/lit/ - Literature

She came from the meadow,
where the wind is dead
and the light is dim.
No grass grows,
just ashes and dust.
No seed sows,
it's salt and sand.
Young men must search
all rusted roads
and dark waters
to find such a place.
She came with flowers in her hair

>>1894554
>>1894528

I am astounded. Bravo

>>1894558
Thank you, that is very nice.

A summoner of all things
small and divine,
an acrobat of the sky.
I saw her fire sliding
down the wire
and in that moment
I
Felt
Electric.
Burning stars birthed
all gods and men,
giving them no ground
or sea to stand on.
But you were born
from a simple spirit
in the bubbly blue water.

Does anyone else want to contribute poems?

We saw
cupboards of dry rotten wood,
chalk white dusty dresses,
chipped teapots on the table.
The rooms were well lit
and the air was empty.
The ground was bubbling
with rain, remember
how hard it fell?
And what was it that
our mother told us then?
That you never can tell.

>>1894685
no one wants to follow your act

>>1894685
last time I did, I later cought people posting it as their own
Kind of put me off the whole thing

OP, can you make these into PDF's? They're absolutely amazing.

>>1894826
I thought they were just pretty decent personally

Me likey

My newest, which I'm in the process of rewriting. If you can let me know what you think that would be awesome, I'm forever looking for critique.

Peat

Done undone, deeds linger on
like heavy-hanging heads,
they echo down through peatbog holes,
in tightly thick-wound bandage gauze
round bodies, said unsaid.

Memory is echo-bound,
regret is ever-stirring,
a sealed cave of repetition,
preserved undisinterring.

>>1894865
Nice poem, it's really good. I especially like these lines:

>they echo down through peatbog holes,
>in tightly thick-wound bandage gauze

I like the second section much less then the first, though.

>>1894871
Thanks, I agree about the second section. I think I've tried to make the message a bit too obvious. I will try and rectify this in my rewrite. Cheers.

>>1894890
Me again. I just finished this rewrite. I'm off out, but I'll be checking this thread later, so please let me know what you think of my changes. I'm always grateful for other people's opinions!

The blocks clash midair.
Distant, silent,
in outstretched hands.
A short pause

and fractured echos of the sound recur,
from the windows, walls, tarmac, halls,
of the school's demolished grounds.
Silence does not stop the swell:

it lingers on in heavy heads,
bound in thick-wound bandage gauze
and buried deep in peatbog holes,
to stir undisinterred.

>>1894965
I stole imagery from All Souls' Night, by Yeats: "Such thought, that in it bound / I need no other thing / Wound in mind's wandering / As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound."
And The Shout by Simon Armitage:

We went out
into the school yard together, me and the boy
whose name and face

I don’t remember. We were testing the range
of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth,

I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.

He called from over the park—I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,

from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell’s Farm—
I lifted an arm.

He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.

Boy with the name and face I don’t remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.

Ever found a sparrow in yer pocket?
Did you treat him like a little gent?
There are many things twixt stars
but zoos and mars ain't one.
Hop

Have you ever watched a little moon
try to get its light out?
Doted on by good old mum?
A small price to pay
he's young.

Ballerinas drinking
all the bloody whisky
all the Bella Donna in the joint.
I've had my fill, they've had tutus on
we'll go to the pub instead.

George Farquhar said "hardi-har"
as he began to dine
the Dane he dined with made a din
and George said "try the wine."

>>1894995
I wrote this in 1978- it was primarily for my children but my mum liked it too. Tell me what you thought please

She is a maiden
of jet black wisps
of moon boat feelings
In her eyes are alluring stars
that take me to my long-lost voyages
and forlorn hopes
Her countenance is a flickering candle
burning in the darkness
of my reality

She is a maiden
clothed in the splendor
of my forbidden light
She is bathed in beauty
of glory ethereal
She sings in the tongues
of sirens and loreleis
enchanting, enticing
my haunted soul

She is a maiden
dancing in my mansion
of candlelit dinners
of orchestrated pianos
her body swaying
to the rhythm of weeping violins
arms held close
whispers echoing
resonating
through victorian walls

She is a maiden
blessed by the sun
Whilst I
am still slave to shadows
Adoring the moon

And sadly
sunshine's rays
never know
moonbeams

There's a graveyard at the top of the hill
The pond at the bottom
has a scent to it
like salt pork
left out on a day that's wet and hot
The floor is swamped
with bright green algae
and the three feet of beach
on the south shore
between the water and the wheatgrass
is where things
wash up

We are not dreamers, but mere ocean dwellers
of subconscious schools that leech
In a silent slumberous state
when phenomenal control of the tide thrives

Where one may pass the impossible
from the vacant dark of a blue reach
to the end of the melting horizon

With glows that set great waters ablaze
With whirlpools that trap you forever
in a surge, in a surge, in a surge
Vibrating the color of soaked worlds
that forevermore remain worn

as homes of the dreamers
who stare with eyes of stars at Poseidon's realm
Reach tools of creation into the deep
forging brothers of a sea
Who are not dreamers, but mere ocean dwellers

Bump

>>1894965
This guy again. Bumping with something else I wrote. Hopefully some kind soul can give me their thoughts on my rewrite. Plus, moar poems.

Smallpox

"A room without doors,
within these walls."
This, he said, was God.

Pebbles formed beneath the skin.
Husband, daughter, mother, gone.
Light of an indifferent sun
heats an empty bed.
Imprint of a heavy head.

They have gone into the doorless room.
This, I say, is memory.

>>1894995
This is great! It's very playful.

>>1895018
I can really feel where you're coming from, but I don't think this poem takes you where you want to be going. Many of the phrases and words feel tired, and it makes the entire poem feel over-exposed. Keep writing, keep pulling from whatever source inspired this.

>>1895030
Interesting imagery. It feels incomplete though. The shore of the pond becomes pretty vivid, but I get nothing about the graveyard except that it's on a hill.

>>1895223
I like this one a lot. The imagery is nice. I feel like I understand the direction it is going, but not fully. Maybe a brighter arrow would help.

>>1895991
The title makes this poem feel obvious. Other then that I like it.

Tears fill my heart with gears,
A deer, at my dear, rears.
Soapy flesh, nothing less,
A frightened scream,
A nothing beam,
Up her skirt.

bump

This one got me laid.

Shall I list all of the ways
In which you've made me complete?
So even stars will look down and say,
"Truly, there never was a love so deep"

Maybe it is the things you say
And all the ways you say it.
How the smallest sigh can still convey
A thousand emotions, and yet, not know it.

Maybe it is the way you hitch your breath,
Should our eyes ever chance to meet,
And the way you laugh, so sweet, and yet,
Can still bring me to my knees.

It might be the flow of your hair
As the strands flow through my fingers.
Or how your eyes outshines the sunniest glare.
And it's there, at night, that the moon lingers.

Maybe it's the way you hold my hand,
So calm, and yet, so restless.
You're a contradiction I can't comprehend,
But I want to try until I'm breathless.

Maybe it is the touch of your lips,
After getting caught in the rain.
Or how the taste of your kiss
Will always make the best refrain.

No, there is no list that is long enough
To state the things I love about you:
Your hair, your lips, your heart, your touch.
But I guess this will have to do.

I love how you're the other half of me.
I love how you're the beating in my heart.
I love how you're the key to setting me free.
I love how you light up my dark.

I know I could never survive
A day without your laughter.
So say you'll be mine on Valentine's,
And all the days thereafter.

I opened a book
to find a circus mirror
and my reflection
narrowed at the hips
widened at the head
and the roof hung fat
a bulbus waterlogged belly
hiding shadows cast
by the swinging light
burning lines across
my polished forehead.

I opened a book
and there I was,
but I wan't ready
and it was time to go to sleep.

Die for the plight
Die just to fight
I'm dying to write
Dying to see the light
Die for love or hate
Die to escape
Die for the high, just die
You're gonna die

Junkies get high, and junkies die
and most of y'all probably won't know me 'til I OD
Believed what they told me, hate what they sold me
Kept the complaints in my head to dull the edge.
Fled from the inbred and left 'em all for dead
Peddled my Haro up Mount Kilimanjaro
Swallowed the sorrow, can't breath until tomorrow
Borrowed the best of and burned all the check stubs.
Joe Cocker nailed it when he said, "You can leave your hat on."
Now everything goes out to those that passed on.
That's wrong, that's right, that's wack, that's tight.
Personnel took the Duracells out of my flashlight.
Sight the way with the ideas of others
Can't follow the voices until I hear my brothers.
Catch me in the alleyway behind the hardware store huffing
Most of us die for nothing.

Die for that bitch and die for what she did
Die from the cops, die for the props
Die for the Earth, die behind your words
An eye for an eye, just die

Now the equivalency of my ignorance be
that canyon labeled as grand, so I'm not taking a stand
or making demands, or shaking your hand
or escaping the man with the Masonic plans it's
Super unleaded embedded within my head trips
kept it in check but the skeptics and the dead wits
When it festors the infection it fills with fluid
Applied the pressure, bursts, satisfied the thirst.

Drink to the pain, you're all hurting for the answers.
The simple and plain, you're all gonna die from cancer.
We all try to make the process faster
'cause we all wanna lie down in the pasture.
The asthma regulates your breath control
So thanks for buying the tapes and eat your vegetables
And let it go if you ain't trying to change it
Keep the hate sacred.
And die, kid, die.

I wrote this one during a visual art funk, it's not nearly the caliber that's been posted though...

I am not an artist,
Artists are beautiful people
That live in chic lofts
I bet they never
Let shit pile up
(figuratively and literally in the case of my cat)
They don't have dishes rotting in the sink
I bet they don't even eat
They subsist on coffee and soul purpose

I am not an artist
Artists are ethereal and wispy
(Since they don't eat)
I have a 38DD and fat thighs
Artists are fragile creatures
Born of tragedy
And terrible childhoods
I grew up in the suburbs
And call my parents weekly

I am not an artist
(But I did a sculpture once)

>>1896596
I can really relate to the
I am not an artist

I have to sat that your view is pretty scewed of what artists are, however this is prob more of a reflection of your state of mind at the time.

All the artists I don't know live in squaller.

>>1896596
"They subsist on coffee and soul purpose", I really like this line.

>>1896635
shouldn't it be sole?

>>1896659
you do know what a soul is don't you?

>>1896635
I know, it's just whenever I go out to get a cuppa joe, I feel like I always see these "oh so beautiful" waif-ish people doing art, or talking about their art. Makes me want to avoid my local coffee shops and just be a shut-in.

>>1896628
Thanks! It's my favorite too. bf liked the parenthetical punchline

>>1896663

... I don't even know how I got those backwards.

>>1896662
yes.

shouldnt it be sole?

I wish that I could join you all, alas I’m dead
My day is here and a pall of peace weighs upon my head
I know, with steady tread, back on the altar of your bed
I have foreshadowed you, but you yet live, so spare a thought
About the fate we with numb hands we had wrought
The things we seek, or sought, the life we led

If I could buy a wish, I’d make this coffin go unfed
An empty coffin’s worth about a slightly fuller head
And in the open head, gray trenches mark the conflicts fought
That’s if wishes could be bought, though as I’ve said,
Alas, I’m dead

“There’s none immortal” so it’s said
And so we scrawl our names on stones instead
The deeper carved, the longer lasts, as we are taught
If wishes were a thing that could be bought
I would pose myself a danger more than that from which I fled
Alas I’m dead