Poetry A Modest Collection

[SkyGinge]

In that case, no problem, and I hope you can see what I mean there. After all, I needn't remind you of the subjectivity of all literature, and what I very pickily identified as a minor flaw might be nothing at all to another :') As for prose, at some point that'd be good, however I am going to be pretty busy now until this time next week, so when I find time I'll contact you and ask for a link.


All of this makes me want to try my hand at poetry again. The last proper poem I did (barring a poem that was literally about how much I hated poetry, such was my dislike for the form then) was probably about six years ago, but I reckon it'd probably play to my strengths and would definitely be worth attempting now that I have a lot more appreciation for poetry in general. So anyhow, if I do ever find something to use as inspiration for that, I'll know where to find a knowledgable reviewer!

 

[Grey]

Cold Enough

Soon it will be cold enough
To build fires. To stack cord
Upon cord.
Hands, on bark worn rough,
Scraping, wringing
Strangling themselves
Like a ward against night.

Beneath a moon
Pitiless and serene,
I am a frozen claw,
A corpse on a hillside,
Stone worn smooth.

I never believed in miracles-
-and still don’t-
-so when I said ‘this won’t be the end.’

I knew, like:
The seabirds seek land;
Caterpillars tighten spiracles;
Snowflakes hiss in descent
Lost to the flames, melting
In your hand.

Soon it will be cold enough
To build fires. I will burn
My books to warm your cold, cold blood.

 

[Grey]

Reflections 1:10

It is universally known,
Without awareness,
The simple mantra:
Reach heaven through violence.

I stand thus before a bloodied altar
Surrounded by splinters,
Fragments,
Still-warm strips of heart.
In my blood-stained left hand I hold a chisel
Which is called Chance
And in my right the hammer which is Will.
The altar is an anvil and it is named Time.
I will crumble upon it, eventually, and it will remain,
And there will come others, after me.

These, like flakes of red quartz;
I scraped them off with a year
Of selfish goodbyes.

This piece froze, and broke away
Because I was not ready, and cruel.

Ah, and this one, still bloody…
I crushed the source to dust,
But the pressure left behind a diamond.
I keep this to remember.

But what of my heart? Here
On the altar;
This piece I took and stitched in,
To make it stronger. I’m sure
She found a replacement.

Here is a strand, traded.
We knew it had to end,
Not easily,
But with love.

This obsidian septum was required
To fuse the broken parts together again
And to never feel the heat of the Mediterranean sun.
When I rose from nightmare, and she said:
“I’m sorry. I’m engaged.
I’m sorry. I don’t expect you to forgive me.”

Here, and here, and here…
When she told me “I can’t let myself fall in love with you.”
I replaced that with steel.
When she told me “I fell in love with him - like I refused to do with you.”
I replaced that with something that would cut if touched.
When she said “I love you; please, call me your whore.”
I replaced the loss with the lie, and would not forget.

I stand in bare feet upon the shards of broken heart
Before my blood-stained altar
With my blood-stained hands
And my bleeding wounds
And I raise my hammer, which is the Will.
Reach heaven through violence; I think
That I am near, and soon I can lay down
My tools. Wash the blood from my hands.

Rest.

 

[Ashurbanipal]

So violent. I dig it.

 

[Grey]

Dug out of my old files. Thought I'd never attempted a Garland Cinquain.


Garland of Dead Roses

Whisper
Of sheets drawn tight,
Hiding from the cold and
Desolate silence beyond us;
Dreaming,

Bleed now
This sullen night
Of all memory kept
In distant, dishonest hearts,
Waiting.

Away
With all this now;
With all the yesterdays
I could neither quit nor embrace
Nor mourn.

Deceit
Is the nightdress
Of those truths which I am
longing to mourn and so heal, not
Hold.

Forgive,
Or don’t, these sins;
I was weak and lazy
I would slide into solitude
Forget.

Whisper
This sullen night
With all the yesterdays
longing to mourn, and so heal, not
Forget.

 

[Poe]

I'm reading through these right now and definitely want time to digest them as thoroughly as they deserve to be digested (you've got some seriously striking and brilliant words here). I just wanted to make a quick comment on your Garland Cinquain because that is a structural nightmare for the rest of the universe to figure out and you've done it rather impressively. I often times find it hard for myself to stay within any structure whatsoever but the thought of even attempting this makes my hair stand on end.


But like I said, this is all really impressive and I look forward to letting you know my thoughts!

 

[Grey]

I'm reading through these right now and definitely want time to digest them as thoroughly as they deserve to be digested (you've got some seriously striking and brilliant words here). I just wanted to make a quick comment on your Garland Cinquain because that is a structural nightmare for the rest of the universe to figure out and you've done it rather impressively. I often times find it hard for myself to stay within any structure whatsoever but the thought of even attempting this makes my hair stand on end.
But like I said, this is all really impressive and I look forward to letting you know my thoughts!

Thank you! I will look forward to it.


You can tell how much I struggled with that Cinquain, can't you? I feel like it's too incoherent, almost using the structure as an excuse.

 

[Grey]

Dry Well

The well is ancient
Deep and dark
And one might think I, as Narcissus,
Spend a while on self-regard
In black waters.
But it is bare, and I
Descend;
To feel the embrace
Of the dark earth.
The light above fades.
It is a disc,
Dissolved to ring,
To darkness;
But from here,
However bright the day
I can see the stars.

 

[Grey]

@ClaveVesari - I understand you feel my work is sub-par. I would appreciate your impartial and civil criticism on any or all of these poems. It is my hope to improve the existing work or ensure higher quality poetry in future with the aid of your feedback.

 

[Grey]

This is just an experiment inspired by someone I used to know.


Return To The Monastery

Set this one to music;
Let’s call this a swan song
because while I was amused, well
this conversation ran on too long.
Let’s open a bottle because without a doubt
we’re both going to feel worse about things
come morning, so we should get it out.

Now, I understand your reservations - alright
I’m lying; I’m guessing, but you tell me without telling me
(an accidental success, would you believe)
that this isn’t a path you found in light
and I feel it when you say it’s not right and…

Really that’s a tragedy but it’s clear you don’t want to learn from me and hey the road is long so I can hope
You let this go and someone from a quarter you respect (absent papers, books, and debt) finds you
And helps you climb this mountain so you can look below to recognize your own mirrors and smoke
‘cuz see I firmly believe you’re only as strong as your community which places on you a responsibility
- shit, would you look at this unruly screed?


The medium is the message
And there are angels in the architecture
If you just learn to see ‘em
And in a way you have to be one
Because if you keep the company of kings
while you call them friends but inside know
there’s little difference 'tween the roles
you owe it to say ‘you’ve got no clothes’.

Ah, hold on, I forgot to brag
I forgot to brag
(that’s obscure allusion,
callback, homage;
Saul Williams makes this
look like spewing garbage).

Forget it though, I’m not going to brag
Other people have the right style, the right ‘swag’,
So have a lovely evening
Because this piece is done
And the proof is in the reading.

 

[Grey]

Year Walk

Rain hard on streets again.
Cobbles wind-worn, long-walked
Swept clean of the year;
All things borne to water.
Vista changed by the storm.

Cobbles wind-worn, long-walked;
Jamais vu tickles my neck.
I have been here before
Under a black umbrella
Looking into the future.

Jamais vu tickles my neck;
The memory of a whisper
In the chill January gloaming
And a long walk onward
Sure of every single step.

The memory of a whisper
A prayer or a curse
Spoken into the empty air,
Lingering like a dream
Or the smell of rain.

Rain hard on streets again.
Jamais vu tickles my neck
In the chill January gloaming.
The memory of a whisper;
A curse, or a prayer.

 

[Tronethiel]

I must traverse the realm that is Grey's poetry collection. I'm glad you posted your new poem so that I'd know this actually existed.

 

[Dusky]

I must traverse the realm that is Grey's poetry collection. I'm glad you posted your new poem so that I'd know this actually existed.

Buckle up. You're in for a ride.

 

[Grey]

Apologia

Rain on my face like a cold shroud
under a blank springtime sky,
mirrored in the floodwaters rising
from pavement and the city's lights
are distant stars.

I am dying without drowning,
and these waters flow not
over street and concrete
but brittle grass and living rock,
down to the sea.

The distant stars
are a lighthouse
or a beacon
or fireflies
or the city lights reflected on the fog
that drifts like torn gauze across the scar
of old glaciers long gone which cut here to the chalk.

I cannot tell if this path falls
or ascends and the journey is
maddening, cutting my wrists
and feet on exposed stone
where I will not risk my fingers.
In the caverns under the island
or on the up-heaved promontory
I found unburied dead
and forgotten mementos;
confetti of torn pages spiraling
into the void


I do not fly.

 

[Dusky]

Oooh. This one makes me think of Dear Esther, among other things.

 

[Grey]

Oooh. This one makes me think of Dear Esther, among other things.

That is an intentional intertextual reference.

 

[Grey]

First post edited back into legibility.  May have made some sneaky changes to structure here and there. 


Anomaly is right, I really do use water imagery a lot.


Ah, well.  Something new in the nearish future. 

 

[punkinblackk]

Apologia is my favorite so far. It speaks to me. 


( To be fair, I read that one on Tumblr a while back, and haven't had a chance to digest the rest.)

 

[Dusky]

Anomaly is right, I really do use water imagery a lot.

I had a similar moment of epiphany about my own work, recently. Basically everything I've written lately has been heavily aquatic, it's bizarre.

 

[Grey]

This Crushing Fathom


The sea lives in my veins,
And though I may brave the surface I carry it with me,
Feeling ever the call to look up and sink down,
To this crushing fathom
Which is cold and curious comfort for creatures
Such as I, that can scarcely withstand the sun.
Sometimes I reach the surface,
Trying to swim in the great black sky,
Only to find the cold stars shine with mockery,
And my only solace remains below
In the dark that is mother and father both.
I have reached out to visiting lights
And passing ships
With lumpen, clumsy limbs
And squat now in a charnel kingdom
With fragments torn away and the pearls
That were her eyes.

Regret won’t change what I did.

 

[Grey]

On The Merits of Human Extinction


“It was great, being a child,” she said
And I nodded politely, taking the proffered spliff,
Inhaling to stop any answer emerging


(somewhere in the back of my head weighing cancer


against consciousness)
“You could just play, no bills or rent…”
Which is a hard fact to argue, assuming
You didn’t grow up under Uncle Sam and similar monsters
These days buzzing overhead where once they wore a human face.


(internally thinking that comparison has earned the cancer


and wouldn’t that be easier)
“Yeah, I suppose so,” I replied, through obscuring smoke,
Thinking of days sunk into Final Fantasies
The last time I really used art to escape, that I remember,
Before I thought I could be an artist.


(I remember wondering if you could will yourself to death


which is a harder pastime now)
“I like to make decisions, though.”
Which strikes me as pretty funny, then,
Because it’s not as if they matter;
pork now or salmon later the day ends the same


(mercifully forgetting that I’ll wake up


and walk this circle again)


At one point this might have been seduction
But the flesh can fuck off at the spirit’s revulsion
For lives priced in dollars and pervasive compulsion
Because being a kid again means growing up to be you
Again, and don’t pretend you won’t fuck it up this time too
Because the world will ensure that for you
And the easiest way to change it is to take something out
Rather than hoping things will turn around.

 

[Grey]

Fixed some formatting in the OP but it still needs cleaning up.

 

[Grey]

One day, this will be finished and then I will die.
Part 1; I have to rewrite it every couple of months.

1
Voices and names shattered
Across the face of Europe,
Like a bottle in the hand of a drunk
And the shards make old scars bleed again,
Feeding the dark earth where a serpent slumbers.
Now we feel it's mortal shufflings in our foundations,
The lives shaken loose, adherent and apostate both
Paying for the sins of fathers who would pay for nothing.

As if the streets of Berlin did not remind us.
As if the riven landscape of Afghanistan did not remind us.
As if the flag of a Yokohama police station
Didn’t hang in the home of a young man
Whose grandfather bought it for a bullet
And a piece of his soul.

All the great and noble did
Was learn far quieter evils,
Selling freedom as servitude
Manufactured by slavery.

Teamwork makes the dream work,
This hotel for that permit, send this offshore
Tell the chattel to hate each other and make them spend more.
You want food, scum? Then serve or die.
Single teenage mother selling bullets
By the branded package to feed children
Who will fire,
one day
At the children of the teenage mother in another hemisphere
Who fed them by making the clothes
The other wore
When the pastor cast her
out.

Meanwhile, in the bastion of peace and unity,
Refugees trapped in camps die from sickness and cruelty,
Explained away when the government says:
The nine-year-old surviving on twenty Euro a week
Is the reason you can’t have a house.
The thing about abuse is, eventually,
You learn to be helpless;
Ex-colony stamped indelibly by the expectation
That the faux-paternal exploitation
Is coming from one of ours.

Sure what can you do - they haven’t a notion beyond the Pale.

 

[Grey]

Message In A Bottle

When I think I miss you,
I don't miss you how it sounds.
The empty night becomes comfort as much as shroud,
And the yearning for warmth, the fit of contour and curve
In easy sleep has no name.

When I think I miss you,
I mean I miss trading bites
Of the meal I ordered and you didn't
So we have to share and compare.
There's less flavour without.

When I think I miss you,
I mean I miss the secret tongue
And mangling of words that always prompts a smile
As easily as it confuses anyone else.
Making a soft texture of nonsense.

When I think I miss you,
I mean I miss your clever incisions
Into my body of work, and others,
And how you taught me to see
And use that sight.

When I think I miss you,
I mean I miss the could have been.
Of course I burned those bridges,
Without really noticing, like all my vandalism,
And a sixtieth chance really would be unworthy.

When I think I miss you,
I mean I miss you.

I don't say it.
I hold the warm memory of the loss,
That negative space where the love had been.
I know to be gone, it had to be there once.
I wonder who you are now
But I've no right to know.
You're better, I believe; that's enough.

Here's to absent friends,
From the bottom of my heart
At the bottom of the sea.

 

[Grey]

I am open to criticism, incidentally. Always room to improve.