[k1ePRlda]

Listen to the Warm
By Rod McKuen

I live alone.
It hasn't always been that way.
It's nice sometimes
to open up the heart a little
and let some hurt come in.
It proves you're still alive.

I'm not sure what it means.
Why we cannot shake the old loves from out minds.
It must be that we build on memory
and make them more that what they were.
And is the manufacture
just a safe device for closing up the wall?

I do remember.
The only fuzzy circumstance
is something where-and how.
Why, I know.
It happens just because we need
to want and to be wanted too,
when love is here or gone
to lie down in the darkness
and listen to the warm.

[StethyEntinic]

Whoa. I could totally use that poem in my novel. That's eerily fitting.

[Alkanyadela]

Here I sit on a cloud of vapor
Someone stole the toilet paper
Should I wait?
Should I linger?
Nevermind, I'll use my finger

[kKFB1BxX]

[Crilosajsamq]

[Mypepraipse]

Because poetry is supposed to be performed, not existing as mere words on a page... (and also because I'm not typing up these poems from memory cause it'll take too long )

Love:

[Leaters]

Does everyone in Philly talk like a black person?

[kmjbbT3U]

Well we know what this one is about... much shorter than the others:


I'd really like to perform this one on stage

Actually listening to it, I really like it. Definitely a good one to perform

[Ltftujkg]

Isn't that a song by that girl? The rock chick?

[extessarere]

Pop/Rock
I have The Best Damn Thing (2007), which has that track.

[Klavalala]

record it like I did

I honestly don't even believe poetry should exist as words on a page. It's better expressed verbally.

[sjdflghd]

Ok ok fine. I'd still like a solution to preserving formatting though

[apatteopipt]

bump

[Unergerah]

A very literal translation of The Golem by Borges (with some mistakes)

If (as one Greek states in the Cratyle)
the name is archetype for the thing,
in the letters for rose is the rose
and all of the Nile in the word Nile.

So, made of consonants and vowels,
there'd be a terrible Name, the essence
of God its cipher, that Omnipotence
guards in letters and syllables full.

Adam and the stars knew it
in the Garden. Sin's stain
(so the kabbalists say) erased it
and the many generations lost it.

The cunning and candor of man
have no end. We know that in their day
God's own people searched for the Name
in the small hours of the Jewry.

Unlike that of some other vague
shadow betrayed in vague history,
there is still fresh and living memory
of Judah Loew, a rabbi in Prague.

Thirsty to see what God would see,
Judah Loew gave in to permutations
with letters in such complex variations
that he at last uttered the Name that is Key.

Portal, Echo, Host and Palace,
upon a doll with clumsy hands
he engraved, and taught it the strands
of Word, of Time and Space.

Through dreamy lids was this likeness
confounded by forms and colors,
utterly mixed in subtle rumors
and made its first timid movements.

By small degrees, like us it was
imprisoned in this resounding net
of Before, After, Yesterday, While, Now,
Left, Right, I, You, Them, Others.

(The kabbalist that gave it home
this vast creature nicknamed Golem;
these truths are told by Scholem
in a learned passage of his tome.)

The rabbi taught to it the universe
"My foot, and yours; here is a clog."
After some years this thing perverse
could sweep, well or not, the Synagogue.

It could have been a miswriting,
or an error uttering the Holy Name;
despite so high a spell, it did not
learn to speak, this apprentice of man.

Its eyes, less a man's than a dog's
and so much less of dog than of thing,
tracked the rabbi through the trembling
shadows of their closed quarters.

Something odd and crude was in the Golem,
since out of its way the rabbi's cat
scurried. (This cat is not in Scholem
but, across time, I can glimpse that.)

Raising its pious hands to God
it mimed his God's devotions
or, dull and smiling, it sank
in hollow oriental genuflections.

The rabbi looked upon it with pride
and with some horror. How (he mused)
could I give birth to a pitiful son
and lose the sanity of inaction?

Why did I add yet another symbol
to the infinite Series? Why bring
to the vain skein spun by eternity
another cause, another effect and pain?

In that hour of dread and blurred light,
his eyes lingered on his Golem.
Who will tell us, what did God feel,
looking upon His rabbi in Prague?


from this blog

http://alaska-kamtchatka.blogspot.co...ges-golem.html

[attractiveweb]

O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman


Code:

Code

O CAPTAIN! my Captain, our fearful trip is done,                The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won,                The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,                While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;                        But O heart! heart! heart!                          O the bleeding drops of red,                            Where on the deck my Captain lies,                              Fallen cold and dead.                 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;                Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills,                For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding,                For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;                        Here Captain! dear father!                          The arm beneath your head!                            It is some dream that on the deck,                              You've fallen cold and dead.                 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,                My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,                The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,                From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;                        Exult O shores and ring O bells!                          But I with mournful tread,                            Walk the deck my Captain lies,                              Fallen Cold and Dead.

[Inenuedbabnor]

Connor, you ever perform your poetry on stage or to others (or have them read it)?

You ever get a bit disappointed by the lack of response when it's not performed on stage? Like just an obligatory "It was good." and nothing else? Like if it sucked, tell me what sucked so I can improve. I never know what to think about where I stand as a result. I think in technical sophistication with my rhyme schemes I'm really good but maybe I'm missing something beyond that and more important than just 'talking an idea constrained by polysyllabic rhymes'

Where do you go for critiques/improvements? I even took a poetry writing class in college where the whole class would evaluate your poems but never got anything meaningful out of it. Just "It was good" which always struck me as an obligatory response.

[DoctorBretonDen]

Charge of the Light Bridage and O Captain, My Captain are so cliche What's next? "In Flanders' Fields" and "If"?

[jeepgrandch]

I know it's cliché. But I've liked it since the first time I read it in 9th grade (when I still barely surfed the 'net), more than 10 years ago.

[Loopyjr]

Stop.

[trilochana.nejman]

Stop.

Maybe that's why everyone just looks at me and gives me that obligatory-sounding 'It was good'. They're not trying to hurt my feelings when I suck. Wasted my time, I guess. It just feels good when I finish a verse and the rhymes are all in there. Like when I said, rhymes/assonance/consonance bolded:

"I got these dreams where I'm a knight and you're my make-believe maiden (A), faithfully waiting (A) for her good prince (B), but I'm cool with (B), patiently waiting (A), though I do think (B) we're basically wasting (A) a good thing (B) that I hate to leave waiting (A)."

It just sounds awesome to me. I can't explain it but it sounds so good when I finish with the rhymes just having this musical feel to it like a melody when I say it to myself. Maybe I'm just hyping up my own stuff and it's like a Dunning-Kruger Effect and I really am terrible. Thanks for being honest though, something which few ever are. There's been a few others who have said I sucked so I guess they're the only honest ones.

I was getting back into it but it's a waste except for my own personal amusement, I guess.