Members Poetry and Writing

This one, I get (empathize with).

 

Your friends said that you, a roadbuilder,
had such love for our country, you rushed
down the trail that night, waving your torch
to save the convoy, calling the bombs down on yourself.

We passed by the spot where you died,
tried to picture the young girl you once had been.
We pitched stones up on the barren grave,
adding our love to a rising pile of stone.

I gaze into the center of the crater
where you died and saw the sky in the pool
of rain water. Our country is so kind:
water from the sky washes the pain away.

Now you rest deep in the ground,
quiet as the sky that rests in the crater.
At night your soul pours down,
bright as the stars.

I wonder, could it be your soft skin
changed into columns of white clouds?
Could it be that when we passed that day,
it was not the sun but your heart breaking through?

This jungle trail now bears your name;
the skies reach down to your death and touch it;
and we, who never saw your face,
each wear a trace of you, bright on our cheek.

 

It is very powerful.

Edgar Allan Poe is my favorite.

 

My daughter loves Poe too.

I like poems that require a little less thought than Poe's do normally. But I really did like that poem and especially that line.

Thanks for posting it.

 

B. I wrote this powem about 30 years ago, when a girlfriend of mine (my first love) left me for college. I never did finish the poem even to my own satisfaction,.... but I've not seen many with the same cadence.

You seem to have some technical understanding about these things and I wondered if you can shed any light or just give your opinion.

(untitled)

"I can't explain the way I felt that evening
When I walked her to her car parked next to mine.
The cold that night was not why I was shaking
when she wouldn't kiss nor hug me one more time."

-- Chuz @1980

Any thoughts?

 

I saw this thread and I wanted to write a poem for you guys. Enjoy:

The Darkness Bellows

By: Up On the Governor

In my estate, I brood and stir
About an evil that has me entombed
Through a dim-lighted window I do see
What malice has come for me

The ghastly form steps on my porch
My heart is beating faster than time
A knock, a thud, a pound, a bang
Avoiding the gleeful doorbell, it could have rang

What does it want, who does it seek
Whatever it desires, I must be there
Slinking down the staircase with much despair
Do I avoid or engage this phantom affair

In front of the door, I see the light
I twist the handle, I accept my fate
In my mind, it is the beginning of the end
"Renew your subscription to Vibe, my friend..."

 

Very good short story!

What's vibe?

(I'm too lazy to look it up)

 

Some weird pop culture magazine. The poem is supposed to be funny.

 

It was funny,...

I didn't mean to take away fom that part.

 

Red Poppy

by Tess Gallagher



That linkage of warnings sent a tremor through June
as if to prepare October in the hardest apples.
One week in late July we held hands
through the bars of his hospital bed. Our sleep
made a canopy over us and it seemed I heard
its durable roaring in the companion sleep
of what must have been our Bedouin god, and now
when the poppy lets go I know it is to lay bare
his thickly seeded black coach
at the pinnacle of dying.

My shaggy ponies heard the shallow snapping of silk
but grazed on down the hillside, their prayer flags
tearing at the void-what we
stared into, its cool flux
of blue and white. How just shaking at flies
they sprinkled the air with the soft unconscious praise
of bells braided into their manes. My life

simplified to "for him" and his thinned like an injection
wearing off so the real gave way to
the more-than-real, each moment's carmine
abundance, furl of reddest petals
lifted from the stalk and no hint of the black
hussar's hat at the center. By then his breathing stopped
so gradually I had to brush lips to know
an ending. Tasting then that plush of scarlet
which is the last of warmth, kissless kiss
he would have given. Mine to extend a lover's right past its radius,
to give and also most needfully, my gallant hussar,
to bend and take.

 

Poe has always been my favorite, too. he was a master of rhythm and rhyme."The Raven" is my favorite poem. It's too long to post so I'll just paste the first three stanzas and a link:

"The Bells" and "Annabel Lee" are wonderful for their rhyme and rhythm, too so I'll just give a taste of each:

Oh heck, Annabel Lee isn't that long,so here it is. The ending is so typically Poe:

 

Feel thats right. If you feel the connection to the event then find a way to approach it give it an idea to guide it, Rhymes? I dont know honestly.

 

I'm not sure I follow.

 

What is the basis for your writing it? Why ? Pain your feelings? You going to go on and describe events for you and her that happened after you parted? What I mean is Define the relationship you want for the text - you and the reader and the subject. What is it about? If it is the break up only write how that made you feel. As far as style I dont know I dont do very much writing So I am not sure how to approach that. Prose, poem or story?

 

I wasn't looking to finish the poem, B.

I was just curious about what you tthought of the cadence and the longer sentences,... the way it flows, etc.

Though I wrote it a long time before the song "Whiskey Lullaby" came out,... every time I hear that song, It strikes me that my poem (to me) has almost the same cadence. (almost)

Check it out.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZbN_nmxAGk"]YouTube - Brad Paisley;Alison Krauss - Whiskey Lullaby[/ame]

(Guitar players,... check out the Baritone guitar riffs)

 

I cant see anything in it like you can its personal for you. .Put that in the music thread. We dont get alot of country and Alison Krauss is amazing.

 

my baby's first snow



a foal tries unsteady legs



fall back into my arms

 

Stuck, moved to longing and
filled with want. Unable to care,
from fanning flames of things
consumed in me. I reach for
never and now. Gaining neither.
Caught in this wanting for more
of the sameness and saneness of self.
Lost from chasing me to you.

Never catching the next feat of my
attentive passions to write in the
diaries of our thoughts. On then I
push you pull I need you want I
rush you run. Then I stop. Walk
to the edge of no, look out and
yell for the insistence of
control I gave up.


Gained from realizing the need
to feed the dream I live in endless
pursuit. To taste, innocence and charm
hiding amongst those secrets guarding
the mystery of hers-each calling me.
And the she’s, who will, and can
always draw me nearer, reaching me
at all times and any place again and again.

Whispers so sweet, the finer they are spoken.
Voices on the wind drifting to my spirit .
Sounds of soft colors directed in me.
Pleasing rays of light the finest hue.
Beautiful flowers the ripest buds.
Heavenly creatures, angels all.
Magnificent thoughts of wonder.
The grandest architecture of structure.
Splendid as many, desirable as only one.
Expressions of appreciation.

Capturing this with thought
and skill the more I chase
the less my words run.
Finally I will use them for me.
To be the comfort of this besotted.
For reading the leaves of desire.
The cost to me most weighty.

Payment tendered with the
vulnerable openness and
wanton dreaminess hope brings.
The currency of which has been
minted by my heart:
Pain , love, want, desire
needing, wonder, passion
Intimacy, longing, lust
and caring. Various denominations
of notes I use to pay for the things
I write that are felt with inner
strife and seen with ethereal reason.

Always as sweet flowers to my mind.
Here I celebrate. Nay? I worship them.
They call to me, rise and fall.
Sprint and stop! Show sorrow,
feel pain and laugh, love with
for and about us.

To give them their just reward
and make an impression here,
Lasting, real and known. Using
words to form pictures of moments
Carved in now, “as well they should be”.

They become part of me forever etched
deep in my heart as fleeting glimpses
of loves lost and reminders of sorrows gained.
Triumphs felt and known. Becoming
entwined with my spirit and living on
carried with me in gratitude.

Blossoms of hearts they honor the soul.
Nurturing me with their beauty.
Ever new and giving they pull me to them.
In my mind we are like dancers, step- touch,
move. Our rhythms quickening when familiar,
they step with me. Partners moving in time
stirring my notions in states of passion and
dreams that inspire me. On it goes leading me.
My fondness for them is as numbered as the stars
and as vast as all that I can know. Leaving me
touched and kindred seeking their sanctity.
Sweet Flowers.

 

A very short story I wrote a bit over two years ago - I wonder if I might share it with you.

Abschied

The sky was leaden, the trees stark and leafless against their battleship grey background, and the wind was picking up in little gusts. He brushed the light dusting of snow from his coat in a futile gesture. The weather mirrored how he felt inside.

She had been there for him all the years of his growth. Hers was one of the first smiles that bathed him warmly in his cot. It was she who would be most often up at the school, waiting in her tiny car, to gather him up and take him away for the weekend. It was she who had revealed the treasures which had lain in hitherto unexplored realms of music and literature. And it was she to whom he had laid bare his unfounded fears, his little secrets and failings, without fear of reproach or condemnation.

When he was old enough to understand, it was she who told him of man's inhumanity to man. Of her flight from her homeland, and from the gas chambers of Dachau. And in so doing, it was she who reluctantly revealed the pain of never knowing what happened to her family - never seeing them again. Of being a stranger in a strange land; being a representative of 'the enemy' in a land at war, and being bombed by her own countrymen. But it was also she who taught him that it is possible to suffer terribly, and yet to retain a faith in the essential decency of human beings, and how not to hate.

It took him some time, over the years, to understand the gift she was trying to give him, tendered as it was in the subtle wrappings of love. It was not a mawkish show of affection - given his own emotionally conservative family background, that would have scared him off. Her displays of affection were reserved and gentle, but none the less spontaneous.

Sometimes that affection took a form which totally puzzled him. Like the time he was kneeling on her kitchen bench, mending the light over the cooker. She was sitting nearby, looking up at him. Suddenly he noticed tears streaming down her face. He jumped down in consternation, asking her if she was in pain. She replied that she was, but it was a beautiful pain. She was looking at him, she said, with the sunlight gold in his hair, and she saw the grandson she never had, and it had all spilled over into tears of love.

That was all over now. The stroke, followed by the stilling of that bountiful heart had happened all too quickly, and there had not been time for him to travel down from the school. By the time he reached the hospital she lay holding a single lily. The nurse was both kind and solicitous.

The service had not been well attended. His family were there, of course, and a very few of her remaining friends (most of her contemporaries had gone to their just reward.) Not much to show for 88 years on this earth, he thought. The burial was mercifully short - it was bitterly cold with ever attendant flakes of snow, and the wind was persistent.

So he trudged up the path from the churchyard and over the fields. He could have got a lift to the bus stop, but he wanted to be alone with her in his mind. As he crested a rise, an insane urge overcame him. He scrabbled for his phone and dialled that familiar number - as he had done so many hundreds of times over the years. He knew it was pointless but he took some solace in the action. It rang twice, and he was about to click off when a familiar voice said "I knew you would come." He stood there frozen with a mixture of shock and delight. "Aunty Lesley?" he whispered. The voice, warm and kind as always, said "You know I will always be with you Mein Liebchen, but now I must go. Wiedersehn Mein schöner Jüngling." There was a half-second's silence followed by the dial tone.

"No!" A voice in his brain screamed, "it's not enough!" Frantically, he dialled the number again. It rang twice again, but this time a voice he never wanted to hear again said "Lesley doesn't live here any more," and the line went dead.

 

I am sorry for the broken heart

 

Thanks Changed.... I needed the hugs (PM)

You can't even begin to know the worst of it.

 

This one:

 

Thanks. Edgar Allen Poe has been the inspiration for my poetry.

 

Thank you- it was good very touching.

 

That was a powerful story, Leo2.

I had some upsetting news and was compelled to write the following. I couldn't rest until I had written it. I posted it on Facebook a few weeks ago.
-----------------------------------

A Letter to Randy, in Memoriam

I remember how we first met. I was working in my parent’s bookstore, the Book Nook, which was located in a little mountain town in Pennsylvania called Tyrone. You collected comic books which we sold at the store. We started talking, and a friendship developed rapidly, literally overnight. I learned that you were a gifted illustrator who created superheroes and developed your own comics on cheap materials like notebook paper and Big Chief writing tablets. You earned pocket money by helping some elderly neighbors with their yard work. You’d spend hours in a day working in their yard and doing other chores and sometimes only get paid a grand total of $5.00. When I pointed out how little recompense that was for all the time and labor sent, you explained that they didn’t have much money and needed the help. You were a wonderful neighbor.

I remember you telling me in the beginning that whenever you became close to someone, you had a pattern of sabotaging the relationship. As an example, you explained that you had been good friends with Dave R. before I moved into town, and then you started a fight to end the friendship. I didn’t pay much attention to this revelation at the time, but I was to remember it later, when you did the same thing to me.

We became very close and sometimes were together for 24 hours a day. Our friends couldn’t understand how a young man and woman could be so close and yet not be boyfriend and girlfriend. I remember when we spent a week together on Long Island where we stayed at my friend Nancy’s place. When we returned to Tyrone we learned that our friends had us married and off on our honeymoon. How we laughed over that!

I remember when we moved into an old home that someone had converted into apartments. When we first moved in, the refrigerator in your apartment was against the door to mine. We remedied that right away and usually kept that door open. We had lots of great parties that would flow back and forth into our respective apartments. What fond memories I have of you and our time together! You were special, and I’ve never felt such a close bond with anyone else. Unfortunately, that living situation soon tapped into your fear of intimacy, no matter how platonic it may have been, and a rift developed that I couldn’t overcome during the remainder of my time spent in Tyrone.

Since the country was in a recession and I couldn’t find a decent job, I joined the military. The first time I went home on leave to visit my parents, I looked you up, and our friendship resumed as if there had been no problem and I had never left. I’ll always be grateful for that. I remember it was frigid cold, and I spent time with you, your sister Becky, and her baby Brandi, who was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. You were very proud of your niece, and though I never met Becky’s second daughter Rachel, I know YOU and know you were just as loving and kind an uncle to her as you were to Brandi. You were a terrific brother and uncle.

I moved to Huntsville, Alabama, got divorced, and learned that you couldn’t find a decent job in the Tyrone area, either. I asked you to move down and stay with me since I knew you’d be able to find a job in Huntsville, but you wouldn’t do it. I always regretted that and wonder how both of our lives would have turned out had you moved to Huntsville.

You eventually moved to Atlanta to obtain employment, and I moved to southern Tennessee. Through the years we kept in touch, and I was excited when you came for a visit one Christmas. I remember picking you up at the bus depot in Huntsville following an ice storm, and that when we returned to my house we only had power for an hour or two. The power was out for five days, and I remember how proud we were for the first two days, cooking meals over my wood-burning fireplace and bragging that we were just like the pioneers, while listening to my adolescent son whine every few minutes, “I’m BORED!” But after two days of burnt food and pioneer living, we decided to go and stay in Huntsville with friends who had power. The power stayed off in my holler until after I dropped you off at the bus station for your return trip to Atlanta. What a memorable visit!

I saw you for the last time when we drove up to Tyrone together several years ago to visit family. I had no idea it would be the last time, and lost contact with you for a few years after that. Then last night I decided to try and see if I could reconnect with you through Facebook. I couldn’t find you, but I found your sister Becky, and I contacted her right away. This morning she let me know that you had died.

Randy, we had a special friendship, the likes of which I have never had with another person. I am so sorry that I wasn’t able to reconnect with you before you died, and I am spending the day grieving. I have a candle burning for you on my hearth, and I’m trying to take some comfort from the knowledge that when it is my turn to travel beyond the veil, you will be one of the loved ones waiting to greet me, and we’ll be able to reconnect in friendship and love as if we had never been apart. Randy, I love you.