Poetics and Poetry Discussion

Nice work, I enjoyed it at all, especially when the end came so strong and powerful, maybe as a release of pain, or maybe as the moment when everything ends the pain and brings that to the reader.
I am still thinking about your point of view. Anyway, this the purpose of writing and reading a poem...............

JC - here is a poem where I purposely used cliches. Albeit it is not my best but I was going for a certain effect.

Addicted

My flame lights your torch
So you fuel my fire
My being needs your touch
So you fill my desire

As bodies connect
Our spirits - they soar
As we intersect
Our hearts cry for more

We revel in the beauty of the moment
for the moment is all we have

Obsessed and addicted
Spinning out of control
Our worlds are affected
Until they are no more

Seekers of salvation
We speak words of love
Afraid of damnation
From forces above

We are tossed into waters of oblivion
for oblivion is our only hope

We run from ourselves
We run to each other
Like babes in the woods
Seeking their mother

Living we mimic
Playing the same tunes
Manic in panic
We've made our own tombs

Well, as Lamont, points out, simple doesn't equal trite. Simple can clear away the underbrush, reveal the poem's heart; trite means worn-out and hackneyed. I can't think of any reason to purposively write a cliche, except to ridicule it or revivify it in a new context. One's first job as a poet is to shear away ALL cliches....

Rap as poetry or poetry rap?

From Langston Hughes, via Amira Baraka, to NWA

Langston Hughes (Who but the lord?) - Amira Baraka - (assassin poems) - NWA - F**** tha Police

Listening " Stranger on the bus" ; one of my favorite songs, I have written as following:

Stranger on the bus

Like a stranger on a bus
trying to make his way home
is everybody's heart in this world.

People who never gonna meet
may be better than those we ever met.

What can we do
when the world let us to be
always " stranger on the bus" .....

Here is a simple poem I wrote the other day,
from an elderly women's perspective. Thought
someone might find of interest. Not writing much
at all anymore, so a new fish caught is a rare surprize.


After all

I'm under the weather
and over the hill
my skin feels like leather
did I take my pill?

and I always say better
when they ask how I feel
but I know it's forget her
cause they're not in the will

and my bones make more noises
than the creaks in this chair
and I kind of hear voices
when there's nobody there

and I know the day's nearing
when I won't be around
and I'm tired of fearing
being stuck in the ground

there's a picture of family
there still up on the wall
I'll be joining them finally
guess I won, after all


Lyn Pendleton
6-10-13

Hard Pressed Night Owls


Dead leaves are strewn and blown, wildly like drunken men.
They’ve brought the beaten road to its lowest level;
To the beacon where trucks mimic life, moving
Almost stately, pass ruins and dilapidated homes
Which were built to withstand common weather; wry
Rains, combative snows, all the more gorgeous in rage.
It is blasphemy to think you won’t go on selecting
Trifle battles to wage; pink slips one can
Almost wear; a lingerie of the proletariat
A slattern might don in hopes of revelation.
There is work to be done when worlds draw taut breaths.
Each night, third shift workers go by like children having
A time of it; a solemnity lives even in desperate
Darkness; it lives and envelopes the working poor
Who still behave like dreams breathe deeply for them.
They see a sort of Kafkaesque nightlife which absorbs
For them reality; the hustle and bustle reduced
To a nightmarish aria, like a man turning into
A breast that even a hungry life won’t suckle.
They see the moon and know it’s a steady clock
Keeping time, assured from the beginning,
Its singularity, supporting you, as you go
In through cruel barriers. Streets now safe
For traveling, its gravel chooses to be loved.

Nowadays, people find harder and harder to find themselves reading a poem, writing a poem. I think that a poem is the best short answer to hit the nail of the head. Reading and writing a poem helps us to scan ourselves better.
THE PHENOMENAL WOMAN was the poem i red yesterday and made me express the following conclusion. Anyway, enjoy Xhevahir Spahiu, the very famous Albanian author:

My Debts

I am going to die,
Die drowning in debt,
Suffocating in water or a gas chamber is nothing by comparison,
I'm in debt to my mother for I raised her no tombstone,
I'm in debt to the oak tree for I made it no trellis,
I'm in debt to love for I stole it last Sunday,
I'm in debt to crime for I called it not by name.
I'm going to die,
Die drowning in debt.
I'm in debt to the word for I saw it not in my dreams,
I'm in debt to the raven for I whitened not its feathers,
I'm in debt to the year 1913 for I cleansed not its wounds,
I'm in debt to the future for I left on its doorstep
The darkness of a distant age.
I'm going to die,
Die drowning in debt.
I'm in debt to the living,
I'm in debt to the dead,
I will have to sell my tombstone
To pay my debts,

And place a full stop here.

Now it is your turn to speak
Of the debts you owe me.

(1989)

CAUL

I was wrapped in mine
On arrival, and it hit me,
The orange undersea light
Of the day of birth.

I was safe, though,
Unafraid of drowning
In the strange, new element
I had dropped into,

A man in a bathyscape
Of throwaway skin,
Old veins, post-natal,
Making his way in the world.

Some spoke of greatness,
Others of safety at sea.
Of the lying-in ward
Three pillars remain

And a great emotion.
Mother, am I beloved,
Or who else wears it now,
My dried skin cap,

For luck, on another ocean?

By Harry Clifton

A Womans Mirror

On any given day
She will see only love
On any other day, she will embrace hate
Then she combs her hair
Puts on a pretty face
Her mirror sees' all