Discipline

[Tzara]

Messages

It isn’t quite like leaving cookies
and milk for Santa. I know
that you are real, just somewhere else

in your own happy life,
with children and dogs and a husband
and, probably, a mortgage

you wish was paid off.
That’s me too. Less the children,
the mortgage, the dogs.

And I don’t have a husband.
But these little poems I leave
are prayers.

They're how I get to stroke your hair
and curl your shoulder
into mine.

So I will leave them, like those mushroom things
that grow over night in your lawn.
Something amazing

that appears overnight,
like my finger, if it was ever,
drawn slow and long over your jaw.

 

[Trixareforkids]

Nice one Tzara. Very nice.
Longing, humor, reality, and a touch of the fantastic.

I like this one a lot.

 

[Tzara]

Nice one Tzara. Very nice.
Longing, humor, reality, and a touch of the fantastic.

I like this one a lot.

Thanks, Trixie.

 

[KatieJones]

There are days when I am fine
with only sharing words
and the ability to look
directly into the same
sun but some days when I feel
the subtle reverberation of your footsteps
against my earth I long for a smile,
a voice and the brush of fingers
when you pass the scones.

 

[KatieJones]

For years you grew amidst a forest
but with the passing
of time you stand alone
with only sky and empty
holes filled by ferns and silence
where your family once stood.

I am not ready to say goodbye.

I resist the realization
that although you thrive,
the peerless solitude has left
you questioning the seasons
and survival is slowly
moving from victory to burden.

I am not ready to say goodbye
because I will miss you
and it means I move one step closer
to being the one
looking down at the ferns.

 

[pensivepoet]

Hit me like a sucker punch, Katie, though it shouldn't have.
Maybe there's enough of us among the ferns to start a meadow.
And i fear the ending~for others
Excellent expression

 

[todski28]

Ahh Katie, so well written, the whole piece ties together in a continuous loop, wonderful expression of the human condition. Not only have you tied in the loss and grief but the same fear of the end that we all face at some stage. Quite remarkable, your sense of assonance, internal rhymeI and small bursts of alliteration are so well placed it uplifts the write in a steady flow. Adding a sombre mood.

Damn good write in my opinion

 

[Tzara]

Urgency

I wrote a poem tonight,
but deleted it
because it was not beautiful enough

to be a proper offering,
which would, of course, be chocolate
and salted caramel

and flowers, perhaps roses,
and even that good champagne,
the one that costs

more than my paycheck.
Can I tell you in any other way
how much I want to sleep with you?

 

[Tzara]

Sestina on Writing

What can I tell you about my writing?
That it's trying to craft a jewel box,
a Faberge egg, something elegant
and beautiful and, probably, useless
for any real-life, practical purpose.
That it's a personal experience

that strives to echo my experience
inside another human being. Writing
has no purpose other than the purpose
of capturing emotions in a box
like a chloroformed butterfly, useless
in their captivity but elegant

to behold. A poem must be elegant
both in phrasing and in experience.
A clumsy poem, a false one, is useless
to both author and reader. Good writing
seduces, sparkles, shines. Gives a good box
to ears and intellect. That's its purpose,

and it is an honorable purpose.
What do I mean, it should be elegant?
That the language used to craft the word-box
function cleanly, so the experience
is lived by the reader, that the writing
be transparent, quiet, even "use-less,"

the words chosen so it would be useless
to try to revise them, that no purpose
defaces the clean wall of the writing
like a billboard ad. That is elegant.
I want my reader to experience
my poems like paintings, perfect frames that box

vivid little bits of life in them, box
things both beautiful and true, not useless
filigree to mar the experience,
words and metaphors whose only purpose
is to crow "This poem is so elegant!
What a privilege to read such writing!"

That's it, in a box. My only purpose
is to build useless, lovely, elegant
poems—that's my experience of writing.




I wrote this this afternoon for a class exercise that I wasn't too thrilled about. As usual, I forgot until about halfway through, that it's quite difficult to write a decent sestina, though it's pretty easy to write a bad one. I think I got the form right, but if someone spots a problem, please tell me. Each line should be ten syllables, though that makes some assumptions about how certain words are sounded.

Not doing this again anytime soon, that's fer sure.

 

[Tzara]

From My Junk E-mail Inbox

Chubby Drunk Springbreak Babes Flashing in Public

and if that isn't poetry,
your ear is so foil, so tin
you could make a hat out of it
to ward off encroaching aliens.

 

[paynomind]

lying awake watching the stars
shifting slowly
from one side of the window
to the other
they fade into tomorrow
so do i

 

[Trixareforkids]

We have advanced to the point
That we're able to eradicate
All threats from outside
Making us the only species
Who's young are prey
Only to our own kind
Where kindness is seen
As a weakness and though
We can conquer all the wilds
Of the world
We cannot conquer our own
Animal instincts

 

[pensivepoet]

We have advanced to the point
That we're able to eradicate
All threats from outside
Making us the only species
Who's young are prey
Only to our own kind
Where kindness is seen
As a weakness and though
We can conquer all the wilds
Of the world
We cannot conquer our own
Animal instincts

Conquer them? We spit and polish them like medals won for~well, for killing other humans.
Nice write, trix

 

[Trixareforkids]

The real world has no safe word
No limits or stops
It keeps coming for us
Laughing at our boundaries
Pushing, pushing, always pushing
And we scream out our pain
In smoke, amber and foam
In interest-free credit for
The rest of our lives
Trying to buy now and pay later
For a space and things we can command
And only ever managing
To build our own tombs

 

[butters]

lying awake watching the stars
shifting slowly
from one side of the window
to the other
they fade into tomorrow
so do i

welcome to the forum
i really enjoy the spare writing of this - it elicits a strange mood

The real world has no safe word
No limits or stops
It keeps coming for us
Laughing at our boundaries
Pushing, pushing, always pushing
And we scream out our pain
In smoke, amber and foam
In interest-free credit for
The rest of our lives
Trying to buy now and pay later
For a space and things we can command
And only ever managing
To build our own tombs

how very true

i love this combination of words - their sound, especially - but also all their attendant imagery/allusions

 

[Magnetron]

I don't even have the discipline to post to the Discipline thread.

 

[paynomind]

blurbs

too many midday meditations while driving
for a sense of peace on a stretch of highway

my entire life is lived in one day
all half forgotten memories converging

the fuzzy static sound of breathing
mixes with the wheezing rumble of my aging car

it's a good thing i don't have to go far
to find what i think i need

 

[Trixareforkids]

Fine Print

I think lawyers are a kinky lot
They have parties every where
They toss back drafts
Write in their briefs
And find inventive ways
To fuck us all
With six point Helvetia

 

[Tzara]

Greens

I won't say I am missing you,
but my poem tonight seems limp
as wilted spinach

and I go to bed hungry
for your conversation,
missing our crisp

exchanges, their light dressing
slightly acidic, yet
sipped so perfectly underneath my tongue.

 

[corndog_]

Damn, there is some good stuff, here! Is it the threat of discipline or the lack thereof?

:caning:

 

[corndog_]

Darwin Attends a Poetry Reading

I’m the last of my race: the mongrel
mix of Navajo and Jew, the Aquarian
collector of beach sand, the night-driving
philosopher, the connoisseur of black coffee
in white Styrofoam cups. I navigate

Burger Kings and ball parks, libraries
and dinner parties always with my nose
to the wind, my shifting eye sifting
the curious stares of the Audubon Society. They pencil

in their field guides the peculiar
droop of one eyelid, the recalcitrant cowlick, the way
a smile migrates across my mouth. In tight
flocks they debate my preservablility: Could he
cure cancer? Lead the resistance? Can he teach us
something of ourselves? Spread it

on the table, let’s see what a taxidermist tastes like.
Poets perch on power lines waiting to be fried.
Which came first, feathers
of flight? A hundred generations from now
only one of us will be read.


....

 

[todski28]

Writing like this corndog makes me realise I'll never be a poet, brilliant poem.

 

[KatieJones]

People try to read the pages
of my life to construct a portrait
of words but they are crafted
plot-a pebble in the pond
to misdirect your eyes
to a watery refraction
of deconstruction. I reside
somewhere between
the starlight, the silence
that follows the coyote’s call
or under an open palm
that releases the smell
of pineapple sage into the night.

From my darkness I watch
you call and I have no desire
to answer because I am not
an echo and you should know
where I am.

 

[Trixareforkids]

That's a keeper Katie. Damn nice writing, the last stanza is killer!

 

[greenmountaineer]

Bhopal

December 1984

The lion will be sacrificed
when it creeps
like fog in the night
through village streets
where infants sleep
naked and brown
as their parents once did

while those in high places
make love,
perhaps with their wives
or someone else,
but absent that
they will with themselves
under their well balanced sheets.
.