/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1959646]

Poetry thread.
Post your shit.

[Anonymous No.1959649]

If you name your child.

If you name your child, Jessica.
She will be manipulative in some way.
If you name your child, David.
He will be different or unique.
If you name your child, Lucy.
She will be popular and attractive.
If you name your child, James.
He will have sex with more people than average.
If you name your child, Jesus.
He will die for people's sins.
If you name your child, Lucifer.
He will listen to rock 'n' roll.

[Anonymous No.1959670]

THE BLEAKNESS OF STANDING IN AN EMPTY KITCHEN

imagining my face lit by a sunset that's almost over

and walking into the living room

trying to logically convince myself of something

i miss you so much

the same way the temperature makes me feel afraid

your gmail status makes me worried about the future

in a giant house with central heating

in a giant bed

eating chocolate

[Anonymous No.1959675]

>>1959670
Nice, I liked that.

[Anonymous No.1959686]

I sit and read
What is plainly weed
In a form most banal
A man with no shirt
In his kitchen
And eating chocolate as dessert

[Anonymous No.1959688]

>I posted this from my facebook and its margins are absolutely fucked. it should be one line for every two line stanza

In the starkness of silence, like the dirge of remembrance playing in the sobbing room
Amid the walls draped in red, of curtains ancient in its accumulation of dust and bloom
Voices speak softly and echo, into an infinity ending at the walls, which holds the books
Abandoned here so long ago, disturbed only by the talk, sound waves that travel through


And in that autumn afternoon, serendipity these few feel, among the dying of the tomes
For forays they did often partake, but only now are they vindicated for long days wasted
“So to now, we discuss the matters so perfect a setting for this room”, and he continues
“A chance to read now, in these woods so feral, of dated prints of Virgil, in a library’s tomb”
“And reason what drove this madman to these woods that overgrew, into his forgotten room”


Of photos kept, he had none, and relics from modernity he has forgone, perhaps to forget
And he lived as an ascetic, for what he ate, canned preservatives, and pleasure he eschewed


The weathered books to unkept age it folds, printed on the casing regarded names in muddy gold
Of Wordsworth and Tolstoy, Goethe and the Greeks too, works so deeply the owner once knew


And the records he kept found too, in a shelf given to life once more by the forest bloom
“Last dated, October 18th, 1987”, nearly a quarter century had this room been out of view
“An imitation of Thoreau, of contemplation in recluse, I have come and here now I need to go”
And deeper within the desk, a box of leaden iron, whose seeds sow death, and six were taken
“Let us look now for peculiarities of the room, and take with you of value, books you can hold”
Grave robbers of a forgotten tomb, continuing to rummage through, amid the skeleton of a room

[Anonymous No.1959704]

>>1959675
Thanks. I plagiarized it. It's not mine.

[Pointman !LAxuxT565U No.1959705]

Within Words
________________________________


To whim a centerpiece,
timidly, and nice,
and neat in the gallery.

the flowery fleece masterpiece was
cozy neat sheep, all asleep,
with pen ink seeps inking their leaps
deep.

no paint man may
understand the wordsmith nor
his vile plan to reprimand the
shift.

His one crippled spire,
enter, turning circles with
fires that were always just words.

[Anonymous No.1959749]

I sit and stare,
looking at the screen in dispair.

[Anonymous No.1959936]

I wrote this and memorised it as an angsty highschooler.

As the colours fade away
All I see
Menagerie
Of dull and subtle tones of grey

We are about to pass away
Can't you see?
You and me
All these things I try to say

Now I waste my time away
Monotony
Lobotomy
Emotion-numbing day-to-day

[Anonymous No.1959940]

Peat

The teacher claps the bricks,
far and silent as a lighthouse,
in his distant outstretched arms.
A short pause

before the sounds recur and stutter,
from the windows, walls and gutters,
of the school’s demolished grounds.
Silence does not stop the swell:

it lingers in our heavy heads,
which bind in the bandage gauze of thought
and bury deep in peatbog holes,
to stir undisinterred.

[Anonymous No.1960727]

The Warden

Very late that night,
the tears forced themselves
through still eyes;
like prisoners with wire cutters
slipping through the fencing.

[Anonymous No.1960736]

>>1959940
Nice poem. I like you're "undisinterred," too!

[Rangaha !KJKZ7n2h3I No.1960737]

Down along a bight in the February frost
Lay a woman, alone, with no coat
Soon arrived a man, in a great longboat
And he wak'ned her, and asked: "Art thou lost?"
She answered sharply, with all possible harshness embossed:
"What wantst thou of me, for I am not haute -
Indeed, I possesseth not the smallest mote."
And from her hand, his coat, she tossed.
"'Tis not your value, but your beauty and grace," said he, brightly with a smile.
And warmth flooded into her heart for the first time in years
And from her eyes poured rivers of tears
And they sat on the edge of the river for a while
And he rid her of all of her fears.

[Anonymous No.1960738]

Were there drawing
On eachother's knees:
Ellipses; eyes
Pointed down, listening
As you listed into me

[Anonymous No.1960742]

>>1959670
>>1959675
Sounds like all of that bullshit going on in New York right now. Wait a minute. It is.

[Anonymous No.1960754]

>>1960736
lol, sorry about the awful grammar, guys. Geez.

[Anonymous No.1960788]

>>1960736

Lord knows "undisinterred" is a less unwieldy coinage than "ununburied".

Although I'm pretty sure that the 4-act original draft version of "The Importance of Being Earnest" contains the coinage "ununbunburied", to refer to Algernon in the debt-collector scene in Oscar's uncut full-length bagatelle.

[Anonymous No.1960790]

same as >>1960738

61.
In the same way—
Less to an extent, than
Below your even skin
As a rigid bend of bone
And in this case then
The way light takes you there
As it spills, rolls down the stair
They, these bone-counterparts protruding
Extending from below your neck
Beneath and perpendicular
But all these things in my
Periphery only— only
Short breaths exchanging
As I kiss your mouth with
Mine. And in removing
My hand from behind the shallow width-
Of, —your-neck, I
Traveled tips of fingers down
Closed my eyes around
Us, and touched your collarbone

[Anonymous No.1960823]

Yo, I'm a hot and bothered astronaut crashin' while
Jackin' off to bufferin' vids of Asher Roth eatin' apple sauce
Sent to Earth to poke Catholics in the ass with saws
And knock blunt ashes into their caskets and laugh it off
Twisted sicker than mad cattle, in fact I'm off
Six different liquors with a Prince wig plastered on
Stop screamin', bitch: you shouldn't be that alarmed
When Big Lips is in the attic armed with an addict's arm
Earl puts the "ass" in "assassin"
Puts the pieces of decomposin' bodies in plastic
Puts 'em in a pan and mixes it up with scat
Then gobbles it like fat black bitches and catfish
It so happens that I'm so haphazardous
I'll puke a piece and put it on a hook and fuckin' cast the shit
I'm askin' that you faggot rap actors take action
And get a hall pass for this class-act shit

[Anonymous No.1960829]

PT 2
How the fuck I fit an axe in a satchel?
Slip capsules in a glass, you dizzy rascal
Party staff baffled, askin' where her ass go
In my room, redefinin' the meanin' of black holes
Go on, suck it up; but hurry, I got nuts to bust
And butts to fuck and ups to shut and sluts to fuckin' uppercut
It's OF buttercup: go ahead, fuck with us
Without a doubt, a sure-fire way to get your mother fucked
Ask her for a couple bucks, shove a trumpet up her butt
Play a song, invade a thong, my dick is havin' guts for lunch
As well as supper; then I'll rummage through her ruptured cunt
Found the mustard, fuckin' nosey neighbors notice somethings up
"What you doin'? " Nothin' much, squish out some other stuff
Gotta fuckin' bounce, guess the bouncer's had enough of us
Get up off the pavement, wipe the dirt and vomit off
DopeBoyz hatin' but them faggots is a lotta talk
Cotton soft pussy them Odd niggas is Molotov
Cocktails, fuckin' toss one in your apartment dog
Wolf Gang we ain't barkin', nah
Try talkin' on a blog with your fuckin' arms cut off
Put in a carpet and watch it get auctioned off
The Ace tell Shake's daughter "We're sorry, but papa's gone... bitch"

[Anonymous No.1960852]

>>1959649

If you name your child Tao
All the caucasians will say "No! Way!"

>>1959670

THE BLEAKNESS OF MOTHER HUBBARD'S EMPTY CUPBOARD

imagining my pomeranian possessed by an avidity for some snacky

and i pull on the flared porcelain handle

trying to do what cesar milan would do

oh sorrowful beastie

yes we have no bananas we have no alpo we have not even the ghost

nor the skeleton,

which is what you were curious about,

of anything to nom on.

go suck your own bone, pom.

>>1959688

In these loose-limbed fourteeners I play with my weiner and in sweet silent thought,
I am composing my poem and what do you know I'm two lines in---what have I got?
It's something that's moody and Judy-Blume-blew-me and full of a facebooky gloom
But I feel like it's bardic, lethargic, like, did I say Judy? I meant Harold Bloom.
But I reach for Poe's thesaurus and then like a brontosaurus suddenly a wight,
Or some archaic diction, shows his farded phiz upon this vast and musty tome
Which I use as a lexicon----I to the flyleaf flip
And there is no marginalia scrawled save this sad paucity:
"my name is moot." Oh nevermore! Oh mute inglorious moot,
How I long to plunder your cahiers, and winkle out your innermost heart!

[more to follow]

[Anonymous No.1960871]

>>1959705

Inside Voice
________________________________

To verb a pronoun,
himmingly, but polite,
and framed in tercets.

The assonance that passes
Nowadays for classy. Lazy labor in my
Neighbor's gay-verse garden, gives me hardon.

Now parody is parroty but loud.
The outside voice is ouching, howling vowels
And now an owl cries: throw the towel in, Tao Lin!


>>1959936

That's amusing stuff!
You got any
Monotony
If I'm not bored enough?

[Anonymous No.1960878]

The Turning

The world seems to rotate all the beauty, the good things
away from me,
keeping it just past the horizon.
But she brings it all to me;
lays it in my arms like a warm basket,
wrapped in a gray hoodie
and blue jeans.

[Anonymous No.1960892]

roses are red
violets are blue
suck my dick
and i'll suck yours too

[Pointman !!+QAUf+RigRX No.1960905]

Knuckles down pitched, deep sodden,
in dirty sailin' entrails, knocked down,
ballasted for better, bombarded best
when crests tipped, a-crashin';
The scurvy knights

No, the flag waves under,
signaled on fer' the fall!

Her strong kicks knick, knock floors,
reavealin' empty treasure whores,
swinging the doors, swelled up
from mutinous cups, a-knockin';
A captain's music

Dun' shot our first mate;
he ain't got place with men!

Yon' jailed cores, rotten now,
lax cross the boards, shaped all mad,
deaths of fury, whirlpools spillin'
on fear and loathing, a-killin';
The lost sea crew

Land, ho;
and so onward to hell, dogs.

[Anonymous No.1960912]

>>1959940

Poot

The teacher has the squitters,
and trots in to the outhouse,
on spindled swift-stirred legs.
A loud retort

Echoes from the crescent aperture
Carved into the wooden privy door,
Thunder resounding far above
Musical, the rage of Jove.

The scent is what lingers most for us,
a mummy's winding-sheet of feculence
as though the wind was merely harbinger,
his turd was undeterred.

>>1960727

The Hard-On

Pretty late last night
he forced his hard-headed way
through closed flies;
like a penis that has learned
to unzip a zipper.

[Anonymous No.1960935]

>>1960912

LOL. Consider my poem revised.

[Anonymous No.1960995]

>>1960935

I'm just teasing. I actually thought both of those poems were pretty good.

[Anonymous No.1961006]

>>1960995
This guy >>1959940 here. It's alright - I'm familiar with your parody poems. They're actually the funniest things on /lit/. Plus, they make me look closer at my own style.
>>1960736
>>1960788
Thanks, I appreciate it.

[Anonymous No.1961008]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
I have a knife
Get in the fucking van.

[Behemoth !!Twl3DmqEY/B No.1961045]

The fireworks are wet today.
The show is cancelled.
Go home.

You anticipated this
with a hushed eagerness:
how you see the sparks,
hear the staccato crack,
culmination of fuse and flame
releasing millions of vermilion gushes
fading and dyeing the sky rosy.

I know you expected this, but
the fireworks are wet today.
There will be no show.
Please.
Go home.

[Pointman !LAxuxT565U No.1961060]

>>1961045
>>1961045

What were you trying to get across with this?

[Behemoth !!Twl3DmqEY/B No.1961075]

>>1961060
I'm just the guy who wrote it. You tell me.

[AnarchistSage !VoonmBZbSs No.1961090]

>These are not mine

Anarchist Limericks

The hooker we brand as "illegal"
While arm candy is treated quite regal
Sex just one time
Is really a crime
But marriage for money is legal

It is wrong to meet Mary Jane
But tobacco and booze are fair game
One makes you raspy
The other car-crashy
The other means prison and shame

Of the hard earned money you make
The IRS will skim off it'take
a contract for all time
(which you didn't sign)
Resist, and your skull they will break

Behold the federal reserve
Printing money it feels it deserves
You must play its game
But if you do the same

[AnarchistSage !VoonmBZbSs No.1961098]

>>1961090
A jail term you will serve

[Anonymous No.1961159]

>>1961045

The donkey has the flu tonight.
He's not performing.
No refunds.

You came to Tijuana
for this reverent spectacle:
the aged Mexican hooker,
the burro who will fook her,
culmination of man and beast
as tens of millions, a seminal geyser,
splatters your kleenex with a nebulous blot.

This is not the only place in Tijuana, and
The donkey has the flu tonight.
He's not performing.
However,
The hooker's available.

>>1961090

ANARCHIST LIMERICKS

A handsome young man of the Left
Met a girl whose fellation was deft.
As he came down her throat
He would quizzically note
How Proudhon said that property's theft.

An anarchist whore known as Betty
Who blew both Sacco and Vanzetti
Took no money to jerk men
Like Alexander Berkman,
But thought Karl Marx looked like a yeti.

[Behemoth !!Twl3DmqEY/B No.1961185]

>>1961159

[Pointman !LAxuxT565U No.1961189]

Oh, oh, do one of mine!

[Anonymous No.1961192]

>>1961189

Awright. Hang on.

[Anonymous No.1961274]

>>1961189
>>1960905

While piggishly frigging in rigging, cabin boy
whose bowel was musket-packed wi' broken glass,
Bent over, bussed and Billy-Budd-buggered by
Butt-Pirate King, our (arrrh!)
Our capstan-striding captain---

Lord, he's been circumcised!
O weeping pansy Christ!

Oho, butt-pirates we
Who practice butt-piracy
Here in Butt-Pirate Bay
Where all the porn is gay!

Then swing rope from foc'sle to keel
And dust off the nautical glossary, o mate,
For one-eyed Cupid's arrow puts fire in marrow
And driving a furrow through billowy pillow
Of whitecaps, it's Captain Jack Strap-on
Whose sparrow's a dildo, ahoy!
With all this sex
It's rated X
Not Arrrrrrgh

Ahoy!
Then drink a dram of grog for the cabin boy!

[Pointman !LAxuxT565U No.1961393]

>>1961274
>>1961274
>>1961274

AHAHAHAHAHA

You are going places, you satirist.

[Anonymous No.1961417]

>>1961393

Why thank you. And btw, writing parodies doesn't mean I think the poem is bad.

Yours was actually really interesting: it sort of reminded me of Celan's Todesfuge, if it was a sea-shanty.

[Anonymous No.1961443]

>>1961417
How does that ever remind you of Todesfuge?

[Anonymous No.1961455]

>>1960852
I'm the guy who wrote the one about the abandoned room. This captures that mock darkness quite well although the poem in itself isn't wasn't mean to be "gloomy" except for a few parts. More of showcasing a hermit/recluse.

[Anonymous No.1961471]

Hey satirist guy, I posted this earlier in another thread. Can you do this one?

Written in black and white, a gentle touch that brings to life
An elaborate finger’s movement draws a simple emotion
An impulse of longing, which calms the fears of forgetting
And from the ear’s sensitivity, lingers on a second’s memory
And eternally engraved, written in chords and octaves
A dance upon the grand, hands resurrecting Chopin

And to converse of how I interpret this sonata’s tune
And to reflect on who I am, who understands my truths
And without hesitation, accept them without question
To be a Glaucon, to whom I structure my thoughts on
I project myself, the figure to be, the listener of my speeches

“I hold a sentiment that disappears in a moment’s notice
Like the night given to a moonlit view, I become in tuned
With an elusive thought, that forgoes my daytime love
Of my inner conflict of ideas and desires, like metal in a fire
That refines bronze and iron, my logic and knowledge
I forgo for the romance of seeing life with feeling hands”
And with articulate passion, words said becomes more lasting
Upon the mind that wanders, forgetting its previous wonders

[Anonymous No.1961474]

"And in this moment I live, to now only beauty I give
My intentions and attention, no longer am I inhibited
By my self-conscious nature, I am free to appreciate these
Memories, and reflecting I am no longer gloomy, now optimistic
That I am outside the burden of my attentive consciousness
Like a wind that forces the branches to be strong amid its dance
That steadfast tree, only seeks a gentle breeze, in a calmness to forget
Its strengths that upholds, its life’s continual and eternal purpose”
And as I continue to listen, to these words spoken, that’s often laden
With a rhythm that becomes to me an aphorism of my contemplations

“Of life now I can only see, that the only thing to be had is the beauty
Of living, despite hardships, despite injustice, only to live is truly
The sight to appreciate, in a reality that I will never understand
And to accept this as I am, and not to contemplate fate nor chance
As defining my very being, only that I am simply here, that I exist”

In the mind’s deepest sanctums, only revealed is the noise from within
How limited I am, when speaking to them, what I have came to understand
To speak truthfully and freely yet to know that I am never in the company
Of ones who can truly appreciate these strange states defining my soul’s face
And so I speak to myself and write to them, I speak a certain way, enunciate
With tones and pitches, but write inevitably vague, words free to interpret

[Anonymous No.1961479]

>>1961443

Just in terms of form: the line and stanza arrangement, and the play of sounds across those lines.

Imagine reading Todesfuge out loud without knowing any German. And then trying to write something similar, but rather than actual fugue-structure (with recurring motifs) you substitute internal rhymes. That's all I meant.

>>1961455

And that one was actually really hard to parody. I didn't really do it justice, probably because it's a narrative poem. A better parody would give more attention to the story it tells.

FWIW yours reminded me of Wordsworth's The Ruined Cottage (also a narrative poem, with similar tone). Or a little bit of Larkin's Mr Bleaney, maybe.

[Anonymous No.1961485]

>>1961471

Sure! :D

Actually I posted in your earlier thread with a note about marking the caesuras. But I'm happy to do a parody.

[Anonymous No.1961487]

>>1961485
Thanks for that advice. I realized how messed up my use of caesuras were. I just love using commas for some reason.

[Anonymous No.1961503]

The Call

I'd been crushing on Sonia like stoking a kiln
and my nail-bitten hands were a horror in clay
as I pawed at the rotary dial on the sill
the receiver was practically oceans away
when I broached the exchange I was staggered to hear
dread Cthulhu still whispering into my ear:

“Um, hello? Am I through to the Residence Greene?”
“Well you've reached a green residence, know what I mean?”

“It's a city of emerald dreams, held afloat
in a blue cage of sighs that rocks jaded and coy.
I'm the god of this place, I'm the keeper of voice;
I'm the dark-matter-smile on a lonely boy's face.
And whenever you call I'll be here on the line
As a doubtful expression of conscious design.”

And he asked “Has the truth set your courage off ease?”
And I answered “Not really. Is Sonia there please?”

Then a bubbling moan - like the bursting of waves -
was left cursing the phone firmly set in my grasp,
and as Sonia said “Sure!”, and the dates became days,
all my fears were compressed like a tongue through a clasp.
I released it one-handed with lustrous esprit;
In his nightmares Cthulhu is dreaming of me.

[Anonymous No.1961514]

>>1961487

Measured and marked on staves, the fingers that play the notes
Are dangling this modifier, then stick it back in the bench
And then unspool pure feeling, while the mind summons concentration
As the ear attunes itself, and marks the shift from tonic to diatonic
And thinks of a lot of jokes, mostly about girls who play viola,
As the music unwinds itself like a sweater whose thread is pulled by Ravel,

As if he were beating a dead infanta with a metronome made of latex
And then sat down to compose, as she decomposed, his stately pavane
And I find the readiest way, to start my eighth consecutive line with A.
Would that I were Odysseus, sailing past the loud wailing sirens,
His ears as I wish mine would be, when listening to this poetry----
Plugged with wax, insensate, and prone to monologue.

"I open quotation, then speak like Wallace Stevens,
If he had been kicked by a horse, and spoke with careful cadence,
Chanting to farmer and rustic that yes, I can count to potato.
But of all that is said, what more can be left unsaid?
I feel no need to try, but instead to promote rhetoric by exhaustion.
And if I don't exist, you'll be surprised to discover I peed on your carpet."

And in the mind's wooliest sweater, can Ravel's music unravel
The tone of these vacuous words, which take a long time to read?

[Anonymous No.1961527]

>>1961503

When I first met Sonia at Comic Con,
she had not yet disturbed economic con-
ditions worldwide
with a blood-dimmed tide
by schlicking to the Necronomicon.

[Anonymous No.1961539]

>>1961527

Bravo! Encore!

[Anonymous No.1961588]

>>1961539

When Sonia and I first caressed,
I vowed I would fuck her the best.
And when I had finished
Her vigor diminished
And I had to call Herbert West.

[Anonymous No.1963057]

>>1961527
>>1961588

who wrote those limericks? those are really good