Ben

I was aiming to meld my two biggest literary influences: William Shakespeare and Edgar Allan Poe. To get the message hidden within the sonnet (in iambic pentameter, I might add), it is the first letter of the first line, the second letter of the second line, and so one. But since my message was a little too long for the form, included are the last two words of the last line. Enjoy!

Necessary

Such tears, all flowed, have tired my eyes and heart.

Where others held success as I had none,

There hoped a bosom cored of reasoned art

For instances made true had smiles begun

To fissure ice and armoured shells turned rust;

But none I knew sustained the gauntlet Time.

And none maintained their days to earn a trust,

Just processed thoughts a-swirl in rhyme.

From ponderous beginnings never seen—

For man (presumed) hung by queries and jest—

A beauty did shine where none before had been;

And I, unseen, bartered stone ’n my chest

If only she approved th’ guarantee

Made desperate, yearn as I, and she for me.

Someone on a poetry site I frequent is concerned another someone is stealing his poetry. Finding one of his poems copied on another site and linked to a book of poetry, "LP Copyright" was found on the bottom of the copy and was wondering what it meant. I, so far, have been unable to locate a definition.

Someone on a poetry site I frequent is concerned another someone is stealing his poetry. Finding one of his poems copied on another site and linked to a book of poetry, "LP Copyright" was found on the bottom of the copy and was wondering what it meant. I, so far, have been unable to locate a definition.

Thank You

Thank you, Sadism

Thank you, Masochism

you have shown me

the faces of misery

Thank you, Disillusionment

Thank you, Irreverence

you have taught me

to have thoughts

free of other people’s slobber

Thank you to everyone who has

walked through my head

Thank you to everyone who dared

not to travel that twisting path

Thank you to my scars

Thank you to my tears

for carving your memories

so they will not be forgotten

Thank you, Heartache

Thank you, Desire

for teaching me to want

for teaching me to cherish

Thank you, Clarity

Thank you, Time

for allowing me to forgive

myself

Thank you, Silence

I wrote this about 10 years ago while taking a literature class in college. This is a parody of another [famous] piece.. John Donne predominantly wrote about three things: religion, death, and sex. Knowing this, I inflated the sexual imagery. It is meant to be houmourous. If you wish to compare, http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/bait.php is a link to the original.

The Jailbait

(A Parody of John Donne’s “The Bait”)

*** with me and by my love

And we will some young pleasures prove,

With golden showers and in our buffs

We could even try using handcuffs.

There will the river moaning and screaming play

Warmed by thy thighs more than the sun’s ray.

And there, my enamored whale sill stay

Begging itself it may hold its fruitful spray.

When mine wilts, swimming in thy bath,

My whale, most willingly every channel hath,

Will amourously in thee swim,

Gladder thou caught he than that yonder him!

If thou, with me seen, beest loath,

Thy father and mum, thou enrageth both;

And if myself e’er leave to have seen

Thou art and beest…DAMN! FOURTEEN!?

Others hath spuriously frozen with their anxious reeds;

Been bare-ly content to spend it in the weeds,

O! my treacherously eager whale beset

Thy strangling snare and womanly net;

Remove my bold hands from thy slimy nest,

The embedded whale in thy banks must a minute’s rest,

My curious traitor, trouser-silk fly,

Bewitched my whale with thy wandering eye.

For thee, surely needest to freakin’ wait,

For thou thyself are damn surely jail-bait!

The whale that is so caught thereby

Needs be so much younger than I!

The world darkened at my step

And all were blinded in my wake.

I was a feral blade

Always seeking the penultimate wound;

Bedighted and carried

To impel solitude;

Barring my potential miseries.

I suffered and assured

Worlds bled with me.

Eyes rolled from

Earth to cloud

Hating everything between.

I wore the twin brothers—

Edges of the same sword—

As a benighted badge.

LOVE relegated

A blood pathogen

No practitioner could cure.

My companionable willingness split

Between victim and accomplice.

You asked me

If I felt lucky:

Lucky to have you,

Lucky to be with you…

Lucky.

My answer was

As good as silence,

A productive string

Of non-commital white noise

Lacking substance

And satisfaction.

In my defense, indefensible

As it is, I wished a stretch

Longer than minutes

To ponder,

To remember.

To remember

How the gilded lady, with

The brat in tow,

Facilitated our pairing

Where none was visible

Except you.

Then, I had no notion

Of possibilities ahead;

I hold no regret

For what has passed us

And see Fortune still smiling.

I push,

Shove,

And work events

To the pinnacle of reason;

But I am pulled

By horns and ring

Beyond endurance.

Each journey up

Is not my penance,

Such rolls over me

At every finale.

OBSCURE AUDIENCES

Senses designated differ

From tongue to plume.

Some quills scratch, as

William’s, for faces foreign

To reflections;

A probation of applause

Spurs them in linear effigy,

Chasing the quibbles of posterity

In pubic forms.

Others harbor efforts

Without aims for pleasing masses.

Emily, iin aged fertilities, may have

Stroked pages only for internal ears;

Blinding tableaus

Suffocate understanding, but prime

Imagination.

I own neither train,

Yet resolutely stand amid their contraction;

Plying scenes generated for reasons

Abjured against audiences,

But to jab curiosities.

I lay to be judged by History’s

Scribbled jury,

With eyes looking past measured tics;

Yet deaf to public desires and outrages.

[ad]minister of rebellion

i, as reigning fist of the vox populi,

severed my own strings;

i, a (s)ain’t in coward’s time

distribute sacriligion

while the dirty word reich

infuses black collared corrective politics;

where words from porno movies

is all They want to believe—

where innocence is counterfused with

dirty

filthy

and eager.

i, a villain necktie of the vaudevillian meatshow,

battle against

trivial forces fighting to be sure I am

obscene and not heard:

candy from the ghetto with a Snow White smile.

but i, labeled their scaped-goat saviour

as if sun is fixed in Their mouth,

remain a hand of five-finger centrist view

never shamed by blame

for the neophyte revolt

to cast out overestimated misunderstanding.

As an exercise at a poetry group I frequent, we wrote a poem about the person sitting next to us. I had an empty seat on one side, so I wrote about who/what I saw there.

ESCAPIST

Hands, a folded grace

Lying upon her lap

Where no one else sees.

A prim pursing of her lips

Betrays the slighted disappointment.

Her eyes flash

In a muted glare

As if to ask

Why I have abandoned her.

No excuses

Nor explanations

Placate her silent wrath.

Perhaps it behooves

Not to point out

She has hidden

From me.

I have made a few changes, namely breaks in the column o' words it once was. The breaks I chose to emphasize the questions rather than making uniform breaks. I also settled on a title: "A Momentary Lapse of Faith."

Who is assigned the

Duty of retrieving shards of

Shattered identity strewn

About Life’s stained floorboard

Without thought,

Without care?

What miracle doctor shall

Present himself to restore

A heart, not broken, but

With armor fissured to impotence?

A world of glass and mirrors

Tumbles to complete the mayhem

Extant now in the realm

Where gods and angels dare not roam:

A land of girded marble

And trees whipped bare.

A back bowed past a

Creaking tolerance trudges

Down roads bearing unlit torches;

Pausing mere moments at

Each successive intersection

Leading to only more questions.

Hope remains an airy burden whose

Heat bores down on shoulders

Of a weary mind—

Remains winging out of touch,

Tickling at fingertips,

Tormenting the needy.

A fighter, born and made

In and of his own principles,

Slouches uncertain as to maintain

The fight.

No tears mar the face

Tinctured in sun and blood,

But overflow the hole

He once relied on as home.

Poets, even blind ones,

Construct pretty words

To sustain vision;

When shadows arrest eyes

And imprison them in visualizations

Of their own imagination,

What enlightened sight could cure such ails?

Is my battle worth believing,

Or should my marbles

Plant themselves wherever

They may happen to land?

I would also like some suggestions for a title:

Who is assigned the

Duty of retrieving shards of

Shattered identity strewn

About Life’s stained floorboard

Without thought,

Without care?

What miracle doctor shall

Present himself to restore

A heart, not broken, but

With armor fissured to impotence?

A world of glass and mirrors

Tumbles to complete the mayhem

Extant now in the realm

Where gods and angels dare not roam:

A land of girded marble

And trees whipped bare.

A back bowed past a

Creaking tolerance trudges

Down roads bearing unlit torches;

Pausing only moments at

Each successive intersection

Leading to only more questions.

Hope remains an airy burden whose

Heat bores down on shoulders

Of a weary mind—

Remains winging out of touch,

Tickling at fingertips,

Tormenting the needy.

A fighter, born and made

In and of his own principles,

Slouches uncertain as to maintain

The fight.

No tears mar the face

Tinctured in sun and blood,

But overflow the hole

He once relied on as home.

Poets, even blind ones,

Construct pretty words

To sustain vision;

When shadows arrest eyes

And imprison them in visualizations

Of their own imagination,

What enlightened sight could cure such ails?

Is my battle worth believing,

Or should my marbles

Plant themselves wherever

They may happen to land?

FOR YOU

My love for you cannot be a red rose

For a rose--perhaps--shall wither and die;

A crushed heap as vermilion goes,

Charcoal dust in fallen curl to but cry--

And a rose no purpose ever it owned,

But to brighten the gravity of tears;

'Twould be a sorrow only dead men condoned...

Weeping being the broken glass of ears

Shall echo softly in the frothy night

As Cupid bleeds on th' morning sun lances

And Spring morns pass on in the frozen white,

Whilst Aphrodite on th' heart stage dances:

For you, my dear, shall I its qualities praise;

For you, my love, I'll honor the rose all my days.

A wrought iron monstrosity,

Forged in abandoned

Arctic crevasse, lies

Sealed in the hoary frost of a

Volcanic world’s ash-blotted sun—

Away from apathetic globes;

With a gore-fanged guardian

Of saber-strewn jaw who remains

Successful against all potential feelers.

An emotional hermit

Stolen away from a viral humanity;

Lonely in retrospection,

Not to the point of action,

Seeking only to wallow in

The flood of memory

Infecting eyes and tongue:

A direct contradiction of wants

Stretched in Time’s own necktie.

Nightly toes peek out into frigid

Streams for another life away

From voided recesses—

Cursed with hesitance,

Blinded by possibilities—

Rush back to the safety of an

Ignorant hope where all live

But none survive

To boast of their journeys.

An unexpected star thaws prisons,

Battalions of sun-armored warriors

Carry light in their charge, shock

The hardened convict to familiar beats

Lost in unrequited desire to be forgotten,

No longer strangled, eased in warmth and

A pulchritude found deeper than the

Cursory beholder bears true. A new existence

Unsought, endowed by acquiescence to fortune.