Setaside's Poetry.... if you like...
setaside2
Posts: 1,084
Damn... sweet new board. I don't know about you all but I like it. LOL now I get to REALLY flap my yap at ya. AND I DON'T HAVE TO SHUT UP.
Okay, maybe I do.
Anyway, I have wanted to post some poetry online and I couldn't think of a better clan to judge it (to hate or to love) than you all. Be blunt but at least leave me with hope, alright? LOL here we go.
and by the way, this scares the SHIT out of me having you all read this stuff but hey, I am looking to either desktop publish or put it together some other way... I just want to know if it's worthwhile... PLEASE let me know. If it ISN'T worthwhile, I shall run away and hide, but your lives shall be much quieter in that case... hmmm....
seta.
PS PJ Fest info will be ELSEWHERE later on. Thanks!
PPS if you guys think it is too selfish to just post my stuff here, please feel free to add your own, because it IS damn selfish, and I admit that, but then I'm from Colorado, I can't help it...
First couple will be stuff I have posted on the (sniff) old board, but I was hoping for opinions.
Okay, maybe I do.
Anyway, I have wanted to post some poetry online and I couldn't think of a better clan to judge it (to hate or to love) than you all. Be blunt but at least leave me with hope, alright? LOL here we go.
and by the way, this scares the SHIT out of me having you all read this stuff but hey, I am looking to either desktop publish or put it together some other way... I just want to know if it's worthwhile... PLEASE let me know. If it ISN'T worthwhile, I shall run away and hide, but your lives shall be much quieter in that case... hmmm....
seta.
PS PJ Fest info will be ELSEWHERE later on. Thanks!
PPS if you guys think it is too selfish to just post my stuff here, please feel free to add your own, because it IS damn selfish, and I admit that, but then I'm from Colorado, I can't help it...
First couple will be stuff I have posted on the (sniff) old board, but I was hoping for opinions. I'm stepping in front of the gushing hydrant in a hurricane. I'd like to see the traction I keep.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
yes, i like...but i can't seem to find it?
it was like it wasn't a poem at all.
it was more like a message.
just kidding with ya seta...
ISLE/future holdings
The rain has stopped and the lightning has chased it's tail for the last time. No thunder to rattle the screens, threatening to be let in. The wind no longer shakes the trees, trembling in humility and bowing in unison to the invisible majesty that is any given storm... even nature must worship it seems. The clouds have slowed their screaming to a low moan and the sidewalks are reasserting their dull, grey, cracked exteriors as if to prove that nothing could faze them, nothing excites them, life is all so boring. The birds settle in, resigned to the chores of tomorrow. The worms resign themselves to almost certain doom come early morn and the babes sigh quietly having been shushed of their rumbling fears, the gods at play, their fates held by their own eyes still searching for something to actually see. Windchimes play their songless tune, the wind needing refinement and education for such a moody instrument so difficult to master in retrospect. Trophies no longer matter. The house is down. The dreams alight and settle on phone wires looking for a home. Water courses down a parking lot vein refreshing hidden cracks we'll never know until next season's dandelion rears its yellow mane and dons its powdered coat. Though the ribbons flutter, the angel never can tell where nor when the motion begins. Confused by the noise that surrounds he trudges homeward, the mud only slowing slightly to allow passage. Molasses is swamplike, he reminds himself. It is dark like chocolate, but it is a falsehood. A syrupy muck that makes way as if it were a moving tide in slow motion. Devious even. Sly. What was it they all got into? The door ajar, the porch light blown, the dog asleep under the rocker. Newspapers scratch the breeze, grabbing for purchase, seeking flight. The print holds down, holds back, never gives of itself, never fades. The stories hidden in between like secrets to be told in a second grade ear. The storm's passage only serves to ruffle and upset their timidity. They share their tragedy in silence, knowing that the rains can only wash away so much and that the city slumbering silent below the eastern horizon will have much to answer for. Transparent is the love, a wisp of steam, a tendril of fog... never touching for long, the fingers grasping yet weak. It basks in the accomplishments of summer and the burnt asphalt that is man's answer to the trailbreak. Sacrifice has never come so easy. There are only so many words to read in the aftermath of a storm, the books yet to be comfortable holding so many lives in the one binding philosophy of reach and affect and dreamreachhurtlovedestroy... what affectations must be reached to catch the rain? What emotive? This page turner is far beyond the skill of even the best of us to dissuade from its purpose- time has more enemies than any other- though it carries forward in gentle manner. It no longer treads with strength upon the graves of others, instead weaving its way amongst the headstones with bated breath as if superstition had finally bitten deep enough to withdraw. The grass bends only somewhat under the force of running footsteps and raising up afterward as if to witness the fleeting figure in the mist and darkness of the early hours. The docks beckon. The water calls. The gulls cry and circle their morning ritual, a life begun anew. The water has cleansed enough and their song has changed from the melancholy of well traveled and overflighted birds, to the joy shared by a chick in its first day of winged bliss. Once the sun rises reminiscence itself is but a memory, superstition a faded myth. No markings left of the barking lightning and love is once again allowed corporeal form, to whisper and wind and grace and to eyelash... the town shutters spring open as it gathers its first breath of the morning air, the dawn an oxygenated treat. And as the first of the townspeople, those who understand the day and its callings, make their way onto the cobblestone streets, a glint in the distant suggests that eternity has just winked at its own private jest; one in which, all in all, life and death are much the same. The blooming petal, the falling autumn, the daily balance... time is nothing but the measurement of what we remember. The ocean understands such laughter, the pelicans cry as fast is broken, and the new day has arrived.
Say So...
While you were out
While
While you were out
Hey man, while you were out she called and lightning struck your tree outside the second floor window.
Hey. While you were out, man:
The big dipper is only half full but at least it’s full of something unlike some people I know:
While you were out…
The doorbell kept ringing and the answering machine kept erupting with messages for “Jill” and she hasn’t slept here for weeks…
While you were out…
Some guy who said he knew you in high school stopped by with an empty gas tank and crashed on the lawn and the world had the audacity to keep in its current pace of rotation even though you were gone…
While you were out…
The house said goodnight and its windows shut concealing any who may have passed and all who have just passed through like so many ghostly café patrons…
While you were out…
My crayons melted and all can read of the once proud Crayola is the O-L-A like some sort of Spanish hello and now I can’t draw…
the card table folded and put itself away if not only to protect me from memories of you, then only to protect my good hand
While you were out…
The champagne was gold, the water was silver, the earth a
greenish-blue. Maybe my crayons didn’t melt after all…
While you were out…
I left this message on the heritage dining table and explained a few things that made me cry to which the fish in the aquarium responded empathetically swimming around…
I packed up my crayons
While you were out…
The driveway tossed and turned under my troubled feet, the mailbox saluting with involuntary flag down…
While you were out…
My shadow faded down the sidewalk in the glitter glare of the streetlight…
This paper held my hand and…
While you were out…
This pen did me a favor by spilling its guts…
While you were out…
This pen did me a favor once again:
And told you goodbye
among other things, i think i saw an oil spill.
later---
ok...up to speed now. (rough morning)
quite good.
thanks.
An OIL SPILL!?
winded, you wound me... yeesh.
here's ONE more...
RETALIATION/
broken aviation
She sat in her corner
Folding industriously,
Of course,
A piece of college ruled.
Just finished dusting
And rusted in mind
She let the plane
Wing it’s way through the
Worldly currents provided by
The stainless steel of a heat vent.
It hovered silent,
Slipping upward to
Graze the ceiling with a rush
Of movement
And a wisp of air.
Nose dive,
Graceful still,
It sticks in the carpet tip first.
The fragile cockpit command center
Would have been a wreck
Yet
Paper survives and so
No actual death
She sighed as she reached over
To pick it up
And watched sadly as her father
Entered the room crushing it
Poor thing
With his right heel
“How many times..?”
He asked
“HOW many TIMES?”
He seethed
“HOW MANY TIMES?!”
He flurried
Emphasizing every syllable
Her heart was crushed
With his right heel
She cried for the loss
He grew angrier
So misunderstood it seems
The both of them
He exploded
She flinched
He shouted
She screamed
And they ate dinner
Parenthood it seems
Is a compound word
Meaning hypocrisy
Teenage it seems
Is merely a two syllable word
She discontinued the situation
In the interest of dinner
One argues with no stomach
When running on one that is empty
A Roman thought
For an American girl
She was special
And yet in the end
She wasn’t anything new
Her tragedy…
She was an American legacy
Fancied herself a cinematic event
Even a star shining dimly
Somewhere in the overview of
The estimated timed arrivals
Her tragedy…
As any other star
Who died in a violent plane crash
Who died in the throes
A part of our woes
Those who died in the arms of the country
That reared
Rejected
Realized and
Revered them
In time she may have been as such
Was such
So we may suppose
As she trusted her fancies
More pink and real
More sunset and starlight
More scented and full
Than anything he bedroom window
Could have provided her
Than anything her shades
Could have protected her from
Her nickname: bent reality
Depression her bitter arrow
The paper airplane her downward fall
Surround her
Around her
Underground her
Love spoke spatters
Poetry with edges roughly hewn
Untaught and dissolute
Deluded
Diluted
Drowned in misconception
Folded by shaking hands
Into yet another paper airplane
Shy and slight
Made in the image of its creator
It flew as predicted.
edit: i really did like it. it honestly moved me. i'm an idiot when it comes to discussing poetry, and for that i apologize. i'm an awful friend to you Marc, and i'm sorry! :(
don't call me daughter, not fit to, the picture kept will remind me...
(:
these are all amazing... the first one especially... it's like tripping and reading the dictionary with superhuman speed...
reallly....
nice (:
I have never tripped while reading the dictionary but now that you mention it, if I am ever to trip, that will be one of the things I will most certainly do. It sounds as though I could learn alot.
Another for you all...
“Ballerina,”
screamed the speaker
The sound molding its words
As glazed clay in the air
Lift your legs higher woman
You’ve nowhere left to run
Surrounded by the radio glare
Glanced off a windshield
And set aside to be packed away
With yesterday’s holiday
She
As they call her, thumbs pointed
Indiscreetly
Indiscriminately
In her general direction
Screams in silence
In midlife orchestral shutdown
The seed to
The beginnings of
Her own fallen grace
A misplaced step
A misdirection
An aerial misinterpretation and
She collapses in a heap
A multicolored
Multi-patterned pile of leaves
That is the woman of autumn
Sad and decaying
A butterfly losing its wings
In the acid rain
Such is the city life
For the natural one
Beauty
Grace
And a losing place
Lost in the gunshot
The sixhundredfeetpersecond
Of a misfire
Temporal perhaps
Hers was too hot
She was too high
And no one was willing enough
To crane their necks
To read the billboard
Upon which she slept
Pride is a crime
Shared and sinned by us all
And she was not the first
To die for our sins
The smell of sulphur
Swirling in the aftermath
Of some bastardized civilization
With no understanding of what lies
Between its gripping fingers
Entangled in her
Whirling hair
Splayed windblown across the sky
Are the lives and lines of millions
Butterflies without wings
Moths in the moonlight of the
Passing windshields
That wink nightly
Slyly
Like the secret that everybody knows
Why state the obvious
When all it does is undermine
What may already be undone
Like the broken shoelace
The frozen smile
The scream of a bullet
The melodic raucous encore
The soul of the dance
The ballet
“Ballerina,”
I screamed as
I heard the squall
Smelled the burning rubber
The melting asphalt
That acrid tar
The last thing I saw as
I fluttered my dusty wings
Enough to settle and dry
-the music hurts at times you know-
Was the fading red glare of the parking lights
Rounding the curve about a block away
Poor girl.
"that last one in your thread
about the woman in autumn...
about a bill board, no?
very interesting..."
I really envisioned a woman, a ballerina, left to die on the balcony of a billboard the image above her is her face or her work or her life... in her particular case it does not matter as life imitates art ironic. But yes, the billboard is most certainly there.
Her dress is tattered and she has lost her shoes. The last dance was perhaps a week ago last monday... she appears like a roof ravaged in a storm, pieces sailing off in the tempest; whether of her or of her raimant it makes no nevermind as regardless, she will be naked to the world. And she will die as she was brought in. She is human. She is humane. She is humanity. The metal grate grasps at her hair as she falls to the pavement below...
I don't know why, but I always loved that woman. She has this ethereal elusivity (if that isn't a word I believe we can christen it now). It is a calling.
-Eddie Vedder
(Blood, 7-5-03, Camden 1)
I thank you for your attempts at plowing through all this. Now I can only hope that some of you have OCD and will read it over and over and over and over....
New stuff soon.
seta
Hi, my name is Sharon, and I have adult ADD...
"future holdings" was challenging to me. nearly every sentence could have been the beginning of a story or a new poem. i thought there should have been paragraphs. fewer periods. more "..." less capitalization. and i did plow through it.
i wasn't convinced, on the first read, that the storm had cleansed anything for the "new day".
and in the end, that is, the last read, i was only slightly more inclined to believe any different. it is too top-heavy with doubt, and observations of present day humanity that the forces of human nature (rather than of nature itself) are still clouding the horizon for the new day.
maybe it's just me. maybe it's the times.
whatever the case, thanks for posting it.
The entire story of future holdings is filled with doubt. I believe that the storm gives the opportunity for second chance, though i scarcely believe the town has the ability to pull itself from past habits and dark doings. However the cleansing is where it ends because it is the single most fleeting part of the entire charade. No storm cleanses completely, and purity can never be gotten by so violent an act. I don't care WHAT the Bible says.
and as for the usage of ellipses... well... LOL
I can only say that YES I love them and that I also thought their usage in this piece was totally appropriate. The ellipses is all about uncertainty, the imagination wondering "what's next?" or "what's meant by that?." But then, occasionally, very occasionally, the ellipses indicates that which is extravagantly obvious to everyone and fills the need (or lack of need) to finish a sentence.
meanwhile, I only count the use of the ellipses THRICE.
And with the human race, both exist equally, side by side. LOL and there is NOTHING truly certain about the obvious.
However, for some reason, while the story certainly has a dark undercurrent, hoeweverso it be... it leaves me with a sense of contentment. I have no idea why. And as for each sentence beginning a new poem or a new story, well, that's just the way I talk. LOL. I guess that's the only semi decent excuse I have for that one.
Thanks, guys, for reading all this stuff.
lifeisworth wrote on 09-01-2003 01:09 PM:
why is she dying?
Why does anything innocent die? The reasons are as varied as the quantity of poppy seeds on any given muffin. I never gave it much thought because it was so Natural, really. She was dying, that was that. It was tragic and beautiful, like any other metamorphosis. But along the way I fell in love with her and realized that, regardless how natural, how run of the mill, how course-of-events all this was, that she maintained that "special-ty" that was oh so infinitely human.
It was her time, if you can dig that. Her last petal had fallen. How cliche. How true.
a new one in the next bit....
RETURN/of the left hand
I’m totally hated, and my Sumerian face is bruised.
She hit me as hard as she could,
The floodwaters rushing the gates,
And in supplication
I bowed out to the better movement.
With trepidation my tiptoed serenity is compromised;
The trembling of the earth the foreboding of yet another sunset unnamed.
The infallibility of the future and the waves of the new tide…
I have watched the moonrise
In awe,
The youngest of children revisited (and never fully understood).
The wonder and fear of it all
Bleached and smattered,
Dried like conch shells on a shelf,
Remnants of what was an evolution left upon the ears of the blind,
The last description a raspy voice lost the in the tempest finally arrived
And a postscript left alone.
What is anything made of if it is hollow? I once read a myth that essentially said that you couldn't know a man or a woman unless they were spread across the road. Interesting theory and, I guess, lol, biologically it's true.
All thoughts are subjects in their own right. I believe this.
As for being idignant, hmmm.... I don't mean to come across in that manner. I have always just hoped that any piece would be strong enough to last or stand on its own. I have no wish to come across as arrogant. And I REALLY apologize if you get that impression.
Depth may start as only one direction, but imagine the drill that plunges miles into the earth's crust and breaks into the unknown grotto... depth spreads quickly. Don't sell yourself short, regardless of the quality of any piece or conversation.
Cynicism, on the other hand, is also quite healthy. I say salt it with some irony and let it grow! LOL
the thumbs up is hilarious
i'm canadian
i don't think that's the first time Seta's heard that before...i agree!!
wow. i really hope that really was a compliment because i'm taking it that way. thank you.
and lol what does your nationality have anything to do with anything?
superfine actalo
and a q for kevin 33... i recognize that sig... some other username... cracks me up anyway...
and a q for seta... (since you pubically post all my pm's, no sense in going that route anymore... :P) um.... (and no animosity or jocularity... just curiosity) why so in love with a dying thing?
fear of commitment? and ego trip on loving the ugly? a power thing over a crumpled ballerina? too many gwenyth paltrow movies???
this is a most masculine phenomenon, this love of small weak needy things
and... in a woman's need for love... does she sell herself short and create herself weak? or does she live alone, the words "feminist bitch" slung around her neck like an albatross?
vibrator happily buzzing away between the matresses???
where be the median, yo? age?
No fear of commitment. No ego trip. and certainly no power trip... if anything the poem is fraught with powerlessness both of the dancer AND of the watcher.
I don't see it as a masculine thing. I see it as a spirit reaching out, hesitantly and then realizing that it has NO idea what to do or how to do it or what's expected of it. I strongly resist the idea of machismo, especially where my poetry is concerned. The thought of some jock mantra entering my words causes me no end of pain.
Have you ever witnessed a dying butterfly, trembling on the stem or on the petals of a flower or on the leaf? It is a signal beauty and one that is laden with a pragmatic beauty so potent that if you let it, it will hurt you. Your chest tightens as you look upon one of the wonders in this world so mundane (death, it happens everyday, to everyone) that no one notices it until it swallows them whole. Only then do they choose to question. and again, it hurts. You don't know why.
As for the age median, I always thought that the ballerina was ageless... on the stage, in real life... she is a symbol of have and have not, love and loss. Clothed nakedness, the one state none of us can deal with: utter vulnerability.
IF she is a feminist, then she would be considered a failed feminist. Her albatross was that she loved too much in a world where that is a crime. She was human. That was also her crime. She was judged and found wanting.
And there will never ever be a vibrator reference in my poetry. LOL. Damn you!
so, that wasn't a poem you sent me last night?....
HA!!
I read these a few days ago so forgive me for not responding sooner...
I've said it before and I'll keep on sayin in, you really have a way with words. Your use of imagery and creation of visualizations is phenomenal. There's nothing I like more than to actually be able to see what I'm reading.
Your first poem ISLE, well all I could hear in my head was Ed's voice reading it aloud. To me this seemed like it was an extended version of "I'm Open," like the draft that didn't make the album cut. Take that as a compliment, cuz I think Eddie inspires us all with his words!
"Retaliation" and "Say So" both seemed very personal, like you had taken scenes out of your own home and put it on paper. I pictured you reciting them in a coffee house with vigor. And we all clapped, or snapped our fingers like true beats, at the end.
Ballerina was almost traumatic to read. I guess that was the point, to feel her defeat. Somehow it's easy, and therefore painful to relate to suffering girls. My poor tortured soul!
So basically, you blow me away. Plus I'm glad that I now understand how you chose your username!
"And set aside to be packed away"
50th show @ Fenway 8/5/16!!!
1996: 9/28 ~~ 1998: 9/10 ~~ 2000: 8/24 ~~ 2003: 4/30, 7/2, 7/3, 7/5, 7/6, 7/8, 7/9, 7/11, 7/14 ~~ 2004: 9/28, 9/29, 10/1, 10/2 ~~
2005: 9/15, 9/16, 10/3 ~~ 2006: 5/12, 5/13, 5/27, 5/28, 6/1, 6/2 ~~ 2008: 6/19, 6/20, 6/24, 6/25, 6/27, 6/28, 6/30 ~~
2009: 10/27, 10/28, 10/30, 10/31 ~~ 2010: 5/15, 5/17, 5/18, 5/20, 5/21 ~~ 2013: 10/18, 10/19, 10/21, 10/22 ~~
2016: 4/28, 4/19, 5/1, 5/2, 8/5, 8/7