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take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo


post poems here please (and also crit them)

apologies for the lame title, a mod can breeze by and change it if people think of anything better

old thread rules apply. post context, etc in italics, and please bold the titles of your poems so we can tell when the poem starts

faq:

Q: I'm a total newbie to poems, should I post them here?

A: yes

Q: I'm an ultra level poem master 5000, should I post poems here?

A: this thread is kind of more for newbies and people who aren't that good. if you're good, get anthologized or something.

Q: I don't know how good I am at poetry since poetry is subjective

A: good point! post away

Q: I don't know dick about poetry, should I crit the poems here?

A: hell yes

Q: will you personally crit each poem?

A: for what it's worth, i will, at least until the thread picks up steam

Q: 2017 is almost over, idiot

A: i didn't realize that till I posted a new thread. i really just wanted some crits for stuff I wrote. titles can change, much like time changes matter

Q: does stream of consciousness writing count as poetry

A: i don't know what people's tolerance is, but i personally will crit it, so sure?

Q: how do I get gud at poetry

A: i have no idea. i am starting on this journey myself. yes, it sucks knowing we can never be as good as poem.exe. but lets try to be good at poetry anyways


edited to put my poems in the second post, edited again to put in a faq. ill throw more into the op as i think of it

take the moon fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jun 5, 2018

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take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
i couldnt sleep tonight so i wrote a bunch of poems. theyre terrible, kind of stream of consciousness-ey and so criticism is appreciated-hopefully you can tell where im going with these cuz i could def get there better


frost

ain't your veins hot today
carved in the ice said i'm yours, but
they told you things about rust and decay
kino side split
buzz mine because i'm just okay
winter drift, born finished
static your torso operates
tryst in the snow, glow and freeze
till i'm bent over
torn clover
saw it and just saw haze
back how they told you to think, laze
marks as black as
their charcoal roads and cities
just pick me up on screen
back where we taped it, frozen in dreams

globe cuck '89

starling flew past my cheek
a broadcast from deep said order, please
told them i wanted the glaze
found his flat earth, sphere cucked
born in the valley, deep hosed
told him i'd always be true
what could it hurt, just me and you?
dragged me up and down stairs
said "this pain is too much to bear"
when i came to i saw ultraviolet
now felt energy burst, sky it
"now" whispered my blood, sighed it
deep in my bones, tried it
broke my arms and i couldn't swim away

gausse

in their own style they
fell upon him like fingers crossed
blotted on, "i'm gay"
blotted out over moss
something to say
fade away into gausse
till your blood turns gray
Mariah's twee skips, my loss
handful of dust, when they could just say

oh no, you're supposed to be this way
grand loves and grand fears
you lit flames 'gainst the wind
pulling feathers, knives only today
the new flesh, new skin, new tears
the cables twisted so the caps could spin

said "forty bones first" and klaxons went off
"do you kill aliens?" "no i hug them, bra"
if you'll learn, you'll tell him to stop
"i was once like you, then i started to aug"
the new mutants' shackled cough
is like death if you're caught before the last stop

take the moon fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Nov 29, 2017

MartingaleJack
Aug 26, 2004

I'll split you open and I don't even like coconuts.
Last Week, Last Night, Daily, and Forever

I’m your host, Dick Missile. Today’s story: Skintight anchors in the newsroom. No wiggling, no wrinkles. Padded. Bulging, but no hint of illegitimate nipple. Power tie limp like member. Empowered female hosts artfully assembled for your pleasure, but standing front and center—I’m your host, Dick Missile launched into contested airspace plunging towards milk warm seas. Cut to commercial. Smoke break. Buttoned-down cardigan above desk, bermuda shorts unzipped and off-camera. Nothing below the waist ever shown, ever. Straighten tie. I’m your host, Dick Missile, today sitting with it tucked tight, folded twice, stuffed into a cotton hammock twisted fifteen times and zip-tied to keep from getting out, touching co-hosts, guest celebrities. Rampaging in studio. Tongue leaving slug trail of mucous across the buzzing static glass. Screaming through clear walls pasted with pheromones thick as fog. Molotov sex chemicals. Eye-contact with co-hosts only, always, hard as bullseye, like trying to hit the moon with rocket and pocket calculator. Eyes up, and count me in three, two, one, and we’re back. I’m your host Dick Missile, and today we’re talking about inappropriate touching in the workplace. How far is too far, and when no means yes. Tie rising out of sport’s jacket. Silk on silk. Creeping in interview. Obvious pattern begging to be seen, touched. Pushed down. Rubbed by fingers and smoothed out. I’m Dick Missile and we’ll be right back after this commercial break. Cigar. Make-up retouched. Sweat wiped from brow by curvy new assistant. Young but fair game. Mental note. Rolodex. Promotion honeypot? Decide later. Read prep notes. War in the Middle East. Rights for Women. Protestors marching naked through Washington. Lap dance at Lincoln Memorial. Assistant count-in. Turn to camera, point at screen. Welcome back, America. I’m your host Dick Missile, last week, last night, daily and forever.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
i liked it. toed the line between being creepy and making a point, but i think fell on the right side. makes me think of someone tied up clockwork orange style and being forced to watch talk shows on repeat. good use of soc, very observatory ("eye-contact with co-hosts only, always, hard as bullseye"). if i could change something i'd make it a bit more dreamy and less political, you approach this with phrases like "pheromones thick as fog." "how far is too far, and when no means yes," is either clever satire or too on the nose, can't decide.

good title and use of.

MartingaleJack
Aug 26, 2004

I'll split you open and I don't even like coconuts.

spectres of autism posted:

i liked it. toed the line between being creepy and making a point, but i think fell on the right side. makes me think of someone tied up clockwork orange style and being forced to watch talk shows on repeat. good use of soc, very observatory ("eye-contact with co-hosts only, always, hard as bullseye"). if i could change something i'd make it a bit more dreamy and less political, you approach this with phrases like "pheromones thick as fog." "how far is too far, and when no means yes," is either clever satire or too on the nose, can't decide.

good title and use of.

Thanks. I really like prose poetry like The Flame Cycle by Zachary Shomburg. I'll take a look at your poems soon.

MartingaleJack
Aug 26, 2004

I'll split you open and I don't even like coconuts.

spectres of autism posted:

i couldnt sleep tonight so i wrote a bunch of poems. theyre terrible, kind of stream of consciousness-ey and so criticism is appreciated-hopefully you can tell where im going with these cuz i could def get there better


frost

ain't your veins hot today
carved in the ice said i'm yours, but
they told you things about rust and decay
kino side split
buzz mine because i'm just okay
winter drift, born finished
static your torso operates
tryst in the snow, glow and freeze
till i'm bent over
torn clover
saw it and just saw haze
back how they told you to think, laze
marks as black as
their charcoal roads and cities
just pick me up on screen
back where we taped it, frozen in dreams


Critique

I didn't get a strong feeling from anything. I didn't make any interesting logical connections between the words. If my brain can't make even a vague connection, it's just word soup despite a recurring motif of cold and snow and film.

globe cuck '89

starling flew past my cheek
a broadcast from deep said order, please
told them i wanted the glaze
found his flat earth, sphere cucked
born in the valley, deep hosed
told him i'd always be true
what could it hurt, just me and you?
dragged me up and down stairs
said "this pain is too much to bear"
when i came to i saw ultraviolet
now felt energy burst, sky it
"now" whispered my blood, sighed it
deep in my bones, tried it
broke my arms and i couldn't swim away

Critique

I liked this one a little more. Although I have no idea what most of it might mean, it had progression.

gausse

in their own style they
fell upon him like fingers crossed
blotted on, "i'm gay"
blotted out over moss
something to say
fade away into gausse
till your blood turns gray
Mariah's twee skips, my loss
handful of dust, when they could just say

oh no, you're supposed to be this way
grand loves and grand fears
you lit flames 'gainst the wind
pulling feathers, knives only today
the new flesh, new skin, new tears
the cables twisted so the caps could spin

said "forty bones first" and klaxons went off
"do you kill aliens?" "no i hug them, bra"
if you'll learn, you'll tell him to stop
"i was once like you, then i started to aug"
the new mutants' shackled cough
is like death if you're caught before the last stop

Critique

I don't know. Some individual lines are nice, like pulling feathers, knives only today but again, I didn't feel you were saying anything, and for me, that's an important component to a good poem.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
thanks for the critiques, ill work on them and post some more later

Collapse Me

Collapse me
Wither my lungs into
A coma, set satellites to
Catch the transmissions
That my teeth spit out

Break my spine
In two, I’ll speak to
The fay that orbit
The meteor’s dry tail

Drift me out into
The ether that swims around
The cold light of distant stars

Meting Out

Meting out the stares
And razor cuts of lurking thoughts
And trials of your sorrow

Existing out the deluge
And rotted fears of
Forgotten dreams

Worry out the taste of
Winter in the black rashes
Of your medicine

take the moon fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Dec 9, 2017

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit
Poetry's tricky to critique in isolation; it takes a while to know what a poet's aesthetic and aims are and it's hard until then to give advice because poems can be doing many different things. For what it's worth, all your poems seem like they're in a fairly similar voice. That is, you're working out a way of conveying something using a consistent bag of tricks, but it is not, right now, clear to me what you're trying to convey. I'd love an explanation of what you think a reader will get out of what you've written: that might make it easier to tell whether you're succeeding.

Is it intentional that the final stanza of "Meting Out" is almost a haiku (6-7-5)? Anyway, as a stand alone, this is the one part of what you've written that expressed something concentrated and clear enough for me to pick up on, which I guess I'd define as the necessity of certain difficulties: winter, like medicine, might be harsh, but maybe necessary. "Black rashes" is a nice phrase there that teeters right on the edge of meaning.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
a sense of desolation would be nice, im in a depressive phase and would like to share that

the first three were designed to evoke what consciousness might be like in a cyberpunk dystopia, but they obviously dont succeed at that

id like to read more poems; i really liked Last Week, Last Night, Daily and Forever and have read it a bunch of times.

MartingaleJack
Aug 26, 2004

I'll split you open and I don't even like coconuts.
Eclipse Rally

A meaningless sound, but growing. A thousand protestors and counter-protestors gathered together in a square filled to capacity by people or hate, depending on who's asking. Pictures taken with the auditorium only half-full, or virgin footage, angled and cropped to present a flattering turnout, or the real thing—you’d have to be there to know for certain. Photoshopped. But to attend at all means compromising reason to the point of fatal self-delusion.

Impassioned internet commentators and political-party funded shills fill message boards with recaps of events that never happened or happened or will happen. A three-dimensional board game played five-dimensionally by a time-traveling ex-actor turned political mastermind. Golden showers in Russia. Dossier. But leaks and dead journalists and e-mail probes. Hanky code dropped at the scene of the crime. Hot dogs eaten no bun. Pedophilia pizza parlors and meetings in secret bohemian groves. Canaan reborn. An ancient owl voiced by Walter Cronkite. Missing girls. Dead drops and coordinate locations hidden in plain sight. Richard Nixon's spirit screaming in quote from Watergate tape, decrying it as "the faggiest thing I’ve ever attended." Mind you, this from man who diddled Bebe Rebozo in Lincoln bedroom.

In the desert a wall is being built to replace a wall that always existed. Always a desert. Always a wall, torn down or erected. Incremental upgrade. Chainlink and barbed-wire swapped for cameras and drones and concrete. Contract negotiation. War milked dry. New opportunities manufactured. And in high-rise conference room facing the waterfront point of disembarkation the jew and the arab and the hispanic and the black and white men are sharing a bowl of hummus, sticking their fingers in, tasting.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
nice title. maybe a bit too political? a bit too on the nose or whatever. i liked the part about an ancient owl voiced by Walter Cronkite. youre like the only person who remembers pizzagate.


BananaNutkins posted:


Mind you, this from man who diddled Bebe Rebozo in Lincoln bedroom.

should be a "the" in there

trim the fat, maybe the more lecture-y bits like "But to attend at all means compromising reason to the point of fatal self-delusion." that sort of thing should be more subtle.

take the moon fucked around with this message at 02:08 on Dec 12, 2017

Magic Hate Ball
May 6, 2007

ha ha ha!
you've already paid for this
potato

you are a pomme de terre
a potato
not an insult I swear
an apple of the earth because the french
cannot open a mouth without dispensing a poem
you are a pomme de terre

yourself, yes, singular
a potato is not an apple
and yet like the french I have not
found the word specific
not the phrase ideally to describe
you in totem

like an undiscovered country
you pesky factotum
I sense your presence but can only say
by comparison
a pomme de terre, apple of the earth
if only I spoke english!
then you could be my potato.

spectres of autism posted:

thanks for the critiques, ill work on them and post some more later

Collapse Me

Collapse me
Wither my lungs into
A coma, set satellites to
Catch the transmissions
That my teeth spit out

Break my spine
In two, I’ll speak to
The fay that orbit
The meteor’s dry tail

Drift me out into
The ether that swims around
The cold light of distant stars

Meting Out

Meting out the stares
And razor cuts of lurking thoughts
And trials of your sorrow

Existing out the deluge
And rotted fears of
Forgotten dreams

Worry out the taste of
Winter in the black rashes
Of your medicine

I appreciate the jolts of language but I wish there was more of it - the gaps between phrases are nice but the rest is a little plain and feels like generic. "The ether that swims around the cold light of distant stars" has so much filler, I'm going "the that around the of" and bumping over the actual meaningful text that's wedged in between. That prosaic phraseology works in a more conversational poem but here you really need your imagery to glitter hard like obsidian. If you were to remove the speaker aspect, the words would possibly seem to be cut out of metal. They need to be more of object poems than a conscious declaration.

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit

spectres of autism posted:

a sense of desolation would be nice, im in a depressive phase and would like to share that

the first three were designed to evoke what consciousness might be like in a cyberpunk dystopia, but they obviously dont succeed at that

id like to read more poems; i really liked Last Week, Last Night, Daily and Forever and have read it a bunch of times.

Yeah reading more poetry is good. Is there any poetry in particular that you've liked? If the answer is no, there's so many different places to start...I personally recently really been enjoying the book "Lighthead" by Terrance Hayes. I think he's good at poetry.

I don't think you fail at either of the two missions you've set out here: creating a sense of desolation or evoking what consciousness might be like in a cyberpunk dystopia, but at the risk of sounding snarky here: are you sure that's what poetry's for? I guess to me that's a fairly low bar, and clearing it doesn't make me, as a reader, go "wow, I really got something from that." I guess at a minimum I'd want the poem to illuminate something about the nature of that desolation; how it works, why it is, etc. T.S. Eliot said the point of a poem is to create an "objective correlative" for a mental state: a series of images which, read in sequence, mimic the operation of an ongoing mental process. I guess what I'm saying here is the poem's got to take the reader on a journey, right, it can't just stay in one place and spin its wheels and I think that's a little bit what you've got right now: a good beginning but the poems aren't going anywhere. There's no process, just exposition. Or maybe I'm totally wrong. I ain't no expert.

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit
I'm gonna post a poem that I just wrote here. I write in a lot of different styles and this one is very conventional. Please don't quote it, if I can' ask for that, because I'm gonna erase it in a few days so it won't ever get archived and be stuck on this website forever.

Edit: you missed it

cda fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Dec 24, 2017

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
yeah im thinking of deleting all my bad words too. posting this thread and being op of it was like a 3am decision, i wouldve posted in the old thread but it was closed. i feel very self conscious that lots of my bad words are on the internet now

for what its worth i liked "scarecrow." "potato" took until the end of the second verse to really grab me

one more try then i might be done

disappointment

it dismays
creeping and scuttling
across the seabed
shining pearls
caught in sandstorms

it dissapoints
spastic again
i want to stay in the shower
digging nails into bites
forever

it deepens
hardening magma
smoke in the air
i want to roll over the sides
and be lost in the tide

e: im gonna check out the flame cycle actually since its goon approved and i need reading material. also wanna read more haikus

take the moon fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Dec 21, 2017

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit

spectres of autism posted:

yeah im thinking of deleting all my bad words too. posting this thread and being op of it was like a 3am decision, i wouldve posted in the old thread but it was closed. i feel very self conscious that lots of my bad words are on the internet now

Oh no! Don't let me discourage you. If the internet isn't for putting bad words on, what's it for? PS, the words aren't all that bad, either. You have a nice way with them, and I bet the more poetry that you read the more satisfied you'll be with the results of your writing.

spectres of autism posted:

e: im gonna check out the flame cycle actually since its goon approved and i need reading material. also wanna read more haikus

Coincidentally I've been reading a bunch of haiku recently. Here's some links:

https://noonpoetry.com/issues/ noon is a magazine (issues available online) that has lots of haikus in it, but not just haiku. It's got all kinds of short form poetry.

Here is Jack Kerouac reading some of his "American Haiku" with saxophone accompaniment. One of my favorite things ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJdxJ5llh5A

And here are two books I've been reading:

The Essential Haiku: Versions of Basho, Buson, and Issa: a collection of translations of the three greatest haiku writers in Japanese.

Haiku in English: The First Hundred Years: like it says, a collection of haiku written in English. Cool because in addition to haiku written as haiku, it also includes haiku-like poems/parts of poems by famous poets (like parts of Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird").

cda fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Dec 21, 2017

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
will literally check out everything, thanks

also got the first book in the flame cycle for christmas :toot:

vietnam

my head is empty
this jaundice it eats
past recursive lines
of regret and into
the hopes buried deep
under my heart

in time flowers may
grow over graves marked
with ash and amber, dawn's
light climbing over fern and flora

until then i wait
for my veins to thicken
and burst with frothy tides
and blood cell gristle
wait forever, when i breathe my last,
onrushing light
tunnel caterpillars
and silken rope

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
still trying

cryptocurrency

lately
youve been saying without talking
youve let your heartbeat quicken
lost in the visceral

lately
ive been raking eyes with knives
black nights with creased armour
empty of sight

lately
bones have creaked more than ever
dreams of domestic sickness
chattel for the home

please don't consume yourself
don't swim in harsh tides
never close your eyes to it
i've been trying not to think about it
lately

cda
Jan 2, 2010

by Hand Knit

spectres of autism posted:

will literally check out everything, thanks

also got the first book in the flame cycle for christmas :toot:

vietnam

my head is empty
this jaundice it eats
past recursive lines
of regret and into
the hopes buried deep
under my heart

in time flowers may
grow over graves marked
with ash and amber, dawn's
light climbing over fern and flora

until then i wait
for my veins to thicken
and burst with frothy tides
and blood cell gristle
wait forever, when i breathe my last,
onrushing light
tunnel caterpillars
and silken rope

Hey, real quickly I think this one has promise because the imagery is used in service of a narrative so it has an emotional arc - it doesn't end up where it started and that's good. Thanks for sharing.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
cerecloth

break gaze because you hold hands
spontane because of blown plans
everyone's trying to wear each other

hold fast to each other's sweaters
creased and torn, don't torch the charge
everyone's wrapped in pieces of each other

it turns me on to reject
held like a husk of someone's past
hell like the way someone loves

time will heal my regret
dawn after dawn, the tape spools
when you talk, it makes some sense

lostdogcantstay
Dec 25, 2013
Edit: nothing to see here

lostdogcantstay fucked around with this message at 23:42 on Jan 24, 2018

Sex_Marxist
Dec 14, 2016

I LOVE MY DEAD GAY SON
Loving Others, loving Yourself

A therapist asked me
If you could date yourself
would you?
Maybe she meant
if I would,
could I go gently caress myself

I Can be a bit sensitive
at times
you know
Some people just want to be held
Some people like me
Is that so much to ask?
It is
if it's a stranger
on the bus
that's why
I'm always late for work

Was in love once
that was just
the Heroin talking
Went to Rehab
Not to get clean
but to find a wife
All I got
was a couple months
in prison

My girlfriend now
She doesn't get it
"Whenever you think of me,
Poetry should just...
Flow out your mouth!"
When I think of her
Something flows
it's not poetry
and it's not out of my mouth

Having no illusions
is important
Love happens
a moment at a time
Nothing is forever
until it is
so until then
always be prepared
to go gently caress yourself

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
pretty good for a poem about edging. liked the first two stanzas, then it sort of slid into average and obvious, and the last stanza was kind of melodramatic. id like it more if all the stanzas were consistently surprising in the way the first two were.

is the third stanza saying rehab is a prison? there are other interpretations but that seems the most likely

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
Bowied a Thunderdome interprompt's entries about pirates and mermaids and love


Phrase Affair
he shivered
vice
devoured
he together He into
died drawled moment

said was eight, you?

horrifying
but transition skin of
He Her versa
Twenty
and
swim
as if that tail was vice
and him versa

she could tell you she wasn’t empty
she loved
Literal real
mermaid just enough
What what mermaid
Air
romantic mermaid
Aye like a room
blushing mermaid
no vice
sweet

That was his from a sewing phase

she was out

Wow

Tiresias2
May 31, 2011

by FactsAreUseless
When I gazed
At the light
Of what I could have said,
Stricken, I stood,
But couldn’t stand,
The noises
Of what I could not grasp.

I looked at you
And saw a face
That wouldn’t rise.
It was the past that slid
From the fingers
Of our minds.

To try to calm the blurry image
That leads
From your eyes
To mine
And back again,
Infinitely,
Is a tiger’s paw
Against a window
Trying not to break it
Though it feels like
A petal in the rain
Brought back to its flower
Again.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo

i dont have much to say about this other than i liked it. i like poems where i don't really "get" them but they still sound unique and interesting.

i wish it didn't end with "wow"


i didn't like this one as much, it reads like something i would have written. too dramatic. i don't like poems which feature a mysterious, anonymous "you" which is something i'm guilty of.

the imagery of tigers and petals in rain seem too cliche for poetry. it seems like a formless, too long haiku.

however its not like i hated the reading experience. it just didn't really grab me.

Tiresias2
May 31, 2011

by FactsAreUseless

spectres of autism posted:

i didn't like this one as much, it reads like something i would have written. too dramatic. i don't like poems which feature a mysterious, anonymous "you" which is something i'm guilty of.

the imagery of tigers and petals in rain seem too cliche for poetry. it seems like a formless, too long haiku.

however its not like i hated the reading experience. it just didn't really grab me.

Thanks for the critique. I know next to nothing about poetry so I'm at a loss to come up with an objective response. It is what I truly felt when I wrote it, though. It certainly grabbed me at the time. Though it has been polished a little bit. About form, like about poetry, I know nothing, but I thought it was nice that the first block of lines and the second block of lines adds up to 13 lines, and that the final block is also 13.

Edit: And if you subtract 3 from 13 you get 10, which is the end of our decimal based counting system, but you also get 3, which is how many blocks there are.

Tiresias2 fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Feb 6, 2018

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo
i dont know much about poetry either. sorry i Didn't cstch your form

thanks for sharing :)

Tiresias2
May 31, 2011

by FactsAreUseless

spectres of autism posted:

i dont know much about poetry either. sorry i Didn't cstch your form

thanks for sharing :)

I read your poetry like raps

Edit:
Una vez viví
Por el dicho de Gines
De Pasamonte
“Toda afectación es mala”,
Y aprendí después
Que es una afectación también.

Roughly translated:
Once I lived
For the saying of Gines
Of Pasamonte
"All affectation is bad",
And then I learned
That it's an affectation too.

Edit 2:
For context, I hope we are all familiar with book 1 of the Quixote, and that is where Gines of Pasamonte first appears. He is saved, rather haphazardly, by Sancho and Quixote, from rowing the galleys as a slave. But since Quixote insists on taking him and the rest of the freed prisoners to his beloved Dulcinea by force, he and the rest of the freed prisoners subsequently pelt Sancho and Quixote with rocks. Later, in a lost chapter of book 1, he steals Sancho's mule. This is canon because it is commented on in book 2. Then in book 2 he appears (though this is not known either to our heroes or to the reader until the end of the episode) disguised as a gypsy wizard, and stages a play with Quixote as the lead, and he gives him this advice: "Remember, all affectation is bad".

Tiresias2 fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Feb 11, 2018

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
Bowied the Thunderdome anti-vehicle interprompt entries


drat so
drat so Frank killed a slug
that’s clear
Frank waited
vehicle us him trees trucks and too much intersection
it inched along to suicide or murder
Depending on Will

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo

Tiresias2 posted:

I read your poetry like raps

Edit:
Una vez viví
Por el dicho de Gines
De Pasamonte
“Toda afectación es mala”,
Y aprendí después
Que es una afectación también.

Roughly translated:
Once I lived
For the saying of Gines
Of Pasamonte
"All affectation is bad",
And then I learned
That it's an affectation too.

ideally poetry should stand on its own. that being said i like the spanish version, it sounds nice. tambien is a great word to close off, reminds me of Y Tu Mama Tambien if that was the name

Tyrannosaurus posted:

drat so
drat so Frank killed a slug
that’s clear
Frank waited
vehicle us him trees trucks and too much intersection
it inched along to suicide or murder
Depending on Will

Frank settled down in the Valley
And he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead


etc.

Tiresias2
May 31, 2011

by FactsAreUseless

spectres of autism posted:

ideally poetry should stand on its own. that being said i like the spanish version, it sounds nice. tambien is a great word to close off, reminds me of Y Tu Mama Tambien if that was the name


Frank settled down in the Valley
And he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead


etc.

I agree that, ideally, poetry should stand on its own. As a hypothesis, I propose that one element of the value of a poem is the quantity of its meaning, to be counted by intensity of significations (how many propositions can be deduced from them by a given interpreter), and extension of the possibility of interpretation of significations (how many people can derive meaning from them, that is, see the bare propositions as significations).

On this basis, I propose three counter-arguments to the demolishing power (which could be absolute) of your critique: 1. The mystery of not knowing the work cited is an example of the mystery of getting to know something, and this is a universal experience. A reader of this poem will not be able to derive the fullness of its meaning, that is, they will not know the work cited, and yet, they will know in the concrete that there is something to get to know. Evidence: Named reference to a literary work. Therefore, by logical inclusion, the reader will be drawn in as if they were getting to know something, and this is a kind of meaning. 2. I can still derive the fullness of its meaning (I hope) for myself, and hence, by intensity rather than extension, the poem maintains an acceptable (?) standard of meaning. 3. I hope (but what a monstrous hope! I suppose it's a win-win/lose-lose situation! And that's an interesting definition for the word 'dilemma' if I've ever heard one) that the experience of disillusionment is universal to everybody, which is what i desired to express, and hope I have done so successfully.

Yet there is something puzzling: What is an acceptable standard of meaning?

Edit: I apologize for the narcissism.

Tiresias2 fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Feb 14, 2018

8 Ball
Nov 27, 2010

My hands are all messed up so you better post, brother.
Lost

Dream of stars up above the filament
I have explored the avenues
Besieged storefronts and window displays
Harsh flushing air through dark to black
I look up at the streetlights and imagine myself free

Tiresias2
May 31, 2011

by FactsAreUseless

8 Ball posted:

Lost

Dream of stars up above the filament
I have explored the avenues
Besieged storefronts and window displays
Harsh flushing air through dark to black
I look up at the streetlights and imagine myself free

I really like this one. In the city one can't see the stars, but we do get bright lights, and it is immense just like the sky, with so many people and so many things, things that outside of the city would be outlandish, and things to see and things you'll never see, and simultaneously things that you'll see that no one else ever will, and at night it's so different from day, and so there's this feeling of being outside of the routine, without structure, free or lost or both. Is that a decent interpretation? What is yours? As for form, it seems like the first and last lines are connected. If I counted correctly, the syllables per line are 10, 8, 9, 8, 13. Is there any meaning to that pattern?

Tiresias2 fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Feb 15, 2018

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo

well, i see your point.

re: your poem, i was a bit dismissive. lets see if i can get a bit more Meaty.

first two lines: kind of alliterative. simple words, max syllable count is two. my eyes dont really have room to slide over any words. its the opposite of prose, really, you want multysyllabic but words with smooth rhythms for maximum denseness of meaning and prettiness. that is, im no expert but i think thats how it should work.

third line: im not sure what you achieve by dropping the name of the city. if youre aiming for mystery, keep the author mysterious, and save yourself some wordspace. this city name is dry.

fourth line: i really like this line. because its in spanish, my brain moves to translate, and it sort of glosses over, becoming alternately the literal translation and "all affection is bad." either sentiment would be cliche on its own but together they have a dual meaning which works really well.

last two lines: sound nice in spanish but literally translated are sort of aiming for a clever paradox which always falls flat. poetry is supposed to sound nice, not wittily point things out. going for the second kind of calls into question the former.

Tyrannosaurus posted:

a poem and got the gently caress out

i wish the title was different. the best line is the fourth, it barely makes sense in an avant garde way. im not sure what the last line is for, if its a pun on the name will i dont know the context.

i dont have much else to say so im sorry. i liked it though. really felt tom waitsy/vagrant legendy.

otherwise thanks for critting each other guys

e:

valerian

cannabis is a gateway drug to valerian
the stars stream light
a bird's wing high
a match is struck

sound is a gateway drug to harsh noise and discord
disentegrate
a parallax
atlas gasping

frequency is a gateway drug to radiowaves
black cat static
dripping wet leaves
hissing summer

my foggy breath
heartbeat's interlude
steady wide eyes
cannabis is a gateway drug to valerian

take the moon fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Feb 18, 2018

Tyrannosaurus
Apr 12, 2006
Bowied the thunderdome interprompt about explaining a joke


vehicle
my sense to bug
exactly (literally)
goes a meaning
the speed goes (a joke)
the difference?
Procreate, they say
can’t stop
bugs flying into the windshield
not enough to matter
propel through the windshield
you have no thing no end no whats
say Right

Tyrannosaurus fucked around with this message at 19:53 on Mar 2, 2018

xitl
Apr 29, 2014

Puzzle

Somewhere between the constellation of Cancer
And the nebula of Cassiope
Between the chains of Narcissus
And the pearl of Nefele
Somewhere round the black hole in the center of the Milky Way
Lies a blessing and a regret I foolishly hold dear
The night I missed the final of the Champion’s League
Because I had to go to sleep

xitl fucked around with this message at 04:16 on Feb 23, 2018

xitl
Apr 29, 2014

spectres of autism posted:


frost

ain't your veins hot today
carved in the ice said i'm yours, but
they told you things about rust and decay
kino side split
buzz mine because i'm just okay
winter drift, born finished
static your torso operates
tryst in the snow, glow and freeze
till i'm bent over
torn clover
saw it and just saw haze
back how they told you to think, laze
marks as black as
their charcoal roads and cities
just pick me up on screen
back where we taped it, frozen in dreams


i really like the title

like it until the line "static your torso operates", this threw me off

picks up speed again and gets very good in the end!

have you worked to improve it? i think it's good. at least i enjoyed it

general critique: i prefer strong beginnings but that's subjective, people say strong endings are more important (and my favorite poem ever is all about the ending...so maybe i actually like them more but can't write them). i feel there is a slump in the middle. the whole concept is good and the poem feels free so good job.

take the moon
Feb 13, 2011

by sebmojo

Tyrannosaurus posted:

Bowied the thunderdome interprompt about explaining a joke


vehicle
my sense to bug
exactly (literally)
goes a meaning
the speed goes (a joke)
the difference?
Procreate, they say
can’t stop
bugs flying into the windshield
not enough to matter
propel through the windshield
you have no thing no end no whats
say Right

your poems are definitely getting good. i like this a lot. bugs are recurrent, a strong theme. i like how theres a gutpunch about sexuality and how its often forced on us. the whole poem is opaque but in a way that i know theres something going on underneath. the end is amazing to me, reminds me of that one incoherent 4chan meme, and then an abrupt, unexpected closer, that kind of deepens the preceding line, as if someone is saying "right" in response to something they dont understand, but theres still an alluring ambiguity to it.

xitl posted:

Puzzle

Somewhere between the constellation of Cancer
And the nebula of Cassiope
Between the chains of Narcissus
And the pearl of Nefele
Somewhere round the black hole in the center of the Milky Way
Lies a blessing and a regret I foolishly hold dear
The night I missed the final of the Champion’s League
Because I had to go to sleep

i get that its a joke but i think the setup is too beautiful to waste on a closing line about Sports. nefele is a really obscure reference, i looked it up and now know about where centaurs and the golden fleece come from so thank you

both of you thanks for sharing

e: humblebragging was here

e2: typed this out today, pretty short

Gave

I fell again. I exhumed contra, glut and lust
I drank deep, sugar and tint
I aged in reverse

I stayed bright lit, a child’s skin, a sketched butterfly’s wing
An embryo, a dust mote
I was nothing then

My nails grow too fast, whisper from bone, curl and slake
My boils lanced, my blisters black
My neck breaks my heart

take the moon fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Mar 1, 2018

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Uglycat
Dec 4, 2000
MORE INDISPUTABLE PROOF I AM BAD AT POSTING
---------------->
What is this thing we've built that nobody owns?

I believe people grow kinder.

Be productive between cigarettes.

Never allow pride to re-double injury.

And if you wish to harvest a healthy crop of genius, spend two years encouraging the mediocre.

I am the center of my own universe - it could not be otherwise - and so too must it be that you are the center of yours.
That does not mean you cannot be - for a time - the captain of my experiences;
nor that I, with your consent, might not serve as the captain of yours.

"Despair Not!" she cried, "there is reason for hope!"
Indeed. Imagine.
What if it isn't already too late?
"Follow me," she continued, "that we might collaborate - and, by so doing, avoid folly."

She is the Lightning and the Thunder
She is the Crackling of a Fire
She is the Rumbling of an Earthquake
and i'm a tumbling spire

Lend your ear to an elder and learn;
the wind and the water will not carry our waste away.
Echoes of humansong and records of dance;
how many great civilizations descend from feral children?

I want again to feel your teeth against mine
our toes entangled, our tongues entwined
wrapped 'round each-other like oak and vine
you can touch my face any time, I'll /never/ mind

We ain't stand t'hear, round 'ere,
the "I ain't et yet" blues.
So part your lips, my dear,
closed mouths won't get fed.

If you are not bringing yourself to tears as you write,
what hope have you of taking your audience there?
How do you expect to moisten their eyes while yours are dry?
Learn to listen to your ducts.
Live, well up, /then/ write.
Stain your pages with more than just Ink.

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