Okay, so this idea will most likely flop. I certainly expect and deserve mass ridicule. Still, it's worth a try.
There are plenty of creative and artistic people at this site. I wonder, have any of you ever written a bit of poetry? Many people write a little bit when they are young, and then hide it away for fear that their friends might read it and laugh at them. It's a bit like singing in that respect - a fairly personal expression that is easily crushed by a few scathing remarks.
Few people continue to write, and few appreciate their abilities. Sometimes, though, a little group of embarassed and self-deprecating poets springs up from nowhere; what's more, these groups seem to have an enormous positive impact on their member's writing. One example, of which I know, is the "Balliol Scrawl" at my university.
Anyway, it usually takes someone to start off something like this. I thought I'd have a go, both because I'd love to read your poems and because it may stimulate me to write more myself.
So go ahead and post any piece of poetry you've written. It doesn't have to rhyme and it doesn't matter what it's about. It could be funny, deeply serious or just bizarre. It could be the lyrics to a song that you wrote. You could explain what it's about or leave us guessing.
To get things rolling, here's a few of mine. I'm very partial to rhyme and meter, and I have a rather old-fashioned lyrical style. No doubt many people will find them totally pretentious and cringe-worthy, but I couldn't care less about that. I encourage anybody else who has tried a bit of writing, to cultivate a similarly robust attitude.
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This one is just a daft ditty I came up with:
Truth and I shall meet again
For we share the same worn track.
Save only truth takes every bend
Whilst I draw in the slack.
This one is to the tune of "Mud, mud, glorious mud":
Stress, stress, glorious stress -
Nothing quite like it for making a mess.
So come with me kindly,
And rant with me blindly,
Then get thee behind me!
Such glorious stress.
This one is somewhat darker:
I see myself again,
Through the twisted glass of mind.
Through the glass I see,
Ghostly masks and phantoms blind.
They will not laugh for me.
Through their lies I see,
To colder truth of liberty.
They will not follow me.
Through my eyes I see,
A bloodshot world of treachery.
It shall not capture me.
Through myself I see.
The pain is kind, it sets me free.
This one is longer; I wrote it for a friend whose patience and kindness have been a great help to me over the past few years. You might say it's a "thank you note". It's also about some of my favourite places, and in a more thematic sense it's about light, shadow, and the gulf inbetween:
I stood upon a distant mountaintop
Whose gold-tipped heights brushed the encroaching dawn
Whose honeyed blood drove back the creeping grey
Who is of passion and of fear forlorn.
I wandered through a hidden, silent vale
Whose thousand greens were all unknown to me
Whose stumbling feet were lost in cotton clouds
Who kissed the hills but sought the lowly lea.
I lingered by a rocky, ravaged shore
Whose shattered shell the yielding ocean caught
Whose deep refrains drew near a breaching whale
Who haply sang for me ? but I heard naught.
I slept beneath a dustless desert sky
Whose arch was flecked with stars, and flaming each
Whose lonely light with weary toil found me
Who tried to comfort them, but could not reach.
I ranged the world and all this beauty saw
Yet still I was empty and artless.
The lights I viewed could only serve
To deepen inner darkness.
For, fleeing from the sun, the creeping grey
Which in the hollows of my eyes retired
Settled, pooled, and coated over colour
Till with my gloomy words it was expired.
I chanced upon a silver, shining soul
Whose lucid light drove back my dusky doom.
He did not fear the creeping grey;
His eyes could see me through the gloom.
Now once again I range the world
But this time I am free.
I walk in clouds but do not lose my way;
I feel the breaking of the day.
And finally, just to prove that shame really doesn't matter, here's one I wrote when I was somewhat younger:
Some spiders are big and hairy,
With great big fangs, really scary!
Some spiders are thin and skinny,
Some spiders have deadly poison!
Some spiders are big,
Some spiders are small,
Do you like spiders,
At all?
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Now it's your turn!
[addsig]
