A Poet's Lament

[SmilingLez]

First arrangement

---

Your mind
taken.

Not offered.
Not asked.

Taken.

By me.


An instrument.
Pulled tight.

I don’t play.

I strike.


One note
your spine answers.

No reason.
No language.

Just

movement.


Hunger
placed in you.

Carefully.

It breathes
like it belongs.

It doesn’t.

---

I leave the hollow
open.

Raw.

I don’t touch it.

I let it echo.


Then

one word.


You reach.

You always reach.


Desire
constructed.

Layer by layer.


Buried
where you never look.


It starts in your skin.

It always does.

Before thought.
Before defense.


Heat.
Need.

You carry it
like it’s yours.


I name it.


Your body
obeys first.

Your mind
late to the scene.


Shudder.

Quake.

Yield.


Not choice.

Not even impulse.

Response.


Your surrender

already decided.

You just arrived
after.


A period.

End.


Silence

does the rest.


No touch.

Still

you open.


No hands.

Still

you come apart.


Past identity.

Past control.

Past the story
you tell yourself.


You

seen.

Completely.


And still

you stay.



Still

waiting.


For the next word.


Every time.

 

[Stephie02]

First arrangement

---

Your mind
taken.

Not offered.
Not asked.

Taken.

By me.


An instrument.
Pulled tight.

I don’t play.

I strike.


One note
your spine answers.

No reason.
No language.

Just

movement.


Hunger
placed in you.

Carefully.

It breathes
like it belongs.

It doesn’t.

---

I leave the hollow
open.

Raw.

I don’t touch it.

I let it echo.


Then

one word.


You reach.

You always reach.


Desire
constructed.

Layer by layer.


Buried
where you never look.


It starts in your skin.

It always does.

Before thought.
Before defense.


Heat.
Need.

You carry it
like it’s yours.


I name it.


Your body
obeys first.

Your mind
late to the scene.


Shudder.

Quake.

Yield.


Not choice.

Not even impulse.

Response.


Your surrender

already decided.

You just arrived
after.


A period.

End.


Silence

does the rest.


No touch.

Still

you open.


No hands.

Still

you come apart.


Past identity.

Past control.

Past the story
you tell yourself.


You

seen.

Completely.


And still

you stay.



Still

waiting.


For the next word.


Every time.

Can't remember if I'm allowed to comment here, but here it goes.

I will never stop being amazed at how much you can invoke in so few words.

 

[SmilingLez]

Can't remember if I'm allowed to comment here, but here it goes.

I will never stop being amazed at how much you can invoke in so few words.

Any thread I make is always open to everyone especially you @Stephie02

In fact if someone has an idea for a free verse, feel free to share it. Might not be able to do it, but I'll give it one hell of a try

 

[Stephie02]

Any thread I make is always open to everyone especially you @Stephie02

In fact if someone has an idea for a free verse, feel free to share it. Might not be able to do it, but I'll give it one hell of a try

You could turn my emoji reaction into a poem, you know you could

And I'll take a

 

[SmilingLez]

Observing the amount of covert bullying in another forum, I decided to try my hand at writing a Paradelle.

bullies laugh near lockers.
bullies laugh near lockers.
karma waits beside silence.
karma waits beside silence.
karma waits near lockers.
bullies laugh beside silence.

mean girls film meltdowns.
mean girls film meltdowns.
tomorrow screenshots flood IG.
tomorrow screenshots flood IG.
tomorrow mean girls flood IG.
screenshots film meltdowns.

cruel boys shove outsiders.
cruel boys shove outsiders.
next week employers watch footage.
next week employers watch footage.
next week outsiders watch footage.
cruel boys shove employers.

tomorrow bullies laugh near lockers karma.
mean girls film meltdowns screenshots flood IG.
cruel boys shove outsiders next week.
employers watch footage as silence waits.

 

[SmilingLez]

You could turn my emoji reaction into a poem, you know you could

And I'll take a

@Stephie02

My free verse on this thread,
then your emojis arrive -
heart, hug and happy face.
Under the quiet comments
something warm starts to answer.

 

[Stephie02]

Im curious what it's like having a Lit groupie

 

[SmilingLez]

Im curious what it's like having a Lit groupie

It's quite flattering. I've never had a groupie. Always been the odd one out

 

[Stephie02]

It's quite flattering. I've never had a groupie. Always been the odd one out

Kinda feel the same, really.

 

[SmilingLez]

It sort of bittersweet that we have that in common

Kinda feel the same, really.

 

[Stephie02]

It sort of bittersweet that we have that in common

I don't know what I expected when I started my account, but it wasn't this. I guess I thought most people were more vanilla like me. Actually until Lit I thought I might be pretty wild, but nope, I'm dull and glad lol. This place and so many people here are so extreme and have expectations that aren't justified I think. I've gotten pretty good at avoiding them, but it's just, wow.

Long way of saying that it would be nice fitting in here somewhere but at the same time glad I don't; so yeah, bittersweet is a good way of saying that

 

[SmilingLez]

This is my stab at a strict Terzanelle

Midnight Gooning

The screen’s blue glare won’t let me sleep,
a flicker in the dark like static.
I swipe, but nothing’s mine to keep.

The notifications never quit
each ping a ghost I can’t outrun.
The screen’s blue glare won’t let me sleep.

I mute the world, but still it creeps
through cracks in every silent dun.
I swipe, but nothing’s mine to keep.

The algorithm feeds my keeps,
a loop of doom I can’t outrun.
The screen’s blue glare won’t let me sleep.

I close my eyes, but still it seeps
into the dark like cigarette smoke.
I swipe, but nothing’s mine to keep.

My battery’s low, the night’s too deep
I’m stuck in this digital ocean.
The screen’s blue glare won’t let me sleep.

 

[SmilingLez]

Authors Forum - Male Chauvinistic Bullies


They still bark cunt like it’s a command,
their voices cracked from years of screaming into the void.
Watch them clutch their rights like a rusted impotent blade,
while the corpses of every woman they’ve ever failed rot in the walls they built.

Their rulebook’s a suicide note,
scrawled in the blood of every female they’ve ever broken.
They’ll call you darling while tightening the noose.

just another name on their ledger of failures.

 

[SmilingLez]

I've been thinking about my next challenge. I've decided to take one theme - Life - and explore different forms of poetry and storytelling because time is precious and too easily forgotten.

Since most people measure life by years (time), I am taking a different route and I am measuring life by summers. If we are lucky, we get 85 summers.

My haiku

85 Summers.
Each one slips like grains of sand.
Don't waste your time here.


Edit - if you want to contribute, feel free to add your verse to the theme of 85 Summers.

 

[Wat_Tyler]

Thank you. It's a good thought and a good summation of where I am these last warm days/daze. Trying to bring order to chaos.


Summer, don't leave me
with more questions than answers
Cuz I ain't dead yet


Not by a damn sight.

 

[12oclocktales]

85 Summers

summer twenty-one
bare skin on leather backseat
our sweaty bodies
conjoined in fervid embrace
will it last till Labor Day?

 

[Angeline]

An oldie but favorite of mine. I revised it many years later for postcard poems.

https://forum.literotica.com/threads/geographical-environmental-influences.529907/#post-23394733

 

[SmilingLez]

85 Summers Onegin

We count our summers, eighty-five,
and think that we have time to spare;
Each June arrives, each July's drive,
Each August fades - we hardly care.

But seasons slip like grains of sand,
and what we thought was infinite
grows finite in its glimmering gland;
we grasp, we lose, we circumvent

the truth we've always known, yet banned
from our own hearts: that each descent
of autumn leaves marks what we've spent,
those golden hours, now spent and dead.

So hold each summer in your head,
and know that eighty-five are all we're fed.

OR

We count the summers: eighty‑five,
the number most of us will get;
each June returns, each July’s drive,
each August fades; we don’t regret.

The seasons slip like grains of sand,
what seemed eternal shrinks each year;
it thins and trickles through our hand,
while we pretend the end’s not near.

The truth we know but leave unsaid,
as autumn leaves fall one by one;
those hours we prized are spent and done,
the truth remains inside our head.

So hold each summer while you can,
for eighty‑five defines the span.

OR

We count the summers: eighty-five,
And think that time will still remain;
Each June returns, each July's drive,
Each August leaves us once again.

The seasons slip like grains of sand,
They pass beyond the waiting hand;
What once seemed endless fades each year,
And every autumn draws more near.

The truth we know, but leave unsaid,
As leaves descend, their colors dead;
The hours we prized are spent and gone,
And still we count from dusk to dawn.

So hold each summer while you can,
For eighty-five defines the span.

Edit I am thinking the second is the closest to a Pushkin Onegin

 

[SmilingLez]

66 Summers

He was meant to have eighty‑five summers.
Instead, he got sixty‑six.
Sixty‑six summers of July heat, August rain, long evenings stretching toward dark.

He reached his sixty‑sixth summer and never reached the next.
Nineteen summers were still waiting for him - unlived, unseen, their mornings already warming somewhere beyond his reach.

That is the ache of it.
Not that he had only sixty‑six, but that there were still so many left to come.

Sixty‑six summers is a lifetime.
Until you count the nineteen missing.
Then it feels like an unfinished sentence,
a door left open to a room he would never enter.

Still, for sixty‑six summers, he was here.
And for those who loved him, summer will always carry a little of him forward.

RIP my friend.

 

[SmilingLez]

His empty chair waits.
Food grows cold on the table.
He will not return.

 

[SmilingLez]

The inspiration for my next free verse

Destiny sneezed beneath the crimson heavens.

 

[Angeline]

The inspiration for my next free verse

Destiny sneezed beneath the crimson heavens.

That's very interesting Lez. Is the line from a poem or novel? Is it something you thought up? Looking forward to reading what you do with it.

 

[SmilingLez]

That's very interesting Lez. Is the line from a poem or novel? Is it something you thought up? Looking forward to reading what you do with it.

I did this challenge (https://forum.literotica.com/thread...l-of-the-style-none-of-the-substance.1660615/) in the author's forum.

Been going through a lot of stuff and that sentence just popped up in my mind. I'm thinking of a choka or a sijo

Been doing the writing challenges in the author's forum to keep my mind active. Most of the time I take what I've written in the challenge, which is usually micro fiction, and turn it into free verse.

 

[Angeline]

I did this challenge (https://forum.literotica.com/thread...l-of-the-style-none-of-the-substance.1660615/) in the author's forum.

Been going through a lot of stuff and that sentence just popped up in my mind. I'm thinking of a choka or a sijo

Been doing the writing challenges in the author's forum to keep my mind active. Most of the time I take what I've written in the challenge, which is usually micro fiction, and turn it into free verse.

Thanks!

I've been thinking about writing a terzanelle, a traditional form that combines a villanelle with a terza rima. I used to write a lot of them, but haven't in years. I'm finding myself wanting to write only form poetry these days. We'll see if I can get it together lol.

It's interesting to me to hear how people get inspired or what they use to motivate themselves to write. And I'm always impressed by your work ethic.

 

[SmilingLez]

Another direction

Tenebrous light crawled across the floor.
The walls held their breath.
Something cold waited in the corners.
The dark knew my name.