Oh I thought this thread was dead
Hatred is starvation
Hatred helps on occasion
Hatred needs a mature digression
It’s best learned early by your children
Hatred curves your eyebrows
It pinches your nervous system
It makes you nervous
It is not external
But I’ve seen it walking around
Attached to the ground
Understanding takes patience
Hatred is lazy, instinctual, wet sifting,
Causing in itself, asexual, fucking
Through the holes in your wall
It’s glorified hope glory holing
With inscriptions jizzed in aftermath
In afterthought, in thorough self
Dated fact checking. It’s inevitable
It’s invisible, it’s reassuring, it’s
Oppression impressed on and by and by.
Good thread:
Lasting Love
I am my own proclivity
She is my own stability
I am my lack of motivation
She is my indulgent inspiration
I am flawed with wrinkle
She is twilight’s twinkle
Yet how I move her to a smile
Remains a riddle for a lasting while
^ inspired by a quote from fight club: " I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection" ;)
I sit here like a corpse
waiting
watching
ants crawl over my body
moths land on my face
but I am not dead
I am still alive, not healthy, but alive
I bask in the glow of this screen
listening with my eyes to the rants of a thousand film nerds
talking about Fellini
talking about Gilliam
talking about whether Fellini was weirder than Gilliam
I am on this site and I see EVERYTHING.
They called it Saint Astrid’s Abyss
A gaping cavern straight to the depths of the earth
It was just like the old Russian miner told me
You could drop a twenty pound rock into it and never hear it hit bottom
They lowered scientists down into it on platforms
They brought along supplies to last for three weeks
The platform descended on two four-ton spools of cable
On the seventh day we lost radio contact and started to pull them back up
It took five days at full speed
The platform finally materialized out of the blackness
There was only one of them left
She was delirious and hard to understand,
But we thought she said something about angels and boats of fire
It was unsettling
I would have to look into this
I took a long drag from my cigarette and flicked it into the pit
And now, a limerick in response:
A stare at the ceiling in bed
Thinking thoughts about what you just said
and after a fit
I think I’ll admit
It’s gone straight over my head
I’VE BEEN A NIFTY WORDSMITH
I’ve been a nifty wordsmith ever since i was a nipper,
I’m an avid ornithologist since first i spied a dipper.
I conduct the Philharmonic, i’m a maestro on bassoon,
I’m unrivalled as a linguist and i’ve learned to speak raccoon.
I’ve roared round Monaco and Monza, leaving Senna far behind,
I’m a dab-hand neuro-surgeon and restore sight to the blind.
I’m a black belt martial artist with a stomach hard as iron,
I’ve schooled the scientists at NASA to propel us to Orion.
I’ve soared o’er snow-capped mountains in a tangerine balloon,
I’ve dived for pearls with dugongs in a dreamy deep lagoon.
I’ve sailed to lotus-blossom islands through wild and stormy seas,
I’ve crossed cutlasses with pirates and brought tyrants on their knees.
I’m a consummate investor, conjure money from the air,
I’m irresistible to women and dance like Fred Astaire.
I traipse on sky-high tightropes with a jaunty grace and balance,
And every night by candlelight praise God for all my talents.
HANG GLIDING SERENADE
I love your daring hang glides over canyons and ravines,
I love your scrummy puddings and the way you stir the beans.
I love the riffling breezes that flow up your summer dress,
I love your feisty frissons when the room’s left in a mess.
I love your dainty frolics on a wet and cobbled street,
I love it when your nipples and the autumn moonlight meet.
I love the way you snuggle furry bunnies to your chest,
I love your flair for reading maps that turns the East to West.
I love the Cleopatran contours of your eyebrows in surprise,
But most of all i love to run my fingers up your thighs.
HAIKU
I’ve caught the moonlight,
Enclosed in this small casket
As your secret gift
Red maple, now bare.
Here lies, beneath, poor bunny.
But soon, the snowdrops.
Beyond this mirror:
ivy walls, dark woods, an old
box of memories.
I love this post. 1) Because it features Kenji writing poetry. 2) Because Judy TTR’s poem is fanastic. 3) Because so many people actually took up the pen and posted something! I won’t be adding my hat to the ring, however… I once submitted a carefully constructed epic to The Exquisite Corpse when I was 16 and they put my name in their “body bag”. It’s put me off writing more poetry, but I still like reading it!
Judy has what it takes, that St Astrid’s Abyss is so cool. And My Neighbour Toroto pic on profile too! And a Mizoguchi fan. I must be doing something right then. Maybe some inspiration may rub off. Oops, i didn’t realise i’d already posted 2 of my haikus.
Err… I like Haikus
And also, Samantha’s shih tzu
That was established
In a previous thread
Actually not too previous
It is on page one…
I got a call from Nowhere
a voice I didn’t know
whispered softly
words of no meaning
in my cut-off ear.
Tears ran down my face
acid
burning brooks
giving away
my shame.
I hung up too late
all exposed
the throbbing
in my vains
subsided.
I went back home
to Nowhere
and knew
my name
was Nobody.
Here’s one i’ve just done, no doubt needs honing
THE WELL
After the woods and brambles
came the well: deep fathoms down,
barbed wire scraping through my brain,
my sole light an occasional star
on some lonely orbit.
Then came the filament, slight as gossamer,
dangled through the darkness
by a giant arachnid,
or so it seemed,
though terror was now beyond me.
Slowly, i sensed this fine silk
had been spun not by a spider,
but a word.
As its syllables kept shifting,
as it had one talon clamped
on lugubrious, another on syllabub,
at first i thought it foolish and fickle,
and was wary.
But as we became acquainted i learned
it had perched in a baobab tree,
gazed unblinking on drought
while its feathers grew dusty,
was suppler than an octopus,
had slid through crevices into slave ships
and sheltered romanies with its tentacles,
it had sailed the oceans on the backs
of whales and green turtles
and had buried its own precious egg
on the beach at Minamijima.
Because it had scaled the towers of Samarkand
in the age of Tamburlaine,
loved to play with echoes,
had soothed a cobra with its curving coils,
Because it had been shamed and paraded
for the sin of ejaculation,
been caged, clamped and had its venom
removed by men in white coats,
Because it was gentle yet implacable,
seemed omniscient yet had floppy ears
I came to love and trust it.
And so at length i ascended the thread,
luminous, smooth and silent
as a dream of levitation,
emerged in the long grass
of a meadow, where the wind
was still rustling the apples,
and i could hear again the whisper
of the beckoning maternal sea.
It was that night I saw your blue dress.
It was that night I saw your blue dress.
RETURN JOURNEY
Llanfair pwll gwyn gyll
Gogerychwyrn drobwll
Llantysilio
Gogogoch
Llan fair
pwllgwyngyll
Gogerychwyrndrobwll
Llan tysilio
Go go goch
here’s mine its sort of lyrics actually
just took a blank paper
and take a little brush,
add your fav color,
with bit of feel
,move your brush with passion
an abstract is ready
just paint what you feel and let someonelse think
dont give a damm bout it and let the world feel
if you gonna care much it’ll be a flop show ,
to make it more kool ,mark your signature ,as …for someone i know…
the world is round and round,we are hanging on together ,everybody likes my music ,hey bro wasn’t this song bout the painting ,yeah ,what was dat,hmmm
just took a blank paper
and take a little bursh,
just add your fav color,
with bit of feel
,move your brush with passion
an abstract is ready
Actually Return Journey took me all of 1 minute, after seeing Amman Abbasi’s, more of a conceptual poem for lovers of long names and railway signs.
My dog Bryn and i have had a great time today making echoes in the underpass of a main road a few miles from here. Not only can he sing- croons like Sinatra, or Verdi arias like Leonard Warren- but he can make high-pitched echoes. I’m very proud of him. Next he should turn his paw to painting or writing. The paintings may more easily meet with critical approval.
Haha Kenji, your return journey poem reminds me of Finnegans Wake, with the only difference that it´s easier to understand.
Okay I’ll give this a try.
My Cubicle
I sat hunched
with my spine bent
I saw but couldn’t see
I respired but couldn’t breathe
I was dying enclosed…
my voice had faded
my eyes had dimmed
my eyelids had dropped into groggy disdain
I sat down and I was dying
I was dying like a seed that rots outside its fruit
The fruit dried up
The fruit was dreams
I had been a peach.
Dude, walk out of that office. Now. The economy is for shit, I know that. But, seriously…
“Dude, walk out of that office. Now. The economy is for shit, I know that. But, seriously…”
KJ, I have bills to pay :/
PS. Maybe I should call the poem “My Cubicle, or Because I Have Bills to Pay.” I just wrote it 20 minutes ago in my cubicle, so still a work in progress.
i must admit Return Journey is mere remoulded found footage, as it’s a 58 letter Welsh place name- not mumbo-jumbo
For anyone who has ever worked in a vertical plantation, Berjuan, your poem is understood.
I’m glad it gets the point across :)
The original version is in spanish, so I’ll do my best at translating it…
Let bells clash against each other,
let them sound loudly atop high bell towers.
Let’s cry, for the dawn is red,
and the sky’s treacherous tears are beginning to fall.
Let’s run over the desperate damned ones,
let’s take their souls,
as they take young ladies’ lives.
We are in the midst of a revolution.
Now in spanish:
Que las campanas choquen entre sí,
que resuenen en los altos campanarios de iglesias viejas.
Lamentémonos, porque el cielo ha amanecido rojo,
y sus pérfidas lágrimas se derraman en las calles.
Abalanzémonos sobre los desesperados,
y quitémos de sus almas,
la vida que ellos han quitado a las doncellas.
Estamos en un hervidero de la revolución.
I know it may not be appealing to everyone, but I wrote with my country’s current situation in mind.
I like the look and sound in my head of the Spanish, you have a poet in you. Something of Lorca.
Here’s an old-fashioned moon and june one i did when much younger, years ago, after my wife and i had our first holiday abroad together the year we got married, very basic if not clichéd, but anyway..
MARRAKESH
Mystical city of spices and caravans,
Carpets and camels and minarets of gold;
Delirious your dancers and noble your stallions,
In a night of hot fever your secrets are told.
Magical city of snow-covered mountains,
Throbbing of drums in the Djemaa-el-fna;
Green are your gardens and cool are your fountains,
An oasis for nomads whose guide is a star.
Mysterious city of souks and strange perfumes,
Glistening desert ’neath a crescent of moon;
Skilled your snake-charmers and vivid your costumes,
Long in the memory though left far too soon.
Is there a name for the type of poem that Judy is writing?
There are dozens of different types of poems. Not to speak for the poet, but narrative, perhaps?
I sat along a window bare
among the clouds & smog, that air
so foul and dark and bleak and drear.
Projecting images of delight
from memories far and wide
across lands from side to side
and recalling to my mind.
Judy’s looks like Prose Poetry
without prose layout, and
if read aloud would sound like
a slam poem, but so could any
poem if slammed “well”
Austin Glidden
Judy: That’s really great.