pick one of your poems and tell me all about it

[CharleyH]

I have nooooooo idea how to go about any or it I just know the suitable poems are pouring out right now and going down on paper !!
I have ideas for illustrations but doubt whether I am up to them I haven't touched a paintbrush for years

I am nottttttttt writing a bloody paradiddle!!

I think you under-rate yourself as a poet, Annie. I think you write really good poetry, and I worked with you under pressure and thought you did great. You ARE ready for a gunfight. Nerk? I've never seen Nerk under pressure. The Gunfight is all about adhering to parameters, and the parameters are usually built (at least mine are) on assessing strengths and weaknesses of both poets and then stinging (or at least stringing) together a challenge that either poets could win. You have nothing to lose in this challenge ... you are pitted against a peer.

If you do it, win or lose, you get to come up with the next challenge and pit me against anybody else you want!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I think you under-rate yourself as a poet, Annie. I think you write really good poetry, and I worked with you under pressure and thought you did great. You ARE ready for a gunfight. Nerk? I've never seen Nerk under pressure. The Gunfight is all about adhering to parameters, and the parameters are usually built (at least mine are) on assessing strengths and weaknesses of both poets and then stinging together a challenge that either poets could win.

If you do it, win or lose, you get to come up with the next challenge and pit me against anybody else you want!

is 'stinging' a freudian slip ?!!!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

How is it that the seeds of childhood still
blossom in this garden? Some still budded,
others the wild freedom of honeysuckle
cascading down to shield the hidden thorn.
A shower of someone else's malice
is all it needs to resurrect
that dreamlike world. Another person
in a different place or time.
I see me running
maybe for some happy circumstance,
but likely not; just from pain.
As if that open space spelt freedom
nowhere to run,
they brought me back again
to worse far worse.
Why run? I keep on running
I've never yet escaped the hidden thorn.

Reason? someone upsets me and it drags up (in my mind) my shitty childhood. A kind of obsession in a way I suppose perhaps they should (or do for all I know) have meetings like AA, to stand up and say "I am Annie I survived abuse ..... I am a Survivor" but you don't survive not inside it's like a big bruise that never heals however much you are told to move on that it wasn't your fault you never ever really believe it, that you must have done something really bad because only bad people get treated like that. Right?

 

[butters]

How is it that the seeds of childhood still
blossom in this garden? Some still budded,
others the wild freedom of honeysuckle
cascading down to shield the hidden thorn.
A shower of someone else's malice
is all it needs to resurrect
that dreamlike world. Another person
in a different place or time.
I see me running
maybe for some happy circumstance,
but likely not; just from pain.
As if that open space spelt freedom
nowhere to run,
they brought me back again
to worse far worse.
Why run? I keep on running
I've never yet escaped the hidden thorn.

Reason? someone upsets me and it drags up (in my mind) my shitty childhood. A kind of obsession in a way I suppose perhaps they should (or do for all I know) have meetings like AA, to stand up and say "I am Annie I survived abuse ..... I am a Survivor" but you don't survive not inside it's like a big bruise that never heals however much you are told to move on that it wasn't your fault you never ever really believe it, that you must have done something really bad because only bad people get treated like that. Right?

a thornless for your sorrows, annie, first of all.

now, may i ask something here? do you ever use poetry as release? you know, in the same sort of way some cut themselves ... ?

 

[UnderYourSpell]

a thornless for your sorrows, annie, first of all.

now, may i ask something here? do you ever use poetry as release? you know, in the same sort of way some cut themselves ... ?

I'm not sure if you would call it release, something dredges it up so I write , then drag forward from the step backwards wipe my eyes aand carry on. Most people see me as a joker and I do like to make people laugh but that's all part of it really ..... when someones laughing they're not hitting you (either physically or mentally which is probably the worst of the two) it's a learnt survival strategy. I know I often come across with all my fooling around as a fluffy brainless blonde if you don't know me, but being a clever kid did me no favours so that's another thing that gets played down. You have to stay safe you see not stand out as being different or it's beaten out of you or told how bad you are until you believe it till you are left with almost a dual personality that which is constantly ingrained into you as a child and that which as an adult really you should know you are .......... all as clear as mud I expect!

 

[butters]

maybe, as an adult, you will learn the way to reach the child - allow them to move forward instead of being trapped.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

maybe, as an adult, you will learn the way to reach the child - allow them to move forward instead of being trapped.

I can't let her go I would be abandoning her ....... yet it's strange when I came so close to dying last year they tell me I was calling for my mother oh bugga thats so sad how can you hate someone for what they did to you yet still call out for them?

 

[The_Fool]

in that case, i await your pontificating over this:

Originally Posted by The_Fool

why do I always forget
that today is a day
like yesterday
five years ago
tomorrow
next week
regrets and memories
are for yesterday
plans and dreams
for tomorrow
today is for living
but I always forget

The key to this are the last two lines: "today is for living/but I always forget." I spend too much time doing stuff that is not much fun with the idea that a vacation is just around the corner. I am stuck in a living to work rather than working to live routine. I am convinced that a time will come that I can spend time, money, energy on those things that make me happy, rather than make me money, or make others happy. Those are are the "plans and dreams for tomorrow." The "regrets and memories" are the moments missed that I look back on. I didn't spend as much time with my kids in their preschool years because of first the military and then going to school full time and working full time. That for me is a "regret."

But then again, that I "forget" is a lie. I've chosen the life that I live. Just another way of rationalizing my behavior.

 

[butters]

The key to this are the last two lines: "today is for living/but I always forget." I spend too much time doing stuff that is not much fun with the idea that a vacation is just around the corner. I am stuck in a living to work rather than working to live routine. I am convinced that a time will come that I can spend time, money, energy on those things that make me happy, rather than make me money, or make others happy. Those are are the "plans and dreams for tomorrow." The "regrets and memories" are the moments missed that I look back on. I didn't spend as much time with my kids in their preschool years because of first the military and then going to school full time and working full time. That for me is a "regret."

But then again, that I "forget" is a lie. I've chosen the life that I live. Just another way of rationalizing my behavior.

thanks for returning with this, foolio. i see what you meant about apt, now. i wonder if we choose a life or if, sometimes at least, a life chooses us ... . another illustration of just what personal material many of us draw upon when looking to create. i hope you don't leave it too late to find that time, sir. regrets won't keep a heart warm when we're too old to do jack shit about them.

 

[butters]

in the arms of morpheus

from sleep to sleep i passed
no breath between dreamings
that pressed a memory
softer than wings
into uterus
into mud




this one arrived some years ago, and drew upon the loss of pregnancies many women have experienced ... but its inspiration was an image my ex had up on screen once: it was the old remains of a baby, mostly the head, that had been partially uncovered. buried in clayish soil and preserved to an extent, flattened by the pressure of the soil, but parts near perfect - the seam of eyelids, tiny fingers.

got me to thinking, got me to writing, and i don't feel it was a morbid or sorrowing write - it didn't feel that way at the time, it just felt pretty natural, and from the essence of the spiritual being inside the physical body that didn't make it to live birth.

this is one of those poems that i will not retouch. i love it as it stands, no matter what anyone else thinks of it. i suppose that's the personal side of things bleeding through; it's like a small homage to my lost babies that never made it past the 14 week stage. and it's not a sad poem for me.

 

[butters]

dawn raid


black shapes
with their black sounds
drop black tears on a
sleeping city

day erupts
bright with pain






this little one was off the back of a picture no 3 son made in junior school - a painted dusk sky (all striations of pinks, mauves, blues, greys and then reds/yellows/oranges towards the bottom), against which was the cut-out silhouette of a city running along the bottom of the page. in the sky were silhouettes of war planes, with silhouettes of bombs falling through the sky towards the buildings. some of these were highlighted by flashes of bright card where they'd hit the buildings and were exploding.

now, it wasn't the best picture in the world, but it made a deep impression on me - i think it had something to do with the war stuff on tv at the time, too, bombing raids in distant lands, that sort of thing. dawn seemed more appropriate for the poem, but - most of all - it was the tear-shaped bomb silhouettes that most took my imagination. if he'd have been more true to the shape of the bombs, this poem may never have arrived.

 

[greenmountaineer]

A Kleenex for your Head

Recalling his own original sins
When Marilyn sang “Mr. President,”
Monsignor ordered penitential rites
For teenage souls at Blessed Sacrament.

“Louise, go get a Kleenex for your head,”
Sister Clement in the vestibule said
Who otherwise handed out bobby pins
To girls who remembered their chapel veils.

“So, maybe next time you’ll remember yours;
Another example, listen up, girls,
Of sloth, which is what forgetfulness is,
And don’t forget to button up your blouse.”

Clement then herded recalcitrant boys
Who secretly called her Sister Bo Peep;
Little wolves they could be beneath their fleece,
And that’s what she told all the little girls.

Lou toed the line while she swallowed her gum
And stepped inside Monsignor’s catacomb
Where the monsignor would make her refuse
The sweetbreads of youth for unleavened bread.

She may forget some things but would not this,
Nor the many ways that anyone sins,
And prayed some pope would canonize a saint
For black and white priests and black habit nuns.

......


I wrote this after a recent coincidental visit to a website that spoke about some women who are again wearing chapel veils to church services, a practice in the Roman Catholic church before the Second Vatican Council in the early sixties that liberalized devotional practices, including this one. I recall nuns making girls go to the girl's bathroom at school to get toilet tissue to put on their heads if they didn't bring a chapel veil or have a Kleenex tissue handy because entering a church without a headdress was "against the rules."

The poem is not about chapel veils or religion for that matter as much as it is about how institutions so easily forget the spirit of compassion that inspired adherents in the beginning. In my view it is the nature of institutions to gain in power and maintain it by ensuring compliance from its members through compliance with its rules. I'm enjoying the current thread about Rumi as an example of compassion towards others and the nature of love but am reminded how Islam's message has been contorted by some to make suicide bombings a sure ticket to paradise.

 

[butters]

thankyou so much for this poem and notes about its origins, greenmountaineer. i always enjoy the way your writes are layered with meanings, ripe with imagery. and yes, whilst there are good, kind people in the church, those nastier ones will always be remembered vividly. my own headteacher was a spiteful old crow of a nun - in m opinion at least.

i remember us girls always having to cover our heads in church as a kid, though have never come across this toilet tissue thing. it was a hat or a scarf, and since berets were a part of our winter uni and straw boaters part of the summer one, we always had hats to hand. god, i loathed those straw hats with the elastic under the chin.

 

[greenmountaineer]

thankyou so much for this poem and notes about its origins, greenmountaineer. i always enjoy the way your writes are layered with meanings, ripe with imagery. and yes, whilst there are good, kind people in the church, those nastier ones will always be remembered vividly. my own headteacher was a spiteful old crow of a nun - in m opinion at least.

i remember us girls always having to cover our heads in church as a kid, though have never come across this toilet tissue thing. it was a hat or a scarf, and since berets were a part of our winter uni and straw boaters part of the summer one, we always had hats to hand. god, i loathed those straw hats with the elastic under the chin.

The toilet tissue example was probably an isolated event by an angry nun, like the one I tried to portray in the poem. I knew a few of those, and, yes, there were some wonderful nuns and priests also.

As always, thanks for your encouraging words.

 

[BooMerengue]

I wasn't gonna say anything this not being my thread and me not writing anymore but this caught me. I love kids. and writings for kids. and I really like this. but before I even stepped in here I made a little shelter to protect me from the tomatos when I say... If your gonna use a form, or certain meter, do it right. Yours is a+ perfect til the 6th line, but then stumbles. and the way I read it it made me expect to see the word 'shit' in a further line. lol I do use 'dirty words' reciting to my boys but I don't think I'd want to read it to them from a book. Just sayin... and in the humblest possible way.

Ange. I hate you. You do what I want to do sooo damned easy. You my love are what challenges me, and makes me drop my pen. arrggghhhh!!! (and you know that really I adore you)

 

[BooMerengue]

Come, take my hand and walk awhile with me!
I'll share the day with no one else in mind
our selfishness the gift we give for free.
You'll snuggle close as we walk towards the sea.

I'll cherish all the keepsakes that we find.
Come, take my hand and walk awhile with me.
Your shouted laugh imprints my memory
and racing fast the sunlight makes us blind!

Our selfishness the gift we give for free;
my joy in you explodes in raucous glee
when seagulls scream at us though not unkind!
Come, take my hand and walk awhile with me

as night descends we'll gather from the trees
the firelight that lets the day unwind,
our selfishness the gift we give for free.
The time we share is limited, you see.

We will not waste a glance at whats behind.
Come, take my hand and walk awhile with me
our selfishness the gift we give for free.

I wrote this for my oldest grandson, T Bone, and now it's also for his brothers Boomer, and Shock. Whom I love waaaay more than I love myself, God and filthy lucre. I have always dreamed of taking them to the cold water beaches of my childhood, where a sweatshirt is a must, and the scent of the wind mixing the pines with the salty water is an aphrodisiac still. In the poem there is only a hint that it was never to be because a few days before I wrote this a good Dr (whom I found later did not now what he was talking about) informed me I was terminally ill and to go home and get my affairs in order. But this part, The time we share is limited, you see is still true. Really, only the Dr's timing was off. The facts remain the same, only the clock is ticking very loud now. When I posted this I got a lot of really good reviews, even one saying this competed w/ Yeats! lol But no one ever saw what I was really writing. So here it is. Naked.

 

[butters]

I wasn't gonna say anything this not being my thread and me not writing anymore but this caught me. I love kids. and writings for kids. and I really like this. but before I even stepped in here I made a little shelter to protect me from the tomatos when I say... If your gonna use a form, or certain meter, do it right. Yours is a+ perfect til the 6th line, but then stumbles. and the way I read it it made me expect to see the word 'shit' in a further line. lol I do use 'dirty words' reciting to my boys but I don't think I'd want to read it to them from a book. Just sayin... and in the humblest possible way.

Ange. I hate you. You do what I want to do sooo damned easy. You my love are what challenges me, and makes me drop my pen. arrggghhhh!!! (and you know that really I adore you)

hey, Boo

the thread is open to anyone to comment as they wish; honesty's the very best feedback we can hope for, even if we don't agree with it. it allows us a glimpse inside a reader's head and may help us understand other points of view.

to which poem do you refer, Boo? i think i know, but if you'd clarify then we'd all be on the same page

 

[butters]

and thankyou for showing us both the poem and the 'behind the scenes' footage.

what a lovely legacy, to be able to leave your children poems dedicated just to them. that will keep you very close in their thoughts in years to come

the verse i liked best, for its imagery and its sheer joie-de-vivre was this:

I'll cherish all the keepsakes that we find.
Come, take my hand and walk awhile with me.
Your shouted laugh imprints my memory
and racing fast the sunlight makes us blind!

 

[BooMerengue]

to this one, by UnderYourSpell...

Higgledy piggledy everso squiggerdly
rolls the dung beetle all over the land
picking up masses and even morasses
making the most of whatever's at hand.
Little dung beetle, oh little dung beetle
why does your heart sing for buckets of it
life rolling onwards backwards and forwards
shovelling up elephants bit after bit.


and to Ange's Chambers Street.

My bad. Been so long I don't really now how to use these boxes anymore. ha... I dont even now how to write a poem anymore.
I try
and I cry
and I quit.

 

[butters]

to this one, by UnderYourSpell...

Higgledy piggledy everso squiggerdly
rolls the dung beetle all over the land
picking up masses and even morasses
making the most of whatever's at hand.
Little dung beetle, oh little dung beetle
why does your heart sing for buckets of it
life rolling onwards backwards and forwards
shovelling up elephants bit after bit.


and to Ange's Chambers Street.

My bad. Been so long I don't really now how to use these boxes anymore. ha... I dont even now how to write a poem anymore.
I try
and I cry
and I quit.

there's a poem right there. enough to break a heart...

 

[UnderYourSpell]

to this one, by UnderYourSpell...

Higgledy piggledy everso squiggerdly
rolls the dung beetle all over the land
picking up masses and even morasses
making the most of whatever's at hand.
Little dung beetle, oh little dung beetle
why does your heart sing for buckets of it
life rolling onwards backwards and forwards
shovelling up elephants bit after bit.


and to Ange's Chambers Street.

My bad. Been so long I don't really now how to use these boxes anymore. ha... I dont even now how to write a poem anymore.
I try
and I cry
and I quit.

I deliberately didn't put in 'shit' just for the hell of it I suppose when it is obviously the word that should be in there lol

 

[BooMerengue]

lmao!! maybe we should have a thread of adult childrens poems, huh? cuz we're all kids at heart anyway!

shit does fit!

 

[UnderYourSpell]

lmao!! maybe we should have a thread of adult childrens poems, huh? cuz we're all kids at heart anyway!

shit does fit!

I've got loads but can't post them here as I am aiming to try and get them published

 

[BooMerengue]

I've got loads but can't post them here as I am aiming to try and get them published

oh, hell...

 

[UnderYourSpell]

oh, hell...

but give me a theme and I can write nonsense when ever you like lol