Hey guys, I'm sitting in my empty house (which smells of salmon) at 1am on Sunday morning having spent the entire week drunk with nothing better to do than torture you with some more of my poems. Some of you will have sampled my angry bitter poems in January - thought I'd keep you updated on my bitterness levels. I am still bitter, but about a new person!! Now that's progress. Enjoy and skip all the boring ones. :)
PS: If anyone steals any of these for any reason (not that they are worth stealing)I will hunt you down and kill you in your sleep :) x x x
FIRE SIDE
Standing with handfuls of memories in my hands I fling a cascade of mementoes with force into fire. The edges char, burning black, I'm turning time back - Trying to anyway, trying to fade your memory.
I raise a smokescreen, making mist to hide you, Erasing captured moments, singeing worn out sentiments. Tongues of flame lick words off letters from this lost love. Seared flesh on photographed faces I soon forget in the fire. Feelings dim like embers dying in ash filled fireplaces. The warm glow of old emotions slowly cooling. I burn the wounds, break the flow of blood.
Fire to heal, fire to forget, fire of regret. I leave ashes only to fly away in the breeze, Scattering wasted time in the clouds.
I leave nothing tangible, no touchstones To emote feeling in me again, leave nothing. Burnt and broken, I am left with nothing.
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NOT SINCE
She was not happy, not really. Not anymore, not since the day He'd taken his clothes from his drawer And his cup from the kitchen table. Not now that there was one toothbrush, One towel dripping dry in the morning. Now that there was only one book by the bed, Only one coat hanging alone in the hallway. One pair of boots waiting by the dog's lead. Especially not since the smell of him No longer lingered there on his pillow And she forgot the feel of him on her skin. Not since she didn't know how to begin again. Not since she realised one night She would only ever really love him.
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THE IMPORTANT THINGS For R.
I remember the important things like aubergine jalfrezi, or yoghurt and raisins, peanut butter on dry toast, and you never having any orange juice.
Like the grey coat you wore even in summer, or the foolish red beanie hat rolled up, and your shoes that were falling apart, and you always wearing soneone else's clothes.
I remember the 'romantic things', like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the places, like the park, starbucks, and the tree you said was talking to us.
I kept the important things too, like the feather that was both blue and black, or the stick that looked like the sea, and the stones we found amongst the leaves.
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NOTHING IS MINE
Nothing in this room is mine.
It is her brush on your bedside table. It is her old t-shirt strewn on your floor. Her make up, her shoes, her dress, Her papers, her bag, her poetry book.
This room is your secret history Filled with things only you two know. I am lying here and invading it. I do not belong, do not fill the space That she has left in her absence. I am not her. These things are not mine.
Tomorrow she will return here. Tomorrow I will be far away And I will leave nothing that is mine.
In this room she is everywhere. Everything in this room is hers Including you, who will never be mine.
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DON'T TELL ME
Don't tell me that I am beautiful That I am wonderful and amazing That I make you feel like starlight Or freshly cut grass in summer
Don't tell me that I'm special That you've never been the same Since our walks in the rain at midnight
And don't tell me, don't You ever dare try to tell me That you love me. That you love Being with me, love all of me.
Because then I might have to believe you.
I might have to admit that I feel the same.
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There you have it, some non-depressing (mostly), not bitter (relatively) poems to entertain you at 130am on a sunday when you have nothing better to do and cannot sleep. :) x x x
Liz, as bitter as you think your poetry may be, I find it to be both beautiful and painful, as well as extremely evocative. Your feel for imagery is amazing in my view - well done, and keep it coming (the poetry I mean: I hope the bitterness fades for you )
meesa givin you mucha loooove!
sash xxx
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Three things that mark the Good Man: Truth, Honour and Love
Oh God! I mean no offence but can nobody see that these so-called poems really are laughable poor, over-personalised and nauseatingly over-sentimentalised? Publishing parts of your diary as 'poetry' does not make it so. True poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content.
I mean no offence, this is just my opinion, which I must say I've held back for quite some time not to hurt the young lass's feelings. Anyway, if nothing else I hope I will have stimulated some discussion.
Anonymous wrote: True poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content.
move over, the pseud has spoken. get you.
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burn down our home, RAPE OUR DEAD MOUTHS. Just as long as I don't have to hear anymore of your disgusting babble
Anonymous wrote: True poetry is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content.
As you say, "I mean no offence" (how nice of you!), but this point doesn't make any sense. "In addition" and "insteaf of" are contradicting each other. So what exactly do you mean?
There is no fixed definition of what poetry is, as there are no rules to how to write poetry.
I agree having experiences (like everybody does) doesn't make poetry. Using words to communicate those experiences in a poetic form *is* poetry, however good or bad we think it is.
I suppose your poems respond to your own notion of poetry. If so, let us read some of them. I'm sure we'll find poems by many eminent poets which do not exactly resemble yours.
-- Edited by AlbyFC at 00:17, 2005-06-08
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'I've discovered the secret of life. A lot of hard work, a lot of sense of humor, a lot of joy and a whole lot of tra la la.' Kay Thompson
Thankyou for your opinion Rich Bitch - I always value other people's points of view, and just because yours is negative, doesn't mean that I am going to ignore it. I do have rather a lot to say about it though. You have caught me at another of my bored moments, when I have nothing better to do than prove my point. This may take some time.
You say that I write "so-called" poetry. Indeed - I do write my own style of poetry, which is influenced by the poets I have read, loved, digested, absorbed. In the same way that a cook eats food to develop a palate, a poet reads and reads and reads. A good poet is only as good as the people they are reading. I write simple poems, like diary entries. This is a reaction against over worked poems, excessive, florid, verbose poems, poems that don't let you think or read between the lines but fling a torrent of words at you. Simplicity is what I aim for and it is harder to do than it looks. Not that I think my work is great, just something I do to kill time now and then. Don't think that I am assuming worth here.
So, to continue, 'so-called' poetry is a poem that doesn't look like a poem:
It began at dawn with fighter planes: they came in off the sea and didn't rise, they leaped the sandbar one and one and one
LES MURRAY, THE BURNING TRUCK
Doesn't look like poetry does it?
Take this as another example: When i woke up I was in a forest. The Dark seemed natural, the sky through the pine trees thick with many lights. I knew nothing.
Reads like prose, doesn't it? Can you put the line breaks in? Can you scan it for tetrameters, hexameters, iambic pentameters? Can you tell me where the alliteration is, the sprung rhythm, the assonance, onomatopoeia? That's Louise Gluck for you.
One more, for luck:
When in the heat of the first night of summer I observe with a whistle of envy That Jackson has driven out the road for a pint of stout
Not real poetry is it? I suppose you want 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'? 'Now sleeps the crimison petal now the white' ?
I'll leave you to think about your estimation of real poetry and move on to your criticism that my poetry is 'laughably poor', 'overpersonalised', 'nauseatingly oversentamentalised'.
Well, until you read some modern poets, I'll leave you to reconsider laughably poor. I think you need to refresh your spectrum of reference, find out what is happening in contemporary poetry. Don't get me wrong, I'm no slam poet, playing with word sounds, modern dialects, street rhythms, pidgin english and postcolonial themes - I don't come from that and I don't try and imitate that. Write what you know is what I always say (actually I didn't, Keats did).
Poetry IS sentiment, IS personal. It is taking your feelings and putting them on a page because that is all you can do - emotion recollected in tranquility (keats again, the genius).
To seem the stranger seems my lot, my life Among strangers.
Hopkins wrote that, great isn't it? Sounds quite like something sentimental, personal. He gets nauseatingly so at some points, painfully so:
My own heart let me more have pity on; let me live to my sad self hereafter kind, Charitable; not live this tormented mind With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
Great stuff, sentimental? Yes. Personal? Yes.
So, TRUE POETRY IS AN ARTFORM IN WHICH LANGUAGE IS USED FOR ITS AESTHETIC QUALITIES IN ADDITION TO OR INSTEAD OF ITS NOTIONAL AND SEMANTIC CONTENT. Well done on being able to use a dictionary. Actually, you didn't take that quote from the dictionary, it is taken from the encyclopedia. Please, try and be original in your construction of a personal definition next time.
Firstly, what is 'true poetry'? Next, art is subjective, not a dictatorship of the few to the many.
I felt a funeral, in my brain, And mourners to and fro Kept treading - treading - til it seemed That sense was breaking through.
Emily Dickenson, wonderful, amazing, considered not a true poet by the canon until very recently. So, who are you to dictate poetry to the masses?
So, I hope that this reasonably well constructed answer gets you thinking about poetry, what it is and isn't, and introduces you to some interesting people. Let me leave you with this:
WE WERE SO POOR...
We were so poor I had to take the place of the bait in the mousetrap. All alone in the cellar, I could hear them pacing upstairs, tossing and turning in their beds. 'These are dark and evil days,' the mouse told me as he nibbled my ear. Years passed. My mother wore a cat-fur collar which she stroked until it's sparks lit up the cellar.
Actually, I should clarify that the quote was taken from an encyclopedia article (www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Modernism) and can be found on a Bust of Homer in the British Museum.
For contexts sake, I would like to quote the following from the same article:
"In essence, the Modern Movement argued that the new realities of the 20th century were permanent and imminent, and that people should adapt to their world view to accept that what was new was also good and beautiful. "
"Modernism in the cultural historical sense is generally defined as the new artistic and literary styles that emerged in the decades before 1914 as artists rebelled against the late 19th century norms of depiction and literary form, in an attempt to present what they regarded as a more emotionally true picture of how people really feel and think."
Wow, I never knew I was writing under a definiton of poetry almost 100 years old. Context is everything, Rich Bitch - it is all about relevant referencing.
Try these ones out for size:
"My poems do not turn out to be about Hiroshima, but about a child forming itself finger by finger in the dark. They are not about the terrors of mass extinction, but about the belakness of the moon over a yew tree in a neighboouring graveyard...In a sense, these poems are deflections. I do not think they are an escape..." Sylvia Plath
"Poetry is truth seen with passion" Yeats
"Poetry cannot be defined, only experienced" Christopher Logue.
lizbian wrote: "Poetry is truth seen with passion" Yeats
"Poetry cannot be defined, only experienced" Christopher Logue.
I'm very much liking those quotes. If that's the sort of intelligent, informative and constructive reply you give when you're bored, you should get bored more often, Liz!
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