Open mike poetry thread

[peruban]

I'll start off.

"The Deciders"

Options attenuated into laser beams
My feet are wet and cold
If what was just was just
Then let it be

There are those, those who smother the just
Like a drowning man, splashing about
From the mountain top we see the promise
The promise that the sun will rise tomorrow

Bird in cage, man in cell
Burnt with rage, can't compel
As notes float through the air
Bringing harmony to the wind

Waves crashing upon rock
I drink tea with Gandhi
Absinthe with Rimbaud
And shot heroine with Cassidy

The choice stands alone, no one to make it
The mean average of human intellect
Descends into the fiery depths of bliss
Since bliss is ignorance

But you need not concern, someone will decide for you.

********************************************************

So what's on your mind? express it in a poem.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. My dear peruban...

Welcome to the Lounge!

I really like your poem...

Expressive...Very nice!

Here's a couple of mine:

"The Sheet"

She remembered the sheet
How he tenderly
Laid it over her heated limbs
He’d said she would get cold
Otherwise
Once he was gone from her

It drifted down
Like the cloud she’d seen at sunrise
When he’d lain in her arms
For a joyful eternity

His hands had gently loosely
Wrapped it round her
As she sighed and relented

He’d had his way all along
Why should now be different?
She would yield to him
As he took her
Beyond the dawn

For his hands
Were like the tender sheet
As he tucked his body
Into hers
Warming her cold limbs
And heating her blood
As it coursed through
Tumultuous veins

She danced in the bed, in his eyes
Then he was gone

All that remained
Was the memory
Of his hands
And his smile
As he floated the sheet over her..


This next one has been published:

"Requiem for my body"

I will shed this old body like garbage
Like old clothes that need to be
Tossed

My lumpy, wrinkled, crazed form
With all its hungers, longings and dreams
Shall be shed like so many skins


My stumbling feet that so often falter
My tired eyes that no longer see
My lips that are weary of kissing
My hands that no longer work
At life’s tasks
My shoulders that ache and hurt me
My legs that run no longer

All, all will be gone


Only my soul, radiant, pristine and pure,
Shall float free
Unencumbered at last
By this old body


It shall rise in clear isolation
And float
far away
from what used to be

me

[peruban]

2. Very nice, vivid even

The first one was very passionate, and your second one expressed the acceptance of mortality.

How did you go about getting published? I have entire notebooks filled with original work that I would love to publish. The one above was composed improvisationally.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. Most Tuesday nights, I can be found at a local coffee house...

They have an open mic, and I regularly read. One week, a girlfriend of mine was the featured poet, and she brought a pile of magazines...

The Bellowing Ark. They're out of Seattle, and they are looking for artists.

I sent two of my poems to them, and they published both. "The Sheet" hasn't been published.

If you look in my Journal, you'll see the thread where I announce the publishing!

I can get you a link, if you'd like.

Thank you for your praise!

:hi:

[peruban]

7. Anytime, I like giving honest critiscism.

Just as much as I like receiving it.

[trackfan]

3. A translation of Catullus 51:

He who always sits with you, and who gazes
at you, and who hears you so sweetly laughing,
seems to me to equal a god, and sometimes
even surpass one -


if a thing like that is all right to say. What
misery! This rips away all my senses.
When I see you, Lesbia, I am tongue tied.
Words seem to fail.


Flames run through my body, and down my limbs. My
two ears ring and buzz, and my eyes now fail me,
covered, as they are, with a blinding darkness
blacker than midnight.

[peruban]

8. Where can I find that in the original Latin?

I can read some Latin and, being bilingual, I know poetry is nearly impossible to translate. I tried translating mine above into Spanish earlier tonight and found it doesn't doesn't do it justice.

[trackfan]

9. I used to know the Latin by heart - but had to google and find it here:

http://www.recmusic.org/lieder/get_text.html?TextId=3651


Ille mi par esse deo videtur
ille si fas est superare divos
qui sedens adversus identidem te
spectat et audit

dulce ridentem misero quod omnis
eripit sensus mihi nam simul te
Lesbia aspexi nihil est super mi
vocis in ore

lingua sed torpet tenuis sub artus
flamma demanat sonitu suopte
tintinant aures gemina teguntur
lumina nocte

[peruban]

11. A thousand thank you's for the link. n/t

[Robeson]

13. My favorite poet. Thanks for that translation.

[WCGreen]

4. Something I wrote a while back...

Kim Comes a Callin’

Kim Jung-il moved into the house next door
and he tried to be all normal like,
wanting to meet the neighbors and stuff.

He would stand outside the house, washing down his driveway
only he would be decked out, wearing the full “communist.”
Once he jumped when Mrs. Winston showed him,
up close and personal like, her Pekinese named Mrs. Butterworth.

We know he had our house bugged so we would
play all sorts of bad heavy metal music really loud,
just to piss him off.

But he brought chocolate over to us.
It was really awful, a North Korean brand.
"Nuclear," my friend said, throwing the heavy metal sign,
you know the two horn thing with the thumb and pinky.
And he answered, real serious like, "no conventional."
We laugh far into the night,
talking about American girls.

[peruban]

10. Wow.

That one's hard to peg, but I like the narrative aspect and how the problems of the world are reduced to a mundane level. I'm not sure if you intended to bring conflict to a human level, or if you meant to make mundane matters elevate their importance. But I guess that's the pleasure of poetry, expressing ambiguity and letting the reader ponder meaning.

God damn I love poetry.

[Inchworm]

5. Die in a fire

Life is good
The sun brightens up the day
unswallowed by the expected
gulp...

wtf...

weeee!

:P

[Haole Girl]

12. One of my recent attempts:

"Good-bye"

There are the ones we forget
and the ones we never will

Standing still
as he held my head in his hands
his long fingers on each side of my face
stealing the last kiss

Then there was the time
I knew it would be the last
and cried
"Don't cry," he said
And I stopped
like a scolded child

My father once stood under a sign
so we could see him from the airplane window
his arms stretched out...
as if to say "I love you this much!"
And I didn't think there would ever be
a good-bye as painful

But I didn't know
how many more there'd be

"Are you ok?" he asked.
Surprised, I said, "Yes!"
and smiled
I thought I was
How could I have known?

If there was a way
to never say it
to just leave time standing still
I would
and I'd never say it
again

But it's all part of letting go
and letting things be
the way they are supposed to,
I guess

It's getting late.

[peruban]

15. Very poignant

It pulls my heart strings and reminds me of my own father's passing.

[mcctatas]

14. a friends poem

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=8255711&mesg_id=8255711

[bridgit]

16. Boom Boom Rune Moon Luna

Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom
Room Room Room Room Room
Womb Womb Womb Womb Womb
Soon Soon Soon Soon Soon
Tomb Tomb Tomb Tomb Tomb
Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom Zoom

Yeah Yeah
Lovey Dove

So you talk that baby talk.
Do you walk that baby walk?

Yeah Yeah
Yeah Yeah

Rune moon luna,
Luna soon bloon pop.
Rune moon luna,
Luna soon bloon pop.

Bloon Bloon Bloon Bloon Bloon
Bloon Bloon Bloon Bloon Bloon
Bloon Bloon Bloon Bloon Bloon

Pop!

[peruban]

17. Very abstract, I see meanings hidden in other meanings.

It's almost like Dadaism, throwing away convention and spitting in the face of establishment. The repetition's almost musical.

[bridgit]

18. A belated welcom to DU, peruban...

:kick:

[peruban]

19. Thanks. I was wondering when someone would get around to that.

I actually used to post here a few years back under the user name kixot but I took about 3 years off and couldn't remember my password so I just created a new account. I've been on this site since the stolen election of 2000.

[bridgit]

20. Ah! Then let it be known, I'm always so slow on the up-take...

:):( ------------>:hi:

[Tuesday Afternoon]

21. herewith a paraphrase of Yeats poem:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I'm leaving now for Innisfree
I will build a small cabin there
I will grow a garden and collect honey
I will be alone and quiet among nature's song

Peace will come upon me, slowly
As the sounds of the city will leave me
to be replaced with criciket's song
And the city's neon lights will drop away
to reveal nature's glimmering palette

I'm leaving now because it's always on my mind
I hear the lake's waves lapping on the shore
while I stand here in this city's traffic roar
My heart of hearts still calls for Innisfree.

~Tuesday Afternoon