Official Poetry Thread

[serum114]

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus, 1883

[Gaia]

Originally Posted by serum114

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus, 1883

I have always liked this Poem!

[Jonesy]

Poetry is basically a mixture of writing and speaking. You can't do all the same things in writing you can do in speech (and vice versa). If you find the things you can do in both, and stick to those things, you can become a good poet.

I'm not sure why poetry is associated with softness or 'gayness', but poetry can be completely hard and evil. If it's done right, it can actually make the brain stronger and healthier.

[Comicsartist]

The eyes. That's how she gets you.

You can catch her eye and drown,
or fight the tide and be dealt the same hand.
Either way when her gaze breaks away, you're a shell game of a man.

"Find the pea, win a prize!"

The prize is you were lucky enough to stare into Miss Musing Muse's eyes.
When she walks away
your heart can't help but cry
out for her return.
And I do.
But that funny feeling in your chest, man? They say it fades after time,
but Miss Musing Muse puts the experts to shame.
They try in vain to categorize the incredible. Her eyes will capture your soul, but
her smile will wipe your memory away.
Miss Musing Muse will inspire the desire to be better than you are.
You'll forget your past and focus on her future happiness. She deserves laughter
as her laugh floats listlesly on the wind and whispers into your ear like a delicate harp
and wrenches a sigh from your soul
But with her, sighing is more than a possible side-effect, it's a given. And you couldn't be given a more apt reason to sigh than staring into Miss Musing Muse's eyes.
Miss Musing Muse may be miles away but her lips are always close to yours to kiss away the pain. Tender kisses,
passionately applied to scars of the heart to make it all better.
And nothing could be better than holding Miss Musing Muse
tightly in your arms and kissing her slightly blushed cheek.
That'll make a strong man weaker than a thin tree limb after a soaking rain.
With one word she'll kill you softly, and with another you are whole again.

Miss Musing Muse is more than you deserve but exactly what you need.

[Comicsartist]

Originally Posted by Jonesy

Poetry is basically a mixture of writing and speaking. You can't do all the same things in writing you can do in speech (and vice versa). If you find the things you can do in both, and stick to those things, you can become a good poet.

I'm not sure why poetry is associated with softness or 'gayness', but poetry can be completely hard and evil. If it's done right, it can actually make the brain stronger and healthier.

I'll try to come up with an evil one for you, man.

[michelemichele]

Villanelle - Weldon Kees

The crack is moving down the wall.
Defective plaster isn't all the cause.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

It's mildly cheering to recall
That every building has its little flaws.
The crack is moving down the wall.

Here in the kitchen, drinking gin,
We can accept the damndest laws.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

And though there's no one here at all,
One searches every room because
The crack is moving down the wall.

Repairs? But how can one begin?
The lease has warnings buried in each clause.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

These nights one hears a creaking in the hall,
The sort of thing that gives one pause.
The crack is moving down the wall.
We must remain until the roof falls in.

[ianmine]

Originally Posted by Comicsartist

The eyes. That's how she gets you.

Miss Musing Muse is more than you deserve but exactly what you need.

This is lovely! I hope you shared it with Ms.Musing Muse!

[serum114]

the crunch


too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
though of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."

Charles Bukowski

[grumpygirl]

The Apology

Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.

Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.

Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.

There was never mystery,
But 'tis figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,
But birds tell it in the bowers.

One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

[grumpygirl]

Peace Of Mind

Carry me out the ocean, where
my drifting thoughts flow free.
Guide them to a far distant land,
that only the mind can see.
There I shall paint a great portrait,
of what this world should be.
A place without senseless wars,
and human poverty.

Robert M. Hensel