/lit/ - Literature

"Excuses"

A fever of narcotic haze, the buzz
Of cranium worn down by soft degrees.
As mouselike as you are, oblivious
And numb, you do not care for poetry.

You always stop, but endings must come last.
Beneath the exit of your highway sign
Some dried-up grapes, long shriveled in the grass,
And sculpture gardens filled with finish lines.

If love and fame came first, I'd sing to God.
Come sing me into words, body to flesh
This skeleton. My mother might applaud
Or she might not. What chorus could refresh
A fancy bust with nothing for a heart?
When rain falls down, my plaster falls apart.

"I look upon her dress so sheer
on my cheek a rolling tear
not loud and screaming like a child
but soft and silent, like her so mild"

immaculate blue
a thunderbolt goes crashing--
echo and echoes

and on a puddle,
circles tremble, fading,
a leaf in their midst

I submitted this to the /lit/ book thing or whatever, I wrote it out in the thread, there are some blatant clichés in there, but it kind of adds to the fact that clichés can mean a lot the person creating something, even though it gets spat on by the audience.

Attention whore

The empty wall is naked and cold
my hands are made of acrylic paint
I touch and draw a stripe so bold
the blank façade now wears a face

A body emerges shortly after
days and nights go by in laughter
sharing a past with someone you love
can soothe the shame when facing disaster

She sings and she dances and kisses me tender
slumber and death less appealing than ever
but ever so slender my ego engenders
desire to share with the world and surrender
to all of the pressure of false and pretentious
malicious agendas of fame and success
that now, nor ever will serve for the better
the man in fetters who suffers this test

My maiden of color is shown to the world
I whored out my lover for all to enjoy
She'll never be pure to me anymore
my saviour was raped by anonymous boys

Tough meat-
Gnaw and tear and
Clench the flesh like
It had legs- fast
Legs to run on
Down my mouth and
Out the door and
Down my chin and
Find its mother and
Eat the grass and
Live a little while.

I have no Idea what to do with this.

Making puddles in stone and licking up all earthworms in morning glow,
little children lay fallow in play and studious in song,
all tiny creatures hitting the high note together in sad schools,
drooling whiteboard, crumbling overheads,
Together now:
“We like the things that can; we hate the things that can’t
We like the people we are; we hate the ones we aren’t,
Sing with us, in this ephemeral chant.”
The sign lay flat across its respective inscription.
The sodium drinks and the light machines all holy, all sacred in this place,
attendants with skin as pale and holy as white phosphorous light,
sit and stare plant-like with nothing on their mind.
A blank slate, no canvas to pore onto, a whitewashed mind,
filled with nothing but a thin layer of melted stone and wheel and what can be done with it.
What can be done with it? Machinery? TV set? Insurance? Day-job? God? Man? Washing Machine? Medicine to cure hearts of boredom? Destroyed Generations? Mind Machinery? Emotions that are just chemicals in the brain?
And the bell rings and the kids are called in.
Outside never hurt.

In the space of empty air where church bells once rang,
we lay down this dream as a timeless memory,
feeling as weary as a coal miner melody.
Time stands still at ten o’clock,
Alarms bring us from this Maritime voyage,
pills can put you to sleep, but they can’t make you dream.
And it stands so porcelain,
with eyes shining like ponds reflecting midnight moonlight.
And it stands cropped and tilled with damp sunlight underneath safe beds and under family clouds.
Yet it make us so sad

I've decided to critique early, as I want to spend most of my day in a cafe reading. I wanted to finish an anthology by the end of this month and I'm behind. I won't be sticking around like last time.

>>6065060
There is a lot in this sonnet that is accomplished. The use of "z" sounds in the first stanza to emulate the buzz is a god, albeit highly cliched, aural effect. The meter, overall, is fluent. There are a couple of first rate lines, or parts of lines. The concluding couplet is very satisfying, as is the line preceding it, especially in how it engages the figures of the poem. Has a feeling of real closure. My mother might applaud/or she might not is one of the best line breaks I've seen on lit; it really captures a certain kind of verbal pause very well. You always stop, but endings must come last is tantalizing - does the stopping make an ending? It is also undercut interestingly by the title, "excuses." The tautological nature of this statement might just be somebody struggling for justification.

But that's where my admiration ends, that "might." This poem is extremely diffuse. It is all felt, all connotation and symbol, nothing stated. It is something about a person, another person, probably romantic, but a something, something bleak, critical, something to do with being superior because of art also, because of the title, maybe disingenuous. It comes apart after the third read. Lots of sentence fragments. The first stanza is a mess of mixed metaphor, a fever that is narcotic that is also a haze and a buzz and a brain that has been worn down by degrees that are soft. That is unparsable. A Crane-ish hash.

I'm also aware that "love and fame" calls back to a Keats sonnet, and this could maybe be interpreted by using the Keats sonnet as a sort of key - I tried superficially, but couldn't - but making poems you have to read with another poem as legend is a little stupid, especially if it is a poem ironically undercut by a title.

>>6066518

You look upon her dress, shed a tear, the tear is like this. All this poem does is say you cry a certain way at a certain thing. It's a poem about you. Nobody cares about you unless you give them a narrative in which your character can unfold beyond a simple reaction. At best, you're crying because she's mild and wearing a slight dress. It seems hysterical. I don't care about her either. Who is she beyond somebody mild?

The figure of the tear "rolling" isn't engaged. There's also the logical problem of rolling tears never making noise in the first place. That's crying. The grammar suggests they do. It makes this more comical.

>>6066540
I don't really think of lightning as immaculate. It's destructive, so not really "sinless." Blue isn't white, which is immaculate. It also isn't neat, it's jagged.

A "thunderbolt" already contains in the word the idea of echo and echoes. "Echo and echoes" is a little silly too. You could just use "echos."

[cont]

>>6066540

"Circles tremble" is a nice verbal mimesis.

I like the use of two haiku. One large effect, environmental, one small, local. A nice sense of symmetry. (Your second second line is one syllable off.)

The figure in the second haiku, that of a group of people, the circles, the leaf can be in the midst of I think is unintentional?, and doesn't really make sense?

You can read this as a tacit statement about a great person or action, how it has spanning effects, but also doesn't move some people, the leaf. I like that as a reading of this. It's against the grain of what haiku usually do. (A double senryu then?)

I think there's a better word than "midst." Too literary. "Center" would be better.

>>6066581

The trick with cliche in the poem is not to use it in a way that's cliche, or to subtly change the cliche so it's still recognizable as the cliche, but has been, by context or by slight alteration of the actual text, been made into something other than the cliche, or it could even be the cliche re-vitalized, demonstrated.

There aren't cliches in this poem so much as banalities: "sharing a past with somebody you love can sooth the shame" yes of course. This is actually the summary of a much better poem than yours where the concrete, actual shame, and actual sharing, and the actual love are folded out into a narrative that makes them moving.

A small point: much of the action takes place in private, but a "facade" is the public part of a building. Drawing a face on a facade means you are in front of a building, usually a business.

"She sings and she dances and kisses me tender" - these are also summary of a poem that actually cares to deal in the details.

"Slumber and death less appealing" - stock sentiment. If you were suicidal you wouldn't be creative. Also this is a hysterical ratcheting up... sleep AND DEATH. The whole poem seems a little over senti-mental...sharing art is like the rape of a beloved maiden.

This center stanza is out of place in a poem with all four-line stanzas. The section beginning "pressure" and ends "success" uses WAY too much of the S sound. It's silly.

The end rhymes of this section are also all slant rhymes of each other, making the rhymes mount into something conspicuous, comic.

"my ego engenders desire" - how?
"malicious agendas" - what are they?
"this test" - what is it?

So much of this is just flat language put into rhyme and clunky meter. I think your poem has succumbed to imitating too much what is portrays. That doesn't make it a good poem about a bad art, it makes it a bad poem about bad art. In order to get us to feel, you have to make this a good poem, tactile, musical, and so on, with maybe some elements of mimic-ing the bad art so you can show us what lies behind it.

>>6068808
thanks for the feedback.

to clarify for "immaculate blue" I meant the sky, since my intention was to follow the traditional haiku convention of juxtaposing two natural images.

>>6066769

This builds a certain savage rhythm with its short lines, its monosyllables, its gnawed up syntax, but it's missing a lot of the transitional material that'd make it parsable; what I get is, chew this meat like it had legs (most of us would be repulsed) and then think of something going "down my mouth (what does that even mean) going outside and pretending to be it while the meat goes down my chin and that is like living?

Is this supposed to be a reversal from carnivore to herbivore?

>>6067355
"I have no Idea what to do with this."

Try rewriting it in a four-line stanza, each stanza ten-syllables long, with an iambic beat underneath it da DUM da DUM da DUM.

Try to make each stanza self contained, but also relating to the others, and to have the stanzas proceed in a sensible order.

Also pick up Poems Poets Poetry by Helen Vendler and read it cover to cover.

>>6068856
That was unclear due to the grammar.

I also enjoy traditional haiku. If you want some great writing in that vein, try Ezra Pound's Cathay.

>>6068872
Pardon, each LINE not each stanza.

Alright guys, I'm done for today. I'll be back again next week. And maybe later to argue or clarify.

>>6068848
>A small point: much of the action takes place in private, but a "facade" is the public part of a building. Drawing a face on a facade means you are in front of a building, usually a business.
This is actually a very good point. Cheers.

>stock sentiment. If you were suicidal you wouldn't be creative.
u wot? I don't understand this. A lot of suicidal people are creative, just look at artists and novelists who killed themselves.

>sleep AND DEATH. The whole poem seems a little over senti-mental...sharing art is like the rape of a beloved maiden.

Sleep and death are pretty close in my opinion, it's supposed to mean that I want to be awake and conscious, kind of took the sentiment from a band who sings of sleep as the ''slumber of disconnection'', it's attempting to convey being with your creation.

It is a bit sentimental, I might have succumbed to the desire of ending on a rash note.

>This center stanza is out of place in a poem with all four-line stanzas. The section beginning "pressure" and ends "success" uses WAY too much of the S sound. It's silly.

I wanted it to be a faster tempo. I always read it out in my head, and the middle part is supposed to speed up to convey incoming anxiety.

>The end rhymes of this section are also all slant rhymes of each other, making the rhymes mount into something conspicuous, comic.

I'll add a voice recording, if you read it in Brittish it actually rhymes pretty well.

>"my ego engenders desire" - how?
The full sentence would be:
my ego engenders desire to share with the world

It means that you make something you're proud of, and then you want others to appreciate you for making it, you get the urge to show it to others to boost your ego.

>"malicious agendas" - what are they?
The expectancy of ''fame'' or hyped up unrealistic dreams resulting from you showing your art

>"this test" - what is it?
The test that your ego throws you, the desire to share your creations hoping to get recognition out of it so you can boost your ego.

The recording:
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0fRWF3TkuQg

ps: I'm not trying to say my poem was good, I'm just trying to explain why I think I ended up writing what I wrote.

Will offer some critique in a moment.

This is based on the painting Rowing Home by Winslow Homer

The red sun sticks low in the orange sky.
It burns
like a small tap of fire
pinned up on the horizon.

We three glide gently.
We dip our oars silently and part the glassy water,
vessel nudged by lapping waves
on either side.

Rocked, slowly, we drift into a vision.

Let us imagine this canoe as a cradle,
and our bulky coats of animal furs
as soft and fresh infant skin.

Let us imagine ourselves
as dead and born again,
heading “home”,
swept across the wide and open river Lethe,
safe in our cradles crafted from cedar ribs
and sown on strips of birch bark;

We have slept through another easy death.

We three are idle voyagers,
lost in this beautiful void
lost in a sky streaked with orange,
our image perpetually mirrored on top the of the bottomless water.

Surfacing from the solitary reflections
that the temperament of the sea graciously allows,
we propel forward,
through the forgetful water,
pushed along by the breath of the wind,
and the slow, plodding strides of a paddle.

The familiar journey
towards home,
through the bright purlieu,
a quiet path cut across the orange twilight.

my great, great, great, great grandfather
ate his lunch at home
he dipped his crusty bread in lukewarm soup
and he chewed it slowly
alone at the kitchen table

they cater lunch now
there are falafels in the boardroom
have some pasta salad while your code compiles
get your oatmeal in the kitchen
its all free
and its all healthy
and all my friends are there

but when I get home
I realize that I am slowly forgetting
how to make soup

I stopped wearing my shoes the day I got kicked out of school

I hung my socks up on the fridge
Like a grade A paper
Or a drawing of a cat
"Don't kick meow't"

>>6064844
A storm approaches
It blankets the streets with snow
Better dress warmly

>>6069576
Good lines, but
>lrn2juxtapose

>>6069536
This is nice

I follow through the singing trees
Her streaming clouded hair and face
And lascivious dreaming knees
Like gleaming water from some place
Of sleeping streams, or autumn leaves
Slow shed through still, love-wearied air.
She pauses: and as one who grieves
Shakes down her blown and vagrant hair
To veil her face, but not her eyes--
A hot quick spark, each sudden glance,
Or like the wild brown bee that flies
Sweet winged, a sharp extravagance
Of kisses on my limbs and neck.
She whirls and dances through the trees
That life and sway like arms and fleck
Her with quick shadows, and the breeze
Lies on her short and circled breast.
Now hand in hand with her I go,
The green night in the silver west
Of virgin stars, pale row on row
Like ghostly hands, and ere she sleep
In silent meadows, dim and deep--
In dreams of stars and dreaming dream.

Off to the left side
Of my rushing veins where their wheels have tread
Their trail remains.
He stands distantly, erect on the far away bridge
A figure shadowed by
The Sun's immense illuminity, hidden
Tall upon taller ridge;
His lurching gait falls, breaks
Fails to catch to be caught
Out on the open air, his footstep makes
No contact, no embrace
Between him and foreign air, my eyes
My pupils do not race. I do not watch
The afternoon springtime fall
I passed him on the road so very long ago.

And still he hangs there
On and beyond the bridge in fuzzed-bright air
His figure hidden by the shelter of night
Built by a lightness too bright.

His stride too long to carry on
At such a pace, his feet involved in a run that could not be his race
To race
Among a track of involved predators, his world run and only begun
To stretch from his raised high cloudy eye
Yawning distantly in the distance he occupied.

He was bathed in the solemn of of solitude
Alone in a crowd, life no good.

On the warm oppressive day
A desert mirage
His wings were spread wide in tired homage
To the broken spine of his exhausted mind.
A depth too deep I dare not find
A death beneath, a glow behind;
Shining so bright in the dark I fear for the blind.

Defeated then, I had turned away from the barrier he trembling climbed.

He waits for me there sometimes still
The day still high
The Sun still bright.
With the awaiting gasp of an expectant fate
I search for him alone; seeing none
I cannot wait.

It is early afternoon.
You sit on the grass
with your rough face on the dog's neck.
Right now
you are both as still as a snapshot.
That infectious dog ought to let a fly bother her,
ought to run out in an immense field,
chasing rabbits and skunks,
mauling the cats, licking insects off her rump,
and stop using you up.

My darling, why do you lean on her so?
I would touch you,
that pulse brooding under your Madras shirt,
each shoulder the most well built house,
the arms, thin birches that do not escape the breeze,
the white teeth that have known me,
that wait at the bottom of the brook,
and the tongue, my little fish!...
but you are stopped in time.

So I will speak of your eyes
although they are closed.
Tell me, where is each stubborn-coloured iris?
Where are the quick pupils that make
the floor tilt under me?
I see only the lids, as tough as riding boots.
Why have your eyes gone into their own room?
Goodnight they are saying
from their little leathery doors.
Or shall I sing of eyes
that have been ruined with mercy and lust
and once with your own death
when you lay bubbling like a caught fish,
sucking on the manufactured oxygen?

Or shall I sing of eyes
that are resting so near the hair
of that hateful animal?
Love twists me, a Spanish flute plays in my blood,
and yet I can see only
your little sleep, an empty place.

But when your eyes open
against the wool stink of her thick hair,
against the faintly sickening neck of that dog,
whom I envy like a thief,
what will I ask?
Will I speak up saying,
there is a hurried song, a certain seizure
from which I gasp?
Or will your eyes lie in wait,
little field mice nestling on their paws?
Perhaps they will say nothing,
perhaps they will be dark and leaden,
having played their own game
somewhere else,
somewhere far off.

Oh, I have learned them and know that
when they open and glance at me
I will turn like a little dancer
and then, quite simply,
and all by myself,
I will fall,
bound to some mother / father,
bound to your sight,
bound for nowhere,
and everywhere.
Or, perhaps, my darling,
because it is early afternoon,
I will forget that my voice is full of good people,
forget how my legs could sprawl on the terrace,
forget all that the birds might witness,
the torn dress, the shoes lost in the arbor,
while the neighbor's lawnmower bites and spits out
some new little rows of innocent grass.
Certainly,
I need not speak of it all,
I will crouch down
and put my cheek near you,
accepting this spayed and flatulent bitch you hold,
letting my face rest in an assembled tenderness,
on the old dog's neck.

Up
Butt
Coconut

Up
Butt
Coconut

Up your butt with a coconut
¶¶∆mystery and pain seeker∆¶¶

>>6069510
I'd habe fallafel and pasta salad over moist grandpa soup everyday, you know, your poems a failure anon.

>>6069788
why do people do this

マジか?君がそう平気にいった
アタシはうんざりと童ごとき頷いた。
交差点に近寄ると自転車乗りのお巡りさんがすれ違った。
浮かべだす筈もなカッシャンと隔たりなく流れ。
今夜7時弱であった。
咲いた桜木並街頭を歩きまわり
花びら雪崩に巻き飲まれ
ポカンとして君に見つめられ
ガンガンと動悸高め

「ぺったんこが1番好きだよ」
[童顔な子が好きだよ」
ロリコンなんかダメだよ~!!!

>>6071175

I think you know.

What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall
upon some shellacked and grinning person,
eyes that open, blue, steel, and close.
Am I approximately an I. Magnin transplant?
I have hair, black angel,
black-angel-stuffing to comb,
nylon legs, luminous arms,
and some advertised clothes.

I live in a doll's house,
with four chairs,
a counterfeit table, a flat roof
and a big front door.
Many have come to such a small crossroad.
There is an iron bed,
(Life enlarges, life takes aim)
a cardboard floor,
windows that flash open on someone's city,
and little more.

Someone plays with me,
plants me in the all-electric kitchen,
Is this what Mr. Rombauer said?
Someone pretends with me--
I am walled in solid by their noise--
or puts me upon their straight bed.
They think I am me!
Their warmth? Their warmth is not a friend!
They pry my mouth for their cups of gin
and their stale bread.

What is reality
to this synthetic doll
who should smile, who should shift gears,
should spring the doors open in a wholesome disorder,
and have no evidence of ruin or fears?
But I would cry,
rooted into the wall that
was once my mother,
if I could remember how
and if I had the tears.

>>6071363
It's shit.

IN THE BEACH HOUSE

The doors open
and the heat undoes itself,
everyone undoes himself,
everyone walks naked.
Two of them walk on the table.
They are not afraid of God's displeasure.
They will have no truck with the angel
who hoots from the foghorn
and throws the ocean into the rocks outside.
One of them covers the bedstead.
One of them winds round the bedpost
and both of them beat on the floor.

My little cot listens in
all night long--
even with the ocean turned up high,
even with every door boarded up,
they are allowed the lifting of the object,
the placing themselves upon the swing.
Inside my prison of pine and bedspring,
over my window sill, under my knob,
it is plain that they are at
the royal strapping.

Have mercy, little pillow,
stay mute and uncaring,
hear not one word of disaster!
Stay close, little sour feather,
little fellow full of salt.
My loves are oiling their bones
and them delivering them with unspeakable sounds
that carry them this way and that
while summer is hurrying its way in and out,
over and over,
in their room.

THE ADDICT

Sleepmonger,
deathmonger,
with capsules in my palms each night,
eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles
I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.
I'm the queen of this condition.
I'm an expert on making the trip
and now they say I'm an addict.
Now they ask why.
Why!

Don't they know
that I promised to die!
I'm keeping in practice.
I'm merely staying in shape.
The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls,
I'm on a diet from death.

Yes, I admit
it has gotten to be a bit of a habit--
blows eight at a time, socked in the eye,
hauled away by the pink, the orange,
the green and the white goodnights.
I'm becoming something of a chemical
mixture.
That's it!

My supply
of tablets
has got to last for years and years.
I like them more than I like me.
Stubborn as hell, they won't let go.
It's a kind of marriage.
It's a kind of war
where I plant bombs inside
of myself.

Yes
I try
to kill myself in small amounts,
an innocuous occupation.
Actually I'm hung up on it.
But remember I don't make too much noise.
And frankly no one has to lug me out
and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.
I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie
eating my eight loaves in a row
and in a certain order as in
the laying on of hands
or the black sacrament.

It's a ceremony
but like any other sport
it's full of rules.
It's like a musical tennis match where
my mouth keeps catching the ball.
Then I lie on my altar
elevated by the eight chemical kisses.

What a lay me down this is
with two pink, two orange,
two green, two white goodnights.
Fee-fi-fo-fum --
Now I'm borrowed
Now I'm numb.

Untitled Nights

She doesn’t want my love.

What she wants is:
for me to press my mouth to hers
and suck until she’s hollow,
for me to clutch her thin neck
so she can fade away,
for me to fill her shell with
as much as I can fit,
for me to paint her with bruises
and to tremble with a new delight;
she wants to be abused.

She drains my humanity.

I understand why this is:
I’ve been ensnared by her mystery
and drank away my mercy,
I’ve willingly handed out this depravity
and did not bat an eye,
I’ve been changed by her dark charm
and will not ask for less,
I’ve tasted a different kind of passion
and fulfilled an empty space;
I am replaceable.

We draw apart and the space between is cold.

This vicious viscosity
This vehement violence
Her masked countenance
Aided by silence

Lucifer would repent
Temperance unknown
His fiery depths
Were never alone

For she killed with her beauty
With her beauty she killed
She killed for her beauty
So beauty’s blood would not be spilled

>>6071776
結局、ろりこんでよかったかな?

I have no forces
to fight for an hug:
lap of solitude
for less than rejection.

I will put no effort,
it is not in my nature.

I am pure disenchantment.

---

>mfw it's translated poetry

>>6069536
started great ended shit

>>6069510
first and last stanzas nice, middle shit. why the fuck would you mention code compiling? Don't make 21st century references.

Cool idea for a thread, thanks for doing this!

A bird in flight is often not
a thing you think to see.
Its gentle wings, without a thought
caress wind tenderly

If grounded life had been their birth
and up above were me,
I ne'er again would touch the earth:
my pillow wind would be.

>>6069788
>straight white male who thinks he's smart

>>6071771
>What is reality?
are you fucking serious right now?

>>6071783
so it's about a bunch of sex? first stanza got me excited cause it sounded like some ex-christian 60's poem and then it turned out to be a generic /lit/ poem with pseudo-classy shit and just a bunch of shit. you've disappointed me for the last time.

>>6071829
>I'm on a diet from death.
only descent line in this entire pile of shit

A Love Supreme


With eyes and hair like campfire warmth,
with teeth that garnish a marching band smile.
You crash my canyon symptoms,
with your wooden mallet questions.
You’re so delusional, it’s beautiful.

I’ve got a Krakatoa chest
for the way you bend the universal light.
And I’m certain god was made,
in your cultistic image.
You’re so delusional, it’s beautiful.

With arms and lips like vampirism,
with African marathon blood gushing from your tongue.
You steel care from me,
with your Iron Maiden grip.
You’re so delusional, it’s beautiful.

I’ve got a kitten’s stare
for the way you bend my raw emotions
and I’m certain love was made
in your iron curtain image.

Sweetie, you’re so delusional
It’s beautiful,
and misery making,
and challenge undertaking.
For you,
I’ve got a love supreme.
Now swallow this,
and drink away your living dream.

Yes, mother.

>>6064844

This is a speech from the play that I am writing.

The original is in Portuguese, in blank-verse.

This is a speech from one of the characters that expresses relief at knowing that his master (who was sick, and in his death-bed), before he died, entered a comatose state of delirium where he smiled and chatted merrily with imaginary beings, feeling good, feeling peace, as if caressed by deities.

The speaker draws an analogy between the death and the night; says that the death of the sun (life) gives rise to the dark night (death), but that, at that dark night, there are the wonderful show of the stars and galaxies, a whole genesis and creation that death also seems to hide. Much of the speech (the second half of it) consists in metaphors describing the night skies and space. Every metaphor is separated from the next one with a ";".

That's not the case now, but later, in the same scene, the other character, who was reporting the delusions of the master (he was the only present in the death-bed with the exception of the doctors) reveals that the opiate serenity was only momentary, and that the last days before death were filled with pain, despair, and total lack of hope. Anyway, character dialogue does not reflect my private opinions.

I hope you enjoy this excerpt.

1/2


MASATANE: I feel great relief in knowing that our master,
After the suffering of treading the rough road
And thorny path of twilight
(The stony steps towards death
By the road of the disease) at last
Stepped in gardens of sweet dreams, I feel
Happy to hear that his final deliriums:
These dreams of those who are already walking in the night,
These matte and imperfect mirrors
That reflect, in dying minds
And the consciousness that are defrosting in silence,
Watery watercolors and blurred
Reflexes, only the shadows of the palaces
And small teaspoons of ocular sample
Of the banquet of glories of the other life:
These vapors of an evanescent mind
Were caresses for our father and master of our clan.
I'm glad to see that the Lord Shingen
Tasted with pleasure and serenity these first
Appetizers of non-being, that the tasting
Of inexistence dazzled him. What is death?
Is it not the night in which the sun sinks?
Darkness in which the blue and gold, after
Bleeding wine, the mourning of twilight,
Are carbonized? But why fear it?

>>6073078

2/2

If birds, insects, cattle, grass and rivers,
Oceans, mountains and cities
Only exist when the sunlight bathes them
Then just the same way only when the blond tea
Of day thickens in the coffee of the night
Is that the stars and galaxies truly come to live:
The bonfires of the angels; picnics
Of the cherubim; the glacial waltzes
Of the moths clothed with moonlight dust;
Fire caterpillars; anthills
Of candles that yawn golden pollen;
The sparkling foam and nebulae milk
Of the gilded plankton that floats in the ocean
Of infinity; the azure carousel
Of the fireflies; lava sunflowers;
The light in springtime chanting nectar
Thorough all the space; mating-heat of the suns; cosmic honey;
The Milky Way in flower, smiling silver roses
Marble jasmines and ivory carnations;
Daisies, marigolds and camellias
Burning in flames of diamond and ardent snow;
The spectral rain and phosphorescent hail storm
Hail storm howled in the primordial ages;
The embryos and spawn of immeasurable
Lightings, which, like a litter of kittens,
Are huddled asleep in mute clusters;
The lands and archipelagoes that fruit
The purest manna and inebriating spices
Of the divine; the islands of the legendary phoenix;
Icebergs of heat that melt their luminescent blood
In the freezing emptiness; lotus-flower that break
The swamp of darkness in plasma and purple;
The swarm of blond eyes and pupils
Of wheat of immortality opening
The panther of complete vacuum and the black
Skin of the numb nothing and looking at us.
If the dying of the sun springs so many glories
Why fear the death of this organic clay,
Of this gross and uncivil mortar of matter?
Let the chrysalis break and the butterfly of the soul,
Wet with dew of freedom, fly to the heavens blends with paradise.
The final deliriums and feverish dreams of our master show
That the birth of dying in a warm and loving
Bosom plant us: death is life;
It is sweet to know that sweetly our master fall asleep.

>>6073078
>This is a speech from the play that I am writing.
>The original is in Portuguese, in blank-verse.

Welcome back, Brazilian Anon. No more lectures on the greatness of Tolstoy for us? (He was going to hate your work, btw).

>>6073078
>>6073081

Can I get criticism on this? The more precise, analytical and merciless the critic the better. I want to get better and I appreciate the suggestions of intelligent readers. Here is one of the few places I can find them, and the anonymity makes people really express themselves with total freedom and honesty.

And here: take a cute Audrey pic for the trouble.

I'll post my shorter ones:

At night I dream your colours, paints on the facade
The blues and greens, your brightly reds,
Dripping through the woodwork,
Dripping through the depths.
Dilute the pond – I keep oceans.

-----


From fauces leaps the wine-dark seas
Of its bottomless scalp.
Choirs of drunk baboons scrambling,
For ammunition in a war.

My smile is a rifle
And the dancefloor a trench.
Teeth sharpened and glimming
Run — run! Hours and fools
This dim night and you the brittle tools.


---

Where’s the crooked tenderness?
Your teen age, hurried by dancing
In sunlights playful summer dress.
Where’s your laughter – the yellow’d smile?

A humble partner in crime
Making me feel like no other
Do tell, where is she now?
Lets not pretend nor bother

That a love untouched
Is better than the one tarnished.

And once again we have a lot of posts but no criticism. We are all a bunch of selfish assholes.

>>6073501
I really enjoy these pieces, sorry if this is lacking in constructive criticism but well paced lines and not awkwardly worked in rhymes.

They all worked well and themselves conveyed a subject and feeling,

The first one feels inadequate by itself to me.
Just too generic and passionate a subject to keep so obscure and in-concise.
Just don't know what you're trying to say

>>6072516
This is so beautiful

I think I'll be better off alone, beyond the grip of persuaded drone, electrical stimulation of frontal lobe and beneath the globe. There will be no answers when I face the impartial demons vault, the world will abide only by it's vision-less fault, ephemeral I will inscribe my immortal imprint and sacrifice the complexities I'd molested for reprint.

A prophet-less prophet and a profit-less wallet, I'll sever my legs for a painless hike, and set up my tent intentionally on the steepest bed rushing all the blood to my head on the black tusk kissed by dusk. Where my dreams are an abstraction of lucidity, and my waking hours a reflection of their transparency.

My own sophist and philanthropist under watchful eyes I will meet demise, the godly kindness in his eyes and domesticated desire at his side. Recondite need, deliquesce unto the greater fathom of being.

I renounce the insidious and malicious, I will not deliver them to god, I will throw time away with my fob and graffiti redundancy.
I'll join my brother under, release the pressure and realize metaphysics, press through this faggy fucking body and ethics.

>>6074757
Is this supposed to be prose poetry? If so, you're not doing it correctly. If not, fix the lineation.
The leonine rhyming feels so forced and the diction is awkward. Sounds tryhard to be honest. That envoi is edgy too.

>>6073501
Are you new to writing poetry? Curious. This trope of covering the objective correlative in ambiguity through seemingly deep rhetoric (e.g "my smile is a rifle") is common in amateur poets. It's so common in fact that I feel I should coin a term for it if there isn't one already, which considering how rife it is, there probably is. How about, "ambiguous periphrasis." Sounds good.
The only advice I can give you is to read more poetry and stay away from contemporary poetry until you're familiar with the classics.

>>6074849
will do thx.

Slicing, dicing, rolling around,
Chef splutters, mutters, acts the clown

Filth into water, bacteria drowning,
Sounds do surround the working men

Swinging double doors that Napoleon triumphed;
Imposter rather: he's a garçon who has rivals

Who sneers at his peers though not the customer:
Always right and not without a dollar

Rich like the slight treasures on their plates,
As rich as their words in the reviews they create

Lobster dodgers who insult the cook
Are wrong however, their opinions moot

Heathens that mistakenly return their steaks,
Soon find their arses red, their status: deemed as late

Five stars this establishment does have;
A ship owned by black-beard, who haunts the mast

posted a poem no criticism -_-

>>6074849

HQSSG, you don't know what an objective correlative is. From Hamlet and His Problems:

"The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked."

Eliot's formula for expressing emotion actually justifies the kind of poetic hash you're referring to. That nonsense - that "set of objects" - serves as precisely the right combination to express the emotion (key: the emotion, not the thought) that this poet is trying to express. Or, if you don't feel anything, you suggest he has failed to find an objective correlative, not that he has one, and it is "covered."

If you want theories that call for a more robust structure in a poem, look to Winters' theory of the poem as "judgement," or Cleanth Brooks' theory of the poem as a unified structure of dramatic tensions.

>>6075271
The guaranteed criticism period was over a day ago.

>>6075319
damn i posted yesterday

>>6069296

No critic here, but I really enjoyed that poem. Still agree with OP though, after hearing recording, that the end rhymes are not great.

i just turned this one for a class

-Dogs

A glare of headlights lit up the icicles that hung
from the garage gutter. The stray cat I like to watch
darted with fear in its eyes off our wire fence
as he pulled into the driveway in that
decayed ogre of an ‘03 Chevrolet.

His engine’s noise was that of an aged Hoover amped
up through a megaphone, and it roared through
our thin walls with an offensive and obtrusive malignance.
I had heard his approach from at least a block away,
and as he crept closer, I could almost taste that
wretched aroma of exhaust, old fast food wrappers
and cheap cologne that lingers in his cab.

I stood there and watched as he pulled into the garage
and exposed the weak integrity of its structure; it shook
in the harshness of the wind and from the violence of his engine.
The icicles still hung from the gutter, cold, and stiff,
like frost bitten fingers. I quietly wondered
where all the stray cats run off to.

>>6072430
thank you.

i sort of like placing a poem inside the context of my life. i write a bunch of code at my job, so i reference compiling.

>>6075194
This poem is me.
I never posted this message with the poem originally as I thought there may be a chance someone would pick up on the following things.
I just looked into how metre works for the first time not long ago. I know the rhythm's shit due to the poor rhyming and syllable counts, but have I understood metre to some degree? Am I making that pattern of separating soft and harsh syllables?
One last thing: I feel that my punctuation regarding colons, semi-colons, and commas is a mess. I'm incredibly self-conscious of this. Is there punctuation in my poem that could be better changed or removed?

>>6075316
i know exactly what an objective correlative is. there's a connotation and a denotation.
if you've been around proper circles, o.c is commonly used to simply refer to "the poet's intended meaning"

>>6073081

>>6064844

bump

>>6076146
Not /lit/fag by any means, but holy fuck I like this.

The only thing I'd change is 'noise' to 'voice.' No real reason behind this, and maybe that's a terrible suggestion, but I think it works far better.

>>6079666
thanks man. i think that actually could be kinda of cool, since the car is somewhat personified anyway.
i am excited to see what my professor thinks. i am somewhat proud of this poem, i felt it had a certain emotional resonance

>>6072430
>Don't make 21st century references.
Why not?

>>6079695
It does. It all comes together very well.

>>6064844
A bit late, but if you still have the time:

For the time being.

White branches, white vines,
Twisting limbs like broken spines,
Redding spots like frozen blood,
Enamel floor on bracken mud,
Pearly puff on still top pines;
The needles as an emerald brine,
The dapper sun upon his seat,
Shines bright & clear & without heat,
Shows all as if a darkling jewel,
Creation’s shining silver pool,
Filled with shadows & with light,
A winter morn is quite a sight,
Yet one must sigh, and one must say,
That all of this shall pass away.
But as it goes, one just might see,
A slight grey glimpse of eternity.

This grey is an odding, twilight thing,
With fairies air and silent wing
That in betwixt the silent shade,
Descends upon a hidden glade,
A silent pool upon a hill,
Under the leaves and limbs so still,
A frozen cloud upon the height,
Or passing through dim starlight,
That works the wonder frenzy till,
Ones mind is turning like a mill,
And mossy banks upon the brook,
Or the lines inside a battered book,
Or firelight bright inside the dark,
With sky filled high with golden spark,
Show that simply, straightly, bent,
All of life’s a sacrament.

This passing of the good and grey,
Is a thing that’s here to stay,
Till Time at least, upon his post,
Retires and leaves, without a boast
And the Author puts down His pen,
Fills the inkwell, checks once again,
And all is as He thought it should,
Mirrored in infinite, kingly Good,
And though men sigh upon the night,
Of beauties passing, firm and bright,
Of sweetness, glory, and honor lost,
And resistance melting like morning frost,
Comfort shall come in a peculiar way:
That all of this was child’s play,
For He shall sigh (and without yawn),
The grey today will turn to dawn.