Poetry exercise: Theme - Scent and memory

FinsburyParkCarrots

Please write a poem in any form you like, about how a smell brings to mind a vivid memory and sense impression of the past.

ISN

sometimes when you're mad.....
the world changes....
people change....
reality changes.....
you can get on teh number 12 to Peckham,
and sit down beside a woman reading a book on Satan.....
or you can see things that don't exist
like 'Marijuana se Alquiler'
'pot for rent' signs in Madrid.....
and people can hold Satanist cirlces around you
when you're in the Maudsley & Bethlehem Hospital in Camberwell....
but the worst thing about going to Hell
is the godawful smell....
it smells of sulfur and putrifying bodies.....
and if you get to taste it....
you know it'll be over soon.....

mccreadyisgod

Optimism
Has never had a universal odor
But for me, it's the same every time.

And I don't know the name
Of the aroma she wore that evening
But I catch a draft of it, once in a while.

And the funny thing is,
It wasn't all so great in the end,
But at the moment I smelled that, so much lie ahead.

And so optimism
Has a specific odor,
The smell of new love in springtime.

ISN

optimism is what they try to put into washing powder brands.....like surf and fab......but really opitimism is the smell of snow on a moonlit night......the click of insects on a summer's day......and the smell of babies......there is no perfume in teh world that could make a loved one smell better.....to the lover.....perfume stinks.....I prefer the smell of my baby or the smell of a real human.....

mccreadyisgod

ISN wrote:

optimism is what they try to put into washing powder brands.....like surf and fab......but really opitimism is the smell of snow on a moonlit night......the click of insects on a summer's day......and the smell of babies......there is no perfume in teh world that could make a loved one smell better.....to the lover.....perfume stinks.....I prefer the smell of my baby or the smell of a real human.....

Why do you build me up, buttercup baby, just to let me down?

ISN

I don't know what you mean......hehehehehhe

mccreadyisgod

ISN wrote:

I don't know what you mean......hehehehehhe

I mean to a 19-year-old kid on prom night, optimism can smell like a tasteful, light perfume.

Or rather, the smell of that perfume years later can trigger the memory of optimism.

...tell me my prom date was the poetic equivalent of laundry detergent...

ISN

I prefer real smells to synthetic smells.......you can tell your prom date that, buttercup baby.....

ISN

you're pretty real......goodnight......

mccreadyisgod

ISN wrote:

I prefer real smells to synthetic smells.......you can tell your prom date that, buttercup baby.....

Men, set your sarcasm to "stun."

FinsburyParkCarrots

This thread shows promise.

mccreadyisgod

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

This thread shows promise.

This thread shows what happens when you take 8 poets, put them in the same thread, and they stop being poets, and start being real.


That's right: The Real World, Poetry and Prose Forum.

Ms. Haiku

my grandma's attic
smelled of boxes to be opened later
reminds me of her boxes
of pepsi in the basement
to be drunk in the metalllic colored glasses

today
grandma's attic
is someone else's attic

ISN

Why do you build me up, buttercup baby, just to let me down?

if you wanna play games with me.....I'm afraid I'm not biting.....

olderman

oh no,
don't go
down to the crick,
where rat poison spoils each stick,
and young boys and girls are in a state of joy...

please stay,
whisper the calm of a transient day,
stay your course,
press the love which might be coarse,
play on and enjoy...

trick the mind if you must,
lest you deny your crazy lust,
compounds built in a hippy world,
crazed degenerates in a swirl,
focus, forever on your feelings of joy.

pinktips

""lift your arm
so i can sniff
and inhale deeply
of your man smell
the piercing spice
of you alone
makes me weak"

i lov u hony!!

nobody elz
comz clos

ISN

I love the smell of flowers....
freesias and roses....
tonight when I walked to the shops
I heard a baby screaming
and being slapped....
and I shuddered and cringed.....
but I also saw a ripe moon enclouded in spectral mist....
and I smell the gum trees sometimes
and listen to the crickets....
on my walks.....
there's a house on the corner
with tall fences.....
they have roses in the front yard....
the smell is overwhelming on a warm day
I love the smell of freshly cut grass
and freshly washed clothes
and freshly washed hair
and freshly washed babies
wrapped in arms
I love the smell of flowers

ISN

I remember the smell of my first book...
and the taste and the colour.....
oh, I wish I had my first book back again....
it was pink......and it was fairytales (no offence)....
I wish I was six
I wish I were small
and could live backwards
and grow forever.....
I want to rule the world.....
and I want death overcome and silly shit
I want Kerouac to be pope.....
I can smell Kerouac
and Steinbeck....
I can smell Cannery Row.....
I can smell War and Peace
I can smell Portuguese coffee......
I hate men that smell like fuk
I remember reading in the Economist
that the pheronomes are really how
we become attracted.....
I hate men that smell wrong
I want to smell good tobacco right now!!!!!

ISN

---

oh no,
don't go
down to the crick,
where rat poison spoils each stick,
and young boys and girls are in a state of joy...

please stay,
whisper the calm of a transient day,
stay your course,
press the love which might be coarse,
play on and enjoy...

trick the mind if you must,
lest you deny your crazy lust,
compounds built in a hippy world,
crazed degenerates in a swirl,
focus, forever on your feelings of joy

this is great!!!!

olderman is a man for all seasons.....and he knows all the reasons
boys and girls go to play......and he's very very gay!!!!

pearlmutt

"I want to smell good tobacco right now!!!!!"

You might have to move to cuba.


Your poem reminded me of two of my favorite smells -- home.

Books, the smell of walking into a library. I grew up in libraries, that smell is home.

Tobacco, I grew up a little more in the green fields; there is no warmer smell than fields of tobacco; they really do smell like the sun and heat. You can't replicate the smell in a humidor. There just isn't another to match the fields.

ISN

I know.....books and tobacco fields.....gotta be two of the best smells.....hehehe