mystical poetry thread

[Stosh]

There is of course something in good poetry, its just that so much is either unexplained or just has nothing worthwhole to read that the good is elusive . I think they all should have to explain what the heck they meant. Why is morning important to the smell of a fart , and what significance is this subjective assessment supposed to be to me? Since I think there is nothing there I consider it to be crap poetry. Dont you think?

Her eyelids trembled , a quiet signal in tune with the rising day , a shoulder lifts as muscles tense and a sqeezing fart lifts lifts the sheets to welcome it.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Stosh

[Aetherous]

"A Lemon", by Pablo Neruda

 

Out of lemon flowers loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Edited November 23, 2013 by turtle shell

[soaring crane]

The most beautiful love poem that I know (not necessarily about love between partners)

Brief
Idle moments
Become
You

Author - some brilliant kid in a creative writing class.

Edited November 23, 2013 by soaring crane

[soaring crane]

And a beautiful, uplifting and even a little mystical poem, to bring a little Spring magic into this dreary Autumn day:

 

i thank you God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes!

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings;and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any---lifted from the no
of all nothing---human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

~~~e. e. cummings~~~

[soaring crane]

 

the diminutive fire of a planet.

 

mmmMMMmmm... Neruda=Sublime

 

PS - I like the idea of turning this into a thread simply reserved for quality poetry

Edited November 23, 2013 by soaring crane

[soaring crane]

Since I think there is nothing there I consider it to be crap poetry. Dont you think?

 

I think a good poem contains more insight and knowledge, and beauty and mystery, than any novel. The difficulty some people perceive with poetry is in thinking 'prose' while reading. Think of each line of a poem as a chapter in a book, and spend more time with each line than you would with a comparably long sentence in a book, and after a while, the meaning will open to you. But the best poetry is ambiguous, having multiple - microcosmic and macrocosmic - layers. So maybe you're just too linear for it?

 

Instead of calling it crap poetry, I would talk about my crap comprehension skills (I'm referring to myself in the cases where I can't make heads or tails of a particular poem)

[Starjumper]

I wave my hand

The fire dances

And the world is changed forever

[Infinity]

In a dream many breaths ago a baby born from a blue ethereal woman danced and announced to me:

 

"If you see me smiling it's because I am happy ever after. If you see me crying it will only be with laughter."

Edited November 23, 2013 by Infinity

[Infinity]

The body feels.

The mind thinks

The heart loves

Who cares?

[Infinity]

I've been looking at me and seeing you with my minds eye.
Its nice in here, I see clearly, only few fluffy clouds clutter my inner sky.

I observe myself and know we are all the same,
floating in this soup of thought and feeling and playing this same game.

In worlds of words is where we play
and the world we are in depends on what we say.

With scripts delivered to us by our peers
this madness has been going on for years and years.

We wander lost and found in these labyrinths of fiction,
coralled by seemingly concrete walls of diction.

Our language of love or our language of hate
creates our state and defines our fate.

Talking to ourselves as soon as we wake
we describe our worlds, worlds that are fake.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Infinity

[Infinity]

Soup

Were all living in this world of feeling,
dicing, slicing, chopping and peeling.

Swmming in a soup of thought and emotion.
And the way we move adds to the motion.

All are ingredients for the world to savour.
As well as the chefs adding to the flavour.

In this together bobbing up and down.
The carrots, the peas, the white, black and brown.

Some people complain because their soup tastes sour
But at the end of the day it's us who have the power.

Sprinkle some compassion in to the mix
or some love and understanding for a flavour fix.

We taste this soup and then add to the flavour
it's our world and it could be something to savour.

So the next time your chopping, grating and peeling
remember your the chef adding to the feeling.

Edited November 23, 2013 by Infinity

[Infinity]

This will be my last, sorry if that is too many...

Inspired by the following quotes and our predicament:

In the beginning was the word and the word was with god, and the word was god. - genesis

What we think we become - Buddha

Words

Words... Words... Words... Words...
Absurds.... Absurds.... Absurds....

Talking to ourselves as soon as we wake
we describe our world, a world that's fake.

I am thin, I am fat, I am this, I am that, I am happy, I am sad,
you and I are fucking mad!

 

But mad is just another word,
can you see it, can you see the absurd?

Words weaving worlds, we dance in this trance, laughing, crying,
living, dying, coming and going, toing and frowing.

We are lost in this cycle of infinite diction
constantly babbling this world of fiction.

 

Spewing definitions over each other,
tearing down walls and then building another.

Can we change this world of absurds were in?
Can we change who we are with a new definition?

Edited November 23, 2013 by Infinity

[Infinity]

Sorry one more not quite mystical: :-)

 

Bums

Breathing to their tums

 

Earthly eyes with celestial ties

Sometimes egos throwing pies

 

Black and white is what they mix

Sharing knowledge and their tricks

 

All in all they span the globe

The gap between thoughts is there abode.

[Captain Mar-Vell]

...

 

That's some damn fine poetry there fellers.

 

I don't know how mystic this is, but I do have a blog with some poetry in the archives.

 

...
Indomitable Redoubt of The Blue Wizard.
...

 

...

Edited November 25, 2013 by Captain Mar-Vell

[manitou]

A small kitten

Sinking her tiny claws

into the front of my night shirt,

A distraction to my post.

 

Breathes her tiny breath into my nostrils

Pushes her nose up against my lips

Vying for my attention.

 

Her regular little purrs

Reverberate in my right ear

As she looks for her morning breakfast

by sucking my earlobe.

 

A small tear forms in the corner of my eye

As I feel a small tug of motherhood

Within my loins.

A motherhood that never was.

[ThisLife]

There is of course something in good poetry, its just that so much is either unexplained or just has nothing worthwhole to read that the good is elusive . I think they all should have to explain what the heck they meant. Why is morning important to the smell of a fart , and what significance is this subjective assessment supposed to be to me? Since I think there is nothing there I consider it to be crap poetry. Dont you think?

Her eyelids trembled , a quiet signal in tune with the rising day , a shoulder lifts as muscles tense and a sqeezing fart lifts lifts the sheets to welcome it.

 

 

*

 

When I read your extremely perceptive reply to my earlier sample of Brautigan's poetic smorgasbord, I knew instantly that I was in the presence of a potential devotee. You are clearly someone standing on the threshold of a world of wondrous new insights, just as I was all those many years ago. Welcome, dear brother, welcome.

 

It was the way you immediately grasped the essence of what Brautigan was trying so desperately to communicate to the world when you asked your double-barrelled question, " Why is morning important to the smell of a fart , and what significance is this subjective assessment supposed to be to me? " But it was my first startling initiation to your own poetic inner nature when I read your own breath-taking verse : "Her eyelids trembled , a quiet signal in tune with the rising day , a shoulder lifts as muscles tense and a sqeezing fart lifts lifts the sheets to welcome it." that tears were literally brought to my eyes, (as I'm sure they were to yours on that spell-binding occasion you wrote so beautifully about, and so kindly shared with us.)

 

 

I could clearly see that I was undoubtedly in the presence of a man of impeccable taste and insight. Though we have never met, somehow I feel that the sages and avatars of past, present and future must surely have arranged the synchronicity of our meeting like this inside a Tao Bum.

 

In light of that, (because, above all one desperately does need a light in a meeting place such as this !), the only appropriate action,.... based on my own experience way back in the 70's,.....was to cook you up another fix of Brautigan's poetic insight. I have calculated that by now you most assuredly must be going through the first stages of that dreaded demon, the increasing agony of poetic withdrawal.

 

So please, feel free to take yourself a deep, life-giving draught of the following. May it answer all your questions, and then may it quickly lead you to the bliss of full and complete enlightenment :

 

 

*

 

*

 

 

"15%"

 

She tries to get things out of men

that she can't get because she's not

15% prettier.

 

 

*

 

*

 

 

THE MEMOIRS OF JESSE JAMES

 

I remember all those thousands of hours

that I spent in grade school watching the clock,

waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.

Waiting: for anything but school.

My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James

for all the time they stole from me.

 

 

*

 

*

 

POSTCARD

 

I wonder if eighty-four-year-old Colonel Sanders

ever gets tired of travelling all around America

talking about fried chicken.

 

 

*

 

*

 

 

"Milk for the Duck"

 

ZAP!

unlaid / for 20 days

 

my sexual image

isn't worth a shit.

 

If I were dead

I couldn't attract

a female fly.

 

 

*

 

*

 

"A Good-Talking Candle"

 

I had a good-talking candle

last night in my bedroom.

 

I was very tired but I wanted

somebody to be with me,

so I lit a candle

 

and listened to its comfortable

voice of light until I was asleep.

 

 

*

 

*

 

 

"Nice Ass"

 

There is so much lost

and so much gained in

these words.

 

 

*

 

*

 

"Automatic Anthole"

 

Driven by hunger, I had another

forced bachelor dinner tonight.

I had a lot of trouble making

up my mind whether to eat Chinese

food or have a hamburger. God,

I hate eating dinner alone. It's

like being dead.

 

 

*

 

*

 

DEATH IS A BEAUTIFUL CAR PARKED ONLY

For Emmett

 

Death is a beautiful car parked only

to be stolen on a street lined with trees

whose branches are like the intestines

of an emerald.

 

You hotwire death, get in, and drive away

like a flag made from a thousand burning

funeral parlors.

 

You have stolen death because you’re bored.

There’s nothing good playing at the movies

in San Francisco.

 

You joyride around for a while listening

to the radio, and then abandon death, walk

away, and leave death for the police

to find.

*

 

*

 

 

"The Final Ride"

 

The act of dying

is like hitch-hiking

into a strange town

late at night

where it is cold

and raining,

and you are alone

again.

 

Suddenly

all the street lamps

go out

and everything

becomes dark,

so dark

that even the buildings

are afraid

of one another.

 

*

 

*

 

"Melting Ice Cream at the Edge of Your Final Thought"

 

Oh well, call it a

life.

 

*

 

*

Edited November 25, 2013 by ThisLife

[manitou]

I actually quite liked the 'Her Eyelids trembled...." phrase. The only word missing from the sentence was Silk. Better motion, if you're the observer..

Edited November 25, 2013 by manitou

[Stosh]

I actually quite liked the 'Her Eyelids trembled...." phrase. The only word missing from the sentence was Silk. Better motion, if you're the observer..

Well feel free to go ahead and add it if it will make it better. Or better yet go ahead and add a paragraph ! maybe itll get good at some point , you never know , but now that the tenor of mine was set for "crass" I doubt it can be fixed much.

Somewhere inbetween the drol, and the arcane, there is a tone difficult to nail down,, maybe its sincerity,, I hear it in Zanshins prose,, but though I am totally sincere about my own prose -It just doesnt come across like that. The simplicity of the kitten poem allows it to be readily coherent , and relateable. ( maybe more resonant for women I guess). My cat purring against my head only tickles my eardrums ,and causes no loin-type artifacts.

Something the above author -s going for them is that the poems arent geared for "poem voice". You know that poem voice , its used all the time the rolling humm with rhythmic pauses and a recurrent lilt , which is guaranteed to cause disinterest immediately in almost anyone but the speaker themselves.. who must hear it differently

Similarly, I like that in Thelearner and Mythshrike's stuff, oh yeah , I need to get cracking on my second book ! later gator...

[manitou]

actually - I wasn't going for art in the kitten poem. It was what was actually happening at the moment.

 

And I still think your under the sheets imagery was pretty wonderful - I wouldn't label it crass at all - had a certain Brautigan-esque feel to it. Very intimate and immediate.

[Stosh]

actually - I wasn't going for art in the kitten poem. It was what was actually happening at the moment.

 

And I still think your under the sheets imagery was pretty wonderful - I wouldn't label it crass at all - had a certain Brautigan-esque feel to it. Very intimate and immediate.

Well thank you for the kind words , yes , a particular instance was in mind,

By referring to Braughtigan ,I figure you do understand that the rising of the sheets is due to the passage of gas right?

and thats why poems should be explained

[manitou]

Ahh yes, I do realize that. But wouldn't a silk sheet make for a prettier and flutterier evidence of gas passage than, say, a cotton one? Just goin' for pretty here.

[ThisLife]

Ahh yes, I do realize that. But wouldn't a silk sheet make for a prettier and flutterier evidence of gas passage than, say, a cotton one? Just goin' for pretty here.

 

 

I'm afraid I've exhausted all the poetry I know concerning the expulsion of excess wind, and I don't know any verse whatsoever about silk sheets. But if it's beauty you're after, well, to my way of thinking, true beauty has always to be allied with also having a worthwhile purpose. Actually I know very little about poetry, really, (hence, undoubtedly, my attraction to Richard Brautigan). But I do have a feeling that somehow poetry has a close connection with music. Perhaps it's that they both tend to have rhythm as an indispensable part of their nature.

 

Now, if I were to throw in an apparently complete non-sequitor here by saying that, being a child of the Sixties, one of my favourite albums of all time was Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon",.....perhaps the connection will become apparent if I add two extracts below of what I think of as truly beautiful poetry, (even though there isn't a silken bed sheet or the slightest breath of flatulence to be found anywhere in either of them) :

 

*

*

*

 

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

 

Tired of lying in the sunshine

Staying home to watch the rain

And you are young and life is long

And there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find

Ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run

You missed the starting gun.

 

 

*

*

*

 

 

"Breathe, breathe in the air

 

Don't be afraid to care

 

For long you live and high you'll fly

 

And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry

 

And all you touch and all you see

 

Is all your life will ever be."

 

 

*

 

 

Edited November 28, 2013 by ThisLife

[Stosh]

Ahh yes, I do realize that. But wouldn't a silk sheet make for a prettier and flutterier evidence of gas passage than, say, a cotton one? Just goin' for pretty here.

I probaably shouldnt say this , but the prettiest sheets I remember seeing was light weight cotton with medium size pale pink roses on it . Silk, either as a lightweight shirt , or the heavy kind which has that smooth flat look like linen when pressed ,are nice choices though.

[manitou]

I probaably shouldnt say this , but the prettiest sheets I remember seeing was light weight cotton with medium size pale pink roses on it . Silk, either as a lightweight shirt , or the heavy kind which has that smooth flat look like linen when pressed ,are nice choices though.

 

 

Still think the choices for movement are limited. A silk sheet would allow for the possibility of concentric circles, as the ripples around a cast stone in still waters, or perhaps even a vortex movement of confused gas.

 

Could we possibly pound this into the sand any deeper?

[Stosh]

No, but it sounds like you have an unwritten poem to finish.