Poetry

[Matthew]

Everyone loves poetry, and if you disagree then you're a liar and should be hung. A freedom of expression that has several different forms, whether it be slam poetry to haikus it doesn't matter. What you feel when you read a poem is a totally different feeling than when someone else reads it. It's up to perception. I figured we had some creative people in Smogon or we have people who don't feel comfortable posting their own and they could just post some poems that they really are connected to.

Here's some examples:

Missed a kick
​

at the icebox door.
​

It closed anyway
​

- Jack Kerouac

Haikus are my preferred style of poetry in both reading and writing -- though I've tried to experiment in free-verse, but that was ultimately unsuccessful. So no one feels awkward posting their own writing I'll put one of my own here.

The man lights up
sitting on the city stoop
people cough as they pass


​

One more for good measure? Sure:

The old man watches
All the animals in the park
His only friends

​

If I am to talk about my favorite poet it's Jack Kerouac, despite not really being known as a poet his book of haikus is something that is falling apart by how much I've opened and closed it. Though Pablo Neruda is also a favorite of mine.

So post! C'mon there's no reason to be shy

 

[Al_Alchemist]

I am not shy gen
but i gotta do homework
procrastination >.<

 

[elDino]

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Haiku
Everything you need to know about Haiku's.

cliché

“haiku are easy,
But sometimes they don't make sense,
Refrigerator.”

EDIT: On a more serious note:

I see bees fly
Nature Flowers are blooming.
Birds build their new homes.

That is one of my personal favourites.
​

 

[Renosaur]

I'm just posting to say that when I was 16 I used to write 'poetry' thinking I was cool and what I wrote was like, really deep. Now looking back I feel so embarrassed that whenever I see poetry I cringe at myself

 

[Improbability]

Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champ'd the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor:
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
'Is there anybody there?' he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Lean'd over and look'd into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplex'd and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirr'd and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starr'd and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
'Tell them I came, and no one answer'd,
That I kept my word,' he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

This is by far my favourite poem of all time. The eeriness and the mood captured are just perfect.

Other favourites are "The Way Through the Woods" by Rudyard Kipling, "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Eliot, and "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night" by Dylan Thomas.

EDIT: Oh and The Raven is really quite a great classic, although I'm not the biggest fan of Poe.

 

[Heracr055]

Well...there is "The Red Wheelbarrow", by William Carlos Williams. I read that this is considered his masterwork:

So much depends
upon
a red
wheelbarrow
glazed with rain
water
besides the white
chickens.

I wonder what his other poems must be like. Possibly one of the most bizarre poems I've ever come across, I'll try to analyze it line by line:
"So much depends"-this line signifies the magnitude of what is depended upon
"upon"-same thing as above, reinforcing importance, maybe building up content of next line
"a red"-well, the color might have some importance, contrast the "white" of the chickens later on
"wheelbarrow"-isolating wheelbarrow as its own line underscores its meaning to the poem
"glazed with rain"-perhaps the wheelbarrow is weathered, used many times, couples with the "red" color alluded to earlier. The rain produces imagery of water, which represents...cleansing?
"water"-Again, representing the cleansing of the beaten wheelbarrow
"besides the white"-White, in poetry, usually represents purity, innocence. It seems significant that it is the last word on the line, much like with red being the last word of the third line.
"chickens."-Animal imagery perhaps? Not sure how it contributes. "White chickens" represents innocence or cleanliness compared to the "red wheelbarrow."

It was a stab in the dark analysis, but I tried. Anyways, I think I have a poetry journal from high school, I'll take a look and see if I find anything interesting to share. :)

 

[Alan]

Roses are red
Roses are red
I have Alzheimer's
Roses are red

 

[Improbability]

Well...there is "The Red Wheelbarrow", by William Carlos Williams. I read that this is considered his masterwork:

blahblahblah

for a poet he doesnt seem very creative i mean his first name is practically the same as his last one

Hide

he must have been adopted

 

[Xaqwais]

I've liked this one since I first read it.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

-Emily Dickinson

This is an arabic poem that I like and it makes me feel all sappy.

Promised a man of old
a lad, dinars and gold

For a price like no other
the very heart of his mother

For glitter he did not stagger
took to his mother a long dagger

Pulled out her heart with his hands bare
for everlasting riches, a small fare

Heart in hand, he rushed in haste
not a moment he wished to waste

He fell, and out rolled from his hand
the heart of his mother into the sand

Out called the heart 'O son of mine'
'I hope surely you are fine'

Fear gripped the lad
'What have I done?' he said

His self he intended to punish for the vice
'O my son' called the heart: 'kill me not twice'

 

[Glen]

i really like poetry but i know even less about it than i do about most things

the love song of j alfred prufrock is probably my favourite poem but part of that doesnt sit well with me because its like saying your favourite band is the rolling stones only with a more dilettante feel to it so i guess its like saying your favourite band is the pixies

poetry in general makes me wish i was multilingual. i think english is beautiful in a weird way but i can't help but feel that, it being my native and only tongue, my opinion on it is about as valid as my opinion on canada would be had i never ventured outside it. i love that english can be clunky and sussurant in the same fucking sentence. it can be rough and it can be undulate before youve even registered whatever emotion or thought it evokes, and i guess the poetry i like the most is the kind that takes that confusing shit about english and runs with it, conjuring a nebula of coarseness and pulchritude.

but sometimes i get nervous because i can't accurately explain what i like about poetry. i have an affinity for words and moreso for words that taste good on my tongue, and some words or phrases just hit me not for their meaning but just because they look and feel and taste right together. by not dissecting the piece to bits i can take solace in its sounds and not have to worry about what it means to me on anything more than a visceral, even primal level, but i also don't totally do it justice that way. it's complicated i guess, sometimes i can't help but understand a work and it occasionally ruins it for me.

anyway here's the love song of j alfred prufrock by my main man t.s. eliot.

http://www.bartleby.com/198/1.html

it's a bit long and it's the kind of poem i don't really enjoy discussing cause people write their thesis on it and shit and all i really want to talk about is how 'decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse' gives me this odd velocity of speech, this buildup of momentum that's maybe emotional but maybe physical and through its inertia alone i'm carried to the end of the poem, struggling to pay attention to anything else.

'is it perfume from a dress/that makes me so digress?' is something i've learned to ask myself when i do stupid shit while thinking with my dick.

'i should have been a pair of ragged claws/scuttling across the floors of silent seas' is everything i love about english. you have this cacophonous, warped aggregation of sheer verbal heft in the phrase 'ragged claws' and then you're eased into the soothing sibilance of the second line. i love this part aesthetically but it's also goddamned tragic and the two aspects of it fight and fuck in my brain and i'm left feeling empty or awash with something nameless.

I grow old … I grow old …[SIZE=-2] 120[/SIZE]
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. [SIZE=-2] 125[/SIZE]

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown[SIZE=-2] 130[/SIZE]
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


edit: how the fuck did i forget line 120-121 in my initial post aaaa

i want to get this whole thing tattooed on me but it's so puerile and sophomoric to consider that the ultimate measure of devotion and so i always talk myself out of it. depending on my level of suggestibility 'i do not think that they will sing to me' makes me tear up. it's funny how the most honest admission is usually so much more heartbreaking than any verbal or written histrionics (no doubt why will smith's last line in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmerFuzRNZ4 hits me so hard), and that's maybe what bugs me a little about poetry. you run and run and run and try to find the right words for things but sometimes they're the first words out of your sobbing mouth.




there's a lot of poetry i'd love to mention here but i'm kinda tired so for now i'm just gonna ramble on about a guy i'm really really fond of named rives

NICKEL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5wbToZkJwY

the poem is lousy with meaning, anyone can tell you that. most of us have been hurt and most of us pine for shit but rives captures concupiscence with the best-tasting words i've ever heard (i think i used that line when describing him to soot once but i really like it and so im using it again). 'headbutts in the hotel bed the bashful maid made badly' is one of my favourite sentence fragments of all time. you have to work so hard to get those b's out and it's so awkward and bumpy, like putt-putting up and down a comically cartoonish series of hills.

'now im just teasing you like a thorough lover does, because you always said that ive got smartass on remote control and i always said oh im not even remotely controllabullll-uh' makes me feel like i'm in that relationship and it's weird and uncomfortable and perfect.

i love almost every word in this poem and i could write how i feel about everything but that would take too long

IF I CONTROLLED THE INTERNET

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gu_PQBmk-6c

this one is less surreptitious with its humour but the audience still laughs at awkward moments which sucks but oh well. i don't like this poem much by rives standards mostly because it's a bit too corny (and i know corny and UNFLINCHINGLY TRUE are interchangeable depending on which self-described aesthete you ask) but there is one passage that makes me feel a lot

'if i controlled the internet you could email dead people. they would not email you back. but you'd get an automated reply. their name in your inbox, that's all you wanted anyway. and a message saying "hey, its me. i miss you."'

this gets me every fucking time. it's so honest and simple and relatable and painful and exultant. he turns life into words like some kind of alchemist.

LEVITATE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4fVoT4P9Kw&feature=related

this is an example of a poem that i don't want to try to understand because i care more about the vehicles used and the routes taken than the point b

'and then half an hour later when the moms had gone back to the clingwrap and the other kids of course were playing freeze tag around those fiberglass animals with the springs beneath them and the laughter i sat down and asked the boy who could levitate "does it taste like a nose bleed" and he goes "yeah like a nose buh-leed only backwards"'

this passage makes me fucking giddy. the way it's written, the way it's spoken, the way he spices different words. the notable pauses at 'cling wrap' and 'freeze tag' give it this zigzaggy feel and the modulations and elongations on things like 'nose buh-leed' are so important to me for some reason that i don't care how pregnant with meaning they are or aren't.

basically every one of this guy's poems is fantastic and it was really hard to not write about them all but maybe later but there are so many other poets to talk about in my next post WHAT AN OVERWHELMING THREAD

 

[Hipmonlee]

i'm left feeling empty or awash with something nameless.

You know I love you man, but this sort of thing is getting harder and harder to forgive.

And there are only so many wiktionary look-ups per post I am willing to make. You may not care, but you could consider it a personal favour to tone that down a little..

 

[Fishy]

lovely stuff but mostly RIVES

oh god, do I love rives. courtesy of glands! being able to write poetry is one thing, but being able to perform and speak it is almost too good, and it's definitely way more personal, as far as 'connecting with your audience.' guh guh guh and a guh

I actually was in performance speech in middle school, and I really loved it. at first I only did poetry, but it was my very last (THE very last for everyone) meet that I performed Prose, which is basically performing a little snippet of a story, a scene from a much bigger picture. I performed this piece called "Eleven.".

"Only today I wish I didn't have only eleven years rattling inside me like pennies in a tin band-aid Box."

so yeah, I performed it, and sometimes I would work myself up into tears doing so! and other people. but, I think that is the point of a great poem, and I felt happy to be able to express emotion through it and translate it to other people so they could empathize. it's neat.

if and when i say i love Robert Frost, it's mostly because i was surrounded by him so much in middle school as well, because of my teacher Mrs. Bengert, who also ran the entire speech program, and so it's no surprise that my love of poetry in general sort of sprouted from her loving and personal cultivation of the art. i too used to think that i could write poetry (liiiiiiiiivejournal) and thought it was lovely and deep, and i sometimes produced stuff that i am not ashamed of to this day, but those things i did like are lost in cyber space unfortunately.

a book exists by Dean Koontz where it is just full of haikus and other wistful and moody poems, but I forget the name right now (googling) AH HAH!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Counted_Sorrows

at one point it didn't even exist! koontz quoted this fake book for the sake of quoting, but then he actually wrote such a book and now I want it…. dang. how sneaky. (apologies for messy grammar good lord 5AM)

 

[Thorns]

as you can see i am a master poet

 

[ginganinja]

O.k well might as well post here. I am not typically a fan of poetry as I kinda lack the insight into appreciating it. Regardless, I did manage to create my own poem about 5-6 years ago (so I would be like 14-15 I think) and I entered it into a literacy competition again people older than me and it ended up winning so I might as well show it to you guys now. After all, its gotta be better than what Alan posted.

Hide

All things die.
In a memory that was once clear
My Grandad.

I remember him smiling
Laughing with everyone else.
My Grandad.

I remember him hugging us
And my dad taking a picture as he held my sister.
That same photo lies on our computer screen
Frozen in that instant in time for eternity
My Grandad.

I remember him sick
Thin as a rake
Pale as a ghost
Now dead
My Grandad.

 

[Kier]

i am definitely a fan of poetry. i have a couple of poems i thought i'd share. the first is a haiku by an anonymous author translated from original japanese (which is why is hasn't kept its form):

We are, you and me,
Like two pine needles
Which will dry and fall
But never separate.

--

the second is also translated from the japanese, and this one is from a collection of poems written by japanese children. i have a lot of scans of this book if anyone is interested in reading some more of it.

Father
When my father wants to read the paper
he says,
"Paper, walk to me."
When he wants to smoke
he says,
"Cigarettes, walk to me."
Then
my mother stands up to bring them to him.

--

another of my favorite poems, by ezra pound:

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

--

finally, here is one of my own -- an attempt at a sonnet, but only in the loosest sense (in that it has fourteen ten-syllable lines).

Song for Shaky Eyes

Where a ghost is not shape but a quiet

or a jar sits where there once was a bed.

Where the dog is the dog in the picture

or the girl is the girl in the picture.

Morning becomes something you hear about;

sleep becomes static on television.

The thought of a doorbell makes you feel sick

so you lock the door and turn out the lights.

Answering the telephone turns into

tuning into the Home Shopping Network

until it gets to the point where you lose

the remote on purpose and watch for days,

credit card at the ready, just in case

they sell someone with which to eat breakfast.

i'm never happy with what i do with line 6... if anyone has any suggestions in keeping with the form, i'd appreciate it. feel free to pick apart and critique the poem if you feel the need.

 

[az]

personally i cant stand poetry spoken

i dont understand asshole evangelicals that insist poetry is written to be spoken -- they can all suck my dick. i dont wanna hear some cunt over-enunciate or try desperately hard to P E R F O R MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM a line that just flows nicely in my head because my inner monologue isnt a cunt because it isnt you

 

[Lemonade]

Who likes sonnets !!??
They're a bit restricted for my taste but still enjoyable to make meaningful and for my English class
Well, only the first.

Sonnet 1

I went to there to find that mind I lost
and bought a heart in there of such great price
clockwork and shiny black of red the cost
a flow of love, slowly, to heal, how nice

oh where is there, oh when did Loveless give
the right to buy our heart with coins of blood?
for loss of hue in skins is loss to live
and feelings caught are stuck among the flood

the nicest people give a hand in aid
and hardly care for wrongs of yours un-stowed
but you just try to live among the shade
the gears of hearts do turn a standard code

but t'last the moment is when clockwork breaks
a voice will tell us love and please to wake

Sonnet 2

the sun does set but green the flash it lacks
though watchful eye of mine does wallow here
a scene I wish to share with you, and facts
for only loneliness can lose my tear

the umbrae under us are cast by duals
oh how I wish these two meant me and you
alas there is no time or luck for fools
I sat and watched as one plus one was two

but very vast were victories of mine
the art of fear and wanting not to speak
I simply thought could I just bide my time?
and now my life, though happy, is quite bleak

the day the shining moon flashed green as well
awake was I, and breaking was the spell

 

[Matthew]

V0x that first sonnet is amazing, wow. Did you write that yourself because it was truly moving. On that note, Foreys what problem do you have with line six? While certainly not the most powerful line in your poem I think it is fine. Maybe you're just being hard on yourself!!

Az you clearly haven't been to a poetry reading. The douchebags Who. Talk. Like. This. After. Every. Line. While. Taking. Deep. Breaths. Are. Foolsssssssssssss. If you think your inner voice talks the poem elegantly then you should be able to speak it well

 

[az]

but my inner monologue isnt just my voice

i dont think in my own voice, and i dont buy that anyone does, you just run through what you're thinking in your own voice when you really stop to focus on it and process it. i haven't been to a poetry read afaik but i have had poets read their own shit to me at events and artsy chumps do stuff at festivals and it is all real bad and ANYway even if there are people out there that do it "better" than these guys i stillthink it is a principle thing that i would rather poetry be unspoken. the written word and the spoken word don't have to inextricably linked

 

[Glen]

You know I love you man, but this sort of thing is getting harder and harder to forgive.

And there are only so many wiktionary look-ups per post I am willing to make. You may not care, but you could consider it a personal favour to tone that down a little..

bad art describing good art

 

[az]

art fucking art

 

[Staraptor Call]

My favorite poems are "The Second Coming" by Yeats, and "The Hollow Men" and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by Eliot. I tend to like modernist poetry.

 

[andrea]

Any fans of "The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter" by Ezra Pound? It was my favorite poem in Asian Literature two semesters ago and then studying Pound's translation the next semester in American Literature was awesome.

Pound's translation

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.

At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?

At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

I love the transition from innocence to maturity and longing in the poem. Especially the line about dust and "Forever and forever and forever." The ending lines, addressing a journey to Cho-fu-Sa always make the poem end on a good note for me.

I actually had a creative writing/poetry course last semester. These were my two favorite poetry attempts.

Alliterative Verse- "An Encounter in the Grass"

“An Encounter in the Grass”

“Be careful,” she cautioned.
I couldn’t keep calm.
Growls grazed across the grass. Three
Times I stepped, stopping to stare at
The source of the sound. Silent, I grasped
My tools of the trade— two rounded balls
Colored in crimson yet colored by white. With a
Flick of the wrist, a flurry of wind, a
Flash of red light against final defense…
The ball quivers and quakes then clicks and is quiet.
My prize was caught, captured—contained.
“Hurry, six hundred to go!” she giggled.

Ekphrasic/Free Verse Poem= "the mirror."

the mirror.

inside
i look at myself, trapped
in a place where i don't want to be
reversed world.
perverse world.

a reflection in their
stares at me. Am i merely
that face
in the mirror

help me
escape this confusion.
if only i could
turn things around.

But who am I to define anything?

turn things around.
if only i could
escape the confusion.
help me

in the mirror
that face
stares at me. Am i merely
a reflection in their

perverse world.
reversed world.
in a place where I don't want to be
i look at myself, trapped
inside

the mirror.​

Not the best poetry ever written, but I thought I might as well share.

 

[AccidentalGreed]

Inspired, however cliched.

Time

As time passes sometimes we realize
That it is time to depart the sands
To leave your time at an island we call home
To take new time in the new ocean depths
To find new adventures and people
And places and animals and waters
And foods and uncharted territories.
It is time to turn over new leaves
In the persistent yet short time we have
Until we become one with space, time, and the Earth.

 

[Tobes]

we reach for a truth
hands searching in nothingness
isn't life tragic?