Welcome to Gaia! ::

I'm still going to leave my poetry up here, but anyway, I have a question to pose to you, my fellow guildmember. As it is fairly obvious that we both write poetry, I won't ask of that, but do you read poetry as well? If so, please leave some suggestions of what to read, as I will.
The Rubayait (I don't think I spelled that right) by Omar Khayyim (again, pardon my spelling) is some of the most beautiful poetry ever written, I think.
Shakespeare's sonnets and plays are also lovely and provide plenty of material for deep introspection.
A Coney Island of The Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a good example of somewhat contemporary poetry, and fun to read.
The older I get, the more I love Shel Silverstien. Who doesn't?
Keats, Tennyson, Byron, etc. are all lovely. Give them a try during large blocks of time. I'm particularly obsessed with Byron. It's too bad the guy's dead, I'd SO marry him...


This is a collection of poems that I worked on over the summer, and they should follow a sort of pattern when looked at in sequence, except for the last bit in dark red, which stands alone. Please be critical, I'm no stranger to a lack of praise.

*untitled*
Tell me of why
Fire dances, flares, recedes,
burns alone throughout time,
but snow
her opposite in everything
save solitude
is imprisoned in winter?
Snow has done no crime.
His imprisonment is of
his own making.
He lives trapped in his cage
of numb ice
that holds no sympathy
and bitter winds that shriek and laugh
over his checkmate
his defeat
by his own hand.
But he would tell
another story.
Fire was
stunning.
From a single glowing ember
full of mystery
holding a hidden promise
of greatness
to a column of flame
alive and passionate
yet modestly veiled
in a seductlively perfumed gauze
of smoke.
Snow only had eyes for her perfection
but in seeking her perfection
he lost sight of her flaws.
He perjured himself
that such perfection
could never love
something so flawed.
His terror of being betrayed
trapped him in his prison
forever.

I hope you haven't died of boredom yet, at least enough to scroll down and keep reading.


*untitled*
Tell me of why.
Why what?
Everything.
Everything is nothing.
Everything is infinite.
Only when taken one at a time
Is everything worth anything.
Then tell me of anything.
Anything is worth nothing.
Anything is a blank.
Only when anything holds something
Is anything worth something.
Then tell me of something.
Something. Something is another story.
Something is worth what is put
In something.
For only when something is a pen-name for nothing
Is something worthless.
What is nothing then?
Nothing is worthless.


I hope you're still alive... I'll stop now... But watch for me... I will be back.

well, I'm back. I hope anyone reading this is happy. This is just a short verse that popped into my head uninvited, but certainly not unwelcome while I walked in the woods today... It's an attempt at rhyming, which is not my forte, but I think it turned out pretty good.

Guardian

Old mother forest
know that I'm kin
know that my heart
is pure of sin
and if I die
where I my steps take
know that my soul
a nymph shall make.
To protect the trees
and guard the sand
for all eternity
we'll go hand in hand.
To watch the birds
where they may fly
from the finest roots
to the end of the sky.
This will be my future
this will be my fate
but I ask one wish
for you to contemplate.
The forest has lived
for so many years
gleaning the wisdom
shedding the tears
of countless lives
eternal at last
that walked these paths
in simple times past.
I ask their wisdom
I plead for their fears
I beg for their dreams
their hopes and fears.
In return
I'll give my fate
unknowing, unquestioning
to keep or to break.

give this one a try, too.
Maybe I'm paranoid.
Maybe I'm right.

Can you prove me wrong?
Yes?
No?
What is it to be wrong?
Can wrong ever be truly proved?

Can you prove me right?
Can I prove myself right?
Is there right?

Is there wrong?
Is wrong the absence of right?
Is right the absence of wrong?

What is there?
Is there something else?
Is it wrong, to be something different?
Is wrong different?
Is right change?

Can I be different?

And... Here we go again! This one was inspired by Tennyson's The Lady of Shallot.
Seraph
Moonlit moody seraphs dreaming
Wisps of fair fantastic seeming
That float down through our mortal seams
What do we live, but seraph’s dream?

Day by day, through love and war
The softly stepping seraphs soar
The arcing sun in glassy bands
O’er new daybreak’d Angle-Land.

Ghostly feathers unseen fly;
A gentle seraph dismounts the sky
To drift o’er the stony threshold
Wreath’d in frost, kiss’d by cold.

Sweetest Helène, still in dreaming
Ignoring the sunlight beaming
‘cross her bed of eiderdown
Dancing o’er her silver crown.

Eos’ rays do kiss her hair
That weaves a sweet beguiling snare
With complicit eyes and untouched lips
Shy to even a seraph’s kiss.

The seraph’s heart within him beating,
The cloth’s resistance swiftly fleeting
His pale limbs reach toward her face
Yet leave neither touch nor trace.

His kiss meets naught but vanish’d air
There was no cross of worlds there
His vain efforts to cross to her
Impossibly deterrèd were.

Day by day she loved and warred
And the softly stepping seraph soared
To watch her in her daily life;
He saw when she became a wife.

Her husband smiled, blue-eyed and blond
His hair dancing in golden fronds;
Her childhood life ceased to exist
And the seraph’s eyes were dulled with mist.

Their outer glow of loving joy
He knew to be a hateful ploy,
Tormented when they fought and screamed
He watched as she restlessly dreamed.

Their quarrels grew violently worse
They viewed each other each as cursed
She fervently prayed in her room alone
But he never failed to return home.

The harsh blows fell without haste
For he knew his time to waste
Body and mind, she was in his hands
An inevitably tragic fatal dance.

The seraph stood by, frail as ether
As strength brought down its iron scepter
And for every blow she felt
Wracked under pain, he too knelt.

That night when in an ale’d craze
He raised his hand to end her days;
And she knew it was her end
She had no strength left to expend.

As the blow came crashing down
A tidal wave upon the sound
Battered and bloody, cruised and torn
For Helène the seraph began to mourn.

To ne’er come back as a fragile specter
To ne’er float upon the fragrant ether,
To stay fore’er in a hallowed lawn
To stay fore’er under the rosy dawn.

An eyeblink of a thousand lives
Chance-filled with gorgeous girls and wives
With an unhappy end to her wasted days,
An innocent in a fatal maze.

In forever, there’d be another Helène;
Far in the future, one would fill her frame
But could he ever see her lovely face
Without seeing death’s violent embrace?

His eons of time slowed to a crawl
As he threw himself against the blow’s fall
Yet passed through it as through Helen’s cheek
Separate worlds rendered him weak.

The blow was scant hair-breadths away
His options left naught but dismay
And then he caught her frightened gaze
Replete with sadness through a terrified haze.

He held still her crystal eyes,
The sun stretched her yellow rays to rise,
And all at once, the barriers broke
The chains pulled loose, and at last he spoke.

“Helène!” he cried, and the blow went shy
He was there, Helène would not yet die,
He stretched new limbs in the yellow dawn
Hunter hunting the hunter of a fragile fawn.

One blow, one kiss, Helène was free
But unearthly romance was ne’er to be
Twenty heartbeats and the seraph vanished
From all worlds finally banished.

In those twenty heartbeats, a life was saved
His thousand lives his life-debt paid.
Helène dreams still of her pale knight
Seen for a moment in the pale light.

Helène lived on till the dusk of her day
Until feathered wings bore her away
And until she died, at her throat hung a charm
A silver seraph, keeping her from harm.

Wisps of fair fantastic seeming
Through love and war, all seraphs’ dreaming
May gentle seraphs watch o’er us all.
And gentle seraphs watch o’er all Helènes
And gentle seraphs watch o’er all life.
For is each life not worth a thousand lives?

and then there's this one, inspired by the lilacs around my house and A Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Psychedelic Lilac
A trefoiled cloud of mind-numbing scent
sun-warmed, sun-cooled
blazing and cold
If psychedelic potions
Cure PTSD
OCD
Schizophrenia
Once madness
Will such a swirl of
raw sensation
mimic? Or mimicked?
My eyes
My ears, tears, fears
Summon the psychedelic lilac
For a home
To rival the tree-dwelling Swiss
The purple scent of a forsaken town’s
Ergot-maddened ego-ridden
Night
Since when are
Lifeskills thrown
To the lowest common factor
To fly above
A sea of crowns like
Scales on a wyvern?
And since when does
Shakespeare live in newt-tongued hate
Of the abuse
Of his children?
Yes, I stood on a
Boulder in the shade
To cut them.
No, they’re not too
Much for me to carry
Look here.
I can fit my hand around
All their stems
You try. See?
Now let them go.
You won’t drop them
But they’ll survive a fall
Widen your arms
Cradle them
Like I was.
That’s it.
Like they were your children.
Let your head drop in.
Now you don’t crush
Their petals
You feel the cool skin
Against yours.
You breathe the incense
And you are
The psychedelic lilac
In a lake
Of a vase
On the Roman Holiday
Receptionist’s desk.

First, I wanted to say....

WELCOME!!

I hope you're enjoying yourself here. It's nice to have you. smile

Now for your poems...I love your technique. Your words are lovely and usually very vivid. You're very good at explaining such things as fire and snow. The series really works for you. I hope to read more of your poems soon! Keep writing!!