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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
5358. RickNelson - 11/2/2004 5:53:50 PM Political poem's? Who knows of any?
Funny ones appreciated, smearing to a minimum please. 5359. RickNelson - 11/2/2004 5:56:06 PM There once was a president named Bush
Who liked to carry a stick
But when he met John Kerry
He threw it down and ran away like a girly man. 5360. RickNelson - 11/2/2004 6:06:00 PM I needed to go out and vote,
so I had to turn off Mote.
There was little Jacob to dress,
and we had a bit of a mess.
The stroller to ready,
diaper bag with food stocked aplenty.
We set off little Jacob and I,
walking toward SLP, High.
We knew it would be fun,
as long as we didn’t run,
and find Bushwhackers instead of some sun.
Then we’d have to hit them with a stick! 5361. ElliottRW - 11/2/2004 7:44:38 PM Political poems?
I don't have one, but I did post some electoral prose over in Election:
13719. ElliottRW - 11/2/2004 3:55:30 AM
Here is my prediction...
The sun will come out tomorrow...bet your bottom dollar. By mid-morning you will find it pasted like a red wafer in the sky. There will be wars and rumors of wars at polling places. And much crying and gnashing of teeth. However, no one will rend their garments.
And the polls will close and the anchors and pundits will explode with projections and analyses and blah blah all night long until your bleary eyes open to the dawn of a new day, a day of either hope or despair in which you will walk half-alive in the rut of your old life as you slowly begin to comprehend your future, the thought of which you had deferred until that moment.
And then you'll put the kids to bed and watch Leno or Dave or Iron Chef or whatever your quasi-porn or porn is and you'll realize that it was all like a dream, fading into the past, and that nothing important has really changed all that much, and that you need to pee.
5362. Ulgine Barrows - 11/5/2004 6:01:30 AM Iron Chef Italian
Is a myth
5363. Ulgine Barrows - 11/12/2004 9:15:57 AM 5353. RickNelson
That was odd about the Pictures of You. I was listening to that intently just before you posted that, circumstance.
I am really liking the Ben Harper song
DIAMONDS ON THE INSIDE
I knew a girl
Her name was truth
She was a horrible liar
She couldn’t spend one day alone
But she couldn’t be satisfied
When you have everything
You have everything to lose
She made herself a bed of nails
And she’s planning on putting it to use
But she had diamonds on the inside
She had diamonds on the inside
She had diamonds on the inside
Diamonds
A candle throws its light into the darkness
In a nasty world, so shines a good deed
Make sure the fortune that you seek
Is the fortune that you need
Tell me why the first to ask
Is the last to give every time
What you say and do not mean
Follows you close behind
She had diamonds on the inside
She had diamonds on the inside
She wore diamonds on the inside
Diamonds
Diamonds
Like the soldier long standing under fire
Any change comes as a relief
Let the giver’s name remain unspoken
She is just a generous thief
She had diamonds on the inside
She had diamonds on the inside
She wore diamonds on the inside
She wore diamonds
Oh - diamonds
She had diamonds
She wore diamonds
Diamonds
my favorite:
She made herself a bed of nails
And she’s planning on putting it to use
5364. Ulgine Barrows - 11/14/2004 8:22:50 AM Leaf by leaf,
and page by page,
throw this book away.
All the sadness,
all the rage,
throw this book away.
Rip out the binding,
and tear the glue.
All of the grief we never even knew,
we had it all along,
now it's
Smoke.
All the things we've written in it,
never really happened.
All the things we've written in it,
never really happened.
All of the people come and gone,
never really lived,
and all the people come have gone,
no one to forgive.
Smoke.
We will not write a new one.
There will not be a new one,
another one, another one.
Here's an evening dark with shame,
throw it on the fire.
Here's the time I took the blame,
throw it on the fire.
Here is the time we didn't speak,
it seemed, for years and years,
and here's the secret no one will ever know.
The reasons for the tears,
they are smoke.
Smoke.
Smoke.
We will not write a new one.
There will not be a new one,
another one, another one.
Another one.
Where do all the secrets live,
they travel in the air.
You can smell them when they burn,
they travel
Those who say the past is not dead,
can stop and smell the smoke.
You keep saying the past is not dead,
stop and smell the smoke.
You keep on saying the past is not even past,
you keep saying,
we are smoke.
Smoke.
-Ben Folds Five
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