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poetreeSunday, every Sunday, let's have a community picnic. It's probably been a long week, and it's lovely to have a few minutes to sit back and relax and enjoy some good conversation in a less formal space. Feel free to bring something for the Picnic Basket - a poem you liked this week, a thought you had or something you experienced, or even something completely unrelated to poetry whatsoever that you just feel like sharing. Just take a moment to say hello, and maybe have a bite to eat; no one is going anywhere fast, and the shade promises some relief from the everyday heat. Let’s get to know each other a bit better, here under the branches of the poet’s tree.
Go vote in the poll!
Date: 2012-08-26 11:42 am (UTC)Re: Go vote in the poll!
Date: 2012-08-26 12:40 pm (UTC)Re: Go vote in the poll!
Date: 2012-08-26 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 12:39 pm (UTC)I'm bringing to the picnic more character poetry, as this one had good feedback on my journal. The "narrator" is the MC (a wereanimal), in a distant future where a traumatic and violence-heavy life lead him to a point where he had a significant breakdown and spent several years cut off from humanity. His friends eventually track him down and bring him back, and this poem would be set in that transitional period. TW for allusion to torture, rape, and murder.
Psychosemantic
To the judge and jury of my peers
Who have sentenced me to
life in pity:
I object.
To say that I have "lost my mind"
suggests that my sanity
slipped from my back pocket
on the walk home from work or
that it might again be found
like a pair of keys
engulfed by the sofa.
My mind is not a thing
misplaced.
I know every dark and dingy place it went.
I know where I think, therefore
I am
became, I remember, therefore
I am mad.
I remember:
How her sobs shook her to her ankles
when he forced himself between them.
The softness of my lover's skin - and
the clammy cold of the flesh under it.
I remember:
The skip of a man's pulse on my tongue
the smoke of him burning in my lungs.
The bite of a bullet in my gut - and
how no amount of liquor fills that hole.
I remember:
Days drugged and bound and beaten
how nothing hurt like too late
And how the last life I took
felt like nothing.
See, I didn't lose a thing - I carried it all
until my grief outgrew my mind
shattered it apart
went so wild that it needed its own habitat.
I spent three years in a forest
devouring the crumbs of my humanity
so that it wouldn't follow the trail home.
You followed me instead
had the nerve to call what you found
lost.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 03:50 pm (UTC)My first crowdfunding...
Date: 2012-08-26 01:52 pm (UTC)This is the one I wrote for
Across the Atlantic
To form the perfect castle using memory and sand:
a brisk day by the English seaside,
too rocky and cold to swim;
yellow bucket, salty water, fickle cloud;
a just-met cousin to help build the walls,
a teasing boy cousin to knock them down;
at last, a Kodak moment when all gather proudly
before gran and mum and aunties
to show the fine moat and walls they have built:
defenses against unknown invaders,
useless against the impending tide
and ravages of memory, time;
until one day a bright picture brings back the tang
of salt tears as the sea took the castle home.
Re: My first crowdfunding...
Date: 2012-08-26 03:51 pm (UTC)Re: My first crowdfunding...
Date: 2012-08-26 04:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 03:57 pm (UTC)This week marks the one year anniversary of Hurricane Irene and the devastating floods she caused here in Vermont. Many of our communities were isolated for days, and some for weeks, since so many roads and bridges were destroyed. Many homes were lost. Thankfully only a few lives were lost, so many more were saved by local volunteer firefighters evacuating homes early. The entire state banded together afterwards, and the sheer strength of community still blows me away.
After the Rain
The world as we know it is gone
new life grows through rotten floors.
Our world may end, but life grows on.
Over saturated the lawn
couldn't absorb the rain more.
The world as we know it is gone.
Down the banks the water ran on
until it overwhelmed the shores.
Our world may end, but life grows on.
Up the river rose, danger dawned,
torrents unleashed, destruction roared,
the world as we know it is gone.
Roads, cars, homes, so much lost, withdrawn
downstream, rubble forevermore.
Our world may end, but life grows on.
Water receded, clean-up dawned;
community strengthened through chores.
The world as we know it is gone.
Our world may end, but life grows on.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 04:25 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 05:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-27 02:43 am (UTC)But I forgot to mention two recent finds while hanging around in used book stores: The Oxford Book of Sonnets and a collection of Pushkin that includes all the major narrative poems outside of Eugene Onegin.
---L.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-27 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-26 11:40 pm (UTC)