poetry thread: stuff you write, stuff you like

[Darmodej]

i havent written myself but i really like my country's poetry
especially nikola vaptsarov
when i first read "a letter" in school i was like
(english translation but its a bit stiff)
to the point i've come to to this point associate a specific unrelated aesthetic to it like in yuasa movies or tekkonkinkreet, o meninho e o mundo (short twitter gallery thread) (nitter mirror). images that make you remember the sea and the machines

~Edit by melon to remove meme gif, please avoid using memes on the forum, thank you!

[Melooon]

I think this is a really lovely pome by quite a famous Irish poet

Everything is Going to be All Right by Derek Mahon
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

[di]

I'm so happy you started this thread! I'm a fan of poetry and enjoy writing it myself.

I agree that the translation of "The Letter" you linked feels stiff, but the imagery and feeling behind it shine through. It is so gorgeous, thank you so much for sharing it. I'd never heard of Vaptsarov

Maybe my pick is a bit corny, cliché, overshared... but this poem makes me smile, and I'm simply in a happy mood right now

The Orange
Wendy Cope

 At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
 The size of it made us all laugh.
 I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
 They got quarters and I had a half.

 And that orange, it made me so happy,
 As ordinary things often do
 Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
 This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

 The rest of the day was quite easy.
 I did all the jobs on my list
 And enjoyed them and had some time over.
 I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Ah! just thought of another one. I'm not sure who else will appreciate this, but this is one of my favorite poems I've ever read It's by e.e. cummings:


(im)c-a-t(mo)
b;i;l:e

FallleA
ps!fl
OattumblI

sh?dr
IftwhirlF
(Ul)(lY)
&&&

away wanders:exact
ly;as if
not
hing had,ever happ
ene

D

What do you think? I could go on and on about why I think this poem is so purr-fect but I'll let it speak for itself instead...

I actually run a creative writing club at my uni, and last semester there was this guy who wrote gorgeous drafts of poems in just 7 minutes, in iambic pentameter and everything. *sighhh* I don't know how he did it. He said he grew up reading from writers like Alexander Pope... specifically, I remember one that was about how staring at a single blade of grass relieved his feelings of nihilism. He shared that after I shared a little attempted sonnet about the bright red color of a cardinal giving me hope in the middle of winter.

One time I had a guy write me a limerick about fruit, after I asked him to.

As for the poems I write, I usually like to keep them short, simple, concise. Unlike my prose.

I find poetry around me all the time. Like the old man I saw with his eyes closed, listening to the crisp leaves rustling by his feet as the wind blew past him. Or hearing the call of a red-winged blackbird and knowing Spring is coming.

So.. yeah, I could go on and on about poetry.

Oh! I'd be remiss not to share one of my very favorite poems I've ever read. I found it somewhere on the internet, I can't remember where I found it but I wrote it down. it's by someone named r soos:

tender

the sea burnishes
stone to glisten in the sun
bright in your closed eyes

so very elegant....

Keep the thread going when you think of a good poem everyone, or when one is stuck in your head, or when you want to share one of your own!

[appleAlc]

While that translation of Vaptsarov's "The Letter" is perhaps a smidge stilted, it still conveys beautiful & evocative imagery and depth of emotion.

Here's one of my favourites amongst the poems I've written ^w^—
"Inheritance"

When I look at old photographs—
My mother in her youth and
Her mother in hers—
I see that the similarities are undeniable,
Carved into the zygomatic arches and
Coiffed in the same rich, brown locks—
The colour of cockroaches and chocolates and
Coffees and onyxes—
And as I brush my hair,
The mirror looks at me.
She's the face of a million ancestresses—
Of a history written in my blood and in my bones,
Within the acids and phospholipids of my cells—
Coalesced into a single instant,
A fleeting continuation.

My face has appeared before, has it not?
The though frightens and enthralls me:
That something so core to one's own being—
To their own selfhood—
Is perhaps never truly their own?
People speak of doppelgängers,
Figures with the copied visage of another,
And I am left to wonder
If I am but the doppelgänger of my ancestors.


It's maybe a tad juvenile, but I still like what I managed to do with it

[Melooon]

I heard this pome today, I'm sure its very famous, but it's just so cheeky, I like it a lot!

Jenny Kiss’d Me by Leigh Hunt:

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,
Say I’m growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss’d me.

[Melooon]

Another famous one I came across recently in a really lovely reading from an album

So We'll Go No More a Roving by Lord Byron

So, we'll go no more a roving
   So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
   And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
   And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
   And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
   And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
   By the light of the moon.

[pistachio]

Maybe this thread is too old to post on, but here's one of my most recent:

really pretty woman

honey i love your gucci rhinestone kittycat sweater your pink gucci gucci fiber you way you exist next to a blonde coffee. what ruleset does your body into? how do you gym? where do you shop? what is your degrees fahrenheit? honey do you want to go to goodwill? do you want to go to dunkin donuts? do you want to reapply the pheromones you forgot today? i forgot how to smell your neck.

come on to the sidewalk more and out of the grass honey and you can accept your goodwill award. you can accept your secondhand award and your ethical coffee award and your woman award and your ruleset award and your piece of notebook paper award. honey when i take your hands i feel them are shivering? because the blood belonging to your knuckles and fingertips went somewhere else?

why is your blood numbers? a shivering husk full of numbers? why are your fingernails turning into the blades of an industrial paper slicer? every morning you cut the rope and dump gucci onto yourself, like slime. you smell like an industry.

[pistachio]

working on another poem:

oatmeal


i am the fetal thing
from a cracked egg, spit
food into my mouth
i wait and writhe
i starve for things i gave you
once, your birth when i spat
promise down your healthy lungs and now
i come for the interest
i want the blood out of your own meat
i’m scared and i want to be full

i beg of you
feed me
feed me
feed me
please i’m hungry
feed me i’m starving feed me
feed me i’m dying
and haven’t i done enough? please
even when this thing
starts to scare you—

feed me what i fucking ask for

here in the gray heat
of my deathside, before you find the sky
let my teeth grind your muscle, your own blood
in the razor of my beak

[manyface]

@pistachio i liked both of the poems you posted!!

my first language is russian, and my favourite russian poem is corona astralis by maximillian voloshin (please read it in the original russian if you are able to, as any translation i've found does not do it any justice at all)

my english is much better than my russian now, and i have a few favourite english poems! i go to a lot of open mic nights and hear a lot of live poetry, so i'd say that the bulk of my favourites are from those places local to me. here are a couple that are more famous, though.

acquainted with the night by robert frost

song of amergin

as for my own poetry, i have a self-published book of it called "the lizard's dance". it is available on amazon!

i and the other people in my system write a lot, and we have a page on our website dedicated to our poetry. it talks about our journey with poetry and the book in more detail, and also has seven poems available to read.

we really love poetry, so we hope more people post in this thread!!     

[94673]

the poem 5, from my website:

I don’t think I can learn to be loved
I think I have grown heavy in my sleep
and nobody can carry me
and I cannot make them want to.
I need to crawl
but I do not remember how to.
It reminds me of a crow
taken out by a shotgun
her beautiful bird-bones fuzzy the way
the world looks without my glasses on
I envy her so much it makes me sick.
I cannot make you love me
if I cannot love myself.
but how do you love something
unrecognisable
puddled-up
red-black-red
bird-ribcage clutching worthlessly
at a heart no longer beating?
I cannot love myself.
I don’t know if I want to.
Maybe,
I think that if it comes from someone else
it will feel somehow different.
Maybe I’ve convinced myself
that the loneliness will pass.
Though I know it will not-
It will only fly lower,
and that is where the shotguns are.
I have grown ugly in my sleep
and no-one will look at me.
Although they might take pictures.
I will take solace in the fact that I amuse.
I need to crawl
and the need specifies
dictates; I must do it in a way most-visible.
how else will I ever be loved,
it asks.
I do not know the answer.

[wygolvillage]

I usually feel a bit self conscious about poetry and usually don't share it publicly. I always want to make it flow right but I always end up focusing too much on structure or too much on the emotions of the piece and lose sight of the other. But today I was cleaning one of my old stained childhood plushies, a unicorn and had a thought about how i was cleaning a "stained symbol of innocence"... And it turns out I had a poem in me after all. I tried to just write how that moment felt in terms of just the imagery and I tried not to sweat it on structure or rhyme scheme because it felt right 


"This washcloth is my currycomb
The movements are all the same
Rubbed in tight forceful circles
Upon your stain’ed fur

Well-loved toy’s dirty white coat
The coarseness of ill-fitting handsoap
You are not a real unicorn
But you are cleaned the same

How guilty I am for forgetting
Your scratched plastic eye
Staring up with a hope
I know but cannot name

Innocence is not a fragile shell
But a stain that faintly remains
Even after I cleaned you
But I love you the same

Just as I did in a day faraway
Bedside companion in goldenhoof’d play
Tattered bow round our necks, in the mirror
Like an unspoken name

If you’re not a real unicorn
Well, neither am I

Neither am I"

[grubbyfox]

While that translation of Vaptsarov's "The Letter" is perhaps a smidge stilted, it still conveys beautiful & evocative imagery and depth of emotion.

Here's one of my favourites amongst the poems I've written ^w^—
"Inheritance"

When I look at old photographs—
My mother in her youth and
Her mother in hers—
I see that the similarities are undeniable,
Carved into the zygomatic arches and
Coiffed in the same rich, brown locks—
The colour of cockroaches and chocolates and
Coffees and onyxes—
And as I brush my hair,
The mirror looks at me.
She's the face of a million ancestresses—
Of a history written in my blood and in my bones,
Within the acids and phospholipids of my cells—
Coalesced into a single instant,
A fleeting continuation.

My face has appeared before, has it not?
The though frightens and enthralls me:
That something so core to one's own being—
To their own selfhood—
Is perhaps never truly their own?
People speak of doppelgängers,
Figures with the copied visage of another,
And I am left to wonder
If I am but the doppelgänger of my ancestors.


It's maybe a tad juvenile, but I still like what I managed to do with it

ooh i like that one! it really comes together at the last paragraph. and it's something ive been thinking about a lot sometimes too. i guess most of us do think about that sometimes. 

One of my fav pieces of poetry, is from Venus and Adonis by Shakespeare (lame and cliche but whatever.)
I dont care about the rest of the piece, but this text here, it's just... so       
It's like, so incredibly erotic without being "erotic" ya know?    I just love the passion in it.

     Fondling,' she saith, 'since I have hemm'd thee here
    Within the circuit of this ivory pale,
    I'll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;
    Feed where thou wilt, on mountain or in dale:
    Graze on my lips; and if those hills be dry,
    Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.

    Within this limit is relief enough,
    Sweet bottom-grass and high delightful plain,
    Round rising hillocks, brakes obscure and rough,
    To shelter thee from tempest and from rain
    Then be my deer, since I am such a park;
    No dog shall rouse thee, though a thousand bark.

[spiralstaircase]

I'm not someone who writes a lot of poems but recently I have made one, I think the state of my social life was quite horrible at the time, so maybe that's why I wrote it. Here it is:

Metamorphosis

Begin.
Wake up
and search for its image.
Make sure nobody
will ever find out.

Pursue.
Follow it around, and
know who it chooses to be with.
Know the routine.
Listen for the sound.

Dissect.
Maintain a constant gaze
analyse behaviours thoroughly.
Listen to what others say about it.
Watch how it behaves.

Characterise.
Find something in common
but remember it is futile.
Rewrite yourself.
Resist yourself.

Repair.
Recognise that you are not desirable.
Starve yourself
in order to be appealing.
Resist all temptations.


I wrote this with two ideas in mind but they're both quite similar so I'd just lump them together. It's about trying to fit in, and also about trying to appeal to a crush who is quite distant to you. Both quite similar I would say. I also tried to express how I try and hide this behaviour from others, not make it too obvious that I'm trying to be someone else ("Make sure nobody/will ever find out"). I was going to name the poem 'Silent Metamorphosis' but that, honestly, is lame and sucks.
I felt ashamed of the way I acted around the people I wanted to be friends with or to be more than that with, so I wrote this in a way that sounded kind of .. scientific I guess? Robotic? Sinister, maybe? I don't know. I made it kind of to make fun of myself in a way. But I don't think it's a very funny poem, haha.. Oh well. I'm quite proud of it anyway.
I hate the whole 'cringe culture' thing but I will admit I do cringe slightly at this poem because it's a bit edgy, but, oh well. It's still a poem either way.