Poetry Corner

A friend of mine named PatTheWanderer, an incredibly good writer, made a poetry corner in the early days of RPP and was actually quite the hub for people who wrote, or wished to write, poetry; a lot of good work went in and out of the thread and I just figured that's what this forum is missing. Writing is an art form, after all.

Feel free to submit your own poems, critique other people's poems, or just read and enjoy. The real beauty of poetry is you cannot CENSORED it up.

I'll drop a couple that I've made to get us started:



Viscous


You’re still there
You’re always there
On my mind or not

Behind my eyes
With your vicious lies
You act to be distraught

I try to wash you out
I try a different route
but you always stick around

I grab a rag
And clean my ears
But your echos always sound

Get out my head
You weight of lead
You’re cruel, mean, and wicked

But you always stay
Just like a stain
Kind of like a viscous liquid



---



My Vision of the People


“Rights, rights, rights!” We shout this every so often,
we have rights, we say to the world, but nary does it soften
the blows of your unequivocal suppression.

Even with the refurbished flag and shiny new policy,
I see people’s sorrows, their emotions drawn in to me.
I see it now, the vision of the people: where we uphold our claims,
and break the links of our chains, where we will be truly equal -
washing away the prejudicial stains.

I am friends with the women, and I hear their request:
to be treated as fairly as men, not more, not less.
I see it now, the vision of the people: where we hold the women in law and mind,
just as we claim to do in reality, finally converging in line.

I am friends with the gay, and I hear their plea:
to marry alongside the straight man, right beside of me.
I see it now, the vision of the people: where we hold the gay on equal standing,
not as sinful beasts, disgusting creatures, or social branding.

I am friends with the immigrants, and I hear their cries:
to flee their ravaged lands to a new land with charity, not one with lies.
I see it now, the vision of the people: where we hold the unfortunate in our hearts,
instead as an issue, like numbers upon charts.

I am friends with the children, and I hear their proposal:
to be given a chance, to be heard; of their decisions and role.
I see it now, the vision of the people: where we hold the youth in our thoughts,
but not as mindless sheeple and ignorant worms; your approval is sought.

I am all for the power of man, to control our destined fates.
Capable of diverging our hate from our politics, with the potential to know what’s at stake.
We as humans, are as powerful as any force in nature, a concept to be tempered.
All it takes is some diligence, to continue unhampered.

But when power becomes a tool to admonish the rights of fellow man,
how are we, the very people for whom you supposedly ran,
the evil ones?
Most especially when you repress us and inhibit our freedom
by shoving our rights into jars upon shelves,
and by extension,
inhibiting yourselves?

I think this is an great idea, and I must say you're an excellent poet Lieo. I fancy darker poems that make use of rhyme, Viscous does an good job at this. Here's a short piece of my own.



Of The Night

Under cloak of night,
prey await.
Mortals flee in fright.
My thirst they’ll sate.
Until dawn,
I give chase.
Then I’m gone
without a trace.
So beware the dark
or with a peck,
I’ll leave my mark
upon you neck.
If you live to see sunrise
it shall spell your demise.

This is a poem i came up with recently hope you like it.

The Smoker’s Curse

With every puff we take our life drains away
With every puff we lose another day
We know the risks we take
We can see our money and life flow with the smoke we make
But once we start we can’t stop
It’s too hard to quit on the drop
As hard as we may try
We will lose the strength to fly

Each day it takes away our worry
Each day it hushes the flurry
But is it worth the price we pay?
For it is our curse to lose and there is no other way
Loss of health and loss of life
Loss of money and loss of love this is our strife
Our curse is to always lose and never gain
Till the day we never rise again.

This looks like it could have a lot of potential. An excellent idea Lieo.

Now, if I may entertain you all with some of my best poetry:

Spring

The hills are alive with a solar intenseness
The wee whippoorwills sing by the silvery stream.
The sparrows that sail through the treetops are restless.
And through the emerald canopy God’s sunlight streams.

I lay in the shade of the archaic oak tree.
The dappled white sunlight caresses the shadows.
The green-yellow grasses grow high with their fresh leaves
And robins inhabit where there once were black crows.

The fawn and the fox pup play tag in the sundrops.
The skunk and the rabbit both rest under the shrubs.
The pilose pink pig rolls itself in the mud slop.
And the elegant eagle watches over the wolf pups.

This is the moment that all mankind has lusted
Ever since our high Father breathed our life into clay.
Our arms are retired, the tanks are all rusted
And, in this moment, I wish to forever stay.


The Lessons of the Bees

Sometimes I wish that you and me
could find the immortality
that working ant and buzzing bee
have hid from man for centuries.

For in their humble colonies
they live in perfect harmony.
No need to fight or starve or plead
all scrimmages solved peacefully.

Yet man has conquered every sea
but plagued with such controversy.
We battle, argue, starve, and bleed
man cares not for another's need.

The lessons we can learn from bees
and ants is that we call can be
part of a world where you and me
can live in perfect harmony.

This one will probably take us in a direction we don't want to go, but eh. I've been told it's pretty good, so why not. I changed a couple parts of the original, I think I like this adaption over the older one.



Escaped Early

People believe that they're safe at last,
their troubles being far in the past.
Though I can tell you a story
involving many masquerades,
'bout how I've learned depression never fades.

Remember that long lost feeling that you had inside?
It's gonna come back like a big high tide.
It'll hit you like a mountainside,
'am seein' so few choices,
and I'm left with suicide.

I remember the blood rolling down my arm,
that ugly scar is my lucky charm.
It's to remind me what I was,
to remind me what it does -
the pain.
It's still on my mind,
please pick me up, I'm falling behind.

Earth is hell and heaven is the goal,
exposed to sin, war we wrought.
Convince me please that Earth's not our trial,
that we won't be sent back when denied at the gate.
Wiped of your memory, and a second chance given,
so that a difference is made by those that's driven.
And when the prerequisite's met,
we may know peace in death, all without fret.

Death's the transition - to escape this hell,
and to go hear heaven's bell -
depression. Is it all that bad?
A message from God, to allow us skip the line.
It's not that we're out of time -
we're blessed. To leave our hell without request.

So bleed me like a pig, like the swine I am,
then leave me under the tree, with the soiled life and dirt.
Society the fisher, love and happy life the lure,
caught on the hook, choked on air and my vision blurs.

I still remember the horrific blood running down my arms,
those ugly scars are my lucky charms,
reminding me that I escaped my hell early -
I'd like my family to have thought the same, surely.




Trust me, my work usually isn't this gloomy.

This was a rap that me and a random guy on Youtube made. I made my part more as a poem, so yeah... you'll probably see the difference in the two parts.

Humanity's Wrongdoings

/This is why I rap/
/for the little boys, and girls in Iraq/
/Who see family wrapped in black cloth sacks/
/Now they wear rags as they dig through the trash/
/Later that night they lay in the gutter as they wish/
/And they pray/
/They still had a mother/

/So tell me brother,/
/Does that seem right to you?/
/Does that seem like a fight to you?/
/All around i see so much pain/
/I lose my mind and wish for rain/
/To wash the greed of man down the drain/
/But for now its a drought/
/And the evil remains/

/I can't really believe myself/
/I hadn't noticed this for so long/
/I never knew people were so wrong/
/I can't see how life continues/
/It's really hard to imagine see all the blood spew/
/From the bodies of the wrongly killed/
/I wonder if we can save ourselves/

/This is why we fight?/
/To see our brethren slain?/
/I ask you all, what the hell's wrong with us?/
/Even if you can't answer, just try/
/All the media says is lies!/
/They say it's right to shoot a bullet through innocents/
/They say it's all right, but it's not/

I remember Reading the Sound of Thunder. A good little story. They made a movie of it too.

Genius by Mark Twain


Genius, like gold and precious stones,
is chiefly prized because of its rarity.

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.

Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres
far above the vulgar world and fills his soul
with regal contempt for the gross and sordid things of earth.

It is probably on account of this
that people who have genius
do not pay their board, as a general thing.

Geniuses are very singular.

If you see a young man who has frowsy hair
and distraught look, and affects eccentricity in dress,
you may set him down for a genius.

If he sings about the degeneracy of a world
which courts vulgar opulence
and neglects brains,
he is undoubtedly a genius.

If he is too proud to accept assistance,
and spurns it with a lordly air
at the very same time
that he knows he can't make a living to save his life,
he is most certainly a genius.

If he hangs on and sticks to poetry,
notwithstanding sawing wood comes handier to him,
he is a true genius.

If he throws away every opportunity in life
and crushes the affection and the patience of his friends
and then protests in sickly rhymes of his hard lot,
and finally persists,
in spite of the sound advice of persons who have got sense
but not any genius,
persists in going up some infamous back alley
dying in rags and dirt,
he is beyond all question a genius.

But above all things,
to deftly throw the incoherent ravings of insanity into verse
and then rush off and get booming drunk,
is the surest of all the different signs
of genius.

Escape

Achohol to escape the mind

Drugs to escape the pain

Cigerettes to escape life

A computer to escape reality

A wool blanket pulled over my head to escape my fears

Procrastination to escape my future

A mask to escape others worry

All I can do is run from myself
and hope death is kind as I wait in a moment of time
until the uneveitable end.

Meh, I'll post some work of mine here for nostalgia's sake.

Awoken Monster

I look around at this madness
The screams of the people everywhere
I can't fight these shadows within
When I cried, they'd say "Grow a pair!"

I can't hold this pain
No longer! No longer!
I feel the chaos within
The monster inside begins to win

I am the one
I made this madness.
My sanity is broken
Anger was once sadness.

Ashes of those who I knew
Scattered around the land
No remorse for them
They'd never lend a hand

I'll teach them all a lesson
One that they'll never forget
A lesson for all who abuse
One to tell them to never lose it

Never lose it like I did
For I am now a devil
I am no longer a man
But they made me into this animal

So I look around,
Ashes, ashes everywhere
I yell 'Let them die, let them die!'
So they can feel my despair.