Setaside2's Poetry... if you like

coleen

okay boys.. now this was all nice and sweet until someone (ahem) suggested I write for an automobile name brand manufactured by some other autombile name brand. I tell you that smacks of poisonous treason and treachery, the thought.

And Radar, I'd like you to keep your opinions to yourself about my yang. As for the yin, it's not my fault it was cheaper last year and you only picked one up last week.

Off to apartment hunt.

seta


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coleen

Evening all... the rather ill setaside is just looking for opinions regarding the whole of this thread.

LOL do you like me? Do you really like me?


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coleen

quote:

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Originally posted by setaside2
Do you really like me?

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Okay, Sally Field, upon receiving her second Academy Award for Places in the Heart, "You like me!! Right now! You like me!!!"

Sorry you're feeling poorly. No doubt you're delirious from fever for asking such an "actressy" question. As Obi-Wan said to Luke: "Rest easy, son. You've had a busy day. You're lucky to be all in one piece."

Hope you weren't assaulted by Tusken Raiders, by the way.

I marvel at your written elocution
I marvel at your inviting openness
I marvel at comics (get it?)

Now shut up and go to sleep.

coleen

You know that the sorry fact for that woman is that is all she will ever be remembered for.

I withdraw the questions. I was making a play on the poor girl and now I see that I should have said something more natural such as "Have a pop tart!" or "Fuck you!"

LOL

So have a pop tart.

And thanks baba fett. I appreciate the compliments and the love. I certainly FEEL assaulted by Tusken Raiders. No doubt.
You know what though? Old Obi Wan was a liar and a bender of truths. Not only that but he is responsible for all continuity issues between the pts 1-3 and New Hope-Jedi. He should be stoned, if he wasn't already dead, dammit.

Why can we no longer trust our modern myths? Is it CGI? Twinkies? I wish I knew.
ahhh the delirious ramblings of the sick setaside. gotta love that.


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coleen

Obi-Wan is a Bad Ass MutherFucker.

coleen

1996-present tense. Borrowed from Gita's Thread. I hope she doesn't mind.
Kathryn Shoup...

re:1996

I fell in love with the perfect love, had it in my hands.
She fell in love with the same love, I had her in my hands.
But she ran scared and pretended to ignorance, though it shouted from the fucking SKY that we were one. I had it all and yet I had none.

I became impatient. It hurt to stay. My poetry had said all it had to say and she was in love with me not just on THAT day but on every other. It became apparent that I loved her. And it became apparent that her fear of loss and her fear of love and her fear of US one day splitting the dark, was bonding her to individuality, to her worries.

We never officially dated, no. People asked us when we were getting hitched, married, tying the knot, and we would laugh and tell them "Tomorrow. How did you know?" I wasn't strong enough to grab tomorrow by her jaunty pony tailed hair and pull her into today. So... I let her stray.

Oh we stayed friends and things were fine until I told her that someone ELSE was mine and that Tomorrow was on its way. Her big brown eyes grew wide and misty as she realized the the twine she had laid down in the cave to my heart had somehow vanished behind her, in her fear she had run so far and so fast that the thread had simply run out.

Yet I loved her still. How could I not? Jazz singin, she didn't walk by god she GLIDES, smoothest voice since Ella Fitzgerald and a piano to haunt the Monk. She was my muse, my goddess, and I am certain that somewhere out there or deep within me, she still maintains a certain... stock in that position; but only after Tomorrow came and went did she decide she loved me and wanted me and that she had LOST her little game of going tharn or running with fear at her heels.

And yes, she tried, and I had my chance at last. The ability to take her home and make her mine was in my grasp and I trembled at the touch. I have never wanted anything in my life so much. But Tomorrow was past, the vote was cast, and I had to set her free on broken heart and shaking legs. My mind still reels from that night, as she drove off into the streetlight strewn roadways of suburbia.

It appears that I had been chasing a Jazz Singer in a Ford Escort for so long, I never noticed the sound of her silence and the depth of her absence. I did then.

Now, after 6 years into tomorrowmorrowland, I find myself splitting the dark with my current captor. She of high infidelity and broken trust, I was no better than three other boys and I find myself thinking what I may have done, where my karma set astray... and I often wonder if my karma followed my love home that day.

They say that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all... this may be so but one must be prepared; for if you lose that, if you let it go in some faux heroic act of semi-nobility, be prepared for the search for the next one who could only fill that hole so deep in your mind, that addiction so intense in your soul. It's caffeine and viagra. It's honeycomb and cinnamon. It's the candle that lights the curtains on fire in the midst of heavenly throes.

You will search and you will not feel whole. She of my downtown soliloquy.


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coleen

Who was this someone ELSE? Were you trying to make KS envious by loving someone else so she would run up, bitchslap your new love, and say, "Take me NOW you sexual seta God!"?

coleen

The someone else is the woman who turned into my wife, and unfortunately the woman I am now in process of separation and divorce, though I have not moved out.

in this piece, Tomorrow = wedding/marriage

Never wanted to make Kate jealous, ever. I just felt that I had put it all out on the table and that she had looked at it but had been afraid to take what gifts were hers.

We were young, it was divine love, I kid you not, and that is the scariest, deepest, most intense version I have yet to find. She was the "one". As they say. I don't know, they say a lot of things, mouth always runnin'.

I was too much of a coward to just grab her in that cheesy gone with the wind type pose and tell her about tomorrow. It really is just another day. LOL

that's that.

I cannot believe I'm telling you all this. Seta is one messed up little poet.


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coleen

Seven, I'm more messed up than most. LOL
Here's one more and then I really gotta go. Thanks for reading all this stuff guys, I realize this thread is getting a little overlong. I hope you'll all keep bearing with me. Or at least letting me bare my soul.
Seta

REDSAND/marmalade

The sun burned orange marmalade in my hair
She sat astride
A stride
A ride
She sat away on a park bench
Contemplating white caps that weren’t to be
Or used to be
On a grassy and somewhat speckled knoll
I remembered this
Or did once
Twice
A fore or a score
Before my hair was clouded grey
And misty
By the stormy seas of memory
She sang a song to me back
When my head was filled with
Moths and butterflies
When restrictions went unlimited
Limits had no restrictions
And the world was somewhat newer
She was the happy princess
A statuette crying a jewel
For the little brown bird and I
And now my eyes
They shine silverintriplicate in
The pale and frosty stare that only
A winter bay window can provide
Double pained glass and I
Watch my eyes watching I
Tragedy:
For all those years on a park bench,
“The Uncaring,”
And we became acquainted in a book;
When my head was still moths and butterflies
And grassy knolls rolled like sinking ships off in the
coastal bay
I had understood the meaning of the word
Avoidance
What could I say
What can I say
Sometimes the pale green carpet of this world
Plush as it may seem
Still burns as redsand underfeet
Perhaps only because I prefer remaining shoeless in the sun
While in the midday elsewhere
There lies a park bench
Setting astride
Riding a ride going nowhere
For it is moored in concrete
God rest its weathered metal soul
God heal your orange marmalade heart
And help me change my eyes from the silverintriplicate
Of my reflection
Or of my reflection upon you
They used to be gold.


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coleen

Okay, nobody liked the other one. LOL so I'm hoping this one fares better. So anyway here it is.... the next few will be a little different from my norm but still me.

DAYLIGHT SAVINGS/once

Dawn crawled up the shore like a drunken sailor
Smitten with love and persistent
He finds that he climbs cliffs with ease
They call this rotation, the morning life
Beginning again, the way it was
I walk amongst the aqua seafoam
Picking my way through the seashells and
Star
Fish
Much like an acoustic thread
A flamenco lament or praise
To what I’ve not necessarily surrounded myself with
But to where I may be
And I sigh a wisp of wind
Breath that is inhaled somewhere in Portugal later this fall
I hope I’m still alive then
In Lisbon perhaps I’ll catch my breath
Someday when I won’t catch a wink thrown to me
From a somewhat wayward side
Music clinks beneath my feet
As those shells
Metallic, plasticized, flaccid, concrete
They shift in accordance to my little earthquakes
And the pools of water shaped as the footsteps
I’m careless enough to leave behind
Are reminders only to be more careful
I tread my way up toward the boardwalk
Like a drunken sailor
Like the smitten heart I may be indeed
And find the climb up the stairs to be a flight of sorts
Rusted and stubborn with age and resistance
The nails that scream to be pulled out
Don’t bother me at all as they lie silent
I am not their prey this early morn
Perhaps dawn will spend the day with me
It wouldn’t be entirely unfaithful or ungrateful
To cheat upon the night
Would it now?


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coleen

Here's a piece that has taken me like 5 years to finish, LOL and I am not entirely sure that I am happy with it yet. I have spread it around some and a lot of people have said they like it, and a few have said that they don't. I never know who's being honest! Help me out here...



THE DAY AFTER/the day before (tom sawyer come again)

Tomorrow appeared on my doorstep yesterday
Shaken
Drunk
Confused
I stood naked and caught off guard
Tomorrow
Is never supposed to come
With her hair ragged
And dress shattered
Pieces of which still flutter and dance
In the wind sailing between
The whitewashed and fading
Pine slats of my front gate
Her litter affronts me
I asked her to leave
In frustration
She placed her head against my shoulder
Cheek upon my battered breast
The sun dipped for a moment
Stars flickered
The day began anew
And she cried because she still misunderstood
Her meaning of well-being
“Never have sex with Destiny,”
She said,
Making love as it was.
“He leaves you in the morning
Looking for brother Fate.”
I apologized for being rude
Perhaps humility is rare and
I’d been looking for her elusive
And ethereal beauty
She and I date now
A casual affair at a glance
And a kiss when necessary
As an insomniac I offer naught but support
And she
Nothing but her time
Occasionally her hands tremble
Wrought with the constant apprehension she shares so willingly…
As the sun sets
Tom Sawyer redoes my fence for an apple and
She sits on the front porch swing
Swaying as she is brought ever closer to her element
She’s brilliant after midnight
Tranquil before dawn
And she never sleeps
And she never sleeps.


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coleen

So this one was written quite awhile back and was originally going to be called 90210, because it reminded me of an poem if it were to be (god forbid) produced by Aaron Spelling. No offense to you party of five, saved by the bell, 90210 watching folk out there... but seriously. WHY? I don't know.

To be honest, I have no place for television. I love movies, for certain, but TV sucks the lifeblood out of me. I have been TV free with 2 exceptions for 6 months now. I don't miss it one bit. Read a book, watch a good movie, have a conversation for crying out loud. Reality TV is a sure sign that if the apocalypse isn't upon is... it should be.

But enough of my preachy mouth. Here is a piece that was once 90210 and is now...


CALIFORNIA/over it

In the headlights
His eyes were wicker gold.
She drove with a hurry,
With a vengeance,
And then with grief.
The radio signaled 10:03 p.m.
It was the loss of love
And the loss of life
As the song sang the same for the two;
Her brake lights shone
Rays of blood in the filtered slivers of moonshine.
Her sliding building in intensity,
She realized the mistake she made.
The screech came from underneath
As her car cried out in desperation;
The art of the motionless mime
Reached a level of impossibility distant enough that
She reached for it,
Her hand grasping at the ricochet of her headlights
Detailing a forest she would try forever to forget.
There was an explosive sound
As her car jumped and sank in the rear.
Her headlights blew out.
She spun in the gravel like a dead flashlight
And slowed to a rather off tilt stop.
Still gritting her teeth,
She stepped out,
Bleeding from her left knee,
Tinting the dirt a gritty black
In the offset refraction of the domelit interior.
Dazed,
She touched the stillness that surrounded her
And was shocked enough that she flinched,
Pulled back,
Turning away from the disquieting silence
And the settling dust...
As an afterthought she shut her door
Thinking of her poor wasted battery.
She limped over to his body
Now shadowed red
In the dim watching of her parking lights.
Looking him over she sniffled a bit.
A blood mixed tear landed unceremoniously
And forgotten
On his blue green and black plaid flannel.
He was unconscious,
Living shallow,
But warm enough.
About facing she stumbled a bit and began to walk
Heading in an easterly direction.
After about a quarter of a mile
She felt a bit chilly
And her thumb cut a silhouette in the night sky.
Her ragged ponytail bounced
From shoulder to shoulder
As she faded into the haze.
In the distance
Sirens wailed tonelessly,
And outside
The temperature was a cool
56? Fahrenheit.


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coleen

Oh, where
oh, where
can my baby be . . .

Certainly easier to follow than your others and very visual. I almost wanted it to be a short story. Continue it with her wandering through the woods until Jason Voorhees comes up and butchers her . . . yes, with a lightsaber.

coleen

Jedi Vorhees
Now that is a movie I would go see, no doubt. A true amalgamation movie. I think that people would flock to it in horrified fascination. The ultimate sci-fi blasphemy. LOL

A new, really really really short piece. You won't believe how short it is. And it is what it says it is, and I like it. So there.


REFRIGERATOR WORD ART

To witness:
Objects of desire
God’s pleasure pew
Flowers’ license hold
Anxious are wild voices
“Eternity?”
Pours like ice
Date
Time
Eyes on your wine
Sugar fills
Invitation
Powers blue
Delicious in the morning
Inspired shotgun peace
Sacred room…
Magic is for nothing
Does love elope on its own?


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coleen

okay... another one... and I'll let this lie for a day or so...

words of a man walking slowly past

......my father once told me never to give of myself to anyone who offers the cursory handshake, the bit conversation or the obligatory wink of an eye no matter how forthright, nor daring, nor intriguing the individual may be. Now, it may seem that writing in and of itself is the barest of bare souls and may, therefore, be determined as a sign of vulnerability; at the very least it opposes my fathers advice. However, I have also heard it said that words were the devil’s greatest invention for they are the key notes in what symphony of lies we may chorus a part in. Henceforth, in your local library you shall most indubitably find a Fiction section amongst many of your Non-Fiction items (and, as of yet, a great many “Non”-Fictitious books are only based on an “honest” man’s opinion and may therefore be subject to bitter discussion concerning the percentage of truth involved). So perhaps it is giving much of oneself even to whisper a name or acknowledge that handshake with one of your own. After all, whose game are you playing?

My daughter is too young to have to deal with such things. She gives herself sweetly enough to anyone that offers the hand, the wave, or the smile. It may be that the wink is still too subtle a gesture for her to comprehend; also it may be too complex considering all a wink may imply.

My son is just old enough to know that a person (who may or may not know him well) can be manipulated by physical disposition. Beginning with a facial barrage of such horrible tragedy laced with wit and enough post-toddler cynic irony (for he knows when the goat’s gotten), and ending with any number of well choreographed and rehearsed psychological frequencies emitted, it seems, from the walls themselves.
Little does he know that I understand his plans (for I recall contriving them my self at his saintly age) and am determined to deviate from his propaganda.

I have found that many people use conversation as a power piece in an almost chess-esque struggle for continuing supremacy over others. Law and Debate are other matters entirely. However, everyone has the friend that must get above another in a game of conversational one-ups-man-ship that defies historical and logistical boundaries. The most serious issue of this dilemma to be pondered is that side B of this two part discussion will (almost always) allow themselves to get swept away by the hubris; and the fevered passion with which they deliver their colorful rebuttals is fit for a king before parliament.

Nay I write because I write and because I write soon truths will be forthcoming that my subconscious does not willingly let go (most certainly not in broad daylight lest these truths turn to ash and dirty the carpet). These vampires of the soul are generally petty creatures, self- absorbed and they hang around mostly due to their own ignorance of other issues only knowing when it’s their time to rise and when it is their time to have a seat and let someone else take over.
As they rise, they become all consuming. Psychiatrists call these anxieties or obsessions or (or) compulsions. It’s context sensitive. I care not. However, we all have them and sooner or later they must be dealt with, and when they are dealt with we must ask ourselves:

Have I lied?

Discovery brings questions. Ask any religious scholar fighting to believe. Or any scientist struggling for proof. And even they must ask:

Have I been lied to?

Truth is a colorful perspective and like those fabled issues of love, happiness, etc… I suspect that adding the word “true”(adj.) to such nouns causes them to become hypothetical gestures; things only attainable by degrees or measured by degrees, much like burning paper (urban fires are also rated by the amount of destruction they cause, as are tornadoes, but that is a whole other ball of wax)......


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coleen

I just scanned your latest piece and I would like to know one thing: do I get a medal if I read it aaallllllll??????????

**holds nose, closes eyes, dives in**

coleen

Oh Radar, don't you know that all that matters to me is that we met? I no longer need to lure you in with my linguistic charms...

Oh who the hell..?

Ah. No, my dear MASHed droid, I don't have any medals to give. And you know, it's probably not very good anyway, perhaps I'm running out of new material...

You never have to read anything you don't want to, Radar dear. Remember that.

As it were, thanks for giving it a SHOT.


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coleen

**emerges dizzily from the depths of philosophical perambulations**

Whoa.
Don't know if that was the greatest thing I've ever read
or a just deleted scene from Matrix Reloaded.

Is this nonfictitious advice that you received from your pops and passed on to your younguns? Or is this all fabricated?

As Henrik Ibsen wrote:
To write is to sit in judgement of oneself.

My dear seta, what are you judging?

BTW, don't ever call me Radar dear.

It makes my heart flutter.

Don't worry about running out of new material. I haven't written anything new in months.

coleen

Henrik Ibsen is incredible. the Doll House is one of my favorite plays ever.

what am I judging? I could be honest and say that I'm judging everything, myself, the ethereal... I could be just as honest and tell you that I don't know.

No, my father never gave me that advice, it popped into my head.

I often wonder if my writing is really the result of me acting as some sort of medium as the spirits who wish so desperately to write and express once again take hold. I have a funny dream from time to time that they are lined up, jostling one another as if they are at the opening of some expansive life altering cinematic preview saying, ME! It's MY turn, I'm Next! and then literary fights break out and someone steals Tiny Tim's crutch and uses it to beat the shit out of Longfellow who was trying to bribe his way up the line with dandelion wine stolen from Chaucer. It all plays into it nicely. I wish I was so honored.

I judge myself constantly. I am guilty of not being innocent. I realize that we all are but I take the offense and the pride and the love and the atrocity of being human very personally.

I judge.

I am told by many folks on here that they admire my openness... well I have learned to be no other way. My life is open to those who wish to see it for the bland acid tested piece of sidewalk that it is... oh I've lived plenty between the cracks, because I have ever feared the cracks themselves and I have usually just been trying to protect myself from the blinding snowglare of sunshine off the concrete. I don't know what's ignorance and what's just hidden from me. I have a fair intuition for people and places... I think it comes to those of us in here who have such vivid imaginations. Avenues that appear obvious and mundane to us appear colorful and abstract to so many others. My dreams are so important to me that if I fail to dream for more than 4 nights in a row, I panic.

I now come to this board to share my dreams and visions with strangers who have had no previous knowledge of this wild mind in Colorado. perhaps the altitude finally got him, they'll say. He has to be stoned, others will shout.

Never did the green, I'm weird enough, don't you think? I tried it, I don't enjoy having my paranoia HEIGHTENED for me, HA, thanks. I don't need THAT, no sir. And the altitude only works in my favor.

I don't know radar, jeremy, all of you. I don't know. My heart aches these days. I have had dreams of a massive world war since I was 12. I had dreams of planes crashing into skyscrapers for 5 years before the WTC incident. I have dreams of Denver being leveled by tornadoes sometime in the next 10 - 20 years. I have dreams of the aftermath of the largest nuclear holocaust in existence.

I have dreamed that God has talked to me in a rainforest. I have dreamed that my head has been bitten off by a dragon and sewn back on by some faceless angel with a vast library and the fruit of youth and vibrance upon a silver platter. I have dreamed that I have drowned and that the same faceless angelica saved me again and dried me to softness in front of a gathering fire in the largest library hearth I've ever seen.. he had the throne chair in front of it you know...

And perhaps I've dreamed of you. I have met many people there. I often wonder who they were and why they were chosen to share with me or why I was chosen for their dreams. And I wish to know.

I don't know what I judge, Radar. I do know that we all need to live again. Because this life that humans have chosen for themselves, this epoch, is merely a shadowland.

Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with your heart quickened as if someone long lost was calling your name and some quiet, subtle attraction made you turn to the window as a if you were a human compass? have you felt that attraction grow stronger and wane and grow in strength again? Do you ever look at a passing individual and find yourself smitten with them, no explanation needed? You must follow them home, you must know their life, you must... but of course you do not. The insane are locked up just as easily as the criminal. I feel these things constantly, every day, every quaking minute.

I am insane, I love, I judge, I dream. I am kind. Humankind. I suppose that's all I really should have said to answer your questions, but then that wouldn't be me, now would it?

love,

seta

coleen

Okay, I just read your response.

Where's my medal?

i am dragged
off to dream
i am gagged
when i scream

nighty night for me.
yes, there will be prayers.