Poetry in Progress ~ construction zone

[Angeline]

Tippler on the Roof

 

[PatCarrington]

.....

 

[PatCarrington]

.....

 

[Angeline]

Invisible Muse

She says she can’t write,
no construct sprouts from the parched dust
of her imagination. Still Sun goes up, down.
Each day new passion rains to impregnate
even the driest season of her disbelief.

She says she can’t write,
but tendrils of lines lock patterns
of memory. Synchronicity knits in her
unnoticed, whispers soon from every page
her eyes swallow. Every word lives now,
lives unborn in her

She says she can’t write,
but poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers, rose of awareness,
thorn of recall, She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

 

[PatCarrington]

Invisible Muse

She says she can’t write,
no construct sprouts from the parched dust
of her imagination. Still Sun goes up, down.
Each day new passion rains to impregnate
even the driest season of her disbelief.

She says she can’t write,
but tendrils of lines lock patterns
of memory. Synchronicity knits in her
unnoticed, whispers soon from every page
her eyes swallow. Every word lives now,
lives unborn in her

She says she can’t write,
but poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers, rose of awareness,
thorn of recall, She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

here you go, angel:


She says she can’t write,
no construct sprouts from the parched dust
of her imagination. Still Sun goes up, down.
Each day new passion rains to impregnate
even the driest season of her disbelief.

i think “parched” is redundant and would remove it. i would consider moving the first word of the second line to the first (with the same idea following in the next 2 stanzas). i don’t know if you need “still”. i think this stanza is excellent. if you aren’t intent on 5 lines in the first stanza, i think dropping the word “down” down to the next line might add effect.

She says she can’t write, no
construct sprouts from the dust
of her imagination. Sun goes up,
down. Each day new passion
rains to impregnate even
the driest season of her disbelief.

She says she can’t write,
but tendrils of lines lock patterns
of memory. Synchronicity knits in her
unnoticed, whispers soon from every page
her eyes swallow. Every word lives now,
lives unborn in her

this looks like the weakest stanza of the three to me.

I know I would make the first line:

She says she can’t write, but

the following i think should be reworked. there are so many options, i leave the choice to you, if you agree:

tendrils of lines lock patterns
of memory. Synchronicity knits in her
unnoticed,

the following I would keep, intact, including the repeat of the word “lives”. you need a period, of course.

whispers soon from every page
her eyes swallow. Every word lives now,
lives unborn in her.

line-breaking would depend on what you do with rewriting, if any.



She says she can’t write,
but poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers, rose of awareness,
thorn of recall, She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

i like this stanza very much. i would move ‘but’ up, and change it to ‘yet’, so you have 3 differing words ending the first stanza lines. it feels better aesthetically.

i would shoot for 6 lines per stanza for balance, and because the theme suggests someone who can’t write, but can. balanced stanzas make sense to me here.

She says she can’t write, yet
poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers,
rose of awareness, thorn of recall.
She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

 

[Angeline]

here you go, angel:


She says she can’t write,
no construct sprouts from the parched dust
of her imagination. Still Sun goes up, down.
Each day new passion rains to impregnate
even the driest season of her disbelief.

i think “parched” is redundant and would remove it. i would consider moving the first word of the second line to the first (with the same idea following in the next 2 stanzas). i don’t know if you need “still”. i think this stanza is excellent. if you aren’t intent on 5 lines in the first stanza, i think dropping the word “down” down to the next line might add effect.

She says she can’t write, no
construct sprouts from the dust
of her imagination. Sun goes up,
down. Each day new passion
rains to impregnate even
the driest season of her disbelief.

She says she can’t write,
but tendrils of lines lock patterns
of memory. Synchronicity knits in her
unnoticed, whispers soon from every page
her eyes swallow. Every word lives now,
lives unborn in her

this looks like the weakest stanza of the three to me.

I know I would make the first line:

She says she can’t write, but

the following i think should be reworked. there are so many options, i leave the choice to you, if you agree:

tendrils of lines lock patterns
of memory. Synchronicity knits in her
unnoticed,

the following I would keep, intact, including the repeat of the word “lives”. you need a period, of course.

whispers soon from every page
her eyes swallow. Every word lives now,
lives unborn in her.

line-breaking would depend on what you do with rewriting, if any.



She says she can’t write,
but poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers, rose of awareness,
thorn of recall, She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

i like this stanza very much. i would move ‘but’ up, and change it to ‘yet’, so you have 3 differing words ending the first stanza lines. it feels better aesthetically.

i would shoot for 6 lines per stanza for balance, and because the theme suggests someone who can’t write, but can. balanced stanzas make sense to me here.

She says she can’t write, yet
poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers,
rose of awareness, thorn of recall.
She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

After I edited it, I thought maybe--just maybe--the last stanza is the whole poem. I like the part about synchronicty, though, you know when two ideas from totally different things you've read or remember come together to give you a new understanding of something. Maybe I need to write more to communicate that, but I don't think I want to. I'm not sure.

Did I ever tell you that I'm a total Gemini? Like everything in my chart is in Gemini. I don't know if you believe, but it certainly explains the indecision, lol.

Do you think it's better if this is the poem?

She says she can’t write,
yet poems bloom in her muted longing.
She names them like flowers,
rose of awareness, thorn of recall.
She names them like children,
my sorrow, my dream.

Thank you Patrick.



I will now commence to work on your poem

 

[PatCarrington]

Thank you Patrick.

you're welcome, ange.

i hope i helped, and hope the answer i sent was clear.

 

[PatCarrington]

.....

 

[Tathagata]

Some mornings I awake with my hair on fire,
and the words
swelling,
bunched ,
a fist in my heart,
and I ,
like a mad hatter
try and find the time
to get them
all
down
or at least
exhume some skeletal representation
for viewing and consecration later.

Once the rite is preformed I can go on,
a diminished man
in pursuit of diminished things,
each unnecessary day.

feeding the monkey,
feeding the monkey.

a Zen zookeeper who
rubs away worrystones
convinced it's his ego.

Other days I get up
to an empty mirror,
and feel nothing at all.

and I haven't decided which is worse.

 

[twelveoone]

Some mornings I awake with my hair on fire,
and the words
swelling,
bunched ,
a fist in my heart,
and I ,
like a mad hatter
try and find the time
to get them
all
down
or at least
exhume some skeletal representation
for viewing and consecration later.

Once the rite is preformed I can go on,
a diminished man
in pursuit of diminished things,
each unnecessary day.

feeding the monkey,
feeding the monkey.

a Zen zookeeper who
rubs away worrystones
convinced it's his ego.

Other days I get up
to an empty mirror,
and feel nothing at all.

and I haven't decided which is worse.

exhume some skeletal representation
for viewing and consecration later. (Good No Bones)

Once the rite is preformed I can go on,
a diminished man
in pursuit of diminished things, (not sure you want to use two diminshed)

what minkey?
what minkey? is the question I would ask, if this where to go outside of here
True you have a Zookeeper, but the animal needs more development, as does the rite, what rite?

convinced it's his ego. has a very akward sound, feel.

These three lines very adroitly miss being nothing lines by the addition of "empty"
and the context
"Other days I get up
to an empty mirror,
and feel nothing at all."

the first line - good opener - but doesn't seem quite right

Hope you don't mind the comments

 

[Angeline]

Ten Ways of Falling

I
In that multitude
of Babel, a voice

II
I heard. I am afraid
to reveal myself,
but I listen
and my mouth
betrays me.

III
Words are leaves fallen
from intention. Your words
sway me, as if slender trees
graced with strength bent into

IV
you gathering us.
One known emerges


V
from clouded years
of logic shaded
with sentiment, so I weight
the scales of experience
and expectation.

VI
Winter fogs one window.
Impermanence is porous
with frost and cracks
the moon, but night gleams
in the north's lavender twilight,
and the south's slight west,
more gray.


VII
How many search
whole worlds of poems
without breathing?
My own jagged words
bleed, my nothing
covers pages with emptiness,
and we know everything we mean.


VIII
We unfold from the first
drop of recognition falling
like pebbles rearrange
space. We simply breathe
past the stones we carry.

IX
I hear rivers of song in you.

X
It's 4 a.m.
Your embrace feels
everywhere like moonlight
illuminates snow.

 

[Tathagata]

exhume some skeletal representation
for viewing and consecration later. (Good No Bones)

Once the rite is preformed I can go on,
a diminished man
in pursuit of diminished things, (not sure you want to use two diminished)

So far the two diminished sound the best to my ear, I had meaningless. useless etc. i also had two different words and it felt awkward


what minkey?
what minkey? is the question I would ask, if this where to go outside of here
True you have a Zookeeper, but the animal needs more development, as does the rite, what rite?
I have no idea what you mean by " what minkey", the " animal is the poem. and the need to write the poem. the rite is writing it and getting the words out if you will, a self exorcisma




convinced it's his ego. has a very awkward sound, feel.


it's a great analogy if you knew me lol
but again this whole thing isn't quite done. tell me why you think it's awkward?


These three lines very adroitly miss being nothing lines by the addition of "empty"
and the context
"Other days I get up
to an empty mirror,
and feel nothing at all."

the first line - good opener - but doesn't seem quite right


The " empty mirror" is like " cheery blossoms" in haiku. It is a zen phrase used in stories and koans alike. ex: " If no one exists who is reflected in the mirror?" / " zen is to wipe the mirror clean of dust to see the true nature and the reply was " If there is no mirror where is the dust to settle?" It's not an integral part of the poem. just a nudge to those who don't know and a nod to those who do.

Hope you don't mind the comments

I never mind serious questions. Thank you for the interest

 

[tolyk]

Ello

I started a new love poem today, and I was hoping for some suggestions on how to make it concise and still impart the same message.

I will post it in the varoius stages of completion that I worked through it today, to show how it grew (in case it helps show my frame of mind or something, I dunno.. heh)

First thought and intended last line of poem:
Because loving you, is like breathing.

Trying to show that it was a base responce, as natural as breathing:
Even without thinking,
My love for you comes to me.
Because loving you, is like breathing.

Expanded a bit:
Even without thinking,
My love for you comes to me.
Part of me,
part of the entirity of my being
unable
to live without it
Because loving you, is like breathing.


Final version so far, changed the first lines due to realizing they very incredibly similiar to an older poem of mine, whoops:
It comes without thought
or reflection, pure
instinct,
part of who I am,
of the entirity of my being
unable
to live without.

Sustained by you
drawing
you into myself
fueling my
desires

Baby, I need you,
because loving you, is like
breathing.

 

[twelveoone]

I never mind serious questions. Thank you for the interest

These three lines very adroitly miss being nothing lines by the addition of "empty"
and the context
"Other days I get up
to an empty mirror,
and feel nothing at all."
Tath, I am familiar with the concept, this is excellently done. One of the "tricks" of accepability is to take something that is so familiar, easily recognizable, and either turn it on its head, or add something new to it. The inversion or subversion of cliches. Another is to take something foreign and put it into English, or for that matter take something in an English and put it into another English, this always adds something fresh to it. i.e. how many "Romeo and Juliets" have come out, or the use of language in Marianne Moore's "Poetry" (the long version)

minkey=monkey, it jumps out, if one is to assume that this is the standard monkey, then it is a cliche.

If you wish, I will try to get back to the rest. It shows promise.

 

[PatCarrington]

1st revision

.....

 

[flyguy69]

I started a new love poem today, and I was hoping for some suggestions on how to make it concise and still impart the same message.
.....
It comes without thought
or reflection, pure <--Very nice
instinct, part of who I am,
of the entirity of my being <--You have already made this point
unable
to live without. <--This point could be made more colorfully

Sustained by you
drawing
you into myself
fueling my <--You lose you focus a bit, here; you started with a theme of needing her to live, but now introduce your desires
desires

Baby, I need you,
because loving you, is like
breathing. <--Very nice sentiment. You could clean up the logic a tiny bit because "her" and "loving her" are not exactly the same thing.

The middle stanza contributes the least to the poem, and consider your line-breaking a bit more; make the natural pause at the end of a line mean something.

I think you have a fine start to a poem, here, Tolyk.

 

[Angeline]

Another Kitchen God’s Wife

Let dead icons rest.
Let them sleep.

Stop parading these women
through journals and dissertations.
Stop dragging their intimate kitchen moments
through poetic seminars of apologia.
Their bones are swabbed clean
and they are analyzed to transparency,
the point of their return vanished
in the smoky modern landscape
of gender studies.

See Sylvia inherit the literary mantle
of cryogenics. See her forever frozen
in the kitchen, a bell jar, a funeral urn,
then fully trivialized, thoroughly modernized,
you too, gentle reader, can own her.

The Women Writers' Snow Globe series
is this year focused on tragedians,
interpreted by academic minds
in ivy-league boots of the highest degree.

Sylvia is suitable for display at home,
forever set on your mantelpiece,
a post-feminist pedestal,
your monumental maid
of constant sorrow
enclosed in a predawn tableau,
bereft of sound, but sunk
in a cacophony of anguish.

Shake it at 4 am and the pen moves.
Shake it at 6 am and babies cry.

Why must Sylvia end herself endlessly
to justify our modern means?
Woman is not Ho Madonna,
bitch slut dyke or courtesan,
nor even Magdalene.

She won't be owned, bought
with sparkle or cheap flash,
or even forced soulless into a bed,
made the centerfold of a magazine
or the centerpiece of your fantasy,
shot with botox, swaddled in spandex,
painted and crowned Queen of pawns
in a man-spirited chess game
or sucked up and glibly swallowed,
only to tumble in open-thighed alarums
like a cheap prize from a slot machine,
spattered with sicked-up revenge
against someone, someone,
not her. Not me.

We didn't rip up the flowers
that destroyed your beautiful garden.
We didn’t turn you to stone
with one look or sway you
with sea cries and wiles,
only to crash you under the waves,
We didn't deny you by turning
to salt, desiccated by desire

Sylvia is so tired.
Let me take her home now.
She wants to sleep.

 

[Tathagata]

Some mornings I come awake with my hair on fire,
and the words corpulent,
bunched ,
a fist in my heart,
and I ,like a mad hatter,
try and find the time
to cast them
all
out,
or at least
exhume some skeletal representation
for viewing and consecration later.

Once the rite is preformed I can go on,
a diminished man
in pursuit of diminished things,
a redundant meditation
on life.

feeding the monkey,
feeding the monkey.

A Zen zookeeper who
rubs away worry stones
convinced it's his ego.

Other days I get up
to an empty mirror,
and feel nothing at all.

..and I haven't decided which is worse.
__________________

 

[Tathagata]

Kelli O' Leary
stood in front of the Erie pub
by the weathered sign post
that point lost souls back across
the Atlantic
to Dublin, and Mayo, and Athenry.

Next to the Cape Cod miniature golf course
and across the street from the Christmas Tree Shop.

Kelli O'Leary
used to dot her I's with little hearts
and smilie faces
Now she just says
" With an I"
the symbols of her childhood
abandoned for precision.

Sheathed like a stiletto,
form fitted black
sleek, shimmer of 5th avenue silk,
nyloned legs and heels,
open toed and spiked.
Crucifying heels.
Her hair an explosion
of carefully controlled abandon
and her make up
a still life
of bored sexuality.

She was used to the door being held but
thanked me anyway
and again when I lit her
petite fashion cigarette

Kelli O'Leary
( with an "i")
was down here for the weekend
with a husband I never saw,
and a daughter,
whom she danced with in murderous heels
and short black skirt
in front of a hall full of people.

We all watched
no choice

We saw the perfect thigh tops flex,
smooth jungle muscle,
swinging her child
and we felt those thighs flexing
against our ribs.

All the boyos exchanged glances over their pints,
and the ones with girlfriends or wives
made sure they studied the paintings on the wall
or the menu
the whole time she danced.

Kelli O' Leary
told me to enjoy my evening
as she strode back inside
to resume her get away,
the phrase flew of her lips with the practice
of a hawk launched from
a masters arm.
It had no more emotion
than the cigarette she annihilated
under the toe
of her genocidal shoe.

 

[annaswirls]

two

These claims of disconnect remind me
of horizontal connections that reach across
rather than over and under.

Here in the middle,
we lie knowing
the meringue slides off
with the slightest tilt.

The very thought that there could be
anything more brings us adhesion
to each other, to the illusion
that anything other than this could be real!

Baby it is just egg white and sugar
the tap makes us wiggle
inside our shell
look!

The topping does not even know
it has slipped to the floorm,
does not know enough to miss it’s middle!
Simplicity is our comfort and torture
how could it be so simple?

You twist a balloon into the omega
and I swear you are a genius
don’t argue.



~

We sleep with one eye open
to catch what slips into loss
every day.

Today I grab it by the heel
and slide it under the microscope.
A conclusion is drawn:

it is nothing, once again
I have lost nothing
except another chance to feel
this heaviness of nothingness that comes
only when it is gone.



*two email poems without much edit yet...
put them here to remind myself to consider working on themsome more. not sure if they are worth it or chalk it up to experience.

 

[Syndra Lynn]

We sleep with one eye open
to catch what slips into loss
every day.

Today I grab it by the heel
and slide it under the microscope.
A conclusion is drawn:

it is nothing, once again
I have lost nothing
except another chance to feel
this heaviness of nothingness that comes
only when it is gone.

this I like!

 

[Angeline]

I love
your big Mick Jagger lip,
your saddest eye,
I even loved you
when you got that sty,
and never count the days
that piled up till now.
I welcome every moment
yet to mow us down
in glorious discordant harmony.

I even love you when you lie to me.

I've loved you, love you always
even as I can't explain
how blind affection swallows pain
and us still strutting naked emperors
with loopy foibles on parade,
cascading with the march of tears
that hail a rain of circumstance
for this is love, a passion
that surpasses frail romance.

Two have come to grow
like wildflowers, twisted
but insisting through
a sidewalk crack,
our weedy strength
existing hard by rusted ties
along the railroad track.

I simply love you
for I hear your song ring true
even when music fails
and hold you tight through every
jangled night even
when reason pales.

 

[Tathagata]

I love
your big Mick Jagger lip,
your saddest eye,
I even loved you
when you got that sty,
and never count the days
that piled up till now.
I welcome every moment
yet to mow us down
in glorious discordant harmony.

I even love you when you lie to me.

I've loved you, love you always
even as I can't explain
how blind affection swallows pain
and us still strutting naked emperors
with loopy foibles on parade,
cascading with the march of tears
that hail a rain of circumstance
for this is love, a passion
that surpasses frail romance.

Two have come to grow
like wildflowers, twisted
but insisting through
a sidewalk crack,
our weedy strength
existing hard by rusted ties
along the railroad track.

I simply love you
for I hear your song ring true
even when music fails
and hold you tight through every
jangled night even
when reason pales.

You are such a girly girl sometimes


seriously
This is stunning
The first thing I thought of...was that it would be wonderful read at a wedding.
You sure write some pretty words Joisey
thank you

 

[Angeline]

You are such a girly girl sometimes


seriously
This is stunning
The first thing I thought of...was that it would be wonderful read at a wedding.
You sure write some pretty words Joisey
thank you

Thank you, and yes I am a girl. No subterfuge on that one.

It's an anniversary poem.

 

[Tathagata]

Thank you, and yes I am a girl. No subterfuge on that one.

It's an anniversary poem.

well I wanted to add you couldn't read the mick jagger part at a wedding but you know what I meant