MEMBERS VERSE

[chicken]

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yandee, of course you realize your latest poetic post would have been banned not very long ago, right? heh...i was right with you until the whole tongue thing....i guess as a gay man things are different
still i like it.

I can imagine.
May I add that it most definetely is a great honour that you still liked it.
thanks a lot for the appreciation.
it's kind of hard to post my efforts of the last months for I don't really know how to translate most of them or they sound strange in English when they sound nice in German. I'll take some time to look for some of my poems that can actually be translated without fear of sounding silly.
here would be one for you, guys.

concrete and my head that hurts
concrete and my heart that beats
concrete and my cough that doesn’t get better
concrete and missing you
concrete and the fear of being sick
concrete and the fear of being left alone
concrete and the fear of dissolivng
concrete and missing you
concrete and my miserable poems
that I do not want to see anymore
concrete and my shabbiness
in every breath I take
concrete and my arrogance
that has changed
concrete and missing you
concrete and my dreaming of your thighs
concrete and my dreaming of self-denial
concrete and my dreaming of capitulation
concrete and missing you
concrete and my longing for life
concrete and my longing for decidedness
concrete and my longing for your eyes
tarmac and noise of engines and
sreeching of brakes and tracks and
crossings and gasoline and
missing you
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:blink:
...my cough that doesn't get better...
...my shabbiness...
...capitulation...
and friggin decidedness...

:unsure:
wow. i really like that.

a bit of discussion:
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't really know how to translate most of them or they sound strange in English when they sound nice in German.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
my poet friend, Marlon L Fick (do a google, you'll get hits ) last published a book of translated Mexican Poetry. through him, i think i'm just now seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of translation.

then i think of Rumi. i can't really wrap my head around translating 13th century Sufi poetry...and it hitting me as deeply as it has here in the early 21st age...how utterly cool . IMHO, not many poets can be considered timeless.

last year boxguy and i heard some poetry from a student from Africa....one of the lines was: "this is not my language".........that has stuck with me like mad. [viz: left-handed is cool by me]

all that aside, the concrete poem is nice.

[Boxguy]

my poet friend, Marlon L Fick

One of the most brilliant individuals I have ever had the privilege to get to know, no lying here.

Chicken, what was the other thing that the African student remarked about poetry and cultural differences? I remember that it also stuck with you after the evening was over.

[Miserable Liar]

<div align="center">Box

Desperate measures taken,
keeps me in the box,
sealed with a lock,
a kiss from the devil.

Heaven far,
far away from us all,
grabbing with one hand,
kicking us back.

Pulled down to hell,
“I must be dreaming”,
not a nightmare,
nor a film about you.</div>

[chicken]

matt, that's an interesting poem. the brevity of it is cool--i'd be tempted to verse upon verse with a topic like that.

'grabbing with one hand
kicking us back'

is what really caught my attention.
if that were my baby, i'd keep it close and knead it madly, eager for the bread to come someday.

[Miserable Liar]

matt, that's an interesting poem. the brevity of it is cool--i'd be tempted to verse upon verse with a topic like that.

'grabbing with one hand
kicking us back'

is what really caught my attention.
if that were my baby, i'd keep it close and knead it madly, eager for the bread to come someday.

Cheers chicken. So I should extend it?

[chicken]

So I should extend it?

not in my opinion.
knead the ending; use your box/lock metaphor to bring it together--especially since we know it is desperate.
try several endings, let them steep.

[madmancmonkey]

Out of town

I leave my single bed and navigate

The half full glasses of yesterday's party

Wasted youth, youth wasted, today burns,

Like love, into the dark, fervent ,yet

Illuminates nothing vividly



The town bathes lazily beneath

A sun which flays shadows dead, and

Black hulks succumb to the crimson dawn

No doubts cast over the evergreen void,

Over the unblemished emptiness



As I walk, I feel crows eyes

Watchiing my naked solitude

From thier stark wooden scaffolds

Which frame the shattered mural sky

which mirrors, acre for acre, the plain.



Simple, Symmetric, unabstract.

For one small whim, I was equal,

Unexamined,significant,

Neither blunted, numb or humble

Against some failure or lack



And the verse I have read to lament

Such a thing.! The unshared quiet

Conjured up a love lost perhaps..

For me it renders ways I've felt

To one dimension, easily



See, I have toiled at that stone block

As to sculpt the youth's cornerstone

Of the monument to happiness,

To craft a poetic epitath

For epic stuggle and sadness



As ar as I could see, land stretched,

This, my almost emptyness.

And every acre simpliifies.

[Miserable Liar]

A song, have chords written down somewhere.

The Sleeper

I’m a sleeper, I must say,
sleepin’ helps me dream all of my troubles away,
you should try it, someday,
if you’re tired and need relief from the strain.

I’m a dreamer, I must say,
dreamin’ all night and feeling none of the pain,
of listening, day after day,
to people talking nonsense trying to hide it away,
you need help, if I may say,
sleepin’ even just for a few hours a day.

I’m a sleeper, I must say,
that my daily habit’s never going away,
in my dreams, with friends I’ll play,
sleeping just to see them brings a smile to my face,
it’s ace.

[Miserable Liar]

Semolina

Remember when it was just you and me, my friend,
cuddling, hoping it would never end?
Now it seems that times have changed,
and you've always been just a call away,
but it seems I have to make appointments.

You’ve found some others then I guess,
to treat you right and you know all the rest,
to tell the truth it hit me strong,
but i’ll have to try and carry on,
not a struggle, just a shrug without you.

Did it ever have to come to this,
here’s the point I always seem to miss,
the fact that I never did you wrong,
still we knew it all along,
the end was visible from when we started.

The crime, the conviction, I think,
you always seemed to put it down to drink,
when sober as I could ever be,
you make it just as hard for me,
“you’re no fun without a cocktail”.

And now i’m heading to the door,
don’t think I can take her anymore,
and so I light a cigarette, never would have before we met,
but it seems you drove me to this.

[MANCSMITHSFAN]

Hi folks. Do not be alarmed it is I, Jon, but I had to reregister this account... here is my latest scribblings

Discourse

The wizened oak's wrinkled fingers form a wreath

To summer's demise and the sun is bleakened

In that ashen sky.

"My life is to leaf

In this evergreen youth and is weakened

Only by that rawness now asunder



And underneath this life, this matter of time

Booms the echo of the clock, in the throes

Of fear of death and being alone. That climb

To happiness's summit. And what comes, goes

What ebbs and flows, against that current



Raging towards the wide sea of emptiness

Passed fields of dreams, scattered, sown and reaped



And those reading briallle books are blinded

By the light which blings off the priests' gold

The 'Why are we heres?' falling on deaf ears,

The silence bellows, the story is old

In masuoleaums, zeitgiests haunt yesteryears.

Long-dead souls rest among the dust and pews.



You feel beyond life's immensity

We're floating on the gravity of loss.

Adrift...."



Until the brevity of 'I love you'

Settles and links all meaning and nothing

As it did, shattering my thought, I replied

Fingers shaking,( last nights vodka, not nerves!)

Then the one-o-one trundled beyond the Southern

Cemetery, the sun blinked, life walked on.

[rorschach]

I wish I could comment guys but I know next to nothing about poetry . I feel like an uncultured swine.

[chicken]

I recently finished a poem called: "the time in Sophia, Bulgaria" and will be receiving feedback from my mentors on it. A HUGE THANK YOU to Ruby for writing me all about Bulgarian food!!

Months ago I wrote one called "root cellar" which is all about me being chased across the globe by the "Phantastic Police" because I broke laws about dreaming. In it, I talk about hiding in root cellars in Mongolia, Bulgaria, Uruguay, and Singapore (among other places). Then it occurred to me that I should write individual poems about each place mentioned in that silly long poem...thus my Sophia poem is but one in a series of poems, each three or four pages long. My friend Marlon is calling the project a "magnum opus"...

And.... -gulp- ...this summer I plan to formalize a full manuscript for submission to a printing press here in Kansas that specializes in publishing budding Kansas poets!! I'm very nervous at the prospect, but hugely excited. Maybe in a year I'll have a book of poetry to my name? How awesome would that be?!?!!?!!!

[noonan]

Eighty Two

back in nineteen eighty two
they knew how to deal with the likes of you
they'd beat you black and fucking blue
just because you liked U2

mind you, this was before the miner's strike
and it was a right big deal, what band you liked
if you'd a floppy fringe and a studded belt
you'd made an emotional commitment, you felt