza is good because of that ambiguity, or whether the accidental comparison between me and my raincoat is even good poetry. Maybe it's tacky! But I'm just saying, you know, that a demand for clarity is probably the biggest killjoy in poetry.
>>7456697
How do I into both reading and writing poetry?
Any particular theory books you would recommend?
>>7459136
Indeed, clarity may be a killjoy, especially in beginner writers who have a magical fascination with playing with language. But unclarity and ambiguity are rarely used to good effect. This is why beginner writers almost always mellow out over time, and perhaps also why mature writers turn down their diction toward the end of their careers. Perhaps this is a preference of mine. My favorite poets are meticulous and clear. They are prime examples of saying exactly what they mean without sacrificing any Poetic notions with a capital P. They are Auden, Larkin, Bishop and Fenton. I think it is no coincidence that they are among the finest poets of the 20th century.
>>7459166
Well, I'll just say that "a magical fascination with playing with language" sounds exactly like what a poet should have.
Aligned, through fortune’s arm dislimned,
Extends a disengagement of the past.
A match falls into your throat
cough!
the engines
splutter
into life, a purr issues from her
semi-sealed lips
and hip to hip was the lonely dancers' kiss
pilgrimmed from the quiet comforts of home
to the star-spangled darkness of
hazy encounters
My body moves
and I remain
barefoot, ankle deep in mud.
An opaque screen
drifts listlessly between
us, me, you, and the ever-swirling circle
of glistened bodies caught in the spirited funk of dance.
Glancing bleary and bloodshot eyes across
the room
wavering on the interval, draw
the wall
so high
that no single sketch could capture its fall.
And yet, now and then,
A glimpse through the bricks
washes past our blurred eyes
who, hesitant on a moment,
extend their fruitful branches
towards something that
was once
the resemblance of a tree.
For a moment, I am uprooted:
and my trunk timbers, crashing down
onto concrete,
scattering
the sanctimonious divide held so long
staunch between us.
If it were but for nothing else
would I still feel
swerving swerving
through untold effigies of mist
would I still feel
warm breath instead of damp air
clammy hands instead of stone idol’s
and roots as deep as mine?
Only mirages lie between us, darling.
If only for a moment,
we learnt what it means to find water.
My best? My attitude towards my writing always changes so here's one of my latest ones.
Rain Song.
Whiling away in found shelter
The sound of trees shimmer with a thousand tiny splashes
say, when will the train come?
And do you think we'll see our friend, the rat?
Through the this curtain of droplets I hear, it coming now,
sing me this, this rain song.
This train of thought takes me
Out past the hugging arms of the bay
There's a mist bank ahead
And what lands beyond it?
Surely the sun-disk comes to visit each shore
And whose footsteps do I hear approaching?
Sing this rain song and feed the stream
Many years sitting on the throned bridge
Below roars a great river's source
It flow down through the great plains to the ocean
and along its banks my race finds its souls
And here I'll father a thousand descendants
and shall I be here a hundred years and live another hundred?
But I hear him coming now,
Say, who is that now, come to my door?
>>7458904
"Park-benched" would be nice as a stretched rhyme, but on its own in the middle of a line it calls attention to itself for no reason.
"Are also never visited" and "alone," as modifiers, are doing the same job. Edit the sentence to work with the former, since it is the better modifier. What do you mean by the "rainbow view above"? It's a good phrase but it doesn't connect me to anything. Lose the screens and earbuds, because everyone tries it and it never works. Need a full stop after "all about thumbs now." What is "erolalia"? Define it for me, I can't seem to find a definition. And then, after you've defined it, find an English equivalent (doesn't have to be only one word). "Less mori"? Why not say less dead? What's the connotation you're going for?
Your language and register are pretty good. However, you've failed to leave me with a lasting impression of this "vanishing point." Your images are wildly disjoined--they seem like a series of non-sequiturs. The result is that I have no idea what you're trying to create with them. I like what you're doing with the language, but if you want to be understood or even glimpsed, you ought to help the reader a bit more.
I copy and pasted a bunch of lines from various poems in an old thread and made them rhyme as coherently as possible without writing a single word myself. I call it:
Freud Writes Frankenstein
Let it be said
the time has come for me to say hello:
The Queen is dead
by blackmagic melodies and mellow
Platonic fiends hovering over Tokyo
made from the clouds in your dream
atop the eons of which we roam
broken only after it seems
their faces, those of gods or dogs,
discarded cutlery in the trash,
planet, tiger captains, and frogs,
pig eating pigs plump with cash
murder my personality
without all the advantages
so take some hospitality
a tumble of shiny images
or not quite anyway, except
that isn't Toni Morrison, silly–
for the sake of what was left
we shiver in this chilly
room with the amusement park attraction;
as days crawl with the impatient impasse
that is probably muddled in abstraction
I watched her wilt as days did pass
like the columnated ruins, dominoed,
for the nuance or the yolk
but in schematic pseudocode
colliding with the herb smoke
reminding us of its presence
Güte gräbt ein tiefes Loch
It makes no difference,
set me up upon a rock
with ourselves at the other end
to say something pithy and smart,
though the view does ascend,
this is really easy to pick apart.
BIOLUMINESCENCE
Mea Culpa, Zarathustra
I spoke the name afore
The door did break
Mine fing-nails ache
In touching lectric window panes
And lactic whole-fuck plasma fanes
,Love,
Terministic screens
Spit my crossbeams
Stab light in blinding eye and sheens
Blind and Bleed me into Bethlehem,
Blind me like my momma said
Now I’ll strangle out my white, foreskight
Now I’ll fill my soul with lots black holes
Now I’ll stake the snatch of night
‘N beat fast the tract, my tracks, my lacks
My ever-pumping, aching back, then
Back into my black room-shack
Where light looms cross my pale streaks
Lumes my belly rills, my chic, my streaks
my crusty sheets, my ever 'neath
The thoughtful love of mine own flesh leech
My death by infinitely recurring BioLuminescence, Mea Culpa
>>7458959
>However, what the poem is saying for the first time is just too obvious.
What should I do instead?
Flung from a giraffe's womb
in the middle of a zoo
covered in amniotic goo,
I propose to you
for us to get married
in the stolen eyes from on high
peering down on our predicaments
asking "hey buddy, gotta nicorette?"
I do, but not for you
I'm busy with my girl at the zoo.
So rude, passersby think
until I scream "Allahu Akbar–!"
and bury the hatchet.
So if you want to exhume it,
I ask you to presume it:
you're nonexistent
until fisted,
so add that to your wish-list.
Hyperlinks: stepping stones,
aluminum rods radiating fuzz.
Jump into the dissolve–
you're not insoluble–
slapdash: the stoop kids toss rocks
made from cracked mother's backs.
Onomatopoeic creaks
(we're up shit creek)
consume the submersible
like Cthulhu on a lunch-break.
Sanguine coals and purple prose–
tangerine spleens and green hoes–
happy-went-lucky and stillbirths–
a collage of verbal vessels made from your neurons:
neurona, corona, suns and sons and William Sonoma.
Step back, peel out, peer in, step in–
to deny me your verbiage is sin–
to criticize my wax is grim–
I'm not fat my skin's just thin–
You ask these questions like the one
before you went to the funeral
or bris if you're rabbinical,
but I have no answers,
I'm on a sabbatical.
The lazy painter paints nothing
calling it everything.
I'm no painter, but I do forge
beauteous Platonic forms
in the shape of social norms:
You can't say that, but I did;
fuck, just abort your kid;
he's eleven I kid;
so edgy on the vid;
semi-colons from ulcerative colitis;
such a shame to live in all this detritus;
lest ye have the terrible touch of Midas;
and a cock shaped like an auger.
Title: I Never Edit or Revise Anything I Write Because I Believe Genius Flows Naturally and Infallibly from its Channelling Agent That in This Case is the Unabashedly Narcissistic Ne'er-do-well Whose Work You're Hopefully about to Read and Enjoy
I wanted to want to be taken
seriously;
I wanted to be taken,
but my jester hat kept falling over my eyes
leaving me crestfallen, laughing in disguise.
Whenever I'd sneak a sidelong glance
at a girl, wielding a needle of chance,
I'd only see the immanence of a vituperative dance
and crack-wise
thinking of blue eyes
and the elephant turd in the room
swept under the Persian rug with a toiling broom–
gloom, doom, Vroom!, Celestun's moon in June–
I am something like Spam
or maybe Ricky Wysocki's 'The Room.'
[Now let us all take a moment of silence
so we can hear myself breathe.
That includes you, John.]
Where was I when? Well
as the memories flood my menstruating mind
like an Indian seamster's corrugated roofed home
decorated with smelly children and a poor person’s potpourri
during a rabid monsoon resembling Zeus’ diarrhea, I recall:
Class was always difficult
and ending in 'ass'
aside from the literal
which was just sass
rather than littoral
(like the hole of my ass
whose cheeks are bicameral).
Butt of course I had my troubles,
perpetually sidelined
(I didn’t mind)
like Barney Rubble
sporting post-vasectomy stubble;
yet time went on like it is now:
a second at a time, that's how.
So I once asked Miss Communication when our paper was due.
She said: "No [I'm you], I won't do your paper for you."
But that was just a joke, and so am I.
Yet a mirror that can reflect itself
is equivalent to the number of digits in pi.
Now, for more fantabulousness!
Brought to you BUY Oscar-Meyer “I-don’t-have-a-problem-with-my-dick-size” Wiener™
“We don’t use subliminal advertising!”
Deadpan, bacon is and in a;
tongue-in-cheek, bacon is in a way;
brought home, bacon is and in a;
Porky the Pig, bacon is and in a;
I hope you get what I just did,
so I can figure it out: I kid.
Anyway: That's all folks!
9/11 was a hoax.
P.S.
Rhythm forever has eluded me,
and left me with her boring brother the Blues.
So I slouch and cry out "ollie-ollie-oxen-free!"
and kill more than time with a bottle of booze.
Luckily their lovely cousins Rhyme and Reason
are here to stay with me this holiday season
(to say nothing of their exile for treason
of which I believe involved the Queen’s anus bleedin’).
>>7459314
"Erolalia, a termed coined by Dr. Robert Chartham in his ground-breaking book The Sensuous Couple, makes reference to how important it is to allow all of our natural sounds out during coitus so as to be able to enjoy a full, deep, and satisfying orgasm."
The gravestones are alone, the gg-grandfathers are never visited. Each modifier to its referent. Rainbow is merely in proximity with fish. By itself, it is intended to evoke a view of the dead looking down from the sky. In combination, they are intended to combine to echo rainbow, rainbow, rainbow, and I let the fish go. Also, Eating Poetry. since "I" is eating the creature she released. "I" is romping in the bookish dark, though obviously the joy has departed.
The screens and earbuds are objects of disdain, in this context. Punctuation at thumbs - yes. Something. Mori goes with memento, prior. A vanishing point in painting is the point at which two parallel lines converge within the chosen scale of perspective, but within the scope of poetry, it is also possible for a rhetorical "point" to vanish: "What is your point?" "My point is that my point is vanishing."
Moore evoked toads next to baseball fans (re also, "benched", Strand, after a volume entitled Darker, asked why it is we are dying, and as for who ate peaches, and whoelse proclaimed himself king of apple barns or sang in chains, well.
Let us not write our own anthologist's footnotes.
Markson's great project was to etch an epitaph over the canon of arts, worded with the banality of failing memory, failing context, failing assertion of relevance.
Maybe I failed to ring those bells for you, but did you at least notice the palindromic rhyme scheme? As every cycle of life begins with traumatic pain, and ends with a dreadful execution, every line ends where it started.
Maybe it needs a sundown, to include the notion of senility which is also involved, though not sufficiently there.
I will think about that.
/lit/ talks to /lit/
keks mix
>infinite kek
I read
>lol no u dont
yes I do
>yeah, mcdonalds wrappers
Whatever NEET
>Normie
go back to /r9pol/
>no u go back to r/le reddit where u belong, this is non-pseuds only
wutever man i read ulysses wake tbqhwymf
>cantread.pdf
[REDACTED]
>i'm intelectually superior ro in every way conceivable by your puny walnut you can't even call a brain because its so small that you don't have speech functions and also cant comrehent kant
fightme.gloves
>>7459347
I like it
Chap curses his lips on the daily
but he sublimates and forcibly forgets blaming
anything on the other that doesn’t exist
unless he’s affronted with a cocked fist.
The marionettes on empyrean high-wire
seduce and deduce he’s only part for hire.
The choir spontaneously combusts in church
and a woman is cannibalized by Big Lurch.
Poverty seeds away at the bridge tween worlds
and the river cuts the canyon, drain twirls.
A furious glance atop a multi-looping toaster
as glass shatters on contact with a coaster.
Streetlights pop, screaming for guac:
IVs cascade, cathoding against Brecht’s agitprop.
A yawn comes, an onion in the mouth, tears rising
alongside blue-cheese potato skins tantalizing.
Songs lyrics run throughout as allusion
in an attempt to draw confusion —
absurd like a distant gesticulating blackbird
with screeches and screams inferred,
pecking at feta-spread meta.
PERIPHERY
his eyes, vacant
roll about, rotate
endlessly trying to locate
the peripherals
they are there, in the corners
the bridge of his nose
his eyelashes
the red-hot tips of his lids
slowly closing
not unlike blemishes
unseen until now
>>7456697
TAMAN SHUD..................
thud thud my heart pumps blood
when ever someone talks about my taman shud
who ditched that fox-gloved snitch?
loaded him with poison like a puffer fish
why don’t anybody feel like crying
for the Somerton somebody with the hazel eyes?
why don’t anybody feel like crying
for the Somerton nobody with the hazel eyes?
thud thud my heart pumping blood
when ever someone talks about my taman shud
he’s gone and no one even cares at all
the earth won’t answer and the sea don’t mourn
i don’t give a fuck about no Anzacery
i don’t care you got it interest free
i ain’t gonna fret about Lest We Forget
fuck the Murdoch press
i don’t get hung up on any carbon tax
or Ned getting strung up for being a psychopath
i ain’t really there with any class warfare
the only thing i care about’s the
thud thud my heart pumping blood
when ever someone talks about my taman shud
he’s gone and no one even cares at all
the earth won’t answer and the sea don’t mourn
for all of the probing into whether he exists
the question’s still as open like a radar dish
late 1948
is sending a transmission but its inchoate
don’t hate me for not caring ‘bout you losing your job
i think you’re gonna suit being a welfare slob
i don’t give a toss about no southern cross
or the gulag union jack
i don’t give a fuck if you can’t stop the boats
i ain’t at a loss if Simpson’s donkey votes
i don’t care about no Andrew Bolt
or even Harold Holt
it’s clear as
mud mud my taman shud
everybody mouths off
while they’re chewin’ cud
thud thud my heart pumps blood
when ever someone talks about my taman shud
why did anybody feel the need to lie
‘less that’s Warsaw on the seashore
on the day he died?
don’t nobody wonder where he’s been?
no tags no wallet
and his brains dry-cleaned
i don’t give a fuck about fuck off we’re full
i ain’t gonna send my kids to private school
i ain’t gonna grieve about no BHP
no silver spoons or mining booms
i don’t give a fuck about your brick and tile
i don’t really care if you’re a paedophile
i don’t care about no Master Chef
it’s as appetising as a whistle blower’s doom
or any French cartoon
nothing like a prune to make the death cults bloom
why you think the whole world’s gotta be like you?
fuck western supremacy
i ain’t sitting around being gallipolized
one man’s BBQ’s another’s hunger strike
why’d i give a rat’s about your tribal tatts?
you came here in a boat you fucking cunt
my taman shud
everybody mouths off
while they’re chewin’ cud
thud thud my heart pumps blood
when ever someone talks about my taman shud
>>7458184
What makes a man wake?
To feel that so much time has gone by?
Why are long-forgotten centuries
propelled to present mind,
while contemplating crumbling wall
lit by dusted rays
from a low sun.
good? better? worse?
>>7459563
walls*
>>7459563
lit by a low sun's dusted rays
>>7459563
Lateral movement
Denim on hairless thighs,
I am six
and the sky paints me pictures
out of bird’s blood.
I spin with stucco the stucco walls
to the rhythm of Rich’s guitar
and the tambarine of dried leaves.
My shoulder touches the wall.
The leaves scratch as they blow across the pavement. Autumn’s air is scentless. Metal buttons on denim jackets are are cold against my skin. Velcro music. Hairless arms.
I watch the sunset from my porch,
dressed in whimpers.
>sees Overstock.com commercial
>tries to order prostitute
>prostitute ends up being a black burglar named Jerome
>never visit backpages.com again
>see more advertisement proving "sex sells"
>visit Pornhub and masturbate
>read 50 Shades of Gray
>join Tinder
>match with a girl
>meet up
>turns out to be a tranny
>delete Tinder
>browse Facebook friends photos and remember how much you want a gf
>obsess over being single
>begin masturbating nightly
>drift into depression
>withdraw from your social milieu
>keep thinking about sex
>keep thinking about having a gf
>come to the realization that you want a gf more than sex
>come to the realization that people don't want sex but intimacy, love
>cum
>begin exercising, getting good grades, socializing
>meet a cute girl from one of your comm classes
>emboldened, ask her out
>take her out on a date
>take her home and giver her a kiss
>wait three days, call her, take her out again
>fuck her
>date her
>fuck her
>come to the realization that you only like fucking her
>come to the realization that maybe it is just about sex
>come to the realization that if you don't break up with her you'll break her heart
>realize you care
>break up with her
>repeat however many times necessary
>actually fall in love
>realize sex is a small constituent in a truly loving relationship
>wonder why people stress about it
>die.
Oh lass, you'd how you that brown snuff?
On that ass some brown stuff
That I don't mind too much
My hand makes a makeshift pony-tail clutch
You'll be getting stuck twice tonight
Once for the money and once for the kite
And I wonder if you escape the moral ground
From the spoon's melting mound
Your riding through the desert
On a horse with no name
On the last stanza I came
Listen
to this neo-archaic barter system
Its all it takes to render
Your submission cum surrender
Inside a child grows transcendent
You'll name her Dependence
And the day after I come tomorrow
I write her middle name as sorrow
>>7459484
you're pretty well read but none of that really comes off in your poetry. I've read the Fish and in your poem the fish and rainbow are simply too far apart to bring in that reference. And anyway that image is part of that poem and as a reader I don't like these obscure references that are used in lieu of the writer creating his own images. It's really a pitfall to combine references into a mishmash sort of collage, in my opinion. Instead of talking about "eroralia," why don't you portray it with a scene? Instead of referencing Markson, failing memory, failing context, why don't you anchor those things to a single narrator? You say "I" in the poem but he immediately disappears, later giving way to the coercive "we." These are some things to think about. Usually, if you have to explain your poem then it's not doing its job. If you want real critical attention from randoms, enough to decipher your poem, then you've got to earn it with great language and some comprehensibility, which I felt was lacking. The "palindromic" thing, while admirable, was not executed tightly enough for me to notice it the first time.
Aleatoric or pre-determined?
Apollonian or Dionysian?
Synthetic or organic?
Pepsi or Coke?
Me or you?
These
questions stand up agains the hegemony of time
gaining force with each new rhyme
until in the coconut you put the lime
and realize that we all just mime
our feelings the best we can
all without a super-writ plan
like the names of countries ending in -stan
I just hope that God's name is Dan–
eternal providential acquiescence anent pettifogging pedigrees,
hot pediatrists have top ped-degrees.
Killa Cam killin' it f@m,
I'm not a person, I am the man.
Get it, I got it; give it, I get it.
When I kill you you won't regret it,
so drop your guard and just forget it
and listen to my words: 'don't sweat it.'
But there's no fucking structure or ostensible point?
You might ask yourself at this poem's point.
To which I would reply: you obvi don't get life's point
which I've pinned down to anoint
with my phalanges joints
on this screen, nahmean?
I don't–get out of my head.
You don't–get out of your head.
I don't–get out of your head.
Is this a joke–get out of my bed.
Commercial trucks, what the fuck?
>>7459563
First question mark has to go, and the following "to" should be "and." Otherwise it's an improvement, but still not substantive enough for my taste. I am familiar with the phenomena you describe, and therefore I want a poem to present them to me with a fresh insight. You ask questions but don't answer them, and thus you haven't given me the insight I want.
He's just chasing his own tail
that he made up with his imaginational-pride
of Himiztanopolis in Meurope
where the BeeGees once played a hit show
in the back of a loser's Winnebago
decorated with scrap metal scavenged from abandoned homes
after one of the war's that took our grandparents
from the ground from which they grew.
But I'm serious:
You're going to die one day–
today, tomorrow, maybe never–
but you will die,
and kiss the sky
like Jimi, Jimmy, or Jimbo
who sliced slices of life like Kimbo.
Now for us to graduate
from our Alma Mater known as 'Bereavement'
so sit the fuck down and breathe
because you're dead and you better believe it.
I'm a devout Atheist
because I'm rational.
My thinking is cogent
and very, very rational.
You look for further justification.
But why? That's just a human construct–
we all come from the same source:
known ontologically as nothingness.
Jesus Christ was only a character
in an Andrew Lloyd Webber play,
all the rest is non-factual fiction
that makes the sheepish rabble gay.
Religion is for stupid people
because faith is a poor man's (s)word
and so spirituality is unfalsifiable
and therefore entirely absurd.
The miracle of life is just the thing
that should not be imbued with dogma
so just accept that stuff is all physical
and eschew from any empirical dogma
including preachy repetition
and espousers of retribution
who repeat their preachy speeches
with absolute absolution.
>>7459588
Really like the first stanza. It's spelled 'tambourine'
> Metal buttons on denim jackets are are cold against my skin.
This sentence feels strange surrounded by the shorter ones. Nice work all in all though. Better than the posts I read below yours for sure (sorry lads).
My Heaven's gates aren't passable
The Deity that dreamed them up was dinged out on that data-haul
Truth hidden
Fruits forbidden
Hungry hippo's laughable
Chomping at the bit to hit the bit revealing data-all
I hear the frog belch some benign reason for being
Pronouncing it's a cunt and translation fucks the meaning
Program directive changed for inspiration this one evening
Do deeds tonight aside from technodystopic daydreaming
As the navigation throngs out between sevens and fifteens
Zero one background static
Canvas to the means
It's known that nothing's known now no permission here just luck
In the absence of truth, it's often said, I just won't give a fuck
Pop up
x click
Thought-be-gone system
Perpetual history algorithm
Anti-erase software
I'm not here
I'm not there
Middle-ground without a quest
Hoping for the answer every time I hit refresh
>>7456816
>>7456885
>>7458693
>>7458719
Under the Unfinished Mountain
We close the curtains and eliminate
the watching eye that might experience us vicariously.
We meet in the middle, in the oppressive heat,
in the ocean of cool wooden walls.
The moonlight blows its blessing through the shadows
of branches and chimneys.
Water rushes and roars or gently laps
in the might-have-been-past.
Frozen things melt and calm
the shimmering sun in the
air around us.
In an ocean of sheets and
pillows and blankets kicked to the floor, sleep
passes us on the long voyage to day.
Indistinct images flutter behind
eyes that cannot prop their shutting windows
open any longer, and bodies chase
minds into the blacker fathoms of sleep.
How's this for a second draft?
>>7459300
Jumps all over the place. I couldn't pin the poem down to anything. The language isn't as sharp as it could be. There are some needlessly vague things: "rain song," "arms of the bay," "great plains." Why do we need these things, and how do they affect the narrator of the poem? I recommend reading more poetry.
OP here. The thread is very backed up. If y'all could leave a critique every time you post one of your own poems, it would help enormously. That would contribute a lot more to discussion than I could by myself. I'll still be writing crits.
Also, please take time to edit your own poems. I don't wanna see anymore grammar or spelling or syntax mistakes, and if I do, I will say so, but I won't point them out to you. That's your responsibility.
>>7459680
It's much better, you've eliminated a lot of fat around the edges. The final stanza is good. One problem I notice more conspicuously now is: a lot of your sentences sound the same. You begin the sentence with the subject, then write a verb, then finish with the object (if transitive verb) and a tacked-on clause. "We close the curtains," "we meet in the middle," "the moonlight blows," "water rushes," "frozen things melt." It all starts sounding monotonous. Variety would help you. Another problem is that you keep saying "and." Which means you have a lot of pairs--pair of verbs, pair of nouns, pair of clauses. E.g. "in the middle, in the oppressive heat, in the ocean of cool wooden walls." Or "rushes and roars." or "melt and calm," or "sheets and pillows." This again becomes tiring to the ear, and asks us to keep these little snippets of information in our head as pairs instead of as images. You may disagree but it's a point of readerly resistance for me.
>>7458768
>with your cold wind
describe this using stronger words -- with your biting wind, etc.
>trust me, i've tried
i don't like "trust me"
>your nights are so long
your nights don't seem to end, would be better -- "so" is a weak word
>I'd give him July if i could
I really like this line
>I don't know why I'm writing you/ you bitter bastard, you never write back
Too much "you," I would make it:
>I don't know why I'm writing/ you bitter bastard, you never write back
>it's so warm there
"i don't get cold there" sounds nicer and invokes december's cold
>is that why you're so cloudy and dark?
Get rid of "so"
>I'll give you my doctor, he's really good
Change to "I'll put you in touch with my doctor, he's great
Overall, it's a little weird with "Oh December" which feels a little 19th century, surrounded by relatively contemporary language and sentiments.
Critique my two:
>>7458750
>>7457467
>>7459613
>Usually, if you have to explain your poem then it's not doing its job.
Yes. And yet, "He Does The Police In Different Voices" carries several dozen footnotes to this day.
Not tightly enough? How many ballpein hammer blows to the head are required to notice a skull fracture? I would point to the pantoum which passed un-noted before, and she is trying in earnest. The carnivalesque flattening which happens in this forum is the most ticklish critical challenge the 21st century has yet produced, and you are striving to meet it,
I would ask for a simple good faith down payment, which costs you nothing:
Who ate a peach? Who was the king of apple barns?
Even allowing the cheat of google, you can mop up the chasm, if you wish. I get that no one outside of the East Village really gets Markson, less yet has actually read The Last Novel, This Is Not A Novel, or Wittgenstein's Mistress. It is not a contest. It is a context.
All I really wonder is this: Where is your charitable principle? Examine my posts in this thread in detail. I seek never to be praised. Only to be recognized prior to judgement.
As here:
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7384991#p7396829
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7399090#p7399342
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7384991#p7417659
https://warosu.org/lit/thread/S7424050#p7430883
Recognition precedes judgement. Which brings to mind the title The Recognitions in the first place.
>>7459803
Just call it "The Waste Land," you insufferable pseudo-bohemian.
And you are no Eliot, so quit shitting up the thread with your neediness.
>>7459704
It's an abstract kind of feel.
Well it's really a convergence of several elements in my head, like landscapes e.g. rivers, bays, plains, and of atmospheres like rain. It also contains other elements like the timelessness of waiting and the arrival of a stranger.
but point taken, I suppose if it needs to be explained it's not really working. then again it's more personal poem.
>I recommend reading more poetry.
me too, but I'm short on free time these days too.
>>7459803
I read about half of Wittgenstein's mistress. it was pretty cozy
>>7459803
it's pretty how as soon as posts become "posterity" they get serifs
>>7459803
>>7459891
Man, is your register always this high? heheh. I mean I get it, you read a lot, but you don't have to speak this way outside of the poem. I don't get half of what you're saying. Who is "She"? What are you on about, with the "most ticklish critical challenge in the 21st century" comment? Those are obviously rhetorical questions. Just speak plainly, i.e., in a register everyone understands, since that is the goal of a forum: communicability.
>Where is your charitable principle
I stated at the outset that I would rip y'all new assholes, and for me that means being as honest with my negative criticism as I can be. If I don't like or don't understand something, I will point it out. If I see something I like, I will say so. Which I have done: I said your language and register is good (in the poem), something I can't say for a lot of others here.
Take a hint from >>7459828, stop trying to correct everyone who disagrees with you, it's the easiest way to lose all your readers.
>>7459891
a) No, I didn't have to google it
b) The fact that you assume I would have to only goes to show how vacuous your use of language is. Pointlessly esoteric, serving only to distance yourself from and elevate you above your reader. You are the hack, friend, not me.
>>7459613
So who ate a peach? Apple barns?
A self-proclaimed poetry critic can't identify Darker, or When The Vacation is Over For Good, Prufrock, Fern Hill, The Fish, Poetry [Marianne Moore]. but pretends to be of value to anyone here.
As you wish,
>>7459905
>I stated at the outset that I would rip y'all new assholes,
I can imagine no slogan of the current epoch more appropriate. See the above. My point vanishes.
>>7459919
Jesus, get over yourself. Your literal argument is
>if you dont understand my references then you're worthless
Your poem, as I said, is completely founded on those references. Which, in my opinion, does not constitute poetry. You haven't earned your effects at all. You've merely imported them from your reading. And the other guy said it better than I can: you're needy as hell. Your general demeanor is
>engage with me the way I want to be engaged, otherwise fuck off
and yet, you are the one who came here for critique
>>7459940
So totally /lit/ as tp constitute parody. A strawman stuffed with the straw of strawmen. I have asked for nothing. Show me where I have.
Your protestation, on the other hand, serves only to cover your cruelty and sophistry. Who has thanked you for your effort?
>>7459940
Don't let him break you, OP. You were giving some really helpful critiques.
In the dark- it's winter, sparkling snow does not glitter at night
and we've shut all the windows so that no one can feel
the cold on the outside. Yes, can you
turn up the heater a little bit? Ah, so
warm. We can pick up a cup of hot tea, read a book or two.
We can also eschew this conversation, let it roll into the next room
and let the thought bubble and simmer on the brain.
Or you could explain it instead.
No, no, that'll never do
automobiles aren't produced in a moment
and neither is the surgery completed in an hour. But doctor
there is no surgery, and I am not sour, not in the least.
My serotonin melanin dopamine adenine levels are quite fine
and please tell me where all of these chemicals meet to the faces we make
to the feelings we have, isn't it a little dehumanizing to call me these things?
Because of what you are, no position can you bring
to me which will change my mind.
Therapy sessions for the depression
and Prozac for the panic attacks.
Reassurances and assurances to a man who is not quite a man anymore.
Reassurances and assurances to a collection of molecules.
no sunlight, no chrysanthemums
nothing for you,
you sweet, dawn-hearted generation
only wet rime and a knife in your throat
you have put the common stars to death
and you have put the moon to death
those who disregard the law so flagrantly will not even be tried by the law;
those who work to destroy the law only cry out for their own punishment
your own works will condemn you
& your own children will betray you.
and they will all betray each other,
and they will all devour one another
a mess of rats in the dark
cool white light, torn slate, & rain--corroded cardboard
^this, today and tomorrow, will be your oft-repined for change of scene—
from the next little click of the minutehand to the crack of the glass in the case,
overcome by the tireless march of the sun—
your last eternal sentinel
like a crazed,
desolate Inuit
pacing polar circles
around the farthest flung
inhuman reaches of the world.
Stretching afternoons after a cup of something warm,
Evenings which quietly start to curl as
Night finally shuts it's eyes, breathing softly.
Days that do not march on with the vigor of a soldier, no,
rather, walk lackadaisically to the next interest, gawk
for awhile, smile, greet another person on the street,
for these days have somewhere to go, but they can balk
and wait for awhile, yes, they can wait for awhile and talk.
Weeks that crawl along, all on fours, same pattern, differing habits occasionally.
Weeks that we can watch go on by with a pair of binoculars, quietly take down notes, observe
and plan ahead for the next expedition on this reserve
Months which tick on by, filing paperwork, of course
There is the fourth of July to handle, and a horse
For Marie to ride on the second, yes, yes
The bill is due in three of them, and at the end of the day
The requests look very much the same
But you don't mind it- no, your job is not a pain
And you would do it all again, or so you claim
Years which pile up like debt
Sneaking up behind you, when you are undressed
To take you by surprise, collectors and sharks
To threaten to claw out your eyes if you don't pay
And you sit there, for there is no money, there is no cost
Even without borrowing anything, you're still lost
And tossed aside as they speed off into the night.
And life, life that stretches out after a cup of something warm
Curls up underneath a blanket, in a perfect fetal form,
and shuts its eyes, breathing softly.
Life's like Dirty Harry
asking you if you're lucky
it's also fucking scary
unless your very plucky.
The simpler things bringaling
smiles upon smiles and yet
the simplest things
put a trillion orgasms to bed.
Cough in a hole
sing in your shed;
marry a lantern
or a Pilgrim instead.
Hop over the ages
meet a glowing face
its the magic of the mages
in beautiful cyberspace.
Artificial yet wholly organic
maybe this can save the whole planet.
Oh cram it.
Next one–the king demands it.
Titillate and innovate, gallavant too;
inspirate, reiterate; how I love you.
Cheese fumes smack my upper lip
and your eyelashes perform a flip
and did I mention that I love you?
Point and laugh, for I love someone
and her name is my left hand (sing-song voice; jazz-hands; toothy grin; pizzazz!).
Uck it, here's one on the spot.
Why?
Here stood I with a question
So told to question yet no answer yield
Oh blank sky I can't blame you for our own lie
As I look beyond and question why?
I see the blank canvas as color reflects empty
Is it me or our questionable reality?
Maybe our deluded society? Will I ever know?
Seven Billion, and I am but one. The reality is why did I have to be that one?
>>7460552
The pixellated letters splashed me pupils
and me brain processed with every scruple
hoping to find something that's useful,
but lapsed into barley and sin.
The question sat their like a blind hooker
or day-old hoagie on the plate
that makes your grandma look like a looker–
hey! It's just a joke. Don't get irate.
The point is there wasn't one
just like your flightless vessel
that crashed like Air Forced pun
due to human error____
He compuslively wrote
and did so blindly
literally by closing his fvision slits
and curating a llil somethin somethin
for the audience
(that's you my man how's lifee?
Kid's okay? Yeah
worn as your mother's pussy eh? Thanks
pal.
But belligerence flew out the door
with his first chile
is a great
palce to visti in south america
because of its cculture and diversity
and lushish sceneyr
thank you
*bows face*
>>7460577
infnitely gay
>>7460567
fug, well done. -.-
>>7458972
protip: write with 2015 lexicon
it's not 1750 anymore
>>7459631
>>7459563
What makes a man wake
and feel that so much time has gone by?
Why are long forgotten centuries
propelled to present mind,
while contemplating a crumbling wall
lit by a low sun's rays?
Ghosts can't protect your soul
they only haunt your mind
or linger,
at least. With that shallow afternoon glare.
Why do ancient ruins hang on
for so long?
Their purpose is gone.
Their memories are faded.
They should be torn down, remade, or remodeled
and yet,
here they stand.
Like an eternal sentinel
watching the lives of those it guards come and go.
A new wall should be built though.
A stronger one.
A taller one.
It wont be built though
and certainly not here,
not today.
This vision is too perfect,
too inspiring,
perhaps, too beautiful.
Certainly too beautiful
and more so in the twilight.
Blue hues and dry grass.
It
will be here tomorrow.
Someone will notice.
>>7459642
I don't care for the rhymes in the second stanza, nor the J names, nor the Kimbo pun. The first stanza is much better, more creative and better imagery. The third stanza is a whimper of an ending, but I sense that it's supposed to tie everything together. I didn't connect with the content of the poem much, but the language proficiency (mostly in the first stanza) is nice.
>>7459590
i like the sentiment but i dont like the greentext and the language is very banal because it's greentext
>>7458581
>>7456885
>>7458719
>>7458840
>>7458932
>>7459057
>>7459098
>>7459166
>>7459314
>>7459613
>>7459631
>>7459905
>claims /in this thread/ to be a Bishop fan
>fails to recognize bright neon sign allusions to Bishop's most anthologized poem of all time
You're mean. And not good at this. At all.
>>7457643
>>7459136
>>7459212
>>7459349
And also non-responsive. Except when you are being shown up.
>>7459314
You should feel bad and stop posting. No one is going to become a better poet from your advice. You crit like a blue haired old lady with no husband, a copy of Elements of Style, and too many cats. When in fact, you are an Argentinian grad student with blue balls and a bad translator.
>>7459905
>Man, is your register always this high?
Is yours always so ignorant? If anyone here wants advice from an insecure pretender, they should go instead to Moe's Tavern and recite dirty Limericks while recording how loudly Homer laughs.
Which Poe did I shield you from above?
Again, I'll wait while you google it.
>Poseur.
>>7459940
>you are the one who came here for critique
Actually, I came here to expose bad critique. It's going swimmingly.
>>7459940
>Your poem,
Really? It's in the archive three times in different drafts. Yet another obvious thing, like Prufrock and Bishop, you didn't know.
> in my opinion
Worth every aphorism about opinions.
Do you like anything? Do you even riff?
Jesus in Belfast
When Jesus walks in Belfast
He wears his collar up
he keeps his blessings to himself
and stoops before his cup
when Jesus comes through Belfast
he spends his wisdom dear
And when his name is spoken
he makes as not to hear
He keeps well back in company
and shuts his fuckin mouth
and when he can he does his trade
a measure further south
When Jesus walks in Belfast
He keeps his cap pulled low
his step away he quickens
and those returning slow
He'd have a merry welcome
if he should take the whim
to ask the sods he suffered for
to suffer more of him.
THE FUNERAL OF FULFILLMENT AND THE ETERNAL REPRISE OF LONGING (lit edition)
(*chuckles* oh boy, you know this one's gonna be a sad one)
"in conclusion, 'mad girl love song' is sylvia plath's most popular poem but also one of her worst:
it is the ramblings of a teenage girl consumed by patriarchal fever dreams that are blind to the chains of her existence and the institution of subalternism;
i, myself, am as blind as any impressionable teenage girl,
and my love is an unadulterated, adulterating compulsion to replicate intimacy, taught to me since birth,
movements and sounds manufactured by the public relations industry and military-industrial complex that feel RAW and REAL...
for YOU i would admit defeat and procure in your name loveless, abominable mutations of the situational art of unprotected sex,
fornications tainted with seething masculinity defecated by warmongering, powerful institutions of monotheism,
to suck your dick and swallow your seed as a vehicle to honor the abstract ideals that these elements symbolize"
(the poet has admitted defeat at the hands of programmed love, programmed thoughts, programmed emotions and programmed descent into death by the Communist Gangster Mad Computer God who commanded that the seeds of defeat and conformity be sown worldwide into sleeping, unconscious assholes and the furrows of mankind)
my life has been turned around like a stomach flopping upside-down by the digestive combustion of raw oyster or a looming sensation of dread,
this infatuation causing seasonal lunacy that could make me rape and pillage in the Heavenly Kingdom,
if simply in exchange for fleeting closeness through physical contact and exchange of corporal thermal energy with you, insane and beautiful animal
this love is not real:
the unbearable and mind-fucking obsession with the idea of YOU is the manifestation of my fanaticism to what you poetically represent to me:
sublime and obscure personal have-nots that, through distortion and perversion, my mind has connected in an oh-so-Freudian manner to the indestructible memory of sensory stimuli from the mass of skin and flesh, infinitesimal atoms of symbiotic meaninglessness, that in conjunction represent YOU
YOU, the arch-enemy of my mental well-being and academic-financial success
give me poverty and plague before life without you,
I will slowly i abandon pragmatic cold analysis derived from the a priori to descend, spiraling, into the mad kaleidoscopic ecstasy of my romantic conception of your being,
pressing our atoms together to destroy the construct of space and time,
attempting the destruction of stringencies and inhibition through sadomasochism and an antelapsarian, immoral promotion of nudism
original sin pales to the sins i would commit in your name, allahu akbar
im NOT in love, only diseased
>>7456697
>>7461830
last verse is pretty much brainstorm garbage, haven't really finished this poem but w/e
As clouds devour the horizon
brittle leaves embed the sodden ground
as my hair falls out
and my teeth turn brown
hostage of expression
defaults a frown
I stand on the precipice of
a very wide pit
but even Giotto found himself
painting in circles
He never could recreate its curves
With toes stretched into the still air
i look over the edge and
dribble a little into the darkness
I cannot see it land
nor do I hear it fall
Immured in the murmur of pretty postcard walls
am I? Or is that the tide lapping at my feet?
Sometimes i wish i was there, frightened, sopping wet,
but with you all the same.
To whom, if it may concern,
do I address my shriek?
I cannot know who will hear it
for the pit it swallows whole,
a scream inhaled
bouncing beyond all earshot,
and quietly dying in the far below.
But feed it with your noise
do not waver on the edge
of a note
glistening
by the light of a quiet moon
tear your apple from its tether,
inspire your chest to swell
And fire your obscenities foul
into the blistering gloom below
for the loudest cries
are that which linger most
sincerely
In the darkness.
My eyes return once again
to the beachy scenes of somewhere
distant
As my fortunes align my response.
>>7456697
Is that an artistic representation of menstrus?
>>7461025
>>7461131
>>7461132
>>7461144
not Op here, you seem riled. do you think youre some kind of unrecognized genius? i read your poem, it wasnt good. it's pretty obvious youre insecure about your poem since you wanna fight everyone who tells you its bad. quit shitposting, i havent seen you do a single critique, whereas Op has done many
>>7457643
>Can you explain?
not very well. the register seems to change very jarringly.
>Do you mean they should be cut completely or altered?
try either. i would go for alter.
>Her voice tickles
>her throat as it
>leaps through her lips.
much better. i don't know if i would keep the 'as' but your choice.
>>7462871
>not Op here
>you seem riled
>you think youre some kind of unrecognized genius
pic related
"OP" is stuck on page 3 of Cambridge Grammar. Why would anyone seek advice from someone who only pretends to read or care about poetry?
I'm the only friend any writer has in this thread, whose only purpose, apparently, was to troll poets.
You know how i know its you? You still want to believe >>7458904 is "mine." Which adds "other posts in this thread" to the long list of things you're only pretending to have read.
>>7458904
>"I make a fish sandwich"
FUCKING DROPPED LMAO
>>7460491
Quite good, I like the diction. There are a couple parts where it drops to too conversational or relaxed, like "ah, so warm," and "no no that'll never do." I dont think those parts do anything for the poem. And "no position can you bring to me" is a wacky phrasing, maybe just you can't change my mind? What's "position" doing?
>>7460549
i didnt like the rhyme, it's superficial. but then again it's not a poem that begs to be taken seriously, so thats going for it well
>>7459521
I like what is going on here, that the poem has no punctuation or capitals on its periphery. But also, you say "peripherals" in the body, so maybe change the title? Or change "peripherals" to something else. Anyway, I don't need to be told twice. The ending is good but I don't know why you need the "not unlike" construction. "Like" will suffice and will be less of a mental trick on your reader. The ambiguity you gain with "not unlike" is not worth the attention it draws to itself, which detracts from the image.
>>7462974
So let's review what "op" does not know:
>Elliot's Prufrock
>Bishop's The Fish
>Moore's Poetry
>Thomas' Fern Hill
>>7458904 was a plant from the archive. Just like >>7458972 which someone else, quicker to see this thread for the fraud that is posted, and "op" was /still/ stupid enough to fall for, >>7460592 even after I marked it - twice - as Edgar Allan Poe. "op" is ignorant of basic anthology standards any sophomore lit major could recite half in the bag with one hand tied behind their back.
This whole thread is a troll.
Probably by a stemfag who gets off on trolling aspiring poets. Some technical writer at Monsanto who got passed over for promotion and does this after fapping to trap threads on /b/.
The Word Mother
makes me think of you,
childless and loveless,
kneeling there before the needle
-work that is gifted to no one,
your flesh a soil so acid-rich.
Do you know what springs
from your terracotta figure?
Are you innocent or contrite?
What secret lives in your mouth
and the brown petals of your figure?
Would you tell me if I could know? that
motherhood lurks, arcane, prolific,
in every woman’s woodland
like a lightning-eyed fox by man forever
hounded; never understood
but by those natal beings who
lend her shelter:
wrinkled alder, fecund earth.
Uproot the longest stalks of grass
on an overwatered lawn
and lay them down
to die in the sun.
Or, with an old blanket,
drag a loose thread through
its own looped ends
and wither the blanket.
Children sob at such losses
because grief is the answer to destruction
and because they know that the world
has been irreparably damaged;
it will never be the same world,
not with next year’s spring
or mother’s sewed patches.
You do not even weep
for the dead and their lost riches.
And you want the child to grow up?
>>7463209
cant really think of a title at the moment
People never hear the echoes
lost to plain sight and
endnotes nobody reads
aching in bereavement,
sobbing saccharine symphonies–
eek! Gorgonzola–
However, muffled cries will
eventually mete out a million
lovers' embrace in the knick–
please help.
>>7463262
p
l
e
a
s
e
h
e
l
please help
What can I do, anon?
>I feel like you're treating poetry editing like you're editing prose.
Met with this incoherent response:
>Indeed, clarity may be a killjoy, especially in beginner writers who have a magical fascination with playing with language. But unclarity and ambiguity are rarely used to good effect. This is why beginner writers almost always mellow out over time, and perhaps also why mature writers turn down their diction toward the end of their careers. Perhaps this is a preference of mine. My favorite poets are meticulous and clear. They are prime examples of saying exactly what they mean without sacrificing any Poetic notions with a capital P. They are Auden, Larkin, Bishop and Fenton. I think it is no coincidence that they are among the finest poets of the 20th century.
None of which the troll has ever read. The poet responded again, with the appropriate final action for this thread_ he left.
And not only does "op" not know Poe (or anyone else he is pretending to have read), he can't even place him in the right century: >>7460592
This whole thread is a troll.
>>7463302
hello, i'm the poster >>7462890, not op, whoever it is. i've only posted twice in the thread. the namefag robethalpin said his poem had been posted several times without critique so i tried to give it my best.
when I said I couldn't explain very well was because my ability to engage explicitly with poetry is limited. it's hard for me to explain why something seems wrong, which is why i almost always refrain from critiquing poetry, but I felt the namefag deserved at least a mediocre critique rather than outright silence sinceI really liked choral quietude.
>>7462172
Yeah. the whole thread is a troll.
It has been dripping with contempt for its own project since the first post, and everyone keeps falling for it.
pic related: op's project.
>>7463188
I liked it, can't say what about it. there were some good images
>>7463281
I just need help, man.
>>7463533
go to a therapist immediately
cassionless dress-up
Masquerading around familiar settings
Greeting imaginary strangers and
friends and the occasional
lover
real or not, the conversation is smooth
no spoken topics upsetting
as the band plays perfectly situation sounds
filling the barren room
assembling together the perfect scene
a night that can only be known as a dream
-S.S.
Ive waited for her letter
And her words stuck on my mind.
I went for a walk in the morning
The dew so gentle and kind
An old path through the forest
Worn down by small feet
Of little deer and rabbits
That I have no hope to meet
Along the trail I've determined
With so many flower petals
On this journey I'm not alone
Even when the dusty wind settles
An old man comes from behind
His clothes so aged and worn
His fingers seemed to be bleeding
From where all his skin had torn.
He stares at me in a daze
And scares me with his gaze
Since he's looking beyond me
At a beautiful young tree.
The old man tears at the bark
And whispers sweet nothings
And cries out for its embrace
With me staring, left in the dark.
I travel on towards the open
With his cries stuck behind
And I couldn't shake the feeling
I'd be back here to clear my mind.
>>7463349
It's not really anything other than that people want to just get their work out there I suppose. It's nice to find a place to post a poem or two, even if ultimately no one here is an expert in shit; slight praise is enough.
>>7461830
what the fuck is this
>>7460605
It's shit. It's gay.
I hate it.
Sodoku.
>>7456697
Eyelids: guillotines through my own,
ink black line of demarcation
Spanish-Portuguese usurpation,
native lives cut by unknown knowns
In a yellow office a man moans,
eyes closed to cracking
,nitrogen sapping tired bones
atramentous lives spread across thighs.
Dotted is in designations of time.
Blindness in truth
lies in youth
idealistic follies dappled chartreuse.
From throne they go
in rusted armor
to conquer lands and mold
the rough hewn land
into alabaster and gold
The only poem I've ever written. Made six months ago, short enough to remember. I'm normally a d/ic/k so tear it apart.
The contrast between
soft greys and greens
in rainy springs,
the sparkle and sheen
of dukes and queens
on sapling leaves,
these sing to me.
Around me: I stand on the shore
The waters are black and swirling
I hold a black mirror in my hands
The swastiked winds sweep around me
Their arms the night breath sleepwalking
The sighing of imminence and ending
All there the waves curl under and over
Around me: I see things coming to a close
The door is nearly shut
As we stare at it the tiny light squeaks out
Slower and slower
I see things coming to a close
The folding cerecloth shrugs down over the windows
The lights burn still: invisible to us now
I see things coming to a close
(My mind kissed Myrinerest last night)
I dreamt
I cannot see
I cannot see
I can no longer see
And nor would I want to
Anymore
Clearblindlayeredlightcolourblindeathcomecomecomecome
Goaway
The pale toothed face inverted
At the feet of the Rose Garden
By the hedge and by the dream
By the post and by the bell
By the dawn and by the form
Formless He Lay and Dreamt
And formless we lay and shall dream
And then the rain
"My pain beneath your sheltering hand"
He cried
And gave himself up to the Tempter
The rebel angels (he thought and knew)
Would indeed array him with robes of water
But not mad
But clear
Why can't we all just walk away?
>>7464249
Shit, I really like this. Great job anon.
>>7464511
Not bad, especially for your first and only. I'd suggest maybe trying to suggest the setting in a less direct way. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with directness, but it'll be a good exercise and the way you have it set up the imagery isn't as poignant as it could be. "Soft grays and greens" and "rainy spring" have a clear mood attached to them (and I'm assuming the mood and your reaction to it is the reason for the poem), but it can be reached more effectively by expanding on your reaction. Again, not bad and not much to go on, just trying to give you some kind of critique.
Here's mine:
I think
We should be
A movement.
Our friends,
Literary,
Musical,
I'm thinking
Legends.
And when
Times laid out right
Our teacher
Will speak to us
About our living heights
Will speak of us, to us,
With our legs crossed
Like the Indians, who are
Out in the woods, hunting
Our classmates will play
With our bones
Through bent necks
And playsets all
Wire and screens
Like the Native Americans
Who are out in the sun,
Pumping gasoline
>>7464745
>Shit, I really like this. Great job anon.
Thanks. To be honest it's just a first draft, but the love is appreciated.
I like the simplicity of the word choice, and the subtle shifts in time. The first stanza isn't as good as the second or third. It's a bit too hokey. I think you're going for an ironic self help or teenage bravado thing, but it comes off as pure cheese. Also, the rhyme scheme of stanza 2 is a little off putting. Perhaps smooth that out a bit.
>>7461054
0/10
Does the sun chase the moon
Or does the moon chase the sun
Are they in love
Why do they run
Does the soil cry for the rain
Do oceans yearn for the shore
Is my passion safe
Or will it burn down the world
Can the lion
Truly lie down with the lamb
Will I die trying
Looking for romance
Why does the morning mist
Engulf the world in its kiss
Why do the birds
Sing of the dawn's golden bliss
Snow may blanket the forest
Yet it never hinders the wolf
Who stalks through the trees
On the hunt for its lure
Starlight paints the midnight canvas
As constellations cry in madness
At home on this blue ball
In the infinite black sea of celestial’s sprawl
So vast and so expansive
Its majesty is beyond attractive
To get lost in divine wonder
Endless mysteries to ponder
Mankind is beyond a paradox
We can do so great and yet so often do not
We can build and we can create
Or we can destroy and annihilate
We can love and we can hate
To be ignorant or to educate
We can dance and we can sing
And we can cry and we can bleed
We claim desire for being content
Yet we always yearn to conquer a new continent
We produce art and so much bliss
And weapons to send men into the abyss
There’s so much design, it’s amazing
The Grand Architect’s glory is worth appraising
Yet many have chosen to deny this self-evident splendor
And make the claim that it had no sublime inventor
We may be oceans apart
With different tongues and cultures to chart
Yet in the end we all share the same Earth
Making the quest for peace deserving of worth
Elegy for Teddy Hollywood
Yeah that's right you got that glam, and sure
it don't mean a thing when you got that swing;
Teddy said yet all these things and more,
and honest I began to feel so so bored
His nights dashing forth in streams of glue and glitter all a-gleam
yet every Tom Jack Mary and Jane soon forgot Teddy existed at all
so when his end landed all dolled-up and feathered he just went no problem at all.
Nobody but me stood for his final rites
and as he was pressed into dew-dropped earth
I had shades of Gatsby;
except that didn't suit Teddy at all.
There is a castle overlooking the sea,
Perched upon high rocks and crashing waves,
It eludes to no one that I had lived there for sometime,
Amongst souls with no name and no fortune,
Like the princes of yesteryear,
I have yet to be realised,
I have yet to be discovered.
>>7465247
cut some lines and it could be a nice imagist piece, very evocative image of the castle presented to the reader instantly. Last lines are mysterious enough, not sure about `the princes of yesteryear'- seems superflous
>"Sir the car just arrived"
>Donald was looking out the window. From that floor he could easily see hundreds of miles in the distance.
>He had a pen in his hands. He just finished taking note of some of his thoughts.
>"Sir.."
>Donald lifted his hand, just to tell the man he heard him
>The sound of the door closing, and the room was silent again
>His mind had hundreds of running thoughts, some of them were confused
>He read the paper
>Clouds were moving slow far at the horizon
>There was a scent in the room. It was the flowers that were delivered to him that morning. He bought them for himself
>He took a last glance at the skyline. For a brief moment his mind was all over those buildings
>For a brief moment his mind was right over those bulidings, with the people, in the intimacy of their poverty and depression
>Donald closed his eyes. There were 4 hours left. He was tyred. He stood up from the chair
>He then started walking across the room he built. There was one thing only in his mind now. The city.
>As he exited the room, people were in front of him, waiting for the lift. They bowed. One of them pressed the lift button a few times, as to speed up his wait.
>Donald smiled briefely, but none of the people failed to catch it, and smiled back.
>The doors of the lift opened. It was empty. His lift. He stepped in, and in a moment his tower swollowed him, all the way down to street level
>His car was indeed ready at the curb. Inside of it, waiting for him, his usual companion. Solitude. His mind.
>The car was big, as if meant to fit the size of his dream, as if meant to fit all of the Solitude to accompany him.
>"Sir we will be at the airport in less than an hour"
>"Let's go"
continues
>>7466541
>Donald took out his phone. He took a deep breath. He started browsing America's thoughts.
>-Donald is a moron - D. Trump is a clown - Trump is now banned from the UK, an entire nation takes the welcome away -
>Donald kept browsing. His face was worried, but it was not a problem, Solitude does not give secrets away.
>A king of far and violent lands made public statements against him, and his prince mocked him.
>Donald slowly typed his reply. Donald told him that daddy's money are nothing to him.
>His mind went to his own bank accounts, and wondered if he could make it all the way to the elections
>He then browsed again - El Chapo has promised 1 million dollar to those who will kill Donald -
>Donald closed his eyes. Took a deep breath. He then spoke
>"Dont take the highway to the airport, take the normal road". Houses were speeding out the window.
>He took out his piece of paper. It contained the strategies to rule USA. It contained his secret Agenda. It was holding the key to the biggest of doors.
>It was a few words. It was his own name, preceeded by the word Pres.
>And there he was, with a kids smile on his face. A tear was shed, and he told the driver: "You know, we are going to make America Great Again"
>"We sure are, mr. President."
end
Dancing through the treetops, my footsteps scorch the leaves to sulfur
I lick through boughs and birds alike to choke out rival songs
Until the bark is blackening, cackling, tangling in the roots of the money tree
Glistening in the charlatan's mouth, I am the silver-tongued promise of magic
Hands rusted under the clouds I cannot part,
I beg for drought;
Where the sole spell I can cast is to turn water into wine
Fleeing through the badlands, I am the wildebeest fleeing from the badlands
Shivering before the first gift of green
Laughing in front of the hunter's gun
I, Trapped in the Sultan’s Harem
I screamed and I cried and I bled
as I slithered and squirmed;
encumbered by leaden senses,
beneath a sheet of toxic effluvium.
She howled and moaned and they came,
perhaps out of pity or something savage?
They found me smeared
against concrete sidewalks;
cigarette-in-hand,
walking beside, Zeus-eyed and
covered in the piss of an enraged fever
Sounds that were words washed
uselessly against us. Hot, electric
breath bled blissfully from our pours.
It’s neither miracle nor madness
that I fell into its frothing maw.
And if I would close my eyes,
it might have been all a dream.
I, trapped in the Sultan’s harem,
am not alone.
>>7466280
>it could be a nice imagist piece
nigger what the fuck is wrong with you?
Pound must be spinning in his grave.
>>7464830
No one has anything to say about this masterful piece?
"Descenso"
What I wouldn't give to
ride down a mountain path from an Andean peak,
manoeuvring around
the rocky inhabitants lying stone-dead for millennia,
the tremors of the handlebars intensifying with the seconds
until my fist starts to tingle
and a lone drop of sweat follows the curve of my cheek
to my chin, and drops off my face
as the thin tyres begin rolling upon frosty white sand.
There was a slight breeze and a calm sunlight. What seemed like a cool morning was, in reality, a dank heat of pre-noon. The tall, winding grass of green and tan hue swayed softly over the flat plains. A bluish-green rover rocked gently, forward and back, through the sea of mystic weeds. The rush of the engine on oblique rubber feet conjured a false zephyr that blew sideways against the driver's pale, bearded face.
His silky, wiry chocolate head did not budge as he'd expected it to, nor did his eyebrows twitch like shrubbery divided by invisible hands. His eyes, though fixated on the imaginary road ahead, we're sunken, lazy, deep in shadow and near-wrinkled. Though they lingered in his skull, it was his thoughts who scrambled like a storm over the Caspian Sea.
"Why is this wind so strong," he thought ,"is my wind-breaking garb not fit for it?"
He lamented his silent ramblings a while,
"Or do I know the fate of my brother?" . . . "Is today the day he dies?"
"This is a mistake."
The driver's sweaty grip on the smeared black wheel tightened and loosened, uncontrolled by his nerves. He knew he had to turn around, but something told him this was no longer an option. It was no deep reflection, for in the distance ahead, he could see it already.
Nigger, Cunt, Kike:
these works sting the lips
and jab the spleens of our collective conscience.
But why?
Some idiot asks in Iowa.
Because, people are oppressive as shit–
and that was teh end of the conversation
until everyone heard
that the world was ending
and engaged in an international orgy
that was later covered up
(with excessive amounts of latex and esprit)
and dubbed the Baby Boom,
post World War II, you know.
Anyway, I'll have another one
Dave–
thanks,
and keep the change
(that we can believe in).
>>7467941
I don't really care about the opinions of dead white men.
I'm writing this out of the blue
Yotsuka B format /lit/ adopts
by default. I'm (a) less than happy
camper: Winnebago, Airstream,
hippie vans: we're all on the road
to the end–oh please, let's not,
morbidity is such an overplayed topic
in art. We ought to remember:
words are brush and paint,
and without rhyme we only taint.
But this knotted string is immaterial,
just bits of bits made ethereal.
Time your clocks to stars sidereal.
Then turn and cough. Venereal.
Things end dirty.
>>7468351
>dead white men
Sorry, but what does being white have to do with anything? Or men for that matter?
You need to fucking check your privilege, son.
I don't know anything about poetry but here I go
Poop your pants check for ants
Let's dance
I'm in a trance over that ass
Ask your name you say get lost
I am lost
Lost in that ass
Back it up into my poopy pants
Let's try this again
Let me see that ass
thanks
My belly a taut string fraying,
Cruel silence loudly mocking.
Obstinate I stand as exclamation!
Inside my mind ungorded knots.
Outside, their faces turn aglare.
This treacherous twine
What treasonous tremble
Curse you sweet release
Ambrosia's cup 'as spilled
My pants drenched soiled and fill.
>>7468426
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1YTEpVJEbtC
10/10 baybeee
>>7467963
there's some cliches and it runs on too long and there's no punctuation which is annoying (that's not a mere stylistic disapproval)
We deem as it seems
To sleepwalk in teams
And then flee from our schemes
To feel free in our dreams
>>7468351
>American universities
I am Neil, science i do
I am nigger, and fat bitch too
some say universe don't be like it is
i boldly say but it do
forever yours Degrasse
I'm writing this to procrastinate
which is probably why you're reading it,
too. So let's get off this corner of the web
and grab life by whatever we can.
Tut-tut.
>>7469814
Whatever lol you probably don't read anyway
My attempt at vaporwave literature:
All the Bliss that I've never experienced and will not experience,
for it is now long gone and covered in vine grapes
and the shades of grey, gradually desaturating into Exit.
The things which I have never seen, but are in my memory -
allow me, Web, to describe now in Aral script
as words pour downwards through my DualScreen,
balancing on the edge of emotional erasement.
O! Do take me back to the land of irritation
Caused by the blue in green
The tranquil green, eternally flourishing, blooming
In the veins and the heart upright of newborns
& womb dwellers, hearing muted bliss
And thus, they've left the utero
Began the chase of nonresonant sounds
So pleasingly heard through the walls of organic matter around
They've been promised a sterile, yet blatant existence
Indebted for million of seconds - the price of tissues they used to wipe their tears with.
Everything that now comes to my mind I owe to you
In your endless abyss and multilevel connections
Resides all my knowledge present and possible
Present - I'll lose and eventually search back with your consent
Possible, I am yet to gain (and that is not even sure)
All my soul yearns for is an own subreddit -
I do not hope to become Lil'Milton
I want to be titled New Steve Jobs
Innovately distinguished as a fierce leader,
Not a mere follower (and that is not even sure)
Even though I'm a rising tide
And my mind's still not cooled
Your violet tempts my eye
And that is what is sure
Plurality of tides makes a mind awestruck
Plurality of tides is the foundation of your being
For, who can explore and reach beyond your horizons?
That is a task unacomplishable for a rising tide
Displayeth thee before me the grandeur of thy resources
Keepeth thee my eyes open and thoughts vivid
O! The novel Absolute the Overmind the Masterplan!
Let me describe and feel and the sensation experience
Of all thine incorporeal magnitude of myriads of biting tons.
Let's proceed - - -
>>7456697
Breathe, and carry me away- take my hand in yours, and pull me to the velvet sky above.
As comets whir past our interwoven ascension.
Let's mix our souls together, and know we're as old as the heavens themselves.
There is no end to us; for we are of the universe, and therefore- eternal.
Momentarily, we are wondrous, resplendent constellations.
We are each a marvel to be beheld: each and all a speck of light.
But you; your light, jetting through celestial clouds, found its way to me.
It passed through a splintered pane on my heart.
You took a breath.
You took my hand.
Illumination.
And now we're here; higher than ever, hovering above earth, in the ecstatic levitation of disbelief.
So let us be; for soon, we'll rejoin the cosmos.
We can stir the stars together.
And watch them fall when we're done.
>all we have are assumptions.
>>7471370
>>7471370
Not airy enough. I couldn't feel the crushing weight of capitalism juxtaposed against the lightness of an oversaturated and nostalgic past that I never lived in.
Your language is archaic without being nostalgic and V A P O R 2 0 0 5
It sounded like someone edited a Romantic era poem by adding in some vague references to computers.
Also you have to ironically not capitalize anything. Because.
And toss in random Japanese characters. You know, for aesthetic value.
I also had no idea what your poem was about.
But that might have been the point.
I dunno. To me vaporwave has to look like it's half joking but also take itself seriously in an ironic way. Like the artist knows, somewhere in the back of their mind, that what they're doing is complete shit, but they're not going to ever let the thin mask slip, even though the mask is made of store bought condoms and orange cellophane.
That's just me
![51n7cEKVd9L._SX309_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/rrZswZp.jpg "51n7cEKVd9L._SX309_BO1,204,203,200_[1].jpg")
>>7456697
Alright, I'm supposed to write a shorter (10-15) line poem for a creative writing class on a theme related to "nature."
I picked the ocean (how original, I know) and specifically the risk of periodic tsunamis. I think it might be kind of abstruse though.
Vigilance
If the tameless pulse remained untamed alone,
and slipped midocean in its steady lashing flux,
and in its transit slid through trough and trough
seaborne, until its soft exhaustion on our sands,
then all along, the same enduring laps
would cense us, their ceaseless ingresses
uncorralled, but by their habits known,
then, if then, the same bays and mazy shoals
could verge us into boundless times,
enrhythmed epochs, framed in harmonized design.
And never would malign subducted waves,
inflamed to high unmeasured blades
scourge ports from shore, relake whole vales,
and in repose alone reveal its toll.
I have seen the feet, walking in little patters
As the rain does the same on the windowsill
You look decidedly out the pinpoint designer glass pane
(And not at me, with a knitting of your brows)
it may be too much, but please look at me
in all my asphyxiated glory-
I have cut off my legs and arms for you
(There was no head to begin with)
And I have stood at the funerals of our love with you-
(And their successful 'revivals')
if you could just tell me, please just tell me
what else must I do?
A diabetic man aged fifty
Goes home alone to make some tea
Turns on the evening news
Has a drink or two
And cries softly into his pillow
He was never the sportslike one, no,
nor the attractive one
He hoped when he was young he would have a son
(And now he would sell his soul for one
More workday off or another problem sold
to him to fix to mend and to bother)
What is it about this empty space in my bed
that I so begrudgingly dread?
Oh! But it is twelve, in the morning, in the night
He must rest now, goodnight, goodnight
A young girl
Raised to serve, always observant
Never acute nor ridiculously abstract or obtuse
Always glad to be of use
Now she is taken- trumped up, used up
A rag thrown in a bag of many others
What is she to do?
She texts her friends about a subject
She is neither interested in or uninterested in
Living her life politic, cautious, and meticulous
Indeed, playing the fool
(Some say she is a fool)
A worn out, broken tool
The deaths of all the world's 'love'
Comes to me in wicked screams
Of the hours, the daylights, the nights
And how am I supposed to know if this one is right?
Indeed, how am I supposed to know this one is right
Staring out of a window.
>>7464233
bcuz no one responded.
The world waits
Until I'm awake,
But must hold time
In between the space,
Of what is known
And what is perceived.
How much longer
Until there is no
Middle ground
>>7471361
>haha, u dont kno what ur talking about
>my poem is obviously great
~you, 2000+15
>>7472121
the register is too high for my taste. I can't read it at a natural pace. I have to slow down too much to digest all the tricks of syntax and grammar. This isn't so much a critique as an opinion
>>7461830
>purple purple purple purple
stop trying so hard
read some real poetry
>>7464830
this is ok as lyrics but doesn't cut it as a poem. most of the imagery is unimaginitive. also:
>Can the lion
>Truly lie down with the lamb
cliche
>On the hunt for its lure
this doesn't make sense
>So vast and so expansive
redundant
>We can do so great
ungrammatical
>The Grand Architect’s glory is worth appraising
sigh
&c &c
