Poetry

Resurrecting an old thread...

We had an assignment last year where we were doing a modern version of the Canterbury Tales. Basically, we were required to write a poem that described a character that represents the kind of person you may find in modern society. This was what I did. I found it while cleaning my room the other day. Judging by how my class reacted, this is either pretty good or pretty bad. You tell me:


Rock Star


He stumbled in with bottle in hand
And flat on his face, on the floor he did land.
His dirty blond hair hung down all the way
To his narrow little shoulders where it sat and laid.
He hid behind sunglasses and on his back bore
A purple leather jacket with which he wore
Matching pants, and boots, and belt.
The deep pockets of his jacket held
Papers and bags and a needle or two,
His most prized stuff snug, in the back of his shoe.
His belt buckle was shaped like a little guitar.
If you ask him who he is, he'll tell you he's a star.
And if you ask him, he'll tell you about the places,
The bright light cities and the big old stages.
If you ask him, he'll tell you about the fans,
The groupies, the screaming, the clamoring hands.
But even if you ask, he won't tell you about
How that tower to the heavens came tumbling down.
It was out on the road that he picked up his habits
And three years later, his band had had it
With his drugs, his booze, his incomparable ego.
Now, people spot him wherever he goes
And say, "Hey, weren't you that one guy?"
And all he ever does is drink and cry.
What is it like to have everyone know your name
And the next day be just the same
As any other nobody, walking down the street?
Up from the floor, he gets to his feet.
He's thin as a rail, all skin and bone.
His heart is hollow and he's always alone.
He picks up his bottle and guzzles half.
He's stoned as a sinner, and he can only laugh.
 
Here's a poem I wrote in 7th grade.




Just Pick And Flick It.

by Tog.

Just pick it and flick it

big ones and small ones.

Just pick it and flick it

green ones and brown ones

Just pick it and flick it

solid ones and slimy ones

It's all the same when you just just pick it and flick it​
 
Rough draft sketch of a new poem I'm working on. Should have a final drafting done well in time for Halloween.

Elegy for an Autumn Apple​

There is a crisp break to your skin
tastes ghostly in overtones
October sunsets and falling leaves
spooky thick in the vampire season
the crack of teeth and fragrant release
beneath your skin that's bloody red
a fairytale mythology all its own
Faulkner spoke of Light in August
but in my mind it falls much later
when the shadows glow a just bit brighter
and are the more sinister because.
 
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REHASHED​

--is how you feel (perceptions fixed to singular visions).
The elasticity of your mind worn like your youth.
With no reward of patient maturity.
Silence is your only solace.
Shallow breathing your golden rule.
You sit in the dark.
Alone.

Knees cramped.
Eyes swelled with the salt of sweat spilt as you (desperately, desperately) try to stop yourself.
Paradoxes are only linear in life.
B follows A because C must be born.
The blood flows because the wound has been torn open.
The horror.
It is not a state, but a state of mind.

The little taste at the back of your throat, tickling with pins because you know it's true.
Did the word come before the voice, or did we just bleed our minds?
Did the action entail the intent?
There is no chance.
Did she die in your arms, or is it just a matter of perspective?
You hold her form, still and lifeless and trickling warmth away down your shirt.
Did she die in your arms?

Still and lifeless and ready for the box.
Is it at all real?
Is there shape too be had, form too be seen, or is it simply lines drawn in hopeless segments?
Hopeless.
A shape.
Fixed in dimensions.
Buried beneath the ground.

Feeding the cycle.
Promoting the urge.
Now you have nothing left to do but smile.
Now you have nothing left to do.
Above the stars go spinning by, all taken to their wanderings but one.
A blinking nail straight above you.
He does not move, he does not feel, he does not scream or sigh.

This is his pain.
Stretched black canvas with festering wounds.
Cardinal directions are defined by the lights of martyrs.
Sitting, breathing, crying up at its dead light and knowing the pain of knowing.
This is not pain but pleasure.
This is not solace but sedition.
You are your own god and you are--

Smarter.
Softer.
More comfortable.
Sitting.
Alone.
In your own personal heaven.
Watching yourself die.
 
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Little Ghost​

There is a little ghost haunting my basement.
I can feel her in the air, warm and soft
Warm and soft the breath that makes sweater stick,
Stick to damp skin, denim tight. Oh, my!
Oh, my.
Oh, my little ghost I'll write a lovesong for you,
A lovesong to danse macarbely too
In the basement.

In the basement that I fear the dark,
And every flickering light is a pulse;
A pulse of my heart,
A pulse to quicken.
Can you hear it?

Hear as blood rushes and breath comes ragged?
Rise little spirit,
Rise and stay.
Will you stay with me,
And danse the night away?

There is a ghost in my basement.
Oh, little ghost that haunts me
With your misty footfalls to heartbeat melodies.
Little ghost, you're in my basement.
In my basement. . . .

I can feel the heat in gasping breaths.
Yes, I'll write a lovesong,
A lovesong to you.
For it is very true
That we'll still be lovers after death.
 
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A Narrative, Untitled and In Progress​

As She was nearing the start of Her Life, God had a Thought.

"I know!" She shouted to Herself in jubilant delight,
"I'll remake some people and let them think."

Think about what, though?

"I don't know, I suppose. Cats and cradles and pretty things.
And a funny little fellow they'll call the Devil
who'll be based on their middle-school foes."

They might have nightmares about wilting flowers.

"But that's the risk we always run, isn't it?" went The Words.
"Narration is the closet in which we live,
barking our shins on razor blades."

She had a taste of orange and spearmint and words like buttercups.
I held myself close to Her. A tickle softly in my ear.

"My blood is the ultimate amber pill.
I'll cut my veins in gift to you.
It's OK for little boys to drink
with a knife and fork."

(gibberish on the page)

with father watching and mother looking.
Madness thoughts.
His eyes are watching you.
Sexual charisma.
The potency of music given faith.

Oh God, the forgetfulness is so clear!
(remember this, remember you)
imagination so slow.
Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate
chocolate thoughts of tabernacles,
shifting with the breeze.

"Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
Tell me about it all."

I had experiences last night I might call religious.
Deep in my mind (I was deep) chasing myself
through whatever green fields might accomplish the job.
I had thoughts of retrograde dementia,
questioning my memories.
I had thoughts of tesseracts and music.
I had thoughts of horror and sexual climaxes
that boarder the aghast.
I felt the shaman.
I felt.
It were dreams I would never wake up from
I see now this is my destiny,
to see, to live, to feel.
I must do it.
The discipline is not necessary,
just the inspiration.
I will begin tomorrow.

Picture it in alignment, instances become mutual.
Did you become crooked on the spot?
He knows what makes them scream in the night.
He knows.
"I am what makes them scream."
America was settled by Puritans and Pirates.
All things for blood, money, and the adoration of God.
Is it no wonder to many
they are not mutually exclusive?

"You think disgusting thoughts."

"The glancing reflections of moonbow beams
pregnant with pause.
You talk to light, you speak to light!
a feat I cannot accomplish
because I do not have your eyes. Is that better for you?
Rest in peace."

Black.
Black, black, and black.
Clothed in it, seeing it, breathing it.
Solemnity, celebration, all of it
bestowed on one hue.
That was all he would allow himself,
but for the green of his eyes,
peeking above the black of his glasses.
To write of them (enriching the pages of blank opposition),
"Dotted with black pupils, students studying the world,
giving nothing back.
Stellar black holes caught in the orbit of a dead, black galaxy."
That was him.
Eyes, ringed in green, like event horizons,
promising the pretense of reality.

Naughty cotton knickers, white in their innocence,
white in their seductive lie.

"When you awake, deal with the world in the worst way possible.
Not like a shark, it has blood.
Not like bacteria, it has purpose.
Viral. Virus. Virulent.
Deal with the world in the worst way possible.
No rhythmic reason, not chewing, or feeding, or living, or breathing.
Just be. And infect everything you touch."

Black lanterns.
Swirl.
A moot point,
for we have lost.
Decadence.

All quiet for the story please. . .

It is foggy out; thick, grey, misty,
dull morning light, an inverted wall
lighting the world with subterfuge
and giving bad designs of infinity.

The young man's body begins to die,
aging to reflect his spirituality.
She runs her hands over flaccid hair,
his loving face and insides turned to poison.
("I cry because I lack sadness," she mouthed.)
"I don't give a ****," he cooed softly, and rubbed his face.
"My patience is eroded, I'm done. I just want to forget."

His eyes twirl 'round like glass balls in suspension
the emaciated face cured to leather long ago
by whiskey and sunlight.

She had gone to the cemetery a day before
(the weather much the same), the damp spring grass
and colors of carnations and daisy blooms
giving the feel of sick to the air.
She left her present on a father's grave
Baby's breath wreathed into a heart
and spackled with nevermores.
Symbolism on top of more.
Elusive.
Feeling.
Little else to do but count petals
and read names and dates.
It pervaded her life.
She imagined herself as one of the dead underground
The world broken down to its base poetics
of madness and nothing at all.

"Love is a deathful thing."

The clouds parted, the sunlight shone down
(in it's magical hour)
and she saw a dandelion fairy drift through the beams
sparkling with possibility.
The calm echo of the Rolling Stones,
"Street Fighting Man".
It's worth a smile to know.
Flowers die. Seasons die. Songs die.
You die.
Enjoy it.

"I'll invent a word for this feeling, someday."

A dream.
He awoke to the lovely smell of eggs, cooked in butter
and came down into the evening light.
"You have your fingers in to many soups," he was told.
"Would you do something about it?" She greets me
with yawning, smiling eyes
that know mystery apart from serendipity,
that know genesis apart from foundling,
that know me and everything else,
and I just sit on the maple kitchen floor,
watching.
 
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