Dark Side of the Moon

So there's been this complex discussion on a couple of other people's LJs about passivity and it was triggered by a particular poem by one of the people, and eventually I threw out an acrostic poem of my own and got a "wow" response.  Now, I 'm still learning how to write Poety with a capital "P" (which phrase is in itself a statement, since capitalization is no longer default), but certain types of verse come fairly easily to me.  I've read and watched and performed in so many Shakespearean plays that falling into iambic pentameter is like walking down a sidewalk and not stepping on the cracks: yes, you have to pay attention, and some times it''s trickier than at others, but it doesn't count as hard.   Using it for acrostic verses (where the first letters of each line spell a name or word or phrase) is just extra fun.   (Literally for fun:  I once wrote an acrostic sonnet on "CHEDDARCHEESES" inside an RPG on an in-character bet with another player.  The last line ended with a plea not to disappear "or else you'll leave me blue." )

Is it poetry? Techically, yes, but to me it's just verse.

On a quick subjective scale, I see three types.  One is the intellectual putting together of metered lines and rhymes (or sometimes freer forms) to convey a particular story, or meaning, or impression.  The flower is pretty, the widow is sad, the father is loving, and war is bad. .   Two is the raw emotion that defies forms.  i HuRt and YOU should sEEEE!  And the response is usually10% saying "oh you poor thing" and 20% saying "omg me too!" and 30% saying "STFU, you loser" and 40% saying nothing because they never bothered reading past the first line.  Third is putting together command of form and language, message and meaning, emotion and its response, to get to a level beyond (below?) comprehension of words on a page, to disturb the viscera, to pluck a nerve, to recalll a memory.  The taste of madeleines.  The scent of smoke on a summer evening (and when I say that, you smell it, don't you? but is it wood smoke, or cigarette smoke, or burning leaves, or the fire that destroyed your house? and can I write it so any one of those is enough?).   The "yes, that" response..   If you can get there,  to evoke that level of personal response in people you'll never know personally, is when you're writing poetry.  Or, Poetry.

And CHEDDARCHEESES doesn't come close. 
 
EDIT: To keep honest, if you search the "verse" tag in this journal, you'll find lots of examples of Type 1 and even Type 2, and not so much of Type 3.  Just hope to keep the  proportion moving in the right direction. :-P

"Disappointment" and "coffee" were the writing prompts at write_away  this week, and I came up with a poem that seemed good at first, and now I'm not sure. No one's given me a critique there. Feel free to say anything about it here. I haven't found the right title yet, which makes me even more suspicious of its value.

( ~ untitled ~ )  

First draft, i.e., not yet sure whether it's self-indulgent crap or has any good bits. Probably helps (but it shouldn't) to listen to Kate Bush's "Under Ice" first. (There's a Farscape version. :-) )
  
( ~ Reflection/Transposition ~ )
  

There's been a couple of posts now in LJ communities that ask for recorded readings of poems. This one is Rainer Maria Rilke's "Lament."

VoicePost 186K 0:58

“Everything is far and long gone by. I think that the star glittering above me has been dead for a million years. I think there were tears in the car I heard pass and something terrible was said. A clock has stopped striking in the house across the road... When did it start? ... I would like to step out of my heart and go walking beneath the enormous sky. I would like to pray. And surely of all the stars that perished long ago, one still exists. I think that I know which one it is-- which one, at the end of its beam in the sky, stands like a white city...” Transcribed by: kathryn_aka_kat

I get e-mails from certain companies all the time, and I usually delete without reading. Turns out Park Seed is having a poetry contest ("Ode to My Garden") that ends today. So, just for the helluvit (and, yeah, it's full of very conventional imagery but consider the audience?):

( ~ Prodigal Garden ~ )

I've been reading Catherynne M. Valente's (yuki_onna) verse collection A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects. It's very good.

This is not nearly so good. :-)

( ~ Fairytales ~ )  

 I have no frigging idea if this works or not.  First draft, anyway.

  

A substantive reworking of "Lo Pasado". Comments very much welcomed.

   

Lo Pasado

He drank the wine of desperation.
Emptied the bottle.  
Threw up.
Tap.  Tap.  
Through the filth the beast came,
A thousand thousand eyes upon it.
Tap.  Tap.
It didn't hurt.
He told himself that made it right.

He polishes the marbles every morning.
He is obsessive about grit.
On the beast,
A thousand thousand miles away,
His eyes weep.

-------------------------------------------------------
Boring background bits: 
The "beast" is an image from a long ago RP.  The title started out as "summoning", changed to "incantado", was double-checked against "encantado" (Sp: "pleased, charmed") which was found in a word-a-day list next to "lo pasado" = "that which happened".
Example: Lo pasado ya pasó y no podemos cambiar nada.
Translation: What happened happened and we can't change anything.
  

From nowhere, not much of anything...

Beached

I want to dive
Deep
Though I don't know how.
Drive water up my nose
Rise coughing
Snot dripping
Salt stung.
But someone has to watch
The children.
  

This one is for those of a certain age (advanced), because sometimes it gets to you.  And if you're under 30 you might want to avoid reading it at all.  It might be too depressing. 

( ~ Transition ~ )    

A quickie...

Self-Perception

I stepped into the elevator, going down,
And the floor sparkled,
I first thought, "broken glass"
And then "it's glitter".

I wish it had been the other way around.
Then I might have stooped
And run my hand across the carpet
And known for sure.

But I told myself it's glitter,
And it's late, and I need
To go home.  When I knew, inside,
I was afraid.
  

I love the title. The rest... eh.  Still learning the art. 

Passing Fantasy

And laugh at startled faces before the herd moves on. 
  

Just something based on an RPG, though modernized from the original fantasy setting.

   

Poetry Assignment

 

Calcification

I am shell-like, sand-worn and pitted,
Silted with the detritus of anaerobic journeys,
Stinking of salt and the last shreds of what used to live inside.
Better to be filled with grit
Than washed out, hollowed, the empty chambers would hold
Only the susurration of my rising and falling fears,
And the echoes of your own.
  

Don't panic; just a random poem that got written on a long plane ride.

Breakup

And in the end it matters
That there's a coffee stain on one of the blue-striped placemats,
Two razored beard hairs caught in the rim of the bathroom sink,
Three different bottles of hot sauce in the refrigerator door,
Four unreadable books stacked beside the chair with the good lamp,
Five envelopes per day offering credit cards not in my name.
In six months, they'll be gone, cleaned up, put away, stopped,
But between this breath and the next
It matters
That once you were here.
  
edited: nothing like posting something to make you want to tweak it further :-P

Some one is pushing a "Blank Verse Blog Week".
Now while sometimes that sort of thing is nice, I find their explanation pretty poor.  Both reasoning and execution lack the sort of skill that should inspire me to join their little game.  For Shakespeare's birth?  Five stresses to a line, ten syllables, is that a fitting tribute to the Bard?  I could write shopping lists in that "blank verse" and most blogs have as little meaning, right?  Instead of squeezing meter from a stone, they'd do much better to push folk to -read- the plays themselves (and read aloud is best... maybe a potluck gathering with friends?)  For me, I'll write just as I always do and if it falls in pattern, well... who knew? 
  

Monday morning SOB
Exhausted fumes in traffc, 
Claustrophobic,
Claws atrophic,
Unable to let be or be.