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5338. ElliottRW - 10/24/2004 5:32:10 AM Thanks Ulgine.
Thanks for the good advice and the kind words. I've decided to ditch the world line; it is half-cliché, half self-pity. I'm not sure what to replace it with.
Still, I'm optimistic I can make it work now. 5339. Bill Russell - 10/24/2004 9:56:55 AM Life is a Witch, and then you fly
Bumper Sticker
5340. Bill Russell - 10/24/2004 10:10:08 AM Hauku Poems:
Midday
Middle of the street:
Leaf-fall
......................................................
Refreshing shower
Falls from my watering can
Catching a rainbow.
......................................................
Evening Prayer-Call
Voices colour the spaces
Outlined by swallows.
......................................................
Among hedgerow roots,
Crisp leaves and patches of light:
Blackbird's wary eye.
..........................................................
Saturated mist;
Clear jewel on the leaf-point,
Drip! The river starts.
.........................................................
Glint of dragonflies
Here and there, beside the reeds
Of the Red River.
............................................................
Exploring the world
And yet never far from home:
Snail crosses my path.
.....................................................
Winter comes:
Books pile a foot high
By my bedside.
....................................................
New building site screens
Acres of corporate green
And just one handprint.
........................................................
5341. Bill Russell - 10/24/2004 10:14:49 AM Correction:
Those are HAIKU poems .... 5342. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 4:13:34 PM 5336. ElliottRW - 10/22/2004 8:56:18 PM
Here's a song I'm working on:
You've got your own money. You've got a body that's fine.
You've got brains, beauty, and time. Sweet time.
Your world is an oyster. Your world...is better than mine.
So...
What the hell do you want with a loser like me? (lose this)
(Replace with)when hell comes knockin' look me up
I'm up for you
I'm up for you...
Huh?(lose this)
We'll make fun of the pain baby, we'll make fun
Are you a curious fine thing?
Tell me...
Where you gonna find another like me?
It works with the music, but something about it doesn't work. It lacks...balance. I don't feel like it communicates enough hope and longing. It seems shallowly cynical, even self-pitying.
I'm trying to achieve something more mature. What I want people to visualize is a middle-aged man, a divorcee perhaps, not unattractive perhaps, but mostly used up talking to an attractive young woman
I'm open to suggestions here. Rip it to shreds.
5343. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 4:19:07 PM New building site screens
Acres of corporate green
And just one handprint.
This one is very interesting. Are you getting this from your past work or just coming up with them as you post?
I find that it's just a mood that I'm in when writing Haiku and most of it just happens in real time. 5344. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 4:24:09 PM Elliot, I found you put too much self-pity in it. I also hear another song... "...loser, so why don't you kill me..." when I read your lines. It's not that song, but I can't help hear myself connect to it. I'm not sure if it would be better for the song to add clarity to the person of infatuations personality?
My take of your song:
You've got your own money. You've got a body that's fine.
You've got brains, beauty, and time. Sweet time.
Your world is an oyster. Your world...is better than mine.
So...
when hell comes knockin' look me up
I'm up for you
I'm up for you...
We'll make fun of the pain baby, we'll make fun
Are you a curious fine thing?
Tell me...
Where you gonna find another like me?
5345. ElliottRW - 10/25/2004 4:39:27 PM Rick,
Thanks! I now see how the word "loser" is just too loaded to be used effectively. And the lyrics you suggest have a lot of appeal. I'm not sure I can use them as is, though.
Perhaps it will help if I show where I'm going with the song. The song is an attempt to juxtapose a man's carnal desire, and vanity, with his authentic virtue, kindness. He's not really insecure or self-pitying; he's conflicted.
In later verses I intend to expose that while this guy would love a roll in the hay, he believes it would be wrong to have a long term relationship with such a young woman. Wrong for her, but also wrong for him because the guilt would kill him. This is the tension I'm trying to achieve. It's about temptation. 5346. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 4:52:08 PM Sounds good.
5347. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 5:04:44 PM I know what I missed
picturing your posture
while walking halls of memory
to seek beautiful curves
your walk, your talk
your body I sought.
5348. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 5:13:30 PM We listened to music
and questioned the art
your intellect
my mental fart.
Your need to see Van Gogh's
Olive trees suspended,
sky a glowing movement.
I see glowing. I see light.
The drugs mess with clarity
your body pulled me along.
There I see Van Gogh,
drug induced mind
that moved me far from you.
5349. ElliottRW - 10/25/2004 10:22:21 PM Rick,
I say you might be channeling William Burroughs in those last two but there's not enough violence.
I notice now Bill Russell's pile of Haiku. I've recently become accustomed to quickly scanning Bill's posts (Sorry!) That's obviously innappropriate in this thread. Of this bunch, I think this one has a lot of promise:
Saturated mist;
Clear jewel on the leaf-point,
Drip! The river starts.
Here, the only thing I'd like to change is the leading word "Saturated". While descriptive, it has (to me) a clinical quality, an abstract quality that is somewhat at odds with vibrant specifics of the rest of the Haiku.
Unfortunately I can't supply an alternative. Help me out Rick! 5350. RickNelson - 10/25/2004 11:22:30 PM
Perhaps,
Mountain, downy mist
5351. RickNelson - 10/26/2004 3:43:57 PM The Wild Swans at Coole
W.B. Yeats (1916)
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
The nineteenth autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.
I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.
Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake's edge or pool
Delight men's eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?
5352. RickNelson - 10/26/2004 3:50:42 PM I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
Rainer Maria Rilke, Annemarie S. Kidder translator (2001)
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.
5353. RickNelson - 10/26/2004 3:52:00 PM Pictures of You
The Cure (1989)
I've been looking so long at these pictures of you
That I almost believe that they're real
I've been living so long with my pictures of you
That I almost believe that the pictures are all I can feel.
Remembering you standing quiet in the rain
As I ran to your heart to be near
And we kissed as the sky fell in holding you close
How I always held close in your fear.
Remembering you running soft through the night
You were bigger and brighter and whiter than the snow
And screamed at the make-believe screamed at the sky
And you finally found all your courage to let it all go.
Remembering you fallen into my arms
Crying for the death of your heart.
You were stone white, so delicate, lost in the cold,
You were always so lost in the dark.
Remembering you how you used to be,
Slow drowned you were angels so much more than everything.
Oh hold for the last time then slip away quietly,
Open my eyes but I never see anything.
If only I'd thought of the right words
I could have held onto your heart
If only I'd thought of the right words
I wouldn't be breaking apart
All my pictures of you.
Looking so long at these pictures of you,
But I never hold on to your heart.
Looking so long for the words to be true,
But always just breaking apart
My pictures of you.
There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more
Than to feel you deep in my heart.
There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more
Than to never feel the breaking apart
All my pictures of you.
5354. Macnas - 10/27/2004 10:02:25 AM So calm all summer long, the wind decides its time to stretch
Into the corners of the world and visit places it’s forgotten
Growing stronger as it works, racing down the tree lined lane
And as it passes plucks what leaves it can from sleepy sycamores.
The ash and hardy hawthorn hold on tight to what they have
Unwilling to surrender to the busy fingered wind
But it persists, and it cajoles, and bit by bit and leaf by leaf,
They give up what they’ve grown and timbered hearts soon yearn to rest.
And soon the blanket is complete and it covers lightly over
Ditch and hedge and dyke and headland in a many coloured weave
That shifts and eddy’s as the wind spreads it out and tucks the corners,
All that grows so now grows tired and succumbs to seasons sleep.
I wrote this last night, for my daughter, as a bit of seasonal fun. It's amazing how relaxed rhyme and rhythm make you feel.
5355. RickNelson - 10/27/2004 3:22:56 PM Fantastic Macnas! 5356. RickNelson - 10/27/2004 3:28:01 PM Copyright © 2004 by Irving Feldman.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
The Brother
This great man, this fine public figure,
is stealing his portion, gobbling it up
—brazenly, in front of everyone's eyes.
And his swagger and blarney and light fingers
and swell-headed pleasure in who he is
have got them all applauding him for that.
And because he gets them to be brazen, too,
they love him for this, calling out to him,
"Fine for you, man. Now let us see you take more!"
But brother (and how his face suffers the face
that likeness nails to it), brother, he gazes
in silence into his empty bowl, and he knows.
''''
W and Jeb
5357. RickNelson - 11/2/2004 5:52:07 PM From Poetry Daily:
This Morning
To see things as they are is hard,
But leaving them alone is harder;
Snow in patches in the yard,
The vacuum in the sky, and in the soul
The movements of temptation and refusal.
I felt a day break. Nothing happened.
The windows gave upon a street
Where cars drove by as usual to the faint,
Unearthly measures of a music
Whose evasions struggled to conceal a
Disappointment all the deeper that the
Hope was for a thing I knew to be unreal.
I can't do it yet. Perhaps no one can do it yet.
The unconstructed gaze is still a fiction
Of the heart, a hope that hides
The boring truth of life within the limits
Of the real, a life whose only heaven
Is the surface of a slowly turning globe.
Yet still I want to think I woke one day to —
To what? The crystal trees, an earthly silence
And the white, unbroken snow of a first morning?
John Koethe
The Kenyon Review
New Series, Volume XXVI Number 4
Fall 2004
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