BEST OF /LIT/

[Anonymous No.5333203]

Good evening my fair Lady and Gentlemen, I hereby decree we have a "Best of /lit/" thread as sanctioned by your faithful and loyal magistrate, me, Anonymous. In my records exist a small portion of the higher quality goods this lovely board has produced, and unto you all I share them. I politely ask all of those among you who have saved a work of your liking or two to come forth and submit said works into this ordained scroll of a thread.

May we all be as critical as possible.

[Anonymous No.5333211]

on the subj3ct of enlightenment:

add void & sublet
regretfully cracked
ions of OLANDZ@PINE
tablets we forget to take
at stabtime. with pricked eyez
the onus on us as we
grab vines & bring bus stops
all wrong with us,
but first bust
my skull open!

why don’t You re-get
three shaken-down
dreamlines as we
lie about mispreened
hair jetting out,
setting rusted bodies
about missing
the gray train
by eons, while
neon cars drive
20 on the ugly
cagedway + say:
“hey bookmongers,
we got nothin’ for
ya fools! why are ya
so boastful anyways?”

"beats me…", we
reply as we chew
up the dog
eared trees we
didn’t earn (stolen from
a clothes-down library
in devils lake,
NB — it’s hella
buggin’ there
just fyfly. they stole
my face for 7 dollar$,
sold my soul 4 five)
no diced cloves,
enclosed, we shovel down
stoves heated by
alphabet soup. never
microwave carbon, folks!
the jokes on you,
so they sway…

[Anonymous No.5333220]

For thirteen years and eighty-seven days the Clark boy hadn’t spoken, and the last three had seen his father turn blind. When the boy came to his bedside to tend the wound, his father’s hand would rise and grip his wrist while the other fumbled at the table for nothing in particular, and in sitting upright so abruptly he cricked his back and swung his arms as if he were threatened with being tied down. A mingling of here and hell: perhaps he looked from his eye lost to the fire and smoke, and the smothering ash descending, always descending. Derangement from his own inexplicable breath. The wound itself was the same as ever. When his father settled, the boy would dab with a cloth around his empty socket and the red contractures down his cheek and the half a piece of nose still left, and treated him with whiskey and sometimes morphine, and dabbed the other eye with a different cloth and iced it, but the blindness was sure, and there was nought to stop it. By and by, he watched the last eye fill with blood and his father look toward the ceiling and never again anywhere else. He took the arm scratched and dusty like dejected shrapnel itself and dotted and dashed his fingers across the skin and told his father it’d all be just fine, and that perhaps it was best he didn’t see, and this was perhaps the easiest and most fluent conversation they’d ever shared.

[Anonymous No.5333224]

Here's the tumblr created for the so-called "Nameless Irishman" that used to post his lovely works here: http://4poet.tumblr.com/

[Anonymous No.5333233]

>read it all

[Anonymous No.5333238]

Masquerade

Remember how we used to dance?
when every night was for romance
I'd put on makeup, you'd wear black,
we never thought of looking back
we'd meet in dark exotic places,
where no one knew our names or faces
you'd scowl and mutter, I'd just smile
we'd share the mystery for awhile
the others never understood
it wasn't about the bad and good,
we only had to be together
my crumpled velvet to your leather
my tousled locks, your dark good looks
Like something from the comic books
You'd brood and I would play the clown
I'd laugh, and you would always frown
my silly giddy point of view
could never win a grin from you.
But now I stare out through the glass
and watch the empty evenings pass
I smile above my cup of tea
and wonder if you think of me
and nights, as strong and rich as wine
when I was yours and you were mine.
I dont expect to win your trust
but there's no law that says I must
just sit here waiting for the grave!
and you, live like you're in a cave,
away from life and cool night air
and all the things we used to share
someday I may walk out of here
my cries may find some friendly ear
I'll repent of every rule I broke
and tell them it was all a joke.
and some night find you on some street
just like the ones where we would meet
we'll walk together through the night
and all the wrongs will be put right
we'll do all the things we never did
when we kept our names and faces hid.
and in one of those dim smoky bars
I'll tell you how I got these scars.

[Anonymous No.5333251]

And here's post-post-meta/phuc/kolsti's tumblr: http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/

[Anonymous No.5333258]

In African Darkness


I discover you sleeping
out in red sandy wastelands
where the trees cast no shadows
and the moon haunts the skies

like the eye of Nepenthe.
I have walked from the river
where the silent hawks hover
and the evening sun dies

and through mists of mosquitos
The sentinel Ibis
all hollow-boned hunger
awakes in the weeds

apprehending the creak
of the second plague's minions
and stalks upon stilts
mid the crocodile reeds

I pretend to purloin you
from some servent of Sebek
all kohl-eyed and cruel
a mummified hag

in quick-fingered silence
when I found your guard sleeping
skin thin as the side
of a brown paper bag

and i felt that my heart
was as light as a feather
blown out like the desert
and empty of sin

and in innocent slumber
you kicked back the covers
and I troubled Bast's priestess
and tucked you back in.

But the eye of Osiris
has found the horizon,
so I'll go start the coffee
while you towel your hair

and down in the kitchen
the old cat wanders lonesome
and follows a sunbeam
under your chair.

[Anonymous No.5333265]

Cleveland is
a drunken town
the sidewalks
and the sewers drown
in weary light,
and broken cloud
the streets are rolled
up in a shroud
of close and troubled
waking dreams
the steam grates
bleeding at the seams
a swagger laid off
by the merchant marine
props a gray alley wall,
like a sidelined machine.
and I have stood
outside the bars
and watched the furtive,
straggling cars
at three A.M.
as they struggle past
to find their home
and rest at last.
And seen the vagrant
wavering moon
that rose too late
and set too soon
and shed too little
hazy light
upon the sodden
Cleveland night

[Anonymous No.5333275]

[Anonymous No.5333280]

>/lit/'s most efficient thread ever

[Anonymous No.5333296]

Curious zipping, circulating rabbit:
you have quite the following!
All of whom are not rabbits,
for rabbits do not chase rabbits,
but carrots (or on Easter, eggs).
So bunnies? Maybe on snow, no,
you're chased by gray blurs
and blending beastly barks
that wag up and down like old TVs,
but you wouldn't know that silly rabbit;
you wouldn't know who tricks are for
or the workings of creamy Aquaphor.
Nay, neigh you do not like your cousins:
the equidistant relatives of the jockey-makers:
(I'm no biologists, but I am a) slave to biology!
So please never evolve wiry rabbit
because then you might be able to tell me
that you don't evolve, not unlike sharks,
and a bit like the spin-wheel,
because life is not your strong suit.

[Anonymous No.5333305]

The sterile air
still makes me cringe
I said I flossed
so I must binge.

The humming drill
reels my nerves
while I can't ignore
the nurse's curves.

"Beautiful smile,"
the dentist smirks
but I bet he says that
about all his works.

So I take the baggie
and say goodbye
dreading my return
next July.

[Anonymous No.5333323]

Anal Sex Is The Best:

All of your orifices,
notwithstanding the anus,
are portals of bliss,
love and life.

Sadly, you and your
entrails know no end by me, no
X-ray visionless end.

I sit alone and ponder
solemnly your smell.

Together we reap ecstasy,
holding on with sphincteral
enlivened encumbrance.

Before we return,
ending what we
started, I finish inside you,
thinking you had sharted.

[Anonymous No.5333340]

Linda came over
We tried to talk
But my mouth was full of her cunt
And her mouth was full of Vodka
Those commies knew something
I wanted to go to the races
So I mounted her
I wanted to watch the boxing
So I called her a fucking whore
She nearly knocked me out
I love you
I came over Linda

[Anonymous No.5333348]

Jamal slapped a slurp of suz and cobbled down the slimeslat to gribble on some gooze n griz. Z-boy done copped a clock on Jamal mid-trip-like and eyed down the britches with a sly gromp of griddle. "Get over here nigga," jammered Z. Jamal caught fly of the trick and bumped and bounced on jimmying his fiddle in his rocket pocket, fixing to fix it. Turtling like a jackrabbit, Jamal jumped jiggy-like, rolling crewside on the westside walkin' and talkin' and gawkin' like a bluebird, keepin' fly and dry. Holdin' stacks of slats of scratch, he figged why ain't jumbo insurance be packed and strapped, so he did. Jiving cold turkey, Jamal done flip a flop and turn on his tale to Z. Sliding hands out with a full fledged glicking, clicking glock, boom went the dynamite, rocking the socks off the Z-man, pulling up dem trousers with a slap. Z tumbled and rumbled and crumbled to the 'ment, crying like a river, boltin' big burch with the 9-milla milli lurch. Church bells crack-a-lackin', Jamal kept stackin'.

[Anonymous No.5333362]

bump

[Anonymous No.5333691]

>>5333348
Write something new you retarded faggot.

[Anonymous No.5333867]

>>5333691

I think you've misunderstood the point of the thread. I'm the OP, I didn't write this, I just saved it because I liked it and posted it here because this is supposed to be an anthology of /lit/'s best creative works.

[Anonymous No.5333938]

>>5333233

life becomes a little easier once you come to recognize the insane, desperate, ever-present fantasies of other people

[Anonymous No.5333963]

posting based peanuts guy

[Anonymous No.5333978]

>>5333233
That was good. Also check em

[Anonymous No.5333981]

>no chopan
get it together /lit/
>>/lit/thread/S4610502

[Anonymous No.5335484]

Some Rules for Dreaming

I cannot emphasize these words enough:
take nothing.
They are too real for earth, too dear, the dust
from off your shoes will leave bright stains
upon the simple memory of earth
do no forget that you can fly
and never take a staircase that descends
eat nothing: taste no wine, no kiss, no thought
Beware of passing mirrors in the dark.
exchange no words, remember to forget.
and never meet the eyes of strangers, friends
reflections, portraits, or the dead. Beware
of the familiar strange, the unremembered child
forgotten brother, unbuilt home, yourself.
trust not the dead, but seek their company.
There is a cold bright comfort in the lost.
and standing on a hill upon one foot,
lift up the other too, and hover there,
a yard above the earth, a frail balloon.
and when you leave, when bells or words or light
recall you from the bright and real and void
take nothing, not a sign or sound or face
I cannot emphasize those words enough.

[Anonymous No.5335752]

The tone is wretched
the style obscene
you've pissed in the frothy
hippocrene


The scansion's tortured
the rhyme scheme twisted
the metaphors trite:
the form limp wristed

when inspiration strikes
next time
strike back,
and spare us
from your rhyme

free us from
the drek you parrot,
and choke your muse
with a fucking garrote

[Anonymous No.5336559]

When Jesus walks in Belfast
He wears his collar up
he keeps his blessings to himself
and stoops before his cup

when Jesus comes through Belfast
he spends his wisdom dear
And when his name is spoken
he makes as not to hear

He keeps well back in company
and shuts his fuckin mouth
and when he can he does his trade
a measure further south

When Jesus walks in Belfast
He keeps his cap pulled low
his step away he quickens
and those returning slow

He'd have a merry welcome
if he should take the whim
to ask the sods he suffered for
to suffer more of him.

[Anonymous No.5337008]

The prices we put on our prawns are predictably
purged by the peers in the pool of particular
pricks being picky about their pecualiar
pre/post-traumatic pronounced permutations
of polypersistance prolonging the pride
of the pompous imprudence that buggered the pie
in the sky when policemen came by and preposterous
plots of plasticities pryed and we prayed
for the player of pride to survive but we planned it all
wrong and wound up all deprived of our privacy

proven placebo effects count the fluttering
fart of a faulty device and the flailing
of flirting and fuckable eyes or the freckles
or pickles or prawns or the pricks of peculiar
prudent persistance to parse the pertaining
prescription of pudding and putaway paltry
per se and the peep of the pooper the poop
of the peeper goes deeper than proven by pipers
of popelines and papers of peeplanes or popes
of the pleb in the presence of pampers
proclaming and pointing out pints of a kind
that remind you of porno and prepuberty
and the flipperty liberty flops when you find
that the flaps on your fluke are just shutters and blinds
fornicating your mind with a fling of the flam
and your flim is a zam zala bim zalabama

te llaman las llamas watch out it's a frap
and it's fripping the fog of your flacid fahluhlah
it's flipping the flag on your flickery faliant
fartherlydoodle forsake it ferfriessakes
it's far beyond frotherly friction it's frommedly
fringing upon your frecknitions and frooming
fugnations the frad of the frith of the fred

of the froth if the floth of the flath in the fleeth

[Anonymous No.5337439]

>>5333251
Kolsti is a faggot

[Anonymous No.5337504]

>>5333224
Too cutesy and tidy.

[Anonymous No.5337512]

>>5333233
Fuck that was a read and a half.

Also, dem seeexy treeeps.

[Anonymous No.5337549]

bump

[Anonymous No.5337630]

i been outta socks for 3 days and
im wearing my last pair of undies so
looks like tomorrow ill be commando

[Anonymous No.5337650]

>>5337439
faggot

[Anonymous No.5337718]

>>5333224
>http://4poet.tumblr.com/
I'm liking this a lot

[Anonymous No.5337735]

>>5333251
That tubgirl piece is brilliant.

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/95595878147/postmetapainbrush-episode-2-tub-girl

[Anonymous No.5337755]

I need someone to link to the thread featuring a guy who got put on the sex offenders registry or something after dating some crazy girl, including exerts of a vaguely racist picture book he wrote as a child.

[Anonymous No.5337761]

>>5333233
holy shit

[Anonymous No.5337779]

>>5337735
Good God it's like a normalfag version of E Unibus Pluram and it's brilliant

[Anonymous No.5337780]

>>5333224
God this shit is so great. Not groundbreaking, but just really enjoyable.

[Anonymous No.5337788]

>>5337755
I don't know anything about the rest but, that the "Jahookie" one?

[Anonymous No.5337794]

>>5337788
Yeah, the Jahookie one. It was part of this massive chain of threads this one guy posted. Was great stuff.

[Anonymous No.5337795]

>>5337735
Damn it Kolsti did it again. The parentheses are a little bit much but he's clearly a genius if he can take that picture and make that.

[Anonymous No.5337805]

>>5337779
It's smart and fun, but more Joel Stein that Pynchon.

[Anonymous No.5337813]

>>5337805
If David Foster Wallace grew up with a 140 character limit, he'd he Kolsti Nguyen.

[Anonymous No.5337815]

>>5333280
I see your thread and raise you mine.

[Anonymous No.5337822]

>>5337795
It's a bit formulaic tho
>parentheses overload
>self-centered irony
>allusions to the awkwardness of coming of age along with the internet
>jokes about sex that aren't really sex jokes

He's already got a style but he might soon become encroached in it.
I wonder how many pieces like that he can write now that he's mastered the trick.

[Anonymous No.5337823]

>>5337813
I think you're overstating things a little, but i agree with the sentiment. I too enjoy his tumblr.

[Anonymous No.5337827]

>>5337813
Isn't DFW basically Joel Stein with more anxiety and references ?

And honestly
>maximalist writer
>with a 140 characters limit

that wouldn't bode well for Kolski.

[Anonymous No.5337835]

>>5337822
You grow out of that style.

[Anonymous No.5337840]

>>5337822
I think the fact that he writes about coming of age is excusable considering he himself is literally coming of age as we speak.

[Anonymous No.5337853]

>>5337835
His poetry is completely different and arguably even better than his prose. Plus his Yeezus thing seems pretty distinct.

[Anonymous No.5337860]

>>5333220
I remember this post. Definitely deserving.

[Anonymous No.5337864]

>>5337794

[Anonymous No.5337871]

>>5337840
Of course. I just canted to point out all those pieces start to feel a bit interchangeable after you've read two of them.
But I agree that what I read of his poetry is better.

>>5337835
You're probably right. I feel he already has quite some practice behind himself, for his age that's really good.

[Anonymous No.5337898]

>>5337871
Wait how many parentheses-heavy prose pieces does he have on tumblr? Also, I think that's just his style. DFW has pretentiousness and footnotes, Tao Lin has autism and neo-Hemingway, Hemingway deletes all his adjectives.

[Anonymous No.5337956]

>>5337735
I'm a little late to the party but Kolsti really deserves all the adoration he gets here. He's Tao Lin mixed with DFW with a little Joycean prose flair and Faulkner's lack of restraint.

[Anonymous No.5338000]

>>5337898
>>5337835
... especially under praise, trust me.

[Anonymous No.5338043]

>>5338000
Listen trips man, he's well aware his style will wear out fast. It'll probably get him notoriety, though. That's what he cares about. Gimmicks stand out.

[Anonymous No.5338068]

>>5337853
Oh shit he wrote the Yeezus pasta too? Prodigy.

[Anonymous No.5338104]

>>5337956
That's some strong praise. I'll check him out.

[Anonymous No.5338168]

>>5337735
Is his collab partner any good?

[Anonymous No.5338205]

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/95583346520/you-are-art

He's messianic as fuck for a supposedly humble kid.

[Anonymous No.5338212]

>>5338205
i'm not seeing anything but a bright and articulate undergrad journalism type here. what am i missing? can someone break it down for me?

[Anonymous No.5338218]

>>5338212
/lit/ creams itself over neurotic, socially unskilled inspirational speaker types. The kid is articulate but what he writes about is almost vapid and could easily come from a PoMo self help book.

[Anonymous No.5338219]

>tumblr shills

Seriously, /lit/?

[Anonymous No.5338238]

>>5338212
he's the definition of gimmicky, and a handful of /lit/ anons think he's a genius for using academic words

[Anonymous No.5338239]

>>5338218
http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/95059572605/if-i-ever-start-a-hip-hop-group-im-gonna-call-it
He's a witty kid

[Anonymous No.5338246]

>>5338212
He's still pretty young for and undergrad, and has a variety in style over his whole work. But /lit does overrate him though.

[Anonymous No.5338248]

>Fuck “a picture’s worth a thousand words.” A word conveys a thousand images.
Is this original? It so that's pretty damn poignant for an off-hand answer.

[Anonymous No.5338257]

>>5338246
He's going into his senior year of high school and he's demonstrated that he's both a crafty technician who can write well in multiple styles. A few of those styles are unique (possibly gimmicky, however) and he's a genuinely likable kid. He's not a dick like Tao or Shia.

[Anonymous No.5338300]

>>5338257
So you agree with me ? I don't think Tao or Shia are decent benchmarks for being a prodigy.

[Anonymous No.5338317]

>>5338300
I think he's better than Tao already and he hasn't even graduated high school. I don't think he'll be a literary giant like some think, but I think a DFW-Tao-Faulkner mix is reasonable.

[Anonymous No.5338333]

>>5338317
I'd agree about DFW-Tao for now. Faulkner seems to be thrown a bit too early here. If he goes well, that's a reachable goal.

[Anonymous No.5338346]

>>5333233

Wow I came into this thread to see if anyone would post my stuff and it's the third fucking post. Awesome. The fact that someone liked this enough to SCREENSHOT IT and then re-post it is unbelievably flattering. Thank you so much. And the likes for my ALS ice bucket challenge facebook status update have been going through the roof over the last few hours. Can tonight get any better?

[Anonymous No.5338359]

>>5338317
This shit isn't any better than a vice article. Shit, it could be titled "thoughts on tub girl in my youth".

[Anonymous No.5338394]

>>5338346
There are links to tumblr in this thread, please blog there.

[Anonymous No.5338482]

>>5338394

Don't know if your putting down my autobiographical writing style or actually wanting /lit/-related updates from me. I don't think I would want to maintain a blog and I'm trying to get published so I don't post very much online anyway.

[Anonymous No.5338501]

>>5338359
You realize he's famous on /lit/ for his fiction and poetry and that tub girl thing got posted yesterday.

[Anonymous No.5338543]

>>5338501
I'll admit his Phuc Stevenson passage is absolutely brilliant.

[Anonymous No.5338555]

>>5338543
Why do you think it's absolutely brilliant?

[Anonymous No.5338617]

Well, the Irish guy has made classical form his bitch and has a wry, cynical humor that promises great things if he gets control of his flashiness.. Anybody know anything about him?

[Anonymous No.5338770]

>>5333981

That was an incredible read. Did he continue his story.

[Anonymous No.5338858]

>>5338555
I think people get so offended by the audacity of his prose that they miss the theme or willfully ignore it because they resent him for his prose. In like four sentences he presents very interesting ideas about the ineptitude of not only postmodernism, but New Sincerity and metamodernism as well. I mean come on, of sincerity he said "the opposite of affectation would more accurately be isolation, as affectation is inherent to socialization, or perhaps even suicide, as it's sort of inherent to existence... ." Then he said sincerity is just as troubling to define as affectation because "with intention ... comes an inherent sincerity."

His prose is flashy and a little silly but he's incredibly thematically forthright and manages to touch on every relevant aspect of the contemporary experience and joke about it while making pretty bold statements about art and human nature. The Phuc Stevenson passage basically says "New Sincerity a shit because there wasn't ever an old sincerity." If he has a novel or two as good as that passage in him, the kid will go down as a genius.

[Anonymous No.5338899]

>>5338858
And he's 17? I think part of it is that people are used to show, don't tell smoke and mirrors in heavily thematic fiction. The themes of Wallace or Camus or Dosto or Tao or Pynchon could be distilled and directly stated, but the people in the business of shrouding things in 1100 page "message is the medium, it's long because that's an ironic embodiment of the theme" packages get angry at this kind of directness. The Sparknotes/Twitter/Emoji generation is refreshingly open about things.

[Anonymous No.5338937]

>>5333220

What was the response for this when it was first posted? Getting a serious John Williams vibe off of it.

[Anonymous No.5338954]

>>5338899
Basically this. People have an almost childish belief in the ineffability of depth that when big ideas are spelled out for them they get angry.

[Anonymous No.5339044]

>>5338954
The kid's a genius. He's a maximalist with minimalist tendencies.

[Anonymous No.5339111]

>>5338858
Damn, Kolsti knows his shit.

[Anonymous No.5339121]

>>5333203

P1. >>But murder you'll forgive me, won't you ?<<. >>Sorry ?<<, the policeman turned over to have a quick look at Norton's face. Norton ignored him. He was too busy asking himself - me - if I was going to do anything to help him.

P2. The policeman was now sitting right in front of Norton, >>I just skimmed over the documents my colleagues sent me and as it seems you've murdered your wife. However - and this has to be your lucky day - our system says that you are not guilty. You can leave this room as a free man, Mr. Norton.<<.

P3. If I can forgive him, surely you can forgive me for what I did.

[Anonymous No.5339140]

>>5339044
This explains his love of Yeezus.

[Anonymous No.5339202]

I think the problem with the internet is you see what future geniuses are like before they earn their adoration. People are wowed by novelty and potential. Kolsti is to literature what Anthony Davis is to the NBA. He's already very good and he very well could be an all-time great, but as of now he's more potential than anything.

[Anonymous No.5339209]

>>5338858
>>5338899
god you people are disgusting

[Anonymous No.5339240]

>>5339209
>jealousy

[Anonymous No.5339247]

>>5339240
book critics are gross-tier
trying to be a writing critic on an anonymous image board? i cant even come up with a tier name for that.
hell has a special place reserved for people like you

[Anonymous No.5339252]

>>5339247
Someone asked why I liked something. I told them.

[Anonymous No.5339285]

>>5339202
This is an apt assessment.

[Anonymous No.5339583]

Now that the dust has settled can we all agree that Kolsti Nguyen is a genius?

[Anonymous No.5339636]

lel, Kolsti is literally lurking this thread right now.

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/

>>5339583
speak of the devil.

[Anonymous No.5339666]

>>5337956
go to bed Kolsti

[Anonymous No.5339703]

>>5339636
It links to his Instagram. We're in for a goldmine.

[Anonymous No.5339760]

Ahahahaha, look at how ugly his sister is, untermenschen genes for sure.

[Anonymous No.5339799]

>>5333233
That I can't relate to any of that makes me feel more alone than I've ever felt in my lief

[Anonymous No.5340500]

>>5339583

I agree that for /lit/ he's got some clever and entertaining essays, and that there may be potential there for more, but he's not DFW, he's not even a young Harlan Ellison, though the essays Harlan did in the sixties is close to what it looks like he's trying to do. I really don't see genius here, but you say he's young and that might take a decade or so to develop, so you may be more perceptive there. And if he really does post his stuff on /lit/ and you guys save it, why not post some more here where we can read it? that's what the thread is for right?

[Anonymous No.5340719]

>>5338770

Bump 4 interest

[Anonymous No.5341020]

>tfw no one posts your work
>tfw you wouldn't either

[Anonymous No.5341034]

My soul breathes out
where the skater boys ride
down the dusty grey streets
by the tattoo parlor.

Angry muscles tearing at the breeze,
or sitting solid as a storm cloud
on the horizon,
beneath the locust trees,
sweating in the afternoon shadows.
drinking apple juice form a red cup.

I am that dark shape
beside the swingsets.
hands in pockets,
watching the bottle pass,
from lip to lip,
from hand to brown hand.
I am the silent witness,
pretending to read,
brushing the hair from her eyes,
blown by the same breeze,
that dries your wide backs,
that cools your smooth faces,
that carries your scent,
soap and sunscreen,
prespiration, to where I am,
pretending to read,
watching.
saving this moment
of your lives.

[Anonymous No.5341048]

>>5341020

> that feel when someone actually does post your work which you wrote when you were nineteen but kolsti posted his material in the same feedback thread and became known as the teenage prodigy because he's two years younger than you

it's an obscure feel, really

[Anonymous No.5341056]

"The Superman is a chimera; a will-o'-the wisp; a spook, if you will. He implies that there exists beyond mankind an embodiment of that which mankind ought to be; that he ought to strive towards, a set of often contradictctory characterisitics that somehow encompass aspirtation and are deserving of imitation, even if actual emulation is undesireable. To become superman is no more possible than to catch the shadow that flies before us in the morning across the grass. And the superman IS a shadow: he is a bold and powerful sillhouette, without detail, exaggerated in size and deformed in proportion. Unsubject to the physical, the emotional, the cognitive, seemingly invincible, yet vanishing when a bright light is thrown upon him. He is the tight-rope walker of the Zarathustra story: Brightly lit and boldy clad, performing astonishing feats at a distance, appearing to fear not even death in his gaudy dress, his daring leaps and his bright flashing cape. But the acrobat is not the superman: he walks among us in the shops and stalls and sits at his beer with mortal men; his radiant courage and superhuman grace no longer evident: his cape draped gracelessly over his chair."

"In life it is often thus with heroes as well: The general who won every battle and conquered armies far greater than his own is seen on the parade of his triumph as a short bald man in a cravat with a hat like a swiss garland. The author a dozen inspiring chivalrous poems is a quavering old man with a narrow nose and owlish spectacles.

The bold highwayman, terror of the mail coach road and darling of the penny press when captured is seen to be a lank-haired poacher with a kercheif and a fowling piece: the dashing silk-clad ruffian of our imagination escapes, never to come to the gallows: he goes on to be embodied by other men, like an ill-fitting harlequinade.
It is as in the stories of Pirate Clegg, where the sinister smuggler, clad in rags like a scarecrow, inhabits the marsh like a demon, haunting the fens and quagmires of our imagination, his feats and his daring, his outrages and flourishes seem those of some hellish phantom. yet when the hero is unmasked, when the sacrecrow's mask falls from his face at last, he is found to be only the Vicar of Dymchurch, dressed in stuff from the poor-box to disguise his vestments and bands. Again and again, the superman we we fear and adore, that we worship and aspire towards is found to be, when stripped of his cape and leotard, only a man like ourselves: no superhuman goblin, no tatterdemalion from hell's heart. merely a mild-mannered clark, from Kent."

[Anonymous No.5341063]

>>5341048
Don't feel too bad. Kolsti is all froth at this point. Lots of shiny surface but very little depth. Like Tao Lin really. He has the pseudo profundity of the dorm room bullshit session.

Not to say he won't grow into his image: lots of guys have before. Read Bradbury's old fanzines, or Ellison's juvenalia and you can see the same sort of thing. Some insight, some thought, and a lot of flash and needless complexity. But give him tme to pare down the pesrsiflage, weed out the obfuscation and express himself as a person, and less insistently as an individual, and I think we may see pretty good things from him in ten years or so, and maybe from you, as well.

[Anonymous No.5341067]

So Jesus said, "Fuck this. I see how this goes.
I'll put down all my wisdom in simple, clear prose,
and the next thing you know, they'll all start to debate it.
They'll parse it, rephrase it, construe and translate it.

before you say "amen", there'll be fifty six versions,
some full of praising, some stuffed with aspersions,
They'll say I said this, about that or some other.
Have me walking on water, with a pure virgin mother.
Or calling for war, or for peace or for love.
Or promising everyone bliss up above.

So I'm just going to speak; you can do as you will.
But I won't sign so much as a grocery bill.
Some admire written records: If you want one, go to it.
have Matthew or Mark or that Luke fellow do it."

[Anonymous No.5341090]

Them gods are a slippery business
I'll tell you right now for a fact
they claim that you're made on their model
then condemn every natural act

Take Yahweh, or Allah, or Marx now
they'll tell you a thing plain as day
then when you think you are sure of your grounding
they'll jerk the whole muddle away

if you're lit'ral, they meant metaphoric
you interpret, they laid it out plain
It almost makes a body euphoric
how they point up their lessons with pain:

They promise you virgins and heaven
or the fair equal treatment of men
But they trip you with their dialectics
and they serve you a full score of sins


Then it's right on back into Gehenna,
or right back on back to the wheel,
another year in purgatory,
or pushing that rock up that hill.

they tell you its for your own good,now
they say it'll help you be strong
but it's always the pious that suffers,
it's always believer's that's wrong.

so steer clear of the ones that work wonders
the makers of heaven and earth
it's worth life and soul if you never get told
about them with immaculate birth.

stick right to your plow and your spinning,
and leave holy matters alone
with them losing is better than winning
and you're better a bench, than a throne."

[Anonymous No.5341226]

>>5333238

This is great.Very simple and elegant: I love it.

I generally like my poetry to be extremely metaphorical and rich in imagery, but sometimes simple poems like this one are very moving. Congrats to the author.

[Anonymous No.5341476]

higgledy piggledy
saddam's market strategy
positioning suffered a mild
contretemps
long on blood,
while more practical
mesopotamians
executed a short
limit order,
in hemp

[Anonymous No.5341612]

The Mountain Ash

Mark how it leans toward the sun
a hundred winters,
and one more spring
found the moth-pale green flutterring
of the single samara.
burdened with life and strength
and the future,
a place between these two great stones

A century unchallenged
the great roots grasped the hill,
the wide arches of the great gray limbs
reached upward, and drank the light,
breathed the wind,
and through a hundred winters,
bore the frost.

now upon the hillside,
myriad children, flying out and rising,
raising their own pale butresses
towards the sky. by axe undaunted.
and down beneath the hollows
of the roots of the one great ancestor,
trapping the vernal mysteries
of spring and air, sun and water
the memory of the seed.

[Anonymous No.5341645]

I could not leave in April
for the sun was in your hair
and the lilac and the woodbine
breathed your scent into the air

In May the hawthorn blossomed
and the bee-hum filled my ears
and I would not dare disturb it
with a sigh, much less a tear

I could not leave in June, when
Churchbells carolled in the streets
with so many hands entwining
and hearts quickening their beats

July was all afevered
and the heat was in my veins
and I could not then abandon
what had always healed my pains

August brought his doldrum,
and the sleepy noontime showers
and his dry and slothful spirit
made me linger past my hour

In the waning of September
a departing skein of geese
had my wandring blood arising
and I thought to seek release

But October crept upon me
as I filled my old ruck sack,
and the rose he brought into your cheek
soon had me turning back

November had the sour wind
and cut through my thin shirt,
and a fireside seems so cozy
with the rustle of a skirt

In December snows delayed me
and the waning of the year
made me thoughtful of old heartaches
and loth to add a tear.

In the new year, January
chilled the empty sunless miles
and I did not like departing
from the comfort of your smiles.

February lay a cloak
of silence on the land
I felt the warmth of your embrace,
your patient gentle hand

By March I dared not venture forth
without you at my side
So come May I'll make you promises;
In June, I'll make a bride.

[Anonymous No.5341657]

The Zombie

"I think you may be dead, John said
I don't believe I am said I,
I'm hale and sound
down to the ground,
and feel alright to struggle on
i don't believe that's true, said john
I see about your face john said
a certain lack of grace said john
to dire to dwell upon, said john
that hearkens of the dead, john said
and a certain cast of eye, he noted
bespeaks of one to brains devoted.
so i intend to flee, said he
and so fled as he said, you see
as from the living dead, viz.: me"

[Anonymous No.5341707]

This thread is equal parts inspiring and demotivating.

[Anonymous No.5341708]

>>5341707
elaborate?

[Anonymous No.5341719]

>>5341708
inspiring in the sense that there's a wide range of beautiful language and creativity all around, but demotivating in the sense that my writing pales in comparison.
Threads like this are good though, it allows me to set the bar higher for myself.

[Anonymous No.5341724]

>>5341719
Most of the stuff in this thread is good, but only in the sense that it's competent or interesting in a few aspects. If you devote yourself to writing and studying writing for a few years you should expect to arrive around this point.

[Anonymous No.5341733]

>>5341719
valid, I guess. I like these threads because I learn new words.

[Anonymous No.5341760]

You have broken the horizon
the darkness impends
And out of the heavens as silence descends
flies the Black Racer,
across the blind earth
the herald of heaven
the weigher of worth
We have scaled up to the summit
all tracks now lead down
from the bright empty future
across the fast fading ground
rides the Black Racer
The forger of fate
the sealer of sadness
the hour has grown late
No more tears on your pillow
the last has been shed
from the last lost tomorrow
to the side of the dead
comes the Black Racer
the calmer of care
to break the last bonds
of desire and despair.

[Anonymous No.5341786]

His prose is gimmicky at times, but Kolsti is one of the best new poets I've read in years.

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/95050561255/if-sincerity-is-lowercase-letters-what-if-i-type

[Anonymous No.5341802]

>>5341786
Instead of linking his stuff, why not repost the stuff he's posted on /lit/ before? A lot of us might not have known it was his stuff, and it would be good to know what to look for here in the future, especially if you consider him worthy of the "Best of /lit/" title.

[Anonymous No.5341809]

>>5341786
this is godawful. masturbatory drivel. Or is that what he's going for? I can never tell when people are being ironic.

[Anonymous No.5341829]

>>5341809
i don't get it, either. i think /lit/ just creams their pants at his stuff because he throws in fancy /lit/ words, and all the right ones, too.

[Anonymous No.5341845]

>>5341802
Basically everything linked has been on /lit/.
Here's more proof that Kolsti the poet is better than Kolsti the fiction writer and Kolsti the essayist.

[Anonymous No.5341847]

>>5341829
He obviously browses this site and you can bet he was the first one to post his tumblr here. Is he good? Yes, he is above average for his age. How good? We won't know for another five years, at the least.

[Anonymous No.5341848]

>>5341845
Forgot link
http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/95158983935/its-hard-to-be-unique-with-so-many-niches-i

[Anonymous No.5341849]

>>5341786

In general I think we should support new writers and not try to criticize and destroy them in the shell. The kid seems to be very young, so he’s boldness and fondness for literature might eventually get him somewhere.

However I must say that this “poem” in particular is bad. I have read some of his other stuff and found some value in it, but this work is simply terrible.

No rhythm; no metaphors and imagery; no structure. Only the last line is of some value.

[Anonymous No.5341891]

>>5341847
the whole idea of the slow developing writer and the critics who are super rational and reasonable so they need time to judge pisses me off. just post what you think. we're a fucking imageboard, not the new york times.

imo all koolsti is good at is appropriating a style with the same subject every time. i don't get the hype, but i guess that's what makes it a hype

[Anonymous No.5341903]

>>5341848
there is nothing here anyone will want to read in twenty years, but it's cute enough for a beginner, though anybody who rhymes "artistry" with "arts degree" deserves a terrible fate. Maybe writing ad copy....

[Anonymous No.5341909]

>>5341786
the only thing that gives him any merit is his age, not that his writing is bad, but it's not particularly noteworthy either. I can see an interesting style beginning to develop, but it's still premature and lacks that certain polish that distinguishes between quality writers and amateurs.
It's important to separate authors from their work, at least initially, in trying to define quality.

[Anonymous No.5341925]

>>5341891
>the whole idea of the slow developing writer and the critics who are super rational and reasonable so they need time to judge pisses me off. just post what you think. we're a fucking imageboard, not the new york times.

I know, but the kid is 17 and better than your average /lit/izen in expressing his very fashionable social isolation. My advice to him would be to drop tumblr and so on and become as much a failure as possible, as that would be the fastest way to success in our destroyed culture. He would just have to publish one book.

[Anonymous No.5342025]

March has a black flavor
the ocher billows rising
from the west horizon
savor of molasses
and the glumed and saline
wrack of smokehouse leavings
smells of melancholy
By the ruin of woodpile
An evenings rough-as-kindling
sharp and splinter shadows
push me under porchways
where the waning season's
last crop of icicles
build of morning's snowmelt
their inverse palisade.


April hides no secrets.
the snow, so well-concealing,
of mousetrack and vole-tunnel,
has left the fields denuded.
The frightened rabbit-mother
broods her blind pink morsels
hesitating, dreading
flames of fox-brush through the
thicket, and the fewmets
of the owls excursions
mark the ground with murder
draggled quills indict him
with bony revenentia
of March's depredations
upon the populations
of winter's scurrying hordes.

[Anonymous No.5342075]

Rough magic for man's spellings must suffice
on moonlit height, in secret, and alone
the throat, the blade, the blood of sacrifice
must conjure his stark prayer to silent stone
a woman's sorceries are subtler things
dumb suppers, petal-oracles and sighs
enchantments writ on promises and rings
epithalamion and lullabyes
For love alone it seems a futile end
discrepant supplications to beguile
and join that which seems best disposed to rend
and such diverse rogation reconcile
But cupids bolts contrive to hearts combine
contrary pleas, in single valentine.

[Anonymous No.5342509]

>>5341067
>>5341090
>>5341612
>>5341645
>>5341657
>>5341760
>>5342025
>>5342075
>>5341034
>>5336559
>>5335484
>>5333265
>>5333258
>>5333238
I had no idea there were so many old-school poets on this board. even if some of these are the same person, there's some real talent here. are we sure these are all original though?

[Anonymous No.5342649]

>>5342509
pretty sure these are original, at least to this board.
It's hard to plagiarize poetry this convincing and get away with it. Besides, there's nothing to be gained of posting them on this board other than feedback.

[Anonymous No.5342677]

>>5339760

dude, she's like 10

[Anonymous No.5342779]

>>5342509
I believe most of these are from the same person.

So perhaps it's more accurate to say there is one old-style poet on /lit (although a few others have tried their hands at this).

[Anonymous No.5342874]

War

My insides burn to horrid sight
How can we humans be so vile?
But then in sweet relief I sigh

Not my parents, not my brother, not my child...

The blood, the mourning and the dread
These body piles, reek of the dead
But then I smile and shake my head

Not my lover, not my sister, not my friend...

How many innocent souls in pain
I think I have to scream some day
But then a voice inside will say

This is a million miles away...

And as one war comes to an end
The same old song repeats itself
But then again I'm playing deaf

Not my neighbour, not my fellow, not myself...

And once upon a sweet springtime
I woke up in the firing line
But God won't let it be a lie

“Not the ones I love!”, I cry...

[Anonymous No.5343035]

>>5341645
fuck this one is really good

[Anonymous No.5343179]

>>5343035

The month-wordplay reminds me of So Appalled

[Anonymous No.5343188]

>>5333323
Pretty good

[Anonymous No.5344604]

>>5342779
I think like five or six are the irish guy. the others don't seem to be his style, other than some of them are more or less formally structured. But you could be right. I'm not the best at analyzing stuff like that. I had no idea that T. S. Eliot wrote those cat poems as well as Prufrock, etc.

Who ever he/they are, they're very good.

[Anonymous No.5344683]

Rape is its own reason:
justifications are trite,
excuses irrelevant
It exists beneath morals
outside law
as sacred and awful as childbirth,
or the holy knife
at the throat of the lamb.

[Anonymous No.5344788]

So what i'm getting here is /lit/ has some pretty good poets, some reasonably funny prose writers and at least one promising juvenile journalist. What else have you got?

[Anonymous No.5344806]

>>5342779
No, they are definitely from different people. I see at least 3 or 4 different voices.

>>5344788
What /lit/ doesn't understand is that most people here could be published if they would finish their work. The problem would be cultivating a following.

[Anonymous No.5344811]

>>5339760
Well that's cruel and pointless.

[Anonymous No.5344882]

>>5343179
as in Kanye's So Appalled?

[Anonymous No.5344904]

>>5344882

Yes, pic related. The connection isn't as interesting when it's paragraph v lines though, now that I'm looking at it.

[Anonymous No.5344931]

>>5344604
I agree, the Irish poet is good, though he's derivative of The Movement poets, especially Philip Larkin and Kingsly Amis.

[Anonymous No.5344937]

>>5344931
>>5344788
Its silly to expect the next Nobel Prize winner to be on /lit/. Like I said, this is all of publishable quality and has the ability to be critically praised. Maybe what would tip it in our favor is fully embracing post-modernism and going crazy with the whole internet-4chan image board thing. I know its very silly to say, but that shitty book /lit/ is writing collectively is a step in the right direction.

[Anonymous No.5344980]

>>5344937

I don't understand why we don't collectively fund an establishment. Our /lit/ writers are connected by the same loose generational/technological ties - if we had multiple finished projects, why not start our own publishing house and produce them under a blanket collective like internet-influenced post-millennial pomo. If animal collective could do it with paw tracks, surely we could too. It couldn't be too difficult to find investors if we had the quality writing as seen in this thread, only on a larger, completed scale.

[Anonymous No.5344999]

>>5344980
To the Kickstarter! Awaaaaaaay!!!!!!

[Anonymous No.5345000]

>>5344980
Well, first we need the writing. So every channel their angsty anonymous lives into some finished works. We could write some collection of pomo poetry.

[Anonymous No.5345022]

>>5345000

Yes, I understand needing the writing is a very serious prerequisite. However my own writing productivity has shot through the roof since everyone on /lit/ said it was great - if we had an actual deadline; something to work towards, I imagine lots of people could come up with something.

[Anonymous No.5345028]

>>5345000
the trips have it. how many works will we need altogether?

[Anonymous No.5345029]

/b/’s Poem
23 August, 2014

Fuck Monkey doge into tits
fuck and sandniggers cumfest
Dickfaggot twin rode to the sun
wants nobcheese troye rape moot's
le Sivan is Dalek niggers

lush bojangles the ayy lmao cutie
potat niggerfuck anal explosions meanwhile, smegma eating forkfuckfag potato
The Doctor Whispering and resulting Dante Shaaneequishiaquaneee

ISIS Masturbates underneath Cunts and Shrek
Potato supervisors ebola Euphoria SHIT
responsibly ejaculate muslims love boobnugget
juxtaposition oreos because triceratops businesses
wants dildos, lol alchemy duck

Fedora consumers but,
these italians the god of niggers
swag fuck biggest Nigger Phallus
inside smelliest whimsical K-Mart asshole
cavity seeks revenge communism fuck

cumdumpster splooge is around funky
the uranium wastebin you don't say
heisenberg tomwelling niggarooni died
peaceful in Russia, his rip
favorite cavity asshole dragon.

[Anonymous No.5345047]

>>5345028

Honestly not much to start with. Five to fifteen perhaps? This could be easily possible with poetry anthologies, which I assume - for reasons I'm not quite sure - they would be much more numerous than any /lit/ finished novels. Compilations of short stories would be welcome too.

[Anonymous No.5345055]

>>5345028
At least 20 good ones.

>>5345022
We could make a thread about it later and just have people collect them over time as they are shared. I am trying to write one now using Dickson's Alabaster Chambers and how she was basically a pre-internet anon in her social isolation, even using the word doge. Its currently shitty but with enough editing should come together.

[Anonymous No.5345063]

I am about to get extremely carried away with this to almost fantastical ends - I just realised, if all was organised properly, this could be done extremely efficiently, in terms of running a vanity printing press/founding a publishing house. Using 4chan for human resources we have - tons of people from /biz/ who will happily invest (okay this one is sort of a joke); all of the graphic artists who hang around the art boards for professional looking book covers; tons of unpublished writers on /lit/ who are trying to get their stuff published and keep failing (obviously you'll have a quality control issue here but still, the more we can choose from, the more chance we have of finding something good). This could be the actual start of the /lit/erary movement we were talking about a few weeks ago.

[Anonymous No.5345067]

>>5345055

Anything as ambitious as this usually requires an external conversational means i.e. off of 4chan. But we can worry about that later. I have a lot of scattered poems lying around from my on/off songwriting career I can throw down, I suppose some of them are postmodern in style.

[Anonymous No.5345078]

>>5345067
>>5345063
Do we need to stick with the pomo shit?

[Anonymous No.5345083]

>>5345063
I can get the Irish guy on board possibly. I can ask at least. He doesn't check his email that often.

[Anonymous No.5345086]

>>5345078
(Un)fortunately yes, because what is more interesting: a bunch of autists on the internet writing competent poetry in old styles , or writing horrible (like most people could even tell) poetry in a new style.

Someone is going to be the next big thing, and I would find it delightfully hilarious if it was a nonentity like a bunch of screwy 4chan lurkers.

[Anonymous No.5345097]

>>5345078

Difficult question to answer. Yes and no. It depends. None of my fiction has been strictly postmodern - however, in the /lit/erary movement thread a few weeks back we all decided if the project was based in a new literary movement, built upon the foundations of the internet and influenced by anything contemporary, it would be hard for us to write anything other than pomo.

I guess the answer to that question is a question: 'Are we doing this so /lit/ is found its own general publishing house or are we doing this so like-minded authors can group together under a collective and start the next great thing?' Although I suppose you would reckon the answers to those two questions aren't exactly mutually exclusive.

Apologies if that came off as extremely pretentious - on a realistic note, pretty much anything would be welcome to get us off the ground in basic logistical terms looking at quantity of works. I would think.

[Anonymous No.5345105]

>>5345083

>>5345083

That's interesting, because I am the Irish guy. Unless you mean the poet who writes in the style of Larkin? (This would make more sense because I can't remember if I gave out my email in previous threads.) In which case, yes, that would probably be a good idea. Although one would assume he stopped posting his poems on the internet because he decided it may compromise his publishing future.

[Anonymous No.5345140]

>>5345105
Yeah, he's the Gomorrah guy
He's been working his regular job in the horse industry and writing on the side, but hasn't had time to polish anything up. He said he was going to post more on here when he gets the chance.

[Anonymous No.5345141]

>>5345140

Then by all means, if you reckon he'd be interested - no harm in sending him an email of inquiry.

[Anonymous No.5345192]

>>5339760
You sound like a true hero

[Anonymous No.5345199]

>>5341786
Wow, that poem is excellent.

[Anonymous No.5345201]

>>5333203

Naked in my sheets, you are a warm and fragrant nest,
An island of swans, amid the ghostly albino icy sea of the empty bed.
When I embrace you, when I feel your warm breasts pressed against my chest,
It's like if you fed me with your warmth,
As if my lungs could drink the vitality that curls inside of you:
You are the hot and sweet breath that fills the cavity of my ribs with caresses.
When I hold you, when I smell your skin,
And the softness of your body,
I enter a state of perfect happiness,
I drown in your being, in the deluge of your graces;
And if the angels descend from the heavens and promised me that this would be eternity,
To be forever joined to you, with my veins entangled in your veins,
With my heart kissing your heart every heartbeat,
If they promised me that this would be eternity,
I would walk smiling toward death:
Depart into the abyss as a to a long desired bed.
So many were the nights in which I touched the cool sheets dreaming to touch your skin;
So many nights I hugged the inanimate pillow
Dreaming that it was your body that was dissolving against my sweet-salivating skin;
So many nights where fantasies danced over my eyelids
And mirages sat on my pupils to mock my hunger.
But at last I possessed you,
At last the real world of fertility crept into my gray world of ashes:
Happiness, that shy bird that always avoided me,
Now made its nest of golden straw in my heart.
There is no way to mine all the riches of your body,
To dig all the diamonds of your soul:
Even if eternity was given to me as a gift,
The endless chain of centuries and millennia as a private garden,
I could not exhaust all the riches, all the simple and perfect details
That lurk in you.

[Anonymous No.5345207]

>>5345201

(cont...)

There would always be a small unknown rose, a forgotten ruby,
A sapphire, a coral lost somewhere,
And the gigantic electric jungle of your neurons,
The forge of so many wonders and nursery of unnamed glories.
When death takes us, if I meet you in heaven,
I want to take you by the hand to the pools of light,
The lakes where honey of stars flows in dams,
And I want to bathe your naked body with this warm and bright milk;
I want to lather your body with the foam of nebulae,
And caress you in front of the angels, before the gods,
And see in the eyes of this primordial entourage
The comprehension that the entwine of our bodies is beauty,
A beauty in which I want to drown,
Like a hummingbird drowning in nectar and honey.

[Anonymous No.5345212]

>saved this a while ago, don't remember the poster or the context

Noise bombs throw down newspaper stands
The mayor he throws up gets it on his hands
Infants run screaming down train station hallways
We'll never get home cause we can't work the subways

I'm fifty percent tired and fifteen percent angry
18 times left out in the cold collecting gangrene
What's in my water and why can't I taste it
What's stuck in my throat that won't let me say this

Piss drenched sneakers and bedazzled adolescence
Couch rugs and bulking throws no that doesn't make sense
My eyes they are magnets facing the south side
Turn them toward northwards and fears will subside

Lounged out lakeside I lay on my side
Grass green and bright white dandelion
Smells like summer sounds like bees buzzing
Wake up in Lysol to just about nothing

Plastic benches shared between strangers and friends
Shoot the shit wait for this ride to end
With numb guts and tight throats we speak of past lovers
But for me there's no plural I've never loved another

Not for lack of trying, I tried my best
I just never could quite feel the rest
Or maybe after the first,
I just had no love left

Infectious infatuations define my situation
Rainy soft smiles bring bitter elation
Grainy indie romance only in my dreams
Then not even,
when my dreams, they all snap at the seams
my dreams all snap at the seams

[Anonymous No.5345443]

>>5333233
This really isn't very good.

[Anonymous No.5345489]

Bump 4 interest in a /lit/ publishing house

[Anonymous No.5346258]

>>5345489
a /lit/ imprint might make sense, if any of us were any good and if we were actually producing anything.

[Anonymous No.5346290]

>>5345489

You mean like an online /lit/erary magazine?

[Anonymous No.5346356]

All of you have written poems.

What about prose? Can you comment on that? I have written about 16 book pages worth of material - 4k something words. The only reviewer has stated that my writing lacks substance. Generally all things are there - transitions, descriptions, but they ultimately lead nowhere and my attempt at creating suspense has failed. He was also surprised when I said I was not attempting to "wow" people with content and I was, in fact, writing it for myself.

Can I get tips on how to improve on these shortcomings? Maybe a second opinion from somebody?

http://apsiapsi.deviantart.com/art/Unit-45848-C1-476453813

[Anonymous No.5346423]

>>5346356
This is probably worthy of starting a separate prose critique thread instead of posting it in a "best of" thread. You are on the right track posting as well the comments you have already received and explaining the difficulties you have noticed in your own work.

[Anonymous No.5346465]

>>5346423

Prose critique thread is up, please redirect your comments to

>>5346451

[Anonymous No.5346519]

>>5338257
>he's demonstrated
link or it didn't happen

[Anonymous No.5346951]

>>5333238
Made me think of this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTvWvfEMxE

[Anonymous No.5347006]

>>5346951
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7Zhm7yQl6M

see it, and raise

[Anonymous No.5347348]

I sing the god carcinoma
devourer of beggar and saint.
across all our tissue
the bulls he gives issue
make every is into an ain’t

I sing the mighty sarcoma
Consuming the daft and the wise
In the pallid lymph courses
he marshalls his forces
Decembering all our Julys

Come give us the hymn “melanoma”
the bane of both pauper and prince
when the cool probe insults
and we wait the results,
and the specialist cannot but wince

we sacrifice things on their altars
a lobe or a limb or an eye,
that our doings without
may appease them no doubt
that this bribe might just let us get by.

But the comfort of friends is not cheering
and the struggle does not give release
and the glance of an eye
and the tremor and sigh
and the long dismal wait for decease

Oh drink you the health of Lymphoma:
requiter of dread and despair
and the step on the scale
as it tells a new tale
of a soon to be vacanted chair

But we had some good laughs with him didn’t we?
and he made a good run of it though;
have another small round,
he won’t wake at the sound.
take the bottle back home as you go


from the irish poet

[Anonymous No.5349254]

>>5347348
Somebody post more of his stuff. Is that tumblr all there is?

[Anonymous No.5349268]

Excerpt from a review of a friend of a friend's sister's book about 'life' that got published:

Today I received my copy of your book, "Reflections". I started reading it few minutes ago, and could not but stop on your definition of "Life", which is, and with no doubt, a great one.
"We now and then, reject what we once accepted, and let go of what we wanted to keep, and take what we once gave."
You simply summarized the changes we experience during our lives.

[Anonymous No.5349271]

>BEST OF /LIT/
Tastiest peanut in the excrement.

[Anonymous No.5349288]

a girl with yellow eyes fell from the sky.
from the sky, fell a girl with yellow eyes.
her skin was soft, her hair was gold.
her hands were shaking, her body was cold.
why cry girl with yellow eyes?
girl with yellow eyes, why do you cry?
do you regret this human mold?
is it the stars you call your home?
A girl with yellow eyes fell from the sky.
From the sky, fell a girl with yellow eyes.

[Anonymous No.5349394]

"Behold i will Teach You the Super Man!
He'll Kick your ideals in the garbage can!
Aloof and relentless
Lois Lane and Clark Kentless
He'll take all the power from you, poor Man"

[Anonymous No.5349406]

that starfish tale was good, anyone remember the title?

[Anonymous No.5349442]

The world is made of edges, you said, and, I, thinking of razors and cliffs and the black

teminator rushing toward us past the resolute meridians of our days, looked up at you, and you

smiled and said no.
You drew a map on a white napkin and told me how there are always more feet than will go into

a mile, more inches than will make a foot, about every edge. Achilles was in it, and some slow,

thing, a turtle, perhaps, or a snail. but these were only masks for numbers, and I grew tired of

achilles and his logrithims and we went to the beach.
The dew was on the rocks and the tide was out and there were soft things quaking in the

horrible light. There is so much death at the edges, I said.
Everything lives at the edges. you frowned at me like a stormcloud. You spoke of ecotones and

cusps and crises. I saw your fingers rubbing chalkdust, shedding the imagined detritus of a

hundred dusty lectures. I listened while the sun seaked through your curls and warmed my

arms like your hands an a cold morning. I rubbed my board with the pale bitter wax that smells

like violins and tobacco and burns if you get it in your eyes. Then I painted you with coconut oil

and lemon where we hid behind the big red parasol, and your breasts rose and fell like the pears

on the windrow by the seawall, your fingers espaliered a small blossom.
I left you there on the green striped towel with your books and sunglasses, your tea and the

basket of boiled eggs and sandwiches and the last of the fig newtons. And I went to the ocean.
I dream out there, did I tell you?

[Anonymous No.5349446]

>>5349442
The place where the sea and the earth and the air touch, i touched too, making a moist track,

and we were like sisters meeting, or like four old lovers, sleeping side by side in a tent with the

moon watching, or like both of those things loving each other and jealous at the same time.
I have heard of the surf marching forward, of the waves battering the earth and retreating,

sending forays against the sand and being hurled back.
this is a man thing.
We who have lain at the point where the dry becomes the wet know that these are kisses and

caresses, and the thrusts and tumblings have no martial intent. all living things are born friom

this meeting, into the bright air. we gasp, we burn, we die and return, whether to earth or sea.

Your thoughts were not lost out there, you see? I hold them in my head when I let the dreams

take me, and we do not disagree.

The thing about edges, i liked. Everything that really lives, lives at the edge of something, you

said, and I saw a bead rolling between two widening wires., always about to fall, and somehow

never doing it. always moving forward, and rising and declining imperceptibly, as the world

carries it onward
Benoit, you said, and ecotone. I liked the words, but you never told me what they mean, unless I

was listening to the gulls or the surf or the soft murmer of your pulse beneath my hand.
The wind shook your blue hat, and I got you a green lounge from the old man who made the

umbrellas for the wind to break and drag across the foreshore like tattered dreamthings. like the

birds of wakening, that watched us from the long rusted rails above the seawall and there was a

tall girl at the bar, who said that the sun was in your hair and and i hated her for seeing it and

for seeing you smile, and loved her for knowing the same things that i knew.

[Anonymous No.5349449]

The heart beat of the world, you called it, The surf you meant, and the tall girl brought us

crablegs and you talked awhile about the things that come out of the sea. The hermit crabs and

the robbers, the tiny sidling fingernail crabs that run away from motion like a child who fears

strangers, straggling behind the skirts of the seawrack peeping bashfully out. and the great

ghost crabs; The grey and shining grandmothers twitching their long brachs like blindmans

sticks through the pebbles toward the tidepools, with the moon in their eyes.
They love the sun, but the moon is their mistress, you told me this, and asked me: "have I told

you that the sea is made of blood? It's true; but the blood is stronger now that it was when we

left." I knew you did not mean ourselves, but some lost frightened fossil, living again for a

moment in the tide behind your eyes.
We swam then, and you moved back and forth through the break like an otter, and then the

boarders came down the long stair and waited till we came out before charging like whooping

soldiers into that great onslaught that neither marked them nor wavered.
Under the rusting nod of the lotus pod spigot you turned and turned and lost the scent of our

mother the ocean, and smelled like you and the sun and the cocoa butter sunscreen I had

bought from the old man with the red hat. Blind, you said, but he saw you, as the earth and the

ocean and the sky see you now. as the fire saw you then, lapping lights across your sand dusted

hip, limning out our vagrant sillhoettes upon the moist earth,
I thought I held you that night in the tent, but it was not you was it? beneath their lids your

eyes were watching the pale circles of the gulls, reaching with their wings for the earth as the

sky drew them back in the direction of the invisible stars.
The next day I rode to the top of the break and found a wave waiting; a terrible thing as green

and clear and bubbled as the bottom of an antique bottle. And I was up and I was in it and the

board was a tongue in the mouth of the ocean, and I was for awhile that thing which you were

always: caught between the air and the sky, driving forward into time, unmoving, until the

ocean cast me out and dropped me at your feet, and we showered and you combed out my hair

and we had breakfast.
These are the things I remember, in this dim place beneath the trees, where the ocean has not

been these million lifetimes. Still, within your eyes, i think i am there, that I will always live

there, on the edge between memory and dream,with the bright birds and the grey skies, turning,

rising like the wave, and hanging in that place within your mind, where standing still we rise,

and rising ,turn, and fall, and are falling, now. forever.

[Anonymous No.5349452]

>>5333233
This is fucking terrible though

[Anonymous No.5349496]

someone posted in a poem critique thread lately a short poem that had the line

"i lived a life
and now it's due"

or similar. i really liked it. if anyone has it pls repost

[Anonymous No.5349678]

whatever happened to all those great Nikki Minaj ass poems? nobody saved any of those?

[Anonymous No.5349829]

n praha: The blue fuck? You trespass here. A cat shrugs stiffly into a purposeful slouch--a golden mouse i charge thee! the moon is a hemorrhoid.hanging out off the asshole of night.
"Behold, i will smite thee with the botch of Egypt, and with the scab, and with the itch, whereof thou canst not be healed"
I am drowned in praha, full gutted with a gout of drizzle out of cobbled lanes and frost-rimed gutters, The lights draw cracks upon the ground of the plaza and the cat walks through them like he knows the way, but he knows nothing. his future is as locked up as my past: unknown and unthought of in the heathen future night,
go out pussy, and bring me back something golden. Peradventure I will lighten my hand from off you, and from off your gods.
I have drunk too much in taverns, in rathskellers and in sorrow of my own making. In places like this: cobbled and awkward and oddly lit. fit only for the trespassing tramp of fugitive felines. Fit only for grief.

[Anonymous No.5349833]

the wind carry's bell-sound. wild chimings out of change and peal. And the cool air scents of coffee and the sharp-cold-sweet of orange peelings, bright scraps on the cobbles. The old cat pulls itself loose from the shadow of St. Mark's and saunters careful-like into the plaza. No mark it's foot leaves, no sound it betrays: a vagrant shade cut loose from the lime-tree darkness and wavering steadily toward the lights of the Heart and Scepter. Above the sagging joists of the old-town a cloud-hugged moon dot's the "i" of the early evening, But I am drunk already, on dry old sack and pale vermouth, and the blood-needle smear of grenadine tainted wormwood. The cat is my thought, going home to the gray places beneath the tables, where lights above the festal board make easier shadows than the alley night.

[Anonymous No.5349836]

>>5349833
Who bent the back of this earth, and heaved you up here, Percival? And whence doth this fresh field and pastorum novum appear to vex the ancient shepherd my dear Eugenius?

Annie is bones in a box these last three Easters, and her directions never led me here. I could cast her like runestones over the flints of shoreditch road, but the dead don't know the future. There is no map for it. the street signs are equivocal, pointing two ways at once. These un-mercatored excesses will not stand, sir!

A damp smile and he gets my round. Tight hair slenched across eggshell brow like a comb from a whale's throat.
Something brought you here, some business out of the night. You are felix ultima, last luck and perfect pussy. Here to drag me off to hell or wherever place of durance cats abhor. Perhaps a cold back-parlor with the dryrot smell of old lavender coughing out of the needlework divans.
Vespers rung already? I marked the clock but did not count it. Poor gnomon I. Send not to ask, for the call comes soon enough.
Old percy has a gun, and can use it, by god, if the whim takes him and the thought carrries. No puffed up claw-shod mouse-worrier will psychopomp his numbles off to Satanus, though his lights have gone mostly already there, in the fragrant escort of the Camel short.

[Anonymous No.5349871]

he coffee shop felt too cold after the heat of the july day, and Casie fumbled four of her last thirteen dollars out of her Tyvek wallet and into the hands of the timid puerto rican lesbian behind the counter who was afraid to meet her eys. She took her vente mocha to a table near the wall. She had been stupid last night: very stupid and very hurt, and now Vance would probably never be able to bring himself to talk to her again, or maybe even remember her without succumbing to awkward sighs and that sad ironic smile she loved so much.
She leaned her face into the steam from the dark aromatic beverage before her, holding back tears.
Something blocked the sun. A shadow fell across her battered copy of "For Whom the Bell Tolls".
"Excuse me, is this seat taken?" Drake Palladin bent forward in a mocking bow,


"Milady?" the black borsalino shading his face did not hide the piercing gray eyes or the look of ineffable loneliness upon his youthful, yet grizzled visage. He leaned lightly against his ironwood staff, His sand colored duster almost touching the tiles.
"Oh, shit." she said. "Is this Urban Fantasy? I thought I was the protagonist! You're not going to start sparkling or something are you? Fuck!"

A wave of disquiet passed over Drake's manly face.
"Ma'am? Isn't that language a little...out of character? For YA, I mean?"

"YA? Oh fuck it, fuck this shit, I did NOT sign up for Young Adult! Look, over there, behind the counter! That's a dyke! a lesbian! See the spiked hair, the neatly trimmed fingernails, the look of determined wistfulness when she glances at my cleavage? That look like YA to you?"
Drake became uncertain. "She might be...a shapeshifter? My brother Lance and I have encountered many such in our quest to rid the western world of the hidden evils that pass among them unnoticed. It is a lonely life..."

Casie put her head in her hands.
"She's a dyke. A fucking rug muncher. For all I know, she's going to be my best friend or my new love interest or my resentful stalker in a few chapters. Sit down, you'll make people stare."
Drake pulled up a chair. His black dragon skin boots seeming to coil out from beneath him into a languid posture almost touching her pink stitched Doc Martins. "I assumed you were MY love interest." he said. Thsi is about where they usually show up, sitting ostentatiously in the shadows, sighing without hope and staring into the middle distance, as though remembering a secret sorrow."

"I was staring into my coffee."
"I assumed the author was getting creative."
Casie almost spat. "Like that's ever happened."
"Hey be careful what you wish for: There was a while there where I was enslaved by this Wolf-demon in ancient Mexico. Everything was going all Cormac Mcarthy for about eleven pages. You know how hard it is to get bat-shit out of a fedora?"

[Anonymous No.5349872]

>>5349871
"Look, don't try to relate to me. I'm not your love interest. I do not have time in my life to be sodomized by zombie bikers in an alleyway in order to motivate you. I'm here to go through some ennui, a little post-relationship angst, meet a troubled urban professional, bring him out of his shell, show him my human side, and then get all Shades of Gray with him for a few chapters before the crisis, resolution, denoument and happily-ever-after crap. No. Fucking. Wizards."

Behind them, the swinging doors creaked open, reavealing a dusty and torpid New Mexican border town, as well as the weather beaten yet handsome form of El Paso Slim.
"This here dude botherin' you ma'am?"

"Oh, Lord. He's drinking again."

[Anonymous No.5349899]

>>5349452
I agree. At best, it's uninspired. There is some amazing stuff in this thread though. I had no idea /lit/ produced prose and poetry of this quality. I've only seen about a tenth of the stuff posted here before, and I'm sorry I missed it. I agree with the anon above, in that i am equal parts inspired and intimidated. /lit/, you really are the smartest and most creative board on 4chan. Bravo.

[Anonymous No.5349967]

>>5333203

Perhaps I have wondered you
In shape and still unclear.
Though the mind, like others,
Is capable of spanning both miles and hours,
Still, I am unsure.

The vast; the unknown; the ever-present.
These questions permeate
My lungs, my being, my self.

Your wonder, too,
Remains unreached and unreachable.
Though your shape lay peaceful,
Though my hope is you dream pleasant,
Still, there remains that distance not traversed.

And in the quiet hours
Just before the birds begin to sing the dawn,
I am left speechless.
The need to transcend becomes tangible
and the next moments become fleeting.

To know.
To believe.
To love.

Overwhelmed, I lay down.
Perhaps another time.

[Anonymous No.5350107]

>>5349899
>smartest

Debatable.

>most creative

Objectively untrue. /lit/ is easily one of the LEAST creative boards on 4chan. Little decent board humour and no creative projects to speak of. Compare /a/, which regularly scanlates manga and created Katawa Shoujo, or /v/, which among other things created its own musical.

[le trole faec ಠ_ಠ !Avm1fqtITk No.5350115]

>>5350107
That's because /lit/ is too busy being wannabe critics to understand what lies beyond being a jackass

[Anonymous No.5350133]

>>5350107
I didn't know about the musical. I'll check that out. I mostly hang around /b/, /lit/ and /diy/

[Anonymous No.5350199]

>>5350107

>creativity
>scanlates manga
>/v/ musical

if /lit/ submitted it's collective writings to a database (essays, poetry, etc. etc.) there would be just as much, if not more, "creative" work.

musicals, scans, manga (art/writing/etc.) are forms that work well when multiple people are working on them.

writing is not. the best /lit/ could do is a Literary Magazine, but the board is so different in terms of taste/preference that it's just not practical.

As for the "board humour," /lit/ is the funniest board on 4chan. I've been shitposting since 07, and have never laughed harder on any other board.

Look at this fucking picture. Go find something funnier. I'll wait.

[Anonymous No.5350239]

>>5350107
Even /tv/ created a musical with the Bane meme, and /sp/ churns out new memes like crazy.

I actually think shitposting is conductive to content. /s4s/, a board comprised solely of shitposters, released two albums. /mu/ turned Fantano into a meme (and also made him insane). /pol/ is actually having a small effect on interweb politics. /v/ is funding video game projects.

What does /lit/ have again? A post-modern post-meta post-post online book that is, truth be told, one very long shipost. So what have we learned? Shitposting = good posting.

[Anonymous No.5350271]

>>5350239
Too bad /jp/ arrived at that conclusion nearly 3 years ago. /lit/ can't even do anything original.

[Anonymous No.5350295]

>>5350239

This thread itself gives the lie to a lot of that. there's some excellent poetry here, and very little of it pomo. Although I have a hard time evaluating memes and such as having lasting value. Literature is more my field, and it would be comparing apples to oranges anyway.How would you know if a cartoon on /b/ or a wiring diagram on /diy/ or a recipe, or a drawing, or a song, was better than a poem or an essay? Why not just treat them as non-competitive and try to judge them on their individual merits?

[Anonymous No.5350456]

>>5350107
Over the years we've had a few fanzines pop up. But they all die. I think it's just the nature of the art-form.

The problem is stories are generally insignificant below like four thousand words, yet 98% of internet users won't read anything that lengthy without a significant amount of prior vouchsafing. So if you do go and write the next Ulysses, the internet is not a good starting ground for making that known. Most won't even get to the point of writing something that big though. With almost no one reading their shit from the start, good writers (and you do see a few crop up every cycle), receive little in the way of reinforcement to continue what they're doing, and eventually they disappear before they can properly develop. Unless you're someone who can just write that kind of stuff in a vacuum, you have to look elsewhere (usually off the internet) for support.

That's not to say there isn't any writing that thrives on the internet. There is but it's all short-form stuff, like flash fiction with spooky twists, or erotica/fan-fiction where readers are invested in it for other reasons. If you're discerning however, at least to the degree that most il/lit/erates are, that kind of garbage doesn't suffice.

[Anonymous No.5350466]

>>5350456
i think the internet could bring about a poetry renaissance. The form seems perfectly suited for the medium. The problem is, everybody thinks they can write it.

[Anonymous No.5350493]

>>5350466
I think we're already seeing it. At least, the proportion of poetry writers I see on the internet, especially amongst the young, is disproportionate to the reading interests my friends had growing up (when the net was in its infancy).

I'm not a fan though. I find poetry to be similar to flash-fiction in the potential for emotional evocation. At which point, I think music achieves similar stuff but more efficiently.

[Anonymous No.5350506]

>>5350466
Vignettes >>> poetry.

[Anonymous No.5350523]

>>5350493
compare the poems on this thread to what you've seen elsewhere? is /lit/ close to the norm, or a bunch of posers?

[Anonymous No.5350565]

>>5350523
The poems posted in this thread are better than the average poem posted in an average /lit/thread. The average poem posted in an average /lit/ thread is better than the average poem I've seen posted elsewhere, BUT poetry is not my forte and I don't trawl the internet for it whatsoever.

In general, again not having read too much /lit/ poetry, I'd presume it's similar in quality to its prose writing. Better than the average internet detritus, but most people still need to churn out another hundred works and collaborate with a bunch of editors before they can fathom the professional grade.

[Anonymous No.5350600]

>>5350565
I've just been so disappointed with what I've seen on other sites. Or even in published works. The stuff here shows talent, but not much practice or skill. Real inspiration though. Some of this stuff has teeth; it's not the all the trite, silly adolescent moaning that seems to be everywhere else.

[Anonymous No.5350774]

>>5349871
Oh, haha! I din't realize this was a vignette. Nicely done.

[Anonymous No.5351072]

>>5350199
/lit/ has had a few literary magazines

[Anonymous No.5351349]

>>5349442
>>5349446
>>5349449
>>5349829
>>5349833
>>5349836

This shit is amazing. evocative, clear, poetic involving. and...oddly similar. Is this all by the same guy?

[Anonymous No.5351581]

>>5338346
holy shit your alive

[Anonymous No.5351824]

In that gay autumn,
when the fires fell
from the white pillars
of the elms
and the wind,
catching them to her breast
ran rampant,
dropping leafy blazes
like discredited rumors
upon the palimpsest
of the gray sidewalk.
In that time.
I traced your name
upon the stem of a gray maple
and drew a valentine
enclosing it
with mine.

[Anonymous No.5351835]

Dialogue

>"So, what is a ghost?"


a dead thing, risen;
a sleepless soul
unbodied, unshriven.
come out of some hole
some grave or some shrine
to vex those yet breathing
with voiceless interogations

>"why do they walk?"


(a shrug here, a murmur)
They seek something maybe,
they come to give comfort
to visit old haunts
They rise from our memories,
sit in our dreams,
but they're no longer living.
perhaps they forget.

>"forget what?"


The dream of life.
the striving, even in sleep,
to draw the next breath'
to find the next word.
and then lose them,
as all others are lost
exhaled into time and the past.
perhaps the path eludes them,
the trail unretraceable.
the end of their life
get's shuffled around.
and the rise and come seeking.

>"seeking after what?"


Perhaps to give comfort.
Perhaps to ask questions.
Perhaps to wrap old fingers
around a last kiss
held close in a palm.
and depart again.
Is it lonely, being dead?

>But there was no answer.

[Anonymous No.5351849]

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

I also
put quite a dent
in the cereal
supply

and the
leftover
pizza is not
leftover anymore

The snickers bar
that you hide
in your purse
is gone too

It was delicious
so melty and
peanutted

Look,
I ate all the food
okay?
and

I guess it goes
without saying
also smoked
all the weed.

Get drive thru
and bring me back
some fries
they are

so delicious
and potatoey
and
a Yoo Hoo

[Anonymous No.5351854]

In Praise of the Potboiler

Come, give us the sound and the fury;
don't trouble with rhythm and grace
the subtlest allusion
breeds naught but confusion
to the ear of our primitive race

Show us the blood and the thunder
you can leave out the depth and the scope
the clash of your symbols
in our none-to-nimble
intellects crushes all hope

If we want the profound and ecstatic
we can do well enough on our own
there's Shakespeare and Shelley
to sour our belly
and Dante to rattle our bones

so make with the storm and the swordplay
that good old melodrama and pap
have a tear through the joints
while exclaiming your points
with a plentiful dose of small caps.

[Anonymous No.5351952]

>>5351581

Not quite. Think Good Old Neon. I may or may not be communicating with you from the great beyond.

[Anonymous No.5351958]

>>5351835

The second stanza is so much better than any of the others. Weird inconsistency.

[Anonymous No.5353433]

>>5337735
kolsit a shit

[Anonymous No.5354044]

>>5351849
This makes me laugh everytime.

[Anonymous No.5354102]

>>5333238
oh oh I saved this one, I liked it a lot as well
same anon did this one same thread

he is careful of dogs now:
he makes shorter leaps
and he stays on the inside,
when frost starts to creep

round the borders of windows.
he still walks the ledges
but nowadays two or three steps
from the edges.


The mice whom his forays
would terrify nightly
he just looks on and nods
as they pass him,
politely

When he dreams of the kitten
of eight lives before
he shudders, and takes
a slow stroll to the door

And I rise and assist him
out into the sun
and he shuffles along
where he once used to run

And I take shorter steps
and I take smaller breaths
and I want to inquire
about his other deaths

But he’d just raise an eyebrow
and look up to heaven
and say “I wouldn’t worry
till you get past seven.”

/lit/ writers issue 023 May 22, 2013

I know all I see all

[Anonymous No.5354127]

>>5354102
I love this one, Think what a cool little book it would make if somebody did a cartoon of every verse.

[Anonymous No.5354333]

As an occasional drop in from /sci/, I have to say this thread has impressed me. It is jammed full of excellent content, and if nothing else you guys seem to have solved the poetry thing. And there is some genuinely entertaining and musing prose here as well in my uncultured opinion. I don't see anything in the Kolsti stuff, but that's probably just age and lack of interest more than a valid critique. Good job you guys.

[Anonymous No.5354446]

we are the dead, the damned
we see the future.
wrapped in swaddling clothes
and in its tomb.
as we travel in our circuits,
like dim planets
or ghosts, in silent rooms.

[Anonymous No.5354593]

In a certain light,
you look like Paradise
and when the summer air
dances past your hair
It makes me think of Eden
with its two rivers,
and all the sweet allures of vice,

and from a certain slant,
you make me think of truth,
as when the vagrant moon
looks into our room
and sees you pale and bare,
with summer in your hair

and you play on your laptop,
and yawn like a kitten,
and curl up on your chair
and I am smitten by a sudden thought
I'm not as worthy as I ought
to stand and watch you wash your face,
with savage and unwholesome grace.

of so much now I've lost the track
within the hollows of your back,
within the forests of your eyes
within a sudden wild surmise
perhaps my glances trespass now,
among the shadows of your brow.

from a certain point of view
I find your body wholly new.
and no geographies can speak
of throat and chin and lip and cheek
and shoulder, belly, wrist and thigh
new territories to the eye.

I wonder if i'd find the strength
to lose sight of your breadth and length,
the coasts and bays and and smiling shore
and seek where none has gone before
and make my fretful, furtive start
into the oceans of your heart.

[Anonymous No.5355874]

>>5354446
not bad

[Anonymous No.5356542]

>>5354127
i wonder what you'd have to do to get the rights to do it, considering nobody knows who wrote it

[Anonymous No.5356555]

>>5349496
Bad poet to the rescuuue.


Wasted

He always thought
But never did
He lacked composure
And he slid

He paced the world
On worthless feet
He chose to watch
Stay in his seat

He grasped a lot
But grabbed for few
He lived his life
And now it's due

[Anonymous No.5358171]

>>5349871
Only thing here I would read more of

[Anonymous No.5358197]

this isnt the best of lit thread because im not in it!

[Anonymous No.5358204]

>>5358197
well get in it! Post your stuff. If I had had anything anybody had ever said anything nice about I'd post it.

[Anonymous No.5358211]

>>5358204
i dont think so man. this isnt the right thread. people are getting trips for nothing here.

[Anonymous No.5358217]

circlejerk poetry thread dildos

[Anonymous No.5358223]

>>5358204
alright so earlier, I posted in the poetry thread, and I vaguely remember somebody saying they liked it. Should I post that here?

[Anonymous No.5358237]

>>5358217
>>5358211
it is weird that these things always fill up with poetry, but i guess that makes sense. a novel would be hard to post, or even a short story, and whether it was "from /lit/ " would be arguable. I hit the archive and posted stuff i remembered well enough to search for on here, and it was all poems. I don't usually save stuff from here, except humorous stuff. I saved the Gomorrah poem and a few others but I'm not really that much of a poetry guy. I am glad somebody saves this stuff though, since i do like seeing it in these "best of" threads and being reminded of it. Only thing this thread is missing is more of the really humorous stuff and those Nikki Minaj poems.

[Anonymous No.5358258]

>>5358237
these threads fill up with poetry because people like hearing their own farts. i want to post my writing because i think it has potential. nut i dont want it in the hands and a dickhandler.

[Anonymous No.5358261]

>>5358258
dammit this ones unreadable. *,but I dont want it in the hands of a dickhandler

[Anonymous No.5358267]

>>5358258
i doubt many people are posting their own stuff here. I don't write poetry, except limericks, and none of them have showed up. I think most posters use this thread to bring out stuff they've saved or (like me) remember well enough to search the archive for. I doubt the authors of a lot of these (since they are pretty old) even come hear that much, and almost certainly not within the life of a thread. I think we see poetry here because it's easy to remember, it's short enough to post, and most people can tell a good one from a bad one. I put up the ones I get reminded of by others i see here. I haven't posted my favorite (the Gomorrah poem) because I think everybody has seen it already. I post things I think others might have missed and would enjoy.

[Anonymous No.5358274]

this guy >>5356555
apparently bested all of us in todays poetry challeng

[Anonymous No.5358293]

>>5358274
how do you figure? also that's a recent one. It's good but i don't know if it will stand the test of time.

[Anonymous No.5358627]

>>5358274
Hey, >>5356555 here.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, I really don't think mine's that great.

[Anonymous No.5359051]

>>5358267
the thread title is "Best of /lit/"....

A Rumor in Gomorrah

A man has told me god is good,
and stands above all men,
that he will never cast us forth,
though drenched with lust and sin,
That though we heed him little,
and pursue our own accord
he will not seek our bane nor yet,
unsheath his deadly sword
that he forgives excesses
and will not our prayers reject.

There was rumor in Gomorrah,
to that very same effect.

A friend avers that government,
has all our cares in mind.
And will not neglect the comfort of
the poor, the halt, the blind.
he maintains unreservedly,
his faith in policy.
to bring the fruits of honor to
the strong the just, the free.
he says the great in power seek
the profit of all men

It was mentioned in Treblinka,
but I did not heed it then.

Technology will save us,
i have heard a stranger say.
The wonderment of science,
skill, and tools will win the day.
Our comfort and our safety
we may leave to wise devices.
And men who build and train them up,
will coddle all our vices.
they'll see the future clearly
and avert all waiting dooms.

I think I heard it spoken in
Titanic's smoking rooms.

The forgiveness of the strong is great,
I'm sure most men agree.
The wisest and the best of us
will surely all be free.
the bold men, wise in letters
with their eye on public weal.
will never be cast out or forced
their knowledge to conceal.
Time alters soon the hearts of kings,
and all will be put right.

I heard it in the Gulag
almost every single night.

So go forth with the banner
of of redemption wafting high
and shout the slogan "Liberty!"
in land and sea and sky.
Of justice, peace, forgiveness, love,
proclaim the coming reign.
And cry the truth to power,
and the vanity of gain
That mercy always triumphs,
and that men will all be free.

Go tell them in Gomorrah,
but you didn't come from me.

[Anonymous No.5359210]

>>5338770
>>5340719
He never came back ;_;

[Anonymous No.5359277]

We rode across the Great Pan, leading dawn by about an hour. The air was cool and the horses well watered, and we hurried.

The hooves left craters an inch deep in the soil. Two weeks before, a storm in the mountains had rivered itself down throough the cuts and gulleys and arroyos to die here. The water had seeped into the pan and wicked up through the moist and pregnant soil the spectre of what lay beneath this place. All around us sage and mesquite and thistle stood dead and frozen and sere. Strangled at the root by that blasting ghost.
The raiding tribes and the cattle drivers avoid this place. The beasts are stunted and ragged and picket-ribbed as razorbacks. The soil is not good for men or weeds or coyotes. It sparkles in the dew when it falls, and it tastes of blood.

The great pan is the grave of an ocean.

Sometime way back, after the great winter headed up north to sleep in Greenland for awhile, and rolled it's ice blankets back into the scooped out river valleys that hang above Athabasca and Hudson and the Great Fish River, the loss of that weight and thre natural rise of the ground had suspended a gulf of water here, in this dry, dry place, and the ocean had died. It's corpse was a twisted vein of rocksalt eighty miles long and forty wide. Big as three counties. Its shroud was about fifteen feet of sand and silt and leaf-rot loam.
But the ocean is restless, and water wakes it.
It rains shallow and seldom here, and the soil is thick and gets renewed every spring by snowmelt, burying the ocean deeper every year. The water that runs from the springs in the high rocks is sweet and cold and tastes of the life of the high slopes. seeds blow in and tumbleweed slides out and birds fly and things grow in the pan sometimes for a dozen years. Even creosote and bramblebush and shallow rooted trees.

Then the floods rise in the hills, and then the snow melts too heavy, and the water flashes down the cuts and gulleys and spreads out across the pan, washing away the shallow layers of life, and then it finds cracks in the roof of the tomb.

Cold fresh water seeps down and wakes the ocean in its million year sleep, and the poisoned fingers of its ghost creep skyward. Then a morning like this comes, when the soil sparkles whith cubes of mild azure halite and the wind has a bitter and cracked flavor.

We rode through a blasted plain. leaves hung like tinsel on branch willow and white poplar and birch. Saplings as high as sixteen feet over our heads, all dead a week. the bugs had made holes in every leaf that was more than four feet above the ground, but they had had their turn too, and their husks blew in dense drifts around our horses feet. No birds sang. When we made camp that night in a circle of swamp rose the deadfall wood we burned had strange colors of lavender and violet and green at the roots of the flames. The ghost was hungry.


always wished there were more of this

[Anonymous No.5359284]

[Anonymous No.5359351]

>>5349406
http://www.sarcasticbottlecap.com/starfish.pdf

[Anonymous No.5359485]

"When they came for the bologna, I did not speak, because I was not a cold cut.

When they came for the meatloaf. I did not speak, because I am a raw food.

When they came for the cheese, I did not speak, because I am not a dairy product.

When they came for the mayonnaise I did not speak, because I am not a condiment.

When they came for the sausage I did not speak, because I am not a processed food.

When they came for the Kool Ade, I did not speak, because, frankly, black people scare me a little.

When they finally came for me, there was no one left to speak. So I told them:

"FRUIT GOES IN THE FUCKING CRISPER!!!"

--Granny Smith__

[Anonymous No.5360184]

>>5359051
I agree it's not the best of /lit/ without this poem.

[Anonymous No.5361270]

>>5337794
>>5337788
>>5337755
seconding this, I must have been away while the Jahookie thing happened

someone pls respond

[Anonymous No.5361282]

>>5361270
this seems to be the first thread: >>/lit/thread/S3642888

[Anonymous No.5361288]

>>5361282
>>>/lit/thread/S3642888

thank you!

[Anonymous No.5362415]

does anyone have the one about the banshee?

[Anonymous No.5362675]

going to be sorry to see this thread go. seems like every day I find something new and god on it. Makes me wonder if a permanent "best of" thread or board might be a god idea.

[Anonymous No.5363903]

>>5339760
I'd fuck her.

[Anonymous No.5364221]

>>5333258
That is haunting yet beautiful

>>5341657
Liked it. Its rare to find a truly funny 'poem'

>>5356555
>>5358627
Not that anon you replied to, but I also find it great, it perfectly describes the average anon. Have you written other stuff?

[Anonymous No.5364241]

Has anyone in this thread had experience with Melanie Rae Thon?

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5364305]

>>5364241
Some

[Anonymous No.5364548]

>>5362675

Yeah, if it's still alive tomorrow morning I'm gonna save my faves to an MS document. We should do more of these threads in the future.

[Anonymous No.5364553]

>>5364305

Do you have the rest of the thread? I remember that as being a pretty good thread

[Anonymous No.5365151]

Guys, Kolsti has a new poem out with that qt

[« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » No.5365170]

>>5364553
I don't, I'm sorry. (Holy crap, 2011?)

[Anonymous No.5365206]

>>5365170
too bad this board wasnt up till 2012
confirmed for newfag

[Anonymous No.5365242]

Does anyone on /lit/ actually tell a story, or is everyone just fixated on quasi-philosophical musings and observations on the state of literature?

[Anonymous No.5365259]

>>5365242
http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/93018206491/first-person-present-tense
Kolsti tells a decent story.

[Anonymous No.5365293]

>>5364553
fucking love that thread

>>/lit/thread/S2142656#p2150886

[Anonymous No.5365302]

>>5365151
You mean this? It's definitely different from his other stuff. I guess he's trying to be earnest. I don't know how I feel about it yet.

http://postmetakolsti.tumblr.com/post/96222361595/postmetapaintbrush-episode-4-the-artist-looking

[Anonymous No.5365318]

>>5365302
Now he's just fucking with us. This is in no way even close to his style.

[Anonymous No.5365345]

>>5365302
Well, now I'm impressed. Turns out he can actually write well even without a gimmicky stylistic crutch.

[Anonymous No.5365450]

>>5365206
confirmed for the world's most retarded troll.

[Anonymous No.5366126]

>>5364221
>Not that anon you replied to, but I also find it great, it perfectly describes the average anon. Have you written other stuff?
Well thank you. Who'd have thought.
The only other one I dare post is probably not very fitting, since it's about my job, but oh well.

DayTrader's Dilemma

Should I sell or should I hold?

If I hold there could be trouble,
But if I sell, the stock could double.

Am I weak or am I bold?
Should I sell or should I hold?

My stock keeps going up.
Better pour myself another cup.
All this coffee makes me jitter,
Have I picked another winner?

Am I weak or am I bold?
Should I sell or should I hold?

The indecision's killing me.
The price's falling, I have to pee.
Do I hold my bladder and my stock,
Or do I sell and use the pot?

Am I weak or am I bold?
Should I sell or should I hold?

The stock goes up, I wait no more,
I sell my shares and hit the floor.
A little profit beats a loss,
How I suffer as my own boss.

Am I weak or am I bold?
Should I sell or should I hold

[Anonymous No.5366521]

>>5365293

Hahaha what even

[Anonymous No.5366939]

Glass strikes the countertop and sings,
fluid slops over and onto my sleeve,
frothy bubbles sticky and staining
my sentiments of lovelust.
I’m lacking in luster, gusto, or...
what festers in my belly is
nights spent with locked lips:
the luck lost in laconic limps.
She's beautiful.
So was the last one,
and the next one too.
Flingfall in lovelust
after two shots slung over one lip
and half as many sentences spatspoken
over the jukebox melodymash.
I’m lacking in luster, gusto, or...
what pesters out my brain is
tidbits of babble brimming
over the rim of a glassful teetering

[Anonymous No.5367020]

In the old orchard
we wandered beneath the branches,
heavy with dew, and age,
and we, young in years and spirit
saw the future ripening,
in fragrant blossom
and mellow fruit,
in warm light and grass as green
as our thought.
now in the early winter
the leaves cannot hide
the shadows of the clouds
and the wayward moon
like the face of old death
so small we can hide it
behind a thumbnail
if we can only
raise our hand.

[Anonymous No.5367094]

>>5341786
From what I've read of this Kolsti character just today, this poem is probably his best out of his whole work. The rest of it is, as one anon said, masturbatory drivel, but this was rather enjoyable.

It'll be interesting to see what will happen to this person. I hope the tumblr blogging and 4chan fanboyism doesn't go to his head.

[Anonymous No.5367101]

>>5367094
He put out a new one yesterday and I think it's the best he's done. I think he read what people were saying here and really went minimal.

[Anonymous No.5367114]

>>5367101
link?

[Anonymous No.5367179]

>>5367114
This one >>5365302

[Anonymous No.5368259]

"Pray What is the news from Babylon?
Does Xerxes ancient town,
Still hold inside the Lion's Pride?
where once the world bowed down?"
"There is no tale of Babylon,
that great long-storied land
The Lion's gates are broken now.
The fields are choked with sand"

"You Tread the Path from Illion
Where gods and men did greet,
Does Priams mighty fortress still,
Show all assault defeat?"
"What gods have sown, the raven reaps,
I offer you no joy
neath broken stones her treasure sleeps
I bear no news of Troy."

"Speak, pilgrim, of Jerusalem,
I know you passed that way.
The palmer's badge adorn's you yet:
does David's line hold sway?"
"Where prophets sowed the seed of love,
the weeds of hate now grow:
the peace that was Jerusalem
was broken long ago."

"well, traveller, What of Camelot?
does Arthur's blood still reign?
Do boldy go the shining knights
across the feudal plain?"
"A trusted friend's betrayal;
a bastard's vaunting greed.
The moon that watches camelot
sees stones upon a mead."

"Good host, I beg you, ask no more
you waken in my mind
the shadows of vain, fallen hopes
I fain would leave behind.
You long for comfort; this i know,
that grandeur might abide,
that strength of stone and arms and hearts
can bear the waxing tide,
And Gilgamesh the strong yet stands
upon his mighty wall.
That works endure the waning sands,
that towers might not fall.
Content yourself that legends live
where men are just or brave,
and deeds of lives may yet survive
their castles in the grave.
I will not comfort you with hopes
that Rome may live again;
don't ask me of Tenoctitlan,
I've no news from Berlin.
In sorrow i depart you now;
regretting lenten cheer.
But the road is long
towards London town,
i cannot linger here."

[Anonymous No.5368326]

>>5349442
holy fuck. is this a poem? prose? I'm from /sci/ and don't know that much about this, but she's talking about fractals. And it's beautiful. Is there more of this?

[Anonymous No.5368592]

>>5368259
I like this a lot, though I'm not sure what you mean by

>Does Xerxes ancient town,
>Still hold inside the Lion's Pride?
What's "Lion's Pride"?

[Anonymous No.5368687]

>>5368592
It's a pun sort of. the lion is one of the symbols of Babylon, the lion gate is one of the gates, the pride of Babylon was its success and power, as well as the wives and sons of the Persian kings.(a lions family group= pride) This is just a guess, since i didn't write it, but considering the fantastically elaborate allusion and wordplay i think its justified.

[Anonymous No.5368741]

>>5368687
Ahh. That's pretty ingenious, thank you.

[Anonymous No.5368753]

>>5368687
Couldn't it be a reference to Hebraic exile in babylon ? The Lion was the symbol of the royalty of Judea, and the babylonian held Hebrew captives for a while. Considering the Biblical references, that would make sense.

[Anonymous No.5368769]

>>5368741
yeah my favorite bit is "the peace that was Jerusalem" was broken. Jerusalem is the cty of peace, and it has been broken into two warring factions, and the prophets of peace,are the excuse of both factions.

[Anonymous No.5368784]

>>5368753
it wouldn't surprise me if he's playing both ways. This is a clever boy and he pots layers in a lot of his stuff, there a simple narrative that hides lots of depth. waxing tide (of hisory) waning sands (of time) for instance

[Anonymous No.5369364]

>>5367179
This is seriously brilliant

[Anonymous No.5369398]

>>5369364
You’re an easy on the eyes
version of Gertrude Stein
I’m not yours and
You’re not mine because
You belong to you and
I belong to me
That’s the type I
want to be

You can tell secrets
and I can tell lies
I guess they’re the same
since the truth doesn’t hide
Or maybe truth is inner and
language is a snake
And if you’re using words, then
honesty is fake
Sincerity is
a useful fiction
I see your soul
in syntax and diction

Western LEDs tell me love is weak knees
But Zen Buddhists say love feels like peace
I guess if I’m mixed then
I can be both and
know that love
is when I get verbose
And when I’m with you
is when I talk the most


this? This is high school literary magazine.

maybe there's something post-ironic about clumsy, trite imagery and arch sentimentality that i'm not getting though.

the whole pop-music-lyric style with inappropriate words thing is supposed to be snide? or mocking? what am i missing here?

[Anonymous No.5369409]

>>5369398
You forgot to read the first part.
>Consider it an experiment in unabashed cliches.
But by commenting on this, he undermines the unabashedness of his earnestness. The words are slashed out; the format fits the ambivalence. It's firmly stuck between irony and earnestness and is the most textbook metamodern poem I've seen.

[Anonymous No.5369454]

>>5369409
well, maybe he'll get better with practice. seemed pretty abashed to me, and he could do better in picking his cliches. Might want to use actual lyrics or something. As it is its a muddled mess. But I understand he's still young, and .I'm not sure post-modern poetry has a set of formal conventions that would allow a textbook example. I thought post modernism was against that?

At any rate with a little work and practice I could see something good coming from it. At least he's trying, and if I were his English teacher I'd give him a high B at least.

[Anonymous No.5369468]

>>5366126
Actually its quite good. I dont know if you are aware of it but a lot of early blues songs and such were about work even when the surface meaning was about the sexes. Your take on the clash song makes the song bigger. The line 'indecision killing meʻ is something I will have in my head when Iʻm working my job tomorrow. This kind of lit is better than the pomo and dystopian knock offs that are usually on offer.

[Anonymous No.5369478]

>>5369409
>metamodern poem

Terms like this are why I have such a hard time finding common ground with the denizens of /lit/.

Why does everything have to be defined in terms of modernism/postmodernism, irony/post irony, sincerity/new sincerity? Why can't we just talk about books?

It's honestly unnverving to witness a bunch of 20+ year old misanthropes fawning over a teenaged boy who writes tumblr posts about girls, Kanye West, tubgirl, and a high school awareness of politics. It's like you all secretly want to be hipsters but you don't have the social wherewithal to take a Creative Writing class and act like a douchebag.

[Anonymous No.5369498]

>>5369478
When does he talk about politics? He reblogged a pro-Palestine comic a month ago but that's it. He's a young writer with a unique style and stuff to say.

[Anonymous No.5369499]

>>5369478
nobody's fawning over him. The ones calling him a genius are probably just him samedagging. He's not bad for a highschool kid and when he's less self-consious he might get better. And people use words like modern-post modern and ironic post-ironic to decide what standards to judge things by. You wouldnt judge Ulysses or Executioner's song, and Look Homeward, Angel and Report on Probability A by the same literary criteria, You might say they're all good books, but you'd need to be able to see that they re good for different reasons, and they succeed in accomplishing different things,

[Anonymous No.5369502]

>>5369498
If only it were new stuff. He's parroting Harlan Ellison and doesn't even know it.