i must make music!
to do this, i need more tools—
[error in line 2]
2 Likes
One night around nine
In my small garden I stood
Thinking of nothing
The sky close with cloud
A lunar quilting
I was happy I was sad
Upon the path you appeared
Motionless and translucent
Every pore bejeweled
Breaching the stillness
You were and were not
Redolent scentless
Oblivious to my gaze
A future a past
4 Likes
I came across a batch of haikus I wrote several years ago during an eventful period in life and I really liked this one:
You have graced my world—
A drop of dew in morning.
I am grass adorned.
3 Likes
Even though it’s been a bit I still reap all the benefits
of obsession, indecision, and predilection for addiction
that forces me to bend my wit and twist a word’s inflection
just to focus introspection on the ins and outs of ripping it
seems that in my silence I’ve been something of a hypocrite
I hear it like a siren coming up with something intricate
had my fill of sentiments from aggression to some insolence
fears of insulin dropping like my innocence
scared to death of death and the pressures of the infinite
I dare to bare expenses as confessions of the indignant
I guess I beg the question 'cause it’s better when it’s intimate
I see my sins forgiven but continue to commit to them
been through several lessons but was less and less convinced of it
in the end consider that we’re better for our differences
there is no more bitterness, cleared my head through distances
now I’m more conditioned to be clever with my sentences
2 Likes
Found this in a stack of old papers the other day. Haven’t seen it in years. In the late 90s I went through a phase of making poems out of snippets of text from magazines.
6 Likes
9 A.M.
Self-righteous political pablum
guilty
probably
2 Likes
here’s a two for one!
one for the capitalists…
warrants are for weaker birds,
old nests of ticker tape.
acting on action filled slogans,
something about denial.
we’re showing out,
we’re without words,
or places to stop and think.
the boots will only march to our coins,
ground in dust.
the ghosts will haunt the smaller towns,
remember everything but disgrace.
burned city scent through piggy snout
the garbage doesn’t pay for itself.
they’ve decided without hearing of,
their bells of opportunity,
and nothing ever came from a mirror.
dogs for war that one bible reads,
the nonsense sounds like swarms of bees
talking to the tenth decimal place.
still,
dinosaur stomping grounds.
while they can tell where you have been,
in sweeping generalizations.
some crony disaster,
melting bootstraps and a grandfathered grandfather’s superiority.
the streets we paved with onion skins,
as warning of the rain.
clear the road a king will gorge,
and later weigh the same.
for now,
the old man counts another row,
a million empty seats…
they earned and that’s what matters most,
for vacancy,
for coal.
…
an ode to the wifey…
oh queen of the creek.
you get your rocks and leaves for free.
stacked stone throne to a holler full of fortune,
ruler on the breeze.
your allegiances lie out where the creatures sleep.
giant’s heart fit in a freckled chest,
war drums of a haunted past in monotone lament.
mother earth’s mother wasn’t rich but she had seeds.
thunderstorm heredity.
red sun speckled morning seen through the blue moon over a branch.
heir to the round rock fence.
her wonderment a magic crown pine bough bent.
in happenstance.
earthiest coat of arms with elven dirty feet.
foliage court cats or dogs, the birds and third sense.
snakes and ticks asunder all her dirt road veins pleased.
low water cricket sunset.
witch hands pick wonders to put spells under her sleeves.
oh queen of the creek.
all the country’s beauty got distilled down to the kingdom that you keep.
3 Likes
I think this is a poem, even if it doesn’t quite look like one. to be honest though I do not know what actually constitutes a poem
1 Like
Greetings folks! I know there is already a massive thread about our favorite reading material(which i’ve found tons of phenomenal recommendations in), but I wanted to dig a bit deeper and see if there are any of you out there who enjoy and appreciate poetry. I’d love for you guys to share some of your favorite works or poets, as i’m always looking to get lost in some new(or old) material.
Here is probably my favorite piece of all time, “So You Want To Be A Writer” by Charles Bukowski.
It really hits home and resonated with me as an artist/producer, ever since I first read it over 10 years ago.
Enjoy.
"If it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was…"
7 Likes
There’s a great thread where people are sharing their own poems
Of other people’s poems, one that has haunted me since I heard it is:
The Last Time I Saw God
was different from the first two times.
I’d fallen asleep and when I woke
it was just the two of us rocking
gently through each rumbling curve.
(It was on a subway car at night.)
I thought you’d be a woman, I said.
You always say that, he said and laughed.
Because I always think it, I said.
Every time I see you is the first time.
He shrugged: That’s just how it works.
That is when I noticed his slight resemblance to my father,
which also always happens.
Aren’t we ever going to stop?
I asked, suddenly aware of the hurtling train.
He just looked at me. That was when I knew.
– Michael Bazzett
6 Likes
Gary Snyder is one of my favorites
1 Like
The Earnest Liberal’s Lament
by Ernest Hemingway
I know monks masturbate at night
That pet cats screw
That some girls bite
And yet
What can I do
To set things right?
1 Like
I love Bukowski too BUT I struggle with the white male privilege implicit in his work - imagine other demographics acting like the asshole that he clearly is. My favourite of his poems are those from when he was dying
My two favourite poets of all (at the moment - everything changes all the time) are
Jenni Fagan https://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/five-poems-jenni-fagan/
and
John Burnside - & in fact one of my favourite poems of his is online too
Other poets whose work I really like:
Kim Addonizio “What Do Women Want?” by Kim Addonizio | Poetry Foundation
Ocean Vuong On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong | Poetry Magazine
Yusef Komunyakaa Jasmine - Jasmine Poem by Yusef Komunyakaa
edit - forgot Allen Fisher Allen Fisher poem, Blackbox Manifold 13
1 Like
love and write poetry, was involved in the alt lit scene before it turned out most of the important dudes were rapists… that whole thing was so troubling to me it turned me off from poetry for a while, i’ve only come back to it again within the past year and ive been revisiting some of my original sources of inspiration: my favorite book (poetry or otherwise) Spring and All by william carlos williams - his most famous poems were excerpted from this book and the fact that its been chopped up and hugely under appreciated is a real tragedy. it was published the year after eliots waste land and reacts to similar things but with the hope of spring. ron silliman taught an experimental poetry seminar i took in college where the textbooks were spring and all and wittgensteins tractatus – it was an interesting combo…
2 Likes
this one hits me every time.
“My, My, My, My, My” by Tara Hardy
Take that thing that happened. To you.
Open it like a concealed rose. Hold it up
to the nose of someone else. Let them
tell you that you still smell sweet. Sosweet. Let that person who loves you pluck
petals out of the gully of your wound. Let
her shave them into points and sail them
back into your heart like paper airplanes. Forthat fist at the center of your pulse is of what
you have always been made, despite
your fingers being tipped in thorn. Use them
now to shred the sheets. Shred the night.No one needs to sleep under that much
cover or on that much polite. Slit the sky.
Let the Gods fall out. The ones who could’ve
let that thing happen in the first place.Catch them in your pockets. Catch them
in your chest. Put the God back
in your chest, God after God after God. Until
you know yourself. Again. Repeat.Take that rose, the one your flesh wounds
around. Open it and open it and open it.
Toss bits of your scar into the air
like goddamned wedding rice. Or bird seed.Let some of them sprout. Into so much green
green new day it makes your shins hurt
with how much you want to run. Forward.
And meet the world without all thosered whorls, those old scars, those stuck stitches
in your side. And we, we will marvel at your
silhouette. My, we’ll say. My, my, my, my, my!
Doesn’t she run like an un-flowering?
3 Likes
This seems like the right place to let people know about a new project.
I’ve written the first draft of an open source poem – “Humans” – it is available here:
I’m going to keep revising and working on it in public. I also am encouraging anyone to fork the repository and create their own versions. Part of the work will be in watching the changes, and viewing the diffs.
This is poetry as software, reflecting on our lives as software.
6 Likes
This is great, i hadn’t seen poetry done like this before,
plus i’ve never forked a repo before 
… so i tried, but i probably did it wrong(?):
Looks like the fork worked just fine! Now you can edit your own version of the text, and all the versions will stay linked together via Github.
ah, cool, thanks! (i think i was stuck on the ‘pull request’ thing, it asked me to ‘merge to master’ and wasn’t sure if that meant the original or my own ‘master’ branch… but i pushed it through and relieved to see it was just my own 
)
here’s mine:
(now i wonder how to change that preview’s description 
so it points to the original by reading, “contribute to emenel/humans…” but i’ll keep looking/learning 
)
1 Like
More Celan, one of my favorite poets of all times.
THE TRUMPET’S PART
deep in the glowing
Empty-text,
at torch’s level,
in the timehole:listen your way in
with the mouth.
4 Likes