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Author Topic: The Poetry Thread  (Read 107904 times)

Yoink

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #165 on: April 25, 2018, 10:17:12 am »

So, I'm supposed to be packing to leave tomorrow, which mostly entails carefully cramming as many of the books (at least a couple of dozen) that I've purchased during this trip into a suitcase. Naturally, I've gotten distracted, considering I haven't actually had time to read any of them yet.

Flicking through a Penguin poetry collection, I stumbled across a couple that really appealed to me for some reason.
Quote from: William Blake
A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
'Til it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.



Quote from: William Blake

The Garden of Love

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turned to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore;

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tombstones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.
   
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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #166 on: April 25, 2018, 10:34:06 am »

PTW
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TD1

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #167 on: April 25, 2018, 10:34:49 am »

Haven't read that second one before, but the first is one I like well.
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TD1

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #168 on: April 29, 2018, 05:00:38 pm »

In lair of things long turned to dark
Abode of devils, where all things hark
Unto the brooding throne, the seat
Of Morgoth, ancient, foul and great
A bird was seen to fly by eye
Which never thought such things to spy.
Luthien, Luthien, Nightingale of light
Flew in that hall of lasting night.
   And did she have her hair of black,
Her features fair which no things lack?
Was light upon her flowing shift
Of dreams twilit by morning kissed
In Elven glades of softness sweet.
She did, ay, even there to meet
Grim Morgoth on his throne of stone,
Great Morgoth in his halls of bone.

About the foe was army great
Which took to feast that none would sate –
For they desired more than that glut
Of devil-broth and strangled mutt.
Aye, thought the great lord’s host
The Elven maid they longed for most.
And through them all the gleaming light
Of Silmarils, the fairest, bright
Even unto the minds of gods
Made mockery of all their flaws.
The Balrog captains sheathed in steel
Against their fear of pain to feel
Stood tall and bright, misshapen yet
Of evil made, un-formed, ill-met.
The dozen hounds about the feet
Were snapping for a bite to eat
   And Beren slunk, a shadow grim
To slip amongst them at their sin.

Little hope harboured he, the man
Who’d won the Nightingale, no plan
Could think nor stratagem devise
Which would not end in laboured cries
For fairest Luthien, staunch Beren
Wrapped in chains of darkling iron.
Yet faith he kept, though flick’ring dim,
For Luthien the fair of limb
And snapped the legs of Werewolf kin
And joined the fray of fearsome din.

Then rising up to shout aloud
Morgoth challenged that woman proud
Who stood. And simply. Sang a song.
And in that place of hurt and wrong
In darkness draping arches tall
Flavouring the water in the well
And stealing light from eyes of men
There came a hush. A breath. And then
A Balrog wiped a shadowed tear
And looked on it with gloomy fear
Before his knees met floor of black
With muffled shriek, with ice-like crack.
The hounds forgot their glut of meat
And found they’d lost the use of feet
And dozed into a dawning trance
Where Elven maidens passing prance
Reminding them of days of old
When they wore collars made of gold.

But Morgoth, flame flickering in his eye
But lifted head and laughed. “For why,”
He said, “should I allow you life.
A bare thing you of magics rife
Which turned to dust with passing time.
Your forebears ‘gainst me held much crime
But never this. I would not laugh
Where I should turn to ruin and wrath.
A remnant. Pitiful. A shade
Where once a fire was flaming made.”
But Luthien her tune kept up
And ran her fingers through her hair
So seeming in the brightened air
To scatter stars from ‘cross the seas
That only Oromë in hunting sees.
They filled the caverns with their sheen,
And what is more the flowers seen
In twilit glades the world around
Let loose their fragrance in a shroud.
   She danced, Tinuviel, and at her feet
The spring time flowers were replete.
His flamings flickered. Humour died.
For Morgoth over naught had cried
In all the long time of his life,
Yet in that song he tasted strife
And found it bitter, yes, morose
Was music of the blooming rose.

In slumber deep he fell with crash
Into his Balrogs’ falling ash
And dreamt of music out of reach
The song perverted he would teach
And in it strained a newer note
A flowing music of the stream
Which permeated all his dream.
Long slept he, till he woke
And when in strangled tone he spoke
It was with anger newly fed;
The Silmarils had fled his head
And Luthien had fleeting gone,
To leave behind her just a song
Haunting the darkness and the gloom,
Dispelling all illusions, harshest doom.
Long was his anger vented out
In hate-filled curse and grumbling shout
But in his head, his flaming head
Her song still ran. Her music played.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2018, 05:22:15 pm by Th4DwArfY1 »
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Arx

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #169 on: May 11, 2018, 01:24:28 am »

I've had The Second Coming stuck in my head for a while.

Quote from: Yeats
THE SECOND COMING

    Turning and turning in the widening gyre
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
    A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

    The darkness drops again but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Part of the first stanza is used in this cinematic from Duelyst, and I really wish there was a full reading by the same VA.
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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #170 on: May 11, 2018, 11:39:03 am »

Ooooh, that's one of my favourite.
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Quote from: Paul-Henry Spaak
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Yoink

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #171 on: May 15, 2018, 03:16:56 pm »

For those of you who know what you're doing, here is an international poetry competition I found a few days ago. Grand prize is publication and three grand! You could buy a lot of... quills and ink-pots for that kind of money.
* Yoink sniffles noisily.


Two runner-up prizes also get publication and one or two hundred dollars. Apparently they're only looking for "emerging" poets, whatever that means, and ask for a brief cv outlining entrants' publication history. There is a twenty dollar entry fee, but they're open to submissions from around the world.

Be quick, though - entries close in ten hours!
I kinda meant to share this here days ago. Sorry. :-[
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Hanslanda

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #172 on: May 19, 2018, 06:43:46 am »

Is a wax man afraid of fire?
Does a man hiding make a liar?
What is right to fear?
The usual things we hear?
Spiders and heights, clowns and frights.
Death and dying, or lies and lying?
Every man eventually dies.
Not every man lies.
A wax man fears being a lax man.
Failing his ideal and forgetting what is real.
Giving in to weakness and embracing the bleakness.
A wax man fears failure.
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Dark One

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #173 on: June 07, 2018, 08:26:28 am »

Sonnets and poems from a poetic volume I'm writing since a few months - Starmakers. Cliche love poems - these aren't worth even a halfpenny, but I may finish the volume one day and publish it or post on-line.

Spoiler: Orion's Pearls (click to show/hide)


Spoiler: Fading Light (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Planewalking (click to show/hide)

The last one is unfinished, I kinda lack incentive to continue writing it, but I'm posting it anyway:

Spoiler: Lightshade (click to show/hide)

KittyTac

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #174 on: June 07, 2018, 09:59:16 am »

Roses are green
My name is Dave
This poem makes no sense
Microwave
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Hanslanda

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #175 on: June 09, 2018, 06:12:14 pm »

Roses are green
My name is Dave
This poem makes no sense
Microwave

Violets are orange,
And my name is Gorange.
Rhymes are like purple,
Something something nurple
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TD1

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #176 on: June 11, 2018, 08:53:01 am »

--
Oh yea, love poems and such. I guess I'll make a stab at a sonnet again.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Note: I did not make huge efforts to maintain the 10-syllable ideal.
Edit:
Here are some I did earlier, though I think I've posted some of them on Bay12 before.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This has actually been interesting for me. The last two are some of the first ones I did, and there is a definite difference between them and the one I wrote there now. Nice to know I'm not stagnating.
« Last Edit: June 11, 2018, 09:23:18 am by Th4DwArfY1 »
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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #177 on: June 12, 2018, 01:34:38 am »

First semi-serious poetry:

Kittens are cool
Soft like wool
They're so cute
But when they grow up
They make more.

Rate this, I guess. I'm not a native English speaker, the way I pronounce "more" kinda rhymes with "cute".
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Edmus

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #178 on: June 12, 2018, 07:09:05 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
I love this! It's so sweet!
First semi-serious poetry:

Kittens are cool
Soft like wool
They're so cute
But when they grow up
They make more.

Rate this, I guess. I'm not a native English speaker, the way I pronounce "more" kinda rhymes with "cute".
I'm trying to work out how to squeeze cute to sound like more. :P
The best way to improve it is probably looking at the meter, and a simplified way to do that is to count the syllables (this will only get you so far but works well enough) and try to keep them to a pattern. In yours you have 4,3,3,5,3. Changing the 5 to a 4 might help.

Enjoyed a really moving poem this morning by Nan McDonald, 'The Bus Ride Home'. I can't find a copy online, sadly. So here are two huge photos:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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TD1

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Re: The Poetry Thread
« Reply #179 on: June 13, 2018, 09:14:33 pm »

And are you sleeping, Martin Peibel
With your flowers on your head,
Oh, are you sleeping my fine fellow
Beneath that faded clutch of red?
The rusted bucket on your patch
Speaks subtle words to me
How long since you first sought
Your immortality.

Your stone is unremarkable, your name
Well nigh unknown.
What reason have I to show you courtesy
In such a place as this?
I came to visit family
Who slumber down thon path.
Dear Martin, you have no such draw
On obligation nor familial awe
That would compel me to converse with you

And you are crowded ‘round with monuments
To pierce low-hanging heaven with ambition
With names engraved in Stygian iron
Proclaiming loud their living message.
You, my dear Martin,
Are entirely silent.

Perhaps I feel a shock, sharp, tremulous.
Your very unremarkable presence
Speaks of the gravity inherent in the grave,
And silence seems most natural for one
Whose mouth long since was stopped by sod.
It is as if all others put a mask on death,
A practice you yourself abhorred.

You are a stranger, one long dead
But still I feel compelled to ask.
Do you rest well with flowers on your head
Which I found scattered and abused upon your grave
And for the sake of a moment’s
Tenderness or sentiment
Had gathered as one who knew you would,
Picked up and quickly placed before your stone
So as to brighten it with faded vermilion?
Or are they gaudy, and too much a mask
For you to slumber on in peace?
Forgive me my impertinence, Martin,
If I can call you that. It’s just I felt I had to ask.

---

Went to visit my granny's grave, and on the way saw a plot with a bunch of artificial flowers spilled across it. Gathered them up and placed them at the gravestone, then wondered what right I had to do something so seemingly personal for him. Not really written to show off poetic style, more to get my thoughts on paper.
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