Poems About Poetry

grooveamatic

ever since reading Marianne Moore's Poetry, I've loved poems about poetry. It's so fun! I'll start off.

grooveamatic

Reading a poem
Aloud, to yourself,
In the middle of the night
Is such a useless endeavor
You may as well
Spend your time
Burning your socks,
Or eating fingernails.
You may as well
Bundle yourself up
And wade onto your lawn
For a healthy
Midnight constitutional.
Have yourself a dose
Of real air
Without shadowed phrases
Or canned emotion.
The night sky being a picture
(and therefore worth
plenty of words)
A walk outside
Under it
Will be much better for you
Than stuffy verse
Read aloud by a fool like you
Could even pretend to be.
Have a keen listen
To the moderated way
The Dogwoods rustle
In that Northeast breeze,
The way the leaves only pretend
To touch each other.
All the sound,
It seems,
Comes from within
Each individual leaf;
The tree somehow a chorus
Of choruses
Singing not to be heard
But only to be worth hearing.
And keep alert for wildlife:
It's alive at night.
The hopping and scurrying
You'll hear all around you
Is Nature winding Her clock,
Pushing life forward
In all it's forms
While in the lightless houses
Men sleep oblivious.
It's all there,
In your backyard:
The birthings, homecomings
And inevitable finalities
Of so many
Valiant creations
Racing to-and-fro
In arcs of invisible light.
Soak it all up,
And when you feel
You can bear no more,
Go on back inside
(making sure you have
put your book away,
done the dishes,
drawn the drapes,
and fed the cats)
Slither out of your shoes
And coat,
Pull the blankets back,
Get cozy,
And drift into wistful,
Unsymbolic sleep.

Reading a poem
Aloud, to yourself,
In the middle of the night
Is such a useless endeavor
That I have heard of folks
Who, after having done it,
Set off fireworks,
Or have wept overtop
Their mother's urn
Until it held only mud.

Ms. Haiku

I am surrounded by fire
and my crown almost leaves
the card
when I write I'm large
I'm an Amazon

FinsburyParkCarrots

This is an old poem I wrote back in September but I'll post it here. It's inspired by my favourite poet, Patrick Kavanagh.

Great thread, grooveamatic.


Paddy Kavanagh, you were Behaned
I know, but laying down in the chest hospital
you heard the rustling leaves outside
tell you St Stephen's Green would teach you
not to care, not to fret about the poets' rows in McDaid's
on George Moore's use of the semi-colon,
and not to care about the men who would begin
their book tomorrow, better than your own four volumes.

Paddy, teach me to go out on the river bank,
where bridge shadows speak the mysteries of what
brought me first to love a word as a glimmer in a field,
a flashing fox eye, the streak of a tail,
the reedwhoosh of a now, and free me from all else
but to be romantically reborn in the freedom from contention.

grooveamatic

Fins--"reedwhoosh"...very cool.

grooveamatic

Bibliobella wrote:

I am surrounded by fire
and my crown almost leaves
the card
when I write I'm large
I'm an Amazon

Couldn't have put it better myself. Something about the simplicity of the line "when I write I'm large" strikes me as being truly great.

jboelhow

The words seem so clear
when running along the keyboard
of my creativity
Somewhere, along the neurological
pathways, between grey matter and
muscle
The poem becomes boxed
caged in expectations
The language screams for rules
Noun, simile, semi colon
The paper shies away from my emotions
The reader must understand
But they are my words
my words
my
words

grooveamatic

I've posted this one before, but this seems like a good home for it.


Amateur Poets

I read all about us
In magazines
Or journals
All the time.
It seems
There are too many of us
And we depress those chosen few
Who have--
On occasion--
Recieved money
To do
What I do
In order to breathe;
These professionals
Horde more money yet
By churning out
Insightful
How-to
Articles and detailed
Diagrams on
How To Break Into The Biz.
Meanwhile, the rest of us
Keep grinding it out,
Pushing life through
A hole in a tomato.

Somewhere there is a
Probably small patch of
Imagined land,
Where
The poet who is paid in money
And the poet who is paid in toil
Can meet, if only
In ideals and dark dreams.
If all us classes of poets
Were to someday have a meeting there,
I think I'd raise my hand
And point out
The only professional poet
I've ever met
Is the tree which stands in my backyard,
And it hasn't written anything new
In ages.

christmascleanlove

charles wrote:

This is not a peom
cause it don't mean a thing
and poem don't spell like that

haha! quite unique! refreshing

FinsburyParkCarrots

A Political Poet?

He Googles for some gruesome news: Oil slicks
in the Arctic, forest fires down
under. Then he chops up details, sticks
them here and there and in an overblown
tone of 'irony' begins to list
hypocrisies in govermental tears
for birds and trees that perish. He'll resist
all subtleties. A tone that overbears
to shout a coarse polemic is his norm.
Oh, sure, he'll catch an audience, he shall
please readers without subtlety or gorm
to know good poetry-political
from cheap and easy ditties for applause
that reword news, sans insight, thought or pause.

grooveamatic

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

A Political Poet?

He Googles for some gruesome news: Oil slicks
in the Arctic, forest fires down
under. Then he chops up details, sticks
them here and there and in an overblown
tone of 'irony' begins to list
hypocrisies in govermental tears
for birds and trees that perish. He'll resist
all subtleties. A tone that overbears
to shout a coarse polemic is his norm.
Oh, sure, he'll catch an audience, he shall
please readers without subtlety or gorm
to know good poetry-political
from cheap and easy ditties for applause
that reword news, sans insight, thought or pause.

In my younger days I was surely guilty of this. And nowadays I still see these poems with alarming frequency. You call them out in grand fashion; it scathes. It's been a long time since I worked in form, but this looks like a sonnet to me. A scathing poetry-based sonnet! Now that's just cool!

FinsburyParkCarrots

It's in a kind of Shakespearean sonnet form without the ninth-line volta. ababcdcdefefgg, yes.

Thanks.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Can't believe I missed out the 'n' in typing 'governmental' up there in the last poem. Just had to correct that. Don't want anyone to think I'm thick.

PJfaninmaine

This is very interesting groovematic
I thought id just add to it for a little fun. Been out of the writing for a while, but i need a little pick me up.

How can I write a poem from my heart?
Where do I even start?
Shall I write about how we fell apart?
Or how we fought at Super Wal-Mart?
How you ran into me with the shopping cart?
No, I'm really not that smart
Oh forget it! I'm having a major Brain Fart.

grooveamatic

PJfaninmaine wrote:

This is very interesting groovematic
I thought id just add to it for a little fun. Been out of the writing for a while, but i need a little pick me up.

How can I write a poem from my heart?
Where do I even start?
Shall I write about how we fell apart?
Or how we fought at Super Wal-Mart?
How you ran into me with the shopping cart?
No, I'm really not that smart
Oh forget it! I'm having a major Brain Fart.

Ha! That's great! Any poem that can make me smile like that gets my vote...thanks!

PJfaninmaine

If i can make someone smile every day,,,than ive accomplished my goal for the day!
Glad to put a smile on your face!

grooveamatic

So, here is a poem I wrote a few years back. It's not a good poem--there are major problems with it that I won't even try and fix. But every time I come across it I smile, and it fits quite well in here, so here it is:

July 19, 2001

The art of poetry is a simple one
Yet also most complex.
If it weren't for it's ungratifying nature
I might compare it to sex.
It pits you directly against yourself--
Much to your consternation--
And amid your thoughts of life and death
Poetry becomes masturbation.
It is an art that must leap from you,
As every poet knows;
And it hangs on your lips and cheeks:
Poetry, blowing it's nose.

ISN

I write peoms...because I am illiterate and much more
I add dots....because punctuation is a whore
I object to all teh peots living now
I will pass teh test of time

I'm a peot
and I hope
that you can swing
on my rope

I have peotry at noon
and at 1 I have Brit Lit
I knew peots from the ages
who all wrote tomes and pages

but my peotry is short
it's embryonic (and aborted)
it's a mess
I confess

I am right
and I write right
peotry is teh thing

if you can bring a little luv
to peotry becoz
it's jan 05
let's all just jive
the wrold will end quite soon

I love peoms
they're so cool and
I learned while at school
that origin-ality
is ignore without the ie
that is....ignore me
doesn't matter
got a bib so I'll just splatter
drivel on it....bile and brimstone


i take an e and am happy
read my peom don't be crappy
even e m cummings knew it
can't go past
just go through it

I couldn't give a flying fuck
what you think about my work

I know that it will be remembered
whereas posthumously you'll just disappear
I hear you....
yes I do.....you don't like my grammar or my spelling
well, teh pudding is in the telling
I'm teh future
go get fukked.....

and don't forget to close the door

(disclaimer....I swore)

FinsburyParkCarrots

Let's hear it for peots!

Sound

here i am
locked in these words
look i'm just what you imagine
feel
i am what you feel
tell me
i am what you think
let me know
maybe he is much better than me
i am a fragment
i am lost
but you found me

grooveamatic

written upon reading Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way, poems by Charles Bukowski

What an unpretentious little title
From a ninety-year old gentile,
Slinging us all instructions
On how to write infucktions.
Perhaps if we found "the way"
We could have something neat to say.
You keep telling us "don't do it".
Rest assured I see right through it.
You're just afraid you're going to die
Before anyone has read Ham on Rye.
How much cash did that smash fetch ya?
Can I be a literary asshole? You betchya!






*it should be noted that the venerable Mr. Bukowski is already quite dead.