Poetry and Poetastry

[Fade to Black]

wasn['t feeling the poem i posted in this space earlier, replaced it with an older one.

Elegy for a Gold Digger

Tell me, lately have you seen
A girl gone missing
Went by the name of Kitty Green
Might’ve passed through town
She would dip in and out
But never reached a shore beyond the scene
I first met her on the floor
Where she was crowned in glitter pour
A typical school-end teenage prom queen
Soon enough, time came and went
Flipping through the months like pages of a magazine
Men borrowed her, normally, older guys
Who forgot and liked to know
The feeling of, what it’s like
To be stuck, well in between
The wishful walls of seventeen
Through record halls,
Behind movie screens,
Round revolving doors of bored hotels and art-filled galleries
There were brightly blurry days, star-lit lonely nights
She walked them in and out
But never grew the legs to flee the scene.

[Fade to Black]

Another one written out of procastination just now -

On Painting

I do it as a form
Of practicing abstinence,
Or self-abnegation.
I do it only when
Night is out
And the lights are low,
So it’s hard for me to tell
Just which way the wind blows.

This is my way
Of drying out, staying
Away from the bottle
And sticking to the can.
For what you believe
Is how much of a man
You are, when dark creeps in
As you scribble in the sand.

[lalilulelo]

It is satisfying to see you constantly create, Fade To Black. Like a fuckin' sunrise everyday, you consistently lean forward.

[Fade to Black]

"Like a fuckin' sunrise everyday"

I think this may be the most beautiful comment I've ever received on anything. Thank you sir.

[Fade to Black]

and another one...

Finnish Afternoon

The office girls convene outside, breathing
Smoke between wind-shredded fingers. The sky
Was regular for this Finnish afternoon, and I
Watched behind my desk this 5-minute display
Of rapture and boredom. Here we are,
Like so many parked cars by the door
Have announced themselves before. Up
The metal tubes and through more gridded
Sheets, faint air blows through slits
But it's all barely sensible, only the hum
And drum beneath, soon headed down the street -
A dim echo in the belly of the beast.

[Philipppp]

Chance

I am a cloud in the sky,
A chance shadow on the wave of your heart.
Don't be surprised,
Or too elated;
In an instant I shall vanish without trace.

We meet on the sea of dark night,
You on your way, I on mine.
Remember if you will,
Or, better still, forget
The light exchanged in this encounter.

-Xu Zhimo

Edgar Allan Poe A Dream Within A Dream(1849), so beautiful...

[crouka]

A subtle chain of countless rings
The next unto the farthest brings;
The eye reads omens where it goes,
And speaks all languages the rose;
And, striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form.

- emerson

[Philipppp]

Till dig

Du min förtvivlan och min kraft,
du tog allt eget liv jag haft,
och därför att du krävde allt
gav du tillbaka tusenfalt.

To you

You my despair and my strength,
you took all the life I controlled,
and because you demanded everything,
you gave back a thousandfold.

-Karin Boye

[Fade to Black]

rise and shine poem -

The Belly of the Architect

It is a liminal space where genius collides
With empathy, subject to the whims
Of transient wind, the latitude and longitude
Corresponding to a bittersweet longing
He still feels for the lady wearing pearls
And a polka-dot dress who stood on the other end
Of the window he pressed his nose against, surveying
Architectonic cakes on his way home from school.
Here his thoughts are governed not so much by Euclidean
Reason or ivory tower babble, choosing instead
To navigate the tubular corridors by molecular vessels
Drafted from the shores of memory, something
Which there is a beautiful word in Portuguese for,
But it escapes my tongue at this precise moment.

[Fade to Black]

The Passenger

How easy it is to lose sight
Of where these tracks lead, like
A bird tucking into a skyline,
Even as one is aware of the fact
That the finished plastic cups
Will do just as well in the absence
Of clock or calendar; nobody
Has taken the seat across as of now.
The shifting views beyond the glass
Are faceless despite their competing
Claims to degrees of irresolution;
Surely a flash of ruptured expanse
Is no substitute for the chiaroscuro
Of distinguishable day and night.
Here is where memory comes
To languish in grey compartments
Filled with containers carrying
Various shades of everything
Except their points of origin, all
Of them approaching a wide and empty sea.

[zamb]

THE TRADER

Emotion for intellect
Poetry for prose
Spirituality for rationality
Facts for truth

Materialism for transcendentalism
Reductionism rules the day.................

Wealth of love has been impoverished
and wealth of money ascends the throne
Community for individuality
Altruism for Selfishness

Man is the measure of all things now
But oh has his measure fell short..........................

[Fade to Black]

Relapse

From a point in the abyss a streak
Of light shoots its way to the beginning
For its second blossom, a cloudlike glow
Emanating fumes fashioned by the stuff
That gives birth to dreams in the human
Liver; pink pulsations occur deep where
One has been dormant for too long,
The dilation of two pupils merely
A tautological response to instinct,
Resurrecting what was buried but not hidden.

[Philipppp]

AUTUMN LOVE


Search. Search. Seek. Seek.
Cold. Cold. Clear. Clear.
Sorrow. Sorrow. Pain. Pain.
Hot flashes. Sudden chills.
Stabbing pains. Slow agonies.
I can find no peace.
I drink two cups, then three bowls,
Of clear wine until I can’t
Stand up against a gust of wind.
Wild geese fly over head.
They wrench my heart.
They were our friends in the old days.
Gold chrysanthemums litter
The ground, pile up, faded, dead.
This season I could not bear
To pick them. All alone,
Motionless at my window,
I watch the gathering shadows.
Fine rain sifts through the wu-t’ung trees,
And drips, drop by drop, through the dusk.
What can I ever do now?
How can I drive off this word —
Hopelessness?

Li Qingzhao

[Fade to Black]

Theme Week

That second week of school we invented
Blackboards on which we would screech
And scrawl our way from one end to
The other, and it felt good, this
Momentary sense of total freedom
And abandonment from orthodoxy,
Like edging towards a lake, naked,
Not aware that there was anyone nearby
Watching. We could write in a language
That couldn't possibly exist, its letters
Elusive and impenetrable, a kind of code
Derived from myths born in the playground,
Something only we knew about.
As the afternoons progressed, the marks left
Increased in their urgency, filled
With the sad knowledge that other things
In the world were waiting, that soon
These surfaces available to us
Would have to be taken down,
The years resuming in dispassionate agency.
By Friday, what was written and erased
Took on a filmic patina of heroic scale,
Monumental for its innocence and absence,
A testament to worlds found, then lost.

[Fade to Black]

something written just now while procrastinating at work...

Part-time Job

Instances of routine seem
As impossible as a life lived
In full-on entropy. Breaks
Are often and well-deserved;
The day roars past the clouds.
With only the severity of light
Striking the building across
As my clock, I keep watch
For that god-given intersection
When a single panel projects
A beam so complete, I feel all
Must be right again, as I turn
My back on a window of perfection.