I write strings of words that sometimes pass for poems.
Quote from Talore »
Misanthropy
Ring around the fire
The dancers leap and soar
Shouting, Screaming
Invoking their strange gods
The shamans beat their drums
Incantations esoteric, yet
Ancient is their call
Harrowing the mind
The earth bleeds
And bleeds their dancing feet
Drums beat and hearts sound
Warding away the night
The fire banishes darkness
Their chants keep beasts at bay
Yet in their hearts cloistered
The Beasts lurk
Ready to pounce
Ready to Spring
To Ruin
To Rend
What fell gods are these
To evoke such dire spirit?
Their chant
Barely audible above the revelry
Me
The Wicker Men only fuel the fire
Quote from Talore »
The Void
We were doing fine
I told myself that
Naively
Little lies to get through the day
Stack up
Without warning
A mad rush through a waterfall
To Elysium on faerie wings
Spinning wildly
And back
Falling further
To Tarterian turmoil
Slow to pick up
Contaminated
Couldn't wash it all
Was always bad at cleaning
Reaching for equilibrium
and lashed down
by oily strands of the past
Temoral resolve
Life becomes normal
The tar still screams
From the past
Is this happiness?
Am I content?
Salvage the rigging?
We could stay this time
Everbright fields
Sacred Groves
of the Rite
One straw
Oily and polluted
Make or break
Do or die
Dichtomy
Laughing spectres
Am I content?
Quote from Talore »
Not as a Sibling
Leap fly dance grab lunge fall
catch myself on you
pulled down, bent
a blood-lined groove in dirty floorboards
tumbling
concussive blasts
under the swamp
waves of the roil
break the surface
gentle
like swooning exaustion
arid worn core
mired in plastic filth
dancing shadows
smoke
sumbeam
choked
fighting
plunging into the mire
regret?
Quote from Talore, PRC 137 »
Special Snowflake
First-World problems
from a laptop sipping tea
Video games and a furnace
Existentialism
Fading into the couch
Why?
Sex is cool and all, but accept it and move on
You're ten years to late
No persecution
No bigotry
There's no struggle
so man the **** up and move on
Stop intruding into the
legitimacy
of my first-world problems
with your first-world problems
It's hard enough making myself
depressed
I wake up with a stiff pain
can't move my neck for a tumor sticking out the side
swollen lymph node
take some pills
Next day, ****ty night, shaking fevers
spots everywhere
allergic to the pills
take some different pills
Next day bloodshot, worse sleep than the last
spots are angry hives
hospital trip
take some more pills
But my body is rejecting a system where we
consume each other like pills
I threw up when they took my blood
out of sheer revulsion
I joked, said I was a wimp
but I asked if I was the only one strong enough
to be sick with this world
Sweating for hours, vitals taken (stolen)
they don't know what it is
but they gave me some more pills
My skin is still pockmarked with the scars of a
virus? disease? allergic reaction?
we can't classify it but it eats at me every day
a manifestation of a pill-popping society
I went to the hospital, and I still have hives over my body, It kind of sucks, if only because I can't see anyone.
I don't suspect many people will like the poem, the ending is too simplistic. But I write all my poetry in the moment and at one go, without editing for prettiness. It could be better but it wouldn't be any more true.
"Nobody is born allergic to anything,
you have to be exposed to it to react to it."
Born a beast of a mechanical society
spawned polished groomed programmed
to carry on the cycle
under names like peace, good, right
and political dogma
The animals cry and the forest bleed
we march as one nation
Man
our quest unstoppable
We have weapons and we know how to use them
contracts, money, rhetoric
friends in high places
to trample underfoot
the unenlightened
Being human is worth NOTHING
when the sickest liches
are as innocent as we are
when everything is valid the evil goes masked
look in the ****ing mirror
does this look fixed?
does it look good?
then it can't be all good
There was a time
in a dream
when I could extend my arms to an image of a bear
call "brother"
and weep
And I can grab a rifle
charge like the heroes
my ancestors
as valiant as any in 1945
I breathe their breath, righteousness
but they had the government
I'm sick of trying to work in the system
The human body can purge itself of any sickness
but sometimes it overreacts
and develops an allergy
Azure mist swells through a plastic vial
bubling through the depths
By flame through water
To air from the earth
We are the shamans
Sacrilege is our call
a resonant horn sounds through artificial sound
We are the explorers
Barganing with the spirit world
Through leaf and angst
Beating against the howling chains
Of the gentle oppressor
Tonight, we are free.
(That's why weed is illegal)
I had a real good time with my best friend the other night. We took a walk at midnight down the road, and smoked behind a little diner called the Hilltop Cafe. Many substantial things were discussed.
I weep
for the hateful mind
the soul raised by violence
the jealousy of a first world that stands so tall
yet cannot hope to reach meaning
Idolatry
the mind that presumes knowledge truly knows nothing
is this not the meaning of wisdom?
how do I navigate the ethereal tides
when knowledge is no anchor
and we've destroyed everything else
in jealous love of knowledge?
The landmarks were bulldozed
the paths were paved over; wrong
the stars are shrouded with light pollution
and the cold streets are a labyrinth
An envious world
in jealousy lashes me for asking
Can I have my life back?
I don't remember anything triggering this poem. Just some commentary on my perceptions of society, particularily in regards to knowlege, prejudice, and academia. I've also highlighted some of the philisophical dilemmas I've been through.
Written after reading "Fragments from the Alfoxden Notebook (I)" by William Wordsworth (feel free to shorten it to "Written after reading Wordsworth" in the poll options, sentimentG4X)
I'm sick of imagination
Because imagination is sick
The Bard is dead... we have killed him
We stopped caring about stories
Every story is a children's tale
When only children are allowed to dream
When did it start? I can scarcely fathom
From alpha to king to CEO it's all there
Yet there's a false sense that we can just go back in time
and it'll all be better
But 200 years ago, Wordsworth tells the same story
and I'm sure if we looked hard enough
we'd find a cave painting of an outcast
abandoned for deviance
There's few ways to persist
(as they would like) but
the romantics had a 40% survival rating
and the only way is forward
I should have been born 200 years later
if I can die to make that future
I'll have died well
What it says on the tin, really. Wordsworth is my favourite poet, followed by Keats, and the other romantics. I recently bought a book of selected works of Wordsworth and another of Keats, and I've been devouring the former's work. His views and expressions are something that are extremely relevant to me, and I never thought about it before, but the romantics are people who were struggling with the modern issue of civilization versus the natural world, hundreds of years ago.
Here's the fragments that I responded to:
Quote from William Wordsworth »
I
there he would stand
In the still covert of some [lonesome?] rock,
Or gaze upon the moon until its light
Fell like a strain of music on his soul
And seemed to sink into his very heart.
II
Why is it we feel
So little for each other, but for this,
That we with nature have no sympathy,
Or with such things as we have no power to hold
Articulate language?
-------------------
And never for each other shall we feel
As we may feel, till we have sympathy
With nature in her forms inanimate,
With objects such as have no power to hold
Articulate language. In all forms of things
There is a mind
III
Of unknown modes of being which on earth,
Or in the heavens, or in the heavens and earth
Exist by mighty combinations, bound
Together by a link, and with a soul
Which makes all one.
To gaze
On that green hill and on those scattered trees
And feel a pleasant consciousness of life
Until the sweet sensation called the mind
Into itself, by image from without
Unvisited, and all her reflex powers
Wrapped in a still dream [?of] forgetfulness
I lived without the knowledge that I lived
Then by those beauteous forms brought back again
To lose myself again as if my life
Did ebb and flow with a strange mystery.
My love is like a red, red rose
Frowned upon and laughed at
I love folk
anarchic
at once home in a tavern
and a celestial anomaly
Oh, to be able to speak Scots!
My Robbie impression isn't shabby
as I'm the only student who gives a damn
in this whole facade of a church of literature
Let's study the rebels and great questioners
and reflect in the proper academic mode
Angsty poem written in class. I can speak Scots fairly well. Nobody else in class can. Nor can they speak English well when it comes to poetry. I hate the MLA format.
I really like this poem. Only some people understood what I was trying to say :/ All knowledge is subjective. Those who claim to know much are the ones who truly know little. Real knowledge comes from natural wisdom, such as what the druid represents. The spelling shows how silly and slippery established knowledge is anyways, and how a wise and smart person could be oblivious to spelling and still be such.
There is a strange sadness
which arises from reading
reading is the transfer of
the human experience
all that lives and is known
to the eye and the mind
lives in simple writing
why then such sorrow?
is it not joyous
to experience outside yourself?
the Buddhists and Hindus
are too depressive a people
in their bleak outlooks
that all life is suffering
life is beautiful, not pain
but why then are all
great works of literature
sad?
Oh goddess of fire and healing,
of blacksmiths and poets hear my cry
I invoke thee fill my lungs with your breath
and take my mind from the cold night's worries
Burn the ghostly bonds of profane doctrine
heal the weeping cuts along my soul
forge my heart to be your worthy vassal
guide my hand so I may celebrate you
II
It is fitting that I am never ready
for the first, most potent offering
it burns, but let those burns strengthen me
so that I may breathe deeper
to be not the journeyman shaman
but the druid at one with all
The innumerable stars are fair tribute
to celebrate beauty and your strength
I am glad that I could share them
Greatest are the colours
that reveal themselves in the dark
whose only witnesses
are the celestial and the enthralled
III
I can't tell where my mind goes
or whether it stays
or if it was ever there at all
but it feels good
it feels right
I can feel your hands at work
and it makes me glad
IV
It really is a rather silly thing
to worry about knowledge
and religion
and science
and politics
when I sit here (and here)
and know that everything is alright
I am real, and this is real
everything I feel is real
what is real?
Green cleansing wind biting cold off the Strait
wrap 'round all petty shelters, heed no grey construction
signs marking out their sad little abodes,
carry the sublime lavender and holly, sing
sweet soft melodies of a less hateful diety
and whip the boughs into marching order
for they have their orders, to endure.
Moisture and heat, from a million million
heartbeats in tune with Pan's pipes,
carry their essence in breath and swoon,
nay spin faster and faster, let all the sick world
mark your footprint, carry Morrighan's shrill
horncall, death is nigh.
We feel them, we hear them, some of us
can taste their presence in a bedewed
sunrise, call, call the sleepers and
let loose the bards, alight the fires
in their eyes and let them extinguish
the fires in their internal combustion engines,
let spirit again take the rocky throne
and reclaim the race that got away.
Do you know what it's like to live fully there?
I've truly learned what that is
but only through memory
It's been over a year since it happened
I get dizzy, all the time
headaches, I can't concentrate
I'm only half living
It's really hard to face at times
I can't do **** all
I can't write papers
or hold a job
Nobody knows what is wrong with me
It feels like I'm slowly dying
I don't want to grow old
to feel every step closer
to death's embrace
mortality is a horrible thing to feel
it doesn't matter that I'm not actually dying
I want my life back
18 is supposed to be the best time of your life
Bound to a house
manuactured cotton jail cell
my hunter's muscles ache from disuse
hawk's eye vision separating
the totemic from the academic
it was black magic
the cool aura of a wet spring evening
is the scientifc method of a pagan reality
glass windows let light in but I can't see
an interpretation of the green other side
though it calls to me
leave your house
and go home
Today is an invisible globe
the real god particle
I can only see the impressions
but oh, how peaceful
I am a sleeping leaf in the stream
the stream itself as it flows
washing over the earth
like the breathing winds
Today is the chant of ages
our ancestors sofly hum
their song is in the branches
it's alright
nobody knows better
trust in the damp soil
in long grasses
and the fallen antlers
Today is lost and eternal
the hidden sanctuary
entirely unscientific
dancing in the mist
it stays off the map
but with peace and warmth
let the birds guide you
they know better
I am hafway between your arms
and a blooded chasm
separated by crystal bars
that I can't even punch
to gain the slightest satisfaction
just a numb void
Your lips beg for company
the space filled with burden
distance and regret
a flower still folded
waiting for the beams of dawn
that will never shine
Anticipation lingers
in the small of your back
the hunter in your posture
with the eyes of a nymph
but so tired, straining
days have grown long
Neither of us can help it
lost, crippled and illusioned
always chasing fox-fires
throwing off our trails
to get to the prey first
never tasting that joy
Wit is a poisonous tool
used by men, scientists,
those who cradle-born in silver
presume they know that
which they stand upon;
that the god of culture
bestowed upon them some
great revelation.
Wit is an outdated vestige
of the Enlightenment (of men)
like the evolution of
society, that the West
is the pinnacle of our race.
The master of wisdom is the Shaman,
the one who knows darkness,
who knows that Knowledge is
unknowable until we can reach
its vault, the heavens that
guard it. What then do I
make of those who claim wit?
I went to the hospital, and I still have hives over my body, It kind of sucks, if only because I can't see anyone.
I don't suspect many people will like the poem, the ending is too simplistic. But I write all my poetry in the moment and at one go, without editing for prettiness. It could be better but it wouldn't be any more true.
"Nobody is born allergic to anything,
you have to be exposed to it to react to it."
Born a beast of a mechanical society
spawned polished groomed programmed
to carry on the cycle
under names like peace, good, right
and political dogma
The animals cry and the forest bleed
we march as one nation
Man
our quest unstoppable
We have weapons and we know how to use them
contracts, money, rhetoric
friends in high places
to trample underfoot
the unenlightened
Being human is worth NOTHING
when the sickest liches
are as innocent as we are
when everything is valid the evil goes masked
look in the ****ing mirror
does this look fixed?
does it look good?
then it can't be all good
There was a time
in a dream
when I could extend my arms to an image of a bear
call "brother"
and weep
And I can grab a rifle
charge like the heroes
my ancestors
as valiant as any in 1945
I breathe their breath, righteousness
but they had the government
I'm sick of trying to work in the system
The human body can purge itself of any sickness
but sometimes it overreacts
and develops an allergy
I had a real good time with my best friend the other night. We took a walk at midnight down the road, and smoked behind a little diner called the Hilltop Cafe. Many substantial things were discussed.
I don't remember anything triggering this poem. Just some commentary on my perceptions of society, particularily in regards to knowlege, prejudice, and academia. I've also highlighted some of the philisophical dilemmas I've been through.
What it says on the tin, really. Wordsworth is my favourite poet, followed by Keats, and the other romantics. I recently bought a book of selected works of Wordsworth and another of Keats, and I've been devouring the former's work. His views and expressions are something that are extremely relevant to me, and I never thought about it before, but the romantics are people who were struggling with the modern issue of civilization versus the natural world, hundreds of years ago.
Here's the fragments that I responded to:
Today, I put maui rib sauce
on a cucumber sandwich.
Today, I spit in the faces
of sadists, demons, kings;
Come at me, culture!
I've got an honest smile
and more love than a hundred
of your infomericials.
Howl, ye winds!
I've got bards holding me up,
You see this, gods?
Your domains are shattered.
Let come what may!
Angsty poem written in class. I can speak Scots fairly well. Nobody else in class can. Nor can they speak English well when it comes to poetry. I hate the MLA format.
Written during a lecture. I really like the last stanza.
"Life is like a music hall
But you don't get a curtain call
The trees of youth have come to fall… asunder
and the wheel of time rolls on"
I really like this poem. Only some people understood what I was trying to say :/ All knowledge is subjective. Those who claim to know much are the ones who truly know little. Real knowledge comes from natural wisdom, such as what the druid represents. The spelling shows how silly and slippery established knowledge is anyways, and how a wise and smart person could be oblivious to spelling and still be such.
which arises from reading
reading is the transfer of
the human experience
all that lives and is known
to the eye and the mind
lives in simple writing
why then such sorrow?
is it not joyous
to experience outside yourself?
the Buddhists and Hindus
are too depressive a people
in their bleak outlooks
that all life is suffering
life is beautiful, not pain
but why then are all
great works of literature
sad?
Oh goddess of fire and healing,
of blacksmiths and poets hear my cry
I invoke thee fill my lungs with your breath
and take my mind from the cold night's worries
Burn the ghostly bonds of profane doctrine
heal the weeping cuts along my soul
forge my heart to be your worthy vassal
guide my hand so I may celebrate you
It is fitting that I am never ready
for the first, most potent offering
it burns, but let those burns strengthen me
so that I may breathe deeper
to be not the journeyman shaman
but the druid at one with all
The innumerable stars are fair tribute
to celebrate beauty and your strength
I am glad that I could share them
Greatest are the colours
that reveal themselves in the dark
whose only witnesses
are the celestial and the enthralled
III
I can't tell where my mind goes
or whether it stays
or if it was ever there at all
but it feels good
it feels right
I can feel your hands at work
and it makes me glad
IV
It really is a rather silly thing
to worry about knowledge
and religion
and science
and politics
when I sit here (and here)
and know that everything is alright
I am real, and this is real
everything I feel is real
what is real?
V
Thank you, Brighid
I'm glad
I can't see through it
My mind's eye is blinded
I can't create
I didn't think I'd have mental illness
Looks like I was wrong
I'm wrong
wrap 'round all petty shelters, heed no grey construction
signs marking out their sad little abodes,
carry the sublime lavender and holly, sing
sweet soft melodies of a less hateful diety
and whip the boughs into marching order
for they have their orders, to endure.
Moisture and heat, from a million million
heartbeats in tune with Pan's pipes,
carry their essence in breath and swoon,
nay spin faster and faster, let all the sick world
mark your footprint, carry Morrighan's shrill
horncall, death is nigh.
We feel them, we hear them, some of us
can taste their presence in a bedewed
sunrise, call, call the sleepers and
let loose the bards, alight the fires
in their eyes and let them extinguish
the fires in their internal combustion engines,
let spirit again take the rocky throne
and reclaim the race that got away.
I've truly learned what that is
but only through memory
It's been over a year since it happened
I get dizzy, all the time
headaches, I can't concentrate
I'm only half living
It's really hard to face at times
I can't do **** all
I can't write papers
or hold a job
Nobody knows what is wrong with me
It feels like I'm slowly dying
I don't want to grow old
to feel every step closer
to death's embrace
mortality is a horrible thing to feel
it doesn't matter that I'm not actually dying
I want my life back
18 is supposed to be the best time of your life
manuactured cotton jail cell
my hunter's muscles ache from disuse
hawk's eye vision separating
the totemic from the academic
it was black magic
the cool aura of a wet spring evening
is the scientifc method of a pagan reality
glass windows let light in but I can't see
an interpretation of the green other side
though it calls to me
leave your house
and go home
the real god particle
I can only see the impressions
but oh, how peaceful
I am a sleeping leaf in the stream
the stream itself as it flows
washing over the earth
like the breathing winds
Today is the chant of ages
our ancestors sofly hum
their song is in the branches
it's alright
nobody knows better
trust in the damp soil
in long grasses
and the fallen antlers
Today is lost and eternal
the hidden sanctuary
entirely unscientific
dancing in the mist
it stays off the map
but with peace and warmth
let the birds guide you
they know better
and a blooded chasm
separated by crystal bars
that I can't even punch
to gain the slightest satisfaction
just a numb void
Your lips beg for company
the space filled with burden
distance and regret
a flower still folded
waiting for the beams of dawn
that will never shine
Anticipation lingers
in the small of your back
the hunter in your posture
with the eyes of a nymph
but so tired, straining
days have grown long
Neither of us can help it
lost, crippled and illusioned
always chasing fox-fires
throwing off our trails
to get to the prey first
never tasting that joy
We were the hunted
cutting the chill november air
coal-black feathers fall
as the crone fades into mist
echoes of memory
her spirit drifts, wanders
lingers in the woodcutter's axe
by the ancient paths marked by no tombstones
only gnarled roots
searching for the home
shattered timbers rot in the soil
bones bleached by wind lingering
old crow's ghost cries
for the village that once was
for the heat of our breath
for a forgotten time
when we could forget
beautiful rays of sun
through roiling murk
suspended animation
I'm a deranged bard
drumming in a foreign language
I've forgotten my language
it isn't mine anymore
I have no language
but Earth's tongue
anxiety, anticipation?
wracks me like deep snowdrifts
dancing white like faeries
nothing on Earth is eternal
but the Earth is eternal
nature is eternal
and I am in it
and I am it
but what of the moment
the neverending separation
sliding along, scraping
bleeding
music never lasts
but it is everlasting
used by men, scientists,
those who cradle-born in silver
presume they know that
which they stand upon;
that the god of culture
bestowed upon them some
great revelation.
Wit is an outdated vestige
of the Enlightenment (of men)
like the evolution of
society, that the West
is the pinnacle of our race.
The master of wisdom is the Shaman,
the one who knows darkness,
who knows that Knowledge is
unknowable until we can reach
its vault, the heavens that
guard it. What then do I
make of those who claim wit?
That name is the echo of a funeral bell
They dying words lingering
on the lips of a sigh
Looming spectrues of a frozen monolith
melt away in your light
lower than the sun, humble.
Take me by this hand
through this spot of time
into spots of time less forlorn