Ivy

This isn't much of a poem, I'm afraid. But tomorrow is the last day of Lyssa Poetry Month and I'll have something really good then, promise.



Constantly it climbs, grows
always it shows itself
to know its creation.
Twining up and down,
into the ground and
up around the trees
and buildings, pulling apart
the mason's art but
the heart of the maker remains.
Ivy thrives in shade
but was made for
light, prayed to and
feared and a crown
of ancient renown, even
cut down and hated.
Evergreen ivy shall engrave
all things save none,
even the grave, its foe,
it covered in life, and forgave.

A Soap-Bubble Song

I think my writing skills are declining. Either that or I'm becoming more self-aware.



A toadstool hatched a fairy child
A seedling hatched a flower mild
The Sun, he hatched an eagle wild
On all of them the mountains smiled.

The fairy flew to the moon and back
The flower made the earth to crack
The eagle brewed a plan of attack
And the world was taken quite aback.

She gave to me a rainbow dress
It gave one perfumed breath (or less)
He gave me a look of constant stress
And now I'm set for life, I guess.

X(Chi)

This didn't turn out as good as I thought it would. I might try to rewrite it later.



It may not be a real loss, not forever,
     But still it may be the hardest thing you have ever done.
            Impossible, maybe, heartbreaking, but you do it
                   Because it will be worth it
                          To sacrifice, and because
                                 One
                          Who sacrificed
                   Thought you were worth it
            And did the impossible, broke his heart for you
      And with the two hardest things in the universe
You come out the real winner in the end (and forever).

Psyche

It's terza rima, yay! The Italian form is one of my favorites, but it's pretty hard to write in because English doesn't have as many rhymes as Italian. So if the poem below seems fake/forced/any other sort of bad, that's my excuse.
Cupid and Psyche is my absolute favorite Greek myth. In Greek, Psyche means soul, or butterfly.



Fair Psyche lies beside her husband-god
Afraid to be so close to one so great
She lights her torch, her higher self forgot.

Celestial Cupid lies, her loving mate,
His open eyes all full of wounded trust
He leaves her to be torn and tried by fate.

Good Psyche weeps, her lovely spirit crushed
By her own doubt, and her lost god. She knows
Not how to find him, only that she must.

A lifetime passes; the girl's heart bleeds, but does
The thousand heavy tasks required by Love
She mourns her lot, but walks the path she chose.

Her trials complete, her virtue proven above
Mere mortal women, Psyche finally kisses
Her Cupid again, he leads her to taste of

Sweet nectar and ambrosia, and she is
Immortal and eternal, like the stars-
Her love forever hers, she always his.

Nocturne

The sun is gone, all colors turned to grey,
the last of twilight's fireflies
have slipped away.

The shadows lurk with darkness' languid ease,
they dance like blackened skeletons
around the trees.

Don't look around, look upward to the skies
of sweet and deathless stars
and close your eyes -

The crickets' song, and silvery air of night
keep live a world of music
Live and bright.

Tragedy

Words can be very beautiful.
Paint too, and clay, metal, cloth.
Music is a glorious thing.
But the awful tragedy that is
The heart of all human art is:
None can truly capture
The aching beauty of wind and sun
Or the heady difference of
Air that trees have breathed.

Alliterative Verse

So yesterday I read a very nice translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the introduction there was something I didn't know: English poetry has rhyme because that was what the Romance languages (like French) used, because the accents were mostly on the last syllable. However, Germanic languages (like English before French got mixed in) had the accent on the first syllable, so they used alliteration to highlight that!  Isn't that cool? So all the old English poems, like Sir Gawain and Beowulf, were in alliterative verse! In my ignorance I have been neglecting a full half or more of my linguistic/poetic heritage! This must be remedied at once!



The legacy left me to listen and learn from
Is all held in the murky myth-cloud of Middle English.
Almost apparent but always elusive,
The reticent words will refuse to be read
Shrinking away from me like Sherwood in shadows,
A cross-eyed impression of fair Camelot
Too darkened by distance to dance in the twilight
Never quite near enough to drop into focus.
Trying to see through the ground to the tree-roots -
Just barely an almost and always will be.



Sorry it's kinda short. Also while I was reading the Green Knight, I had to cover up the page that had the original text on it, because I kept trying to see how close the translation got, and it was too frustrating.

Libraries

Sorry, I didn't spend much time on this one. Books to read, you know.



Information
And stories
And information that is stories
Stories that may not be information but are still true
All pressing down on exposed minds like
An approaching thunderstorm on exposed skin
(huge heavy slightly threatening and glorious).
They say
It would take ten thousand lifetimes to
Read through the Library of Alexandria
But I'm betting
I could cut that time in half.

Midsummer Night

Okay, I like this one. 


Midsummer night with the moon and the mist
mingled with smoke from the watchfires round
Ringing the island with mythos and wyrd from the
sea and the sky and the sun and the ground.

Midsummer night and the giants are dancing
Dancing with stones and the fairies unseen
The sea and the trees and the stars are all singing
Singing to the dance of the island in green.

Midsummer night and the island is weeping
Mourning the loss of the world gathered here
Sheltering those that the rest cannot understand
Driv'n from a world that was driven by fear.

Fireflies

Sorry about yesterday's post. I hope you didn't read it. This one is better.



Do you really expect me to
take such a thing in stride?
Low-flying miracles
under the trees.
Tiny blink-dancing stars
Now to flash, now to hide
No other purpose than
humans to tease.
How can I live with this sight?
Easy to explain but impossible to understand
Magical beings of light
Wide-eyed reflections of wonder and joy
Just like the rest of this world.

The Discovery of Joy and Sorrow

Ugh. This one was going to be in terza rima, but then I read a very beautiful poem for inspiration, and it turned out to be very depressing because I realized I will never be that good, and as a consequence I gave up a little bit temporarily and this poem is no good at all. I had to post it out of moral obligation, but do yourself a favor and please don't read it. Seriously. Please?



"Do you know joy?"
"Joy? of all the creatures of the world
I have never met one by that name."
"Are you happy here?"
"I do not know what you mean."
"What about sadness? Or anger? Hate?
You have not truly lived if you have never hated.

Wait! Stay... wouldn't you like to know how it feels
to be afraid?"
"No."
"What about virtuous, perhaps?"

"What does that word mean? It sounds very beautiful."
"Oh, it is... but you won't find your answers
here. And wouldn't you like to know
what it means to be brave and good?"

"I cannot understand your words. But
yes, I want to know."



:( By reading this you have made me sad. Thanks a lot. :(

Happy Fathers' Day!

By the time anyone will be reading this, it will be the Day of the Dad. I wanted to write a poem to celebrate my dad, but then I realized I'm not a good enough poet for that yet, so here's a poem by Robert Hayden:


"Those Winter Sundays"

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

But that is totally cheating. So here's another, completely unrelated, poem I wrote. Not today, a long time ago. Because two half cheats make a whole cheat, or something.


Steady hands
conducting a power stronger
and truer than electricity
A stream of sparks
brighter than electrons
coursing through the copper wire of my hair
into my deepest being.


Happy Father's Day, Dad. I love you.

Rhythm

It's a villanelle! Yay! (pronounced vee-an-el, just fyi.) The villanelle is probably the strictest verse form ever, allowing only two rhymes, and two lines must be repeated throughout the poem. And there are more rules, too. It is very difficult. But, some of my very favorite poems are villanelles and I love the form. And while my villanelle isn't anywhere near as beautiful and amazing as, say, Theodore Roethke's, I'm still pretty dang proud of myself for writing one that kind of makes sense.
Also, on the subject matter of my poem, it is not a cliche. It's an archetype, thank you very much.



When winter comes to shroud the world in grey
It only lasts a time, so do not fear:
There will be spring again, as sure as day.

The earth is veiled in tears, and they
Are hopeless, frozen frosted, never clear
When winter comes to shroud the world in grey.

But foolish to expect one thing to stay.
No silence lasts, no real things disappear;
There will be spring again, as sure as day.

Even when the flowers are iced away,
The sun, the golden seed of summer, still shines here
When winter comes to shroud the world in grey.

And though the sky itself will crack, it may
Be hatched like a robin's egg, no more a sphere,
But songful spring again, as pure as day.

Do not despise the winter, only pray
And laugh with snow and flower, all the year:
Though winter comes to shroud the world in grey,
Green spring will come again, as sure as day.

Sorry:(

It's a haiku. I promised myself I would not do a haiku, because I am bad at them, and it seems like mega-cheating to use a form which is technically easy but actually very difficult (and in which I am unable to distinguish good poetry from bad). So I have absolutely no right whatsoever to pretend to write a haiku, but it's already quite late and I have to get up early tomorrow. Sorry. I promise some terza rima or a villanelle tomorrow to make up for it.



Light from the heavens:
for an instant, it is day
before the sky shatters.

Bumblebee

If you want a poem every day, you are going to have to put up with poems I write when I have been looking at cat pictures all day.



He hums to himself as he wanders the halls
bumbling through all the doors and the windowsills
humbly exploring the halls and the passageways
stumped sometimes by an int'resting mystery
like the
rumble of stairs and the murmur of paintings, all
jumbled perspective for the pleasure of curious folks
never a grumble at stumbling blocks, but a grin,
secretly smiling as he cheerfully hums to himself.



Actually, I kinda like this now that I've written it.
Bonus nerd points for perceptive types.

OULIPO!

So I was looking up random poetic forms for inspiration when I came across another totally weird and never-used one. I was overwhelmed with the need to try it at once. This is oulipo, which is an acronym for something in French. It's basically "think of a crazy number-based rule and write a poem adhering to it strictly." There are several variations
The first one is a snowball, in which every line must be one word longer than the previous line, and every word one letter longer than the previous word. It was much harder than it looks. The second is N+7, in which you take an already-written poem and replace every noun with the noun 7 entries after it in the dictionary. Poems of this sort are (I presume) not intended to make any sort of sense. For my base poem, I used William Carlos Williams' "Red Wheelbarrow," because I figured my version of it would be about as interesting and meaningful.



I
am not
from above heaven:
desire's ravening eagerness devastates
allegorical heartstrings, foreshadowing misinterpreted bittersweetness.



so much depends
upon
a red wheelhorse
barrulet
glazed with raindrop
watkins
beside the white
chickpea.

Come Paint the Sky with Me

I'm pretty sure this is the first love poem I have ever written (read: "sad little first try"). It's inspired by Robert Frost's "A Line-Storm Song," which is one of my favorites of all time, and my absolute number one poem for someone to sing to me at my window. 
However, "A Line-Storm Song" : this :: Mt. Everest : an Appalachian mountain.



Come fly away with me, my love
Come paint the sky with me.
Its echoing vaults were made for us
Who love so endlessly.

Our rainbow stair is slick and steep,
But our clasped hands are strong.
Our love makes the path seem broad and fair,
We laugh as we go along.

You use yellow and I use blue
And we paint till the sky is green;
I sketch horses and you add some cows
For an empyrean landscape scene.

The weather today is drips of paint
From kaleidoscopic clouds
And light from your eyes and breeze from your sighs -
Too perfect to be allowed.

And when the night's dark water comes
To wash away all our work there,
You pluck a star from its rippling face
And tuck it in my hair.

Earthlife

Oops. Late again and I don't even have a good excuse. I am very sorry.
I seem to be stuck in iambic pentameter and quatrains. Maybe tomorrow I'll mix it up a little.



Sometimes the world is joyfully alive
A song in scarlet, blue and leaping green.
It's then I want to run and sing and dance
And, with the breathing world around me, thrive.

Sometimes the world (though no less lovely) sings
In muted hues of purple, grey and white.
I hum a softer melody and think
It's not quite meant for truly living things.

I love both songs, each one the sweetest sigh
Of beauty, freedom, joy; in each I see
Some facet of myself. And yet the world
That's softer often draws a tear to eye.
I don't know why.

After Rain

It rained today. And I'm in an abstract sort of mood. I guess this is the poetic equivalent of a canvas with some grey splotches and maybe a little spatterpaint titled "Moody Thunderstorm No. 1."



                       raining and
                       rainbows
                 the roar/sigh of
 underwater ears
                           ssssssssshhhhhhhs
                                           circling greyness
                                                   and coiled wind
                                          with eyesclosed it looks like
                            the deep of the ocean
                                  with less salt and
                                  more raindrops.

Parentheses

If you have read more than one post on this blog, you probably know that I overuse parentheses (and also that I start sentences with conjunctions). So I figured I might as well do something mildly amusing with it. This was fun because I just took the idea and ran with it; after a few parentheses I couldn't even control it any more.


It's all about getting one (well, maybe not just one)
more idea (or it doesn't have to be an idea (such a narrow word),
it could be a contrasting argument (just for kicks! or maybe (if you have an open mind)
you want your audience to consider both sides (and not just agree with you blindly))
or maybe a qualifier (when you aren't sure if you're completely correct
(because it might be embarrassing if someone (maybe someone
you like and respect (and you want him to like and respect you))
reads what you wrote and it's wrong (but there's no parentheses saying you know that it might be):
he might laugh and never take you seriously again (and that would be awful
(because you had something you wanted to discuss with him tomorrow
(maybe an article about neuroscience you read yesterday (you know he's interested in neuroscience))
but now he knows about your mistake he might think you're just posing
(not really knowledgeable, just pretending to be (maybe just to kiss up to him!
(because he is attractive and he knows it. (oh, how you want him
to like and respect you...)))))))))
in.

Angel Wings

I'm not surprised we give our angels wings:
It's not just flight we're after - after all,
Man can fly now, more swift than any bird
And higher too, past earth and clouds and sky,
But still the search for wings continues on.
In jetpacks, parachutes, gliders, kites,
Da Vinci's ornithopter, still is sought
The means to mount on high through man's own strength.
For what's the sky but empty blue expanse?
It's feathered wings we covet, not mere flight:
The sound of wings - all rushing like a falls,
Their look - so fierce and soft, like driving snow,
Their intricate design and perfect form -
How can we help but want a thing so sweet?
They give us more than sky, if not quite heaven,
It's power to move to choose, it's power to be!
The denizens of heaven may not be winged,
But even so, it's good enough for me.

Outdated

This was my (first and, I'm afraid, only) attempt at humorous poetry. Unfortunately, I seem to have been born without a funny bone. I think I can promise you a villanelle by next week, though.


The dragons of that country having all been vanquished
or chased into hiding (he could never find them)
or tamed into small, portable flame-throwers,
the knight
polished his sword a little brighter
and took up fighting shadows.

There's No Such Thing as Darkness

First week of poetry month! Yay!


There's no such thing as darkness,
really, just a stubborn insistence
on ignoring the vast majority of
light in the universe.
There are no dark places anywhere
just places we're not equipped to see
and even what we think we see
have more and more dimensions of light
(which our eyes can't see at present, of course,
but even now we're getting there - imperfect but audacious
scanners and lenses and metal eyes)
and not a deepest abyss of Earth there is
that isn't lighted.
So please, no more of this nonsense about
"the dark and empty reaches of space" -
Ha! - as if
those weren't the fullest
and brightest places of all.

You call it foolish but I call it real

Today's poem is a guest post by the very famous poet e.e. cummings!
Just kidding, he's dead. It's by me. But it is inspired by him. And it was so terrifically fun to write that I might be adopting this as my permanent style.



You call it foolish but I call it real
it's funny how some who grow up and around
folks have forgotten to learn how to feel
(the nearer the sky is the nearer the ground)

here lie the people forgotten by dance
slowly stopped motion in tombs made of glass
they might still alive but they leave that to chance
a hiss and a murmur and life whirls past

We who remember the life before life
and after and during but   are   right now
we are the ones who sing fiddle and fife
maybe   look   why   wow

dreamers children flowers and me
up and inside us for light to reach far
a purpose in living is more than to be
(the brighter the heart is the brighter the star)

How Beautiful

I am usually quite verbose. If you see a short, free verse poem, it means I'm pretty much out of ideas for the day.  Yep. Sorry.


Feet: they are ugly.
Toenails veins calluses
All dirt and grime
And a weird sort of shape too.
Feet are simply not attractive.
But the feet of someone you love
The feet of someone who has given you something
unimaginably precious:
They are beautiful
How beautiful.



I bet you no longer recognize "feet" as a real word. feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet feet.

Tears

Day four of Epic Lyssa Poetry Month. This writing-something-every-day thing is actually much harder than I'd anticipated.
This is a "pleiades," a seven-line form in which every line begins with the same letter. It was invented in 1999 by Craig Tigerman, and it sounded so delightful that I had to try it (making me probably the first person since Craig Tigerman to do so).


The enemy of makeup and all
That is false, streaking down a face in
Times of anguish or
Triumph; joy, darkness; shining
Through the dull and placid everyday
To reveal the extraordinary by their perfect
Transparent light.

To the Tree-Climbers

Ugh, late and it's only the third day. Sorry everyone. I promise I tried really, really hard. But I also rushed. And structured poems take much more effort than just an idea with words on (aka free verse).Thus, the technical term for the quality of this poem would be "craptacular."
Anyway, I'm going to try out as many different poetic forms as I can think of this month (except perhaps sestina, because those are really hard and I don't even like them that much). First, I present to you: the humble sonnet.



I've never had a chance to seize the world
Or soar above the sunset and be free.
On mountains, it was never my flag that unfurled
Except just once, in the arms of a living tree.
How greenly and how sweet those branches sighed
A world apart, for whose like man still hunts.
Its trunk was firm, but swayed in the open sky
I was sheltered and exalted all at once.
Now lately it's been hard to climb my tree;
I don't fit like I did when I was small,
But, now I reach high limbs more easily
And for all this, it's never let me fall.
So I still climb my tree, because it seems
No matter what, you're never too old for dreams.



*Fun Fact: about half this poem was actually written in a tree.

East

With one long alabaster spiral
Facing towards the East
Blinding white and graceful
Softly lit like a beacon
Like a star on his hill.

Perhaps one day on your journeys you'll notice
A sound like tiny clarion bells, or
A smell like the clearest of water.
I hope you'll turn and see him,
One day, with his face to the eastern sky
Perhaps waiting patiently
But more likely, I think, 
Running.




I really like unicorns. I doubt this is the last you'll see of them this month.
I'll have some good structured verse for you soon, I promise, but I keep forgetting about this project until the last minute and so don't have time for anything that really takes a lot of thought. Still, I kind of like this one. Do you?

Lyssa-tional Poetry Month

This is overdue in two ways.
First, April was National Poetry Month, and I told myself I was definitely going to do something exciting for that. But, since I didn't actually know which month was National Poetry Month until May, I did not, in fact, do anything remotely exciting. Also, I was challenged way back in February to write a poem every day for a month and see if it didn't make me a better writer. So I will. And because I am a glutton for embarrassment and because I literally only have two readers, I will post them here on the internet. You two will be the grateful recipients of exactly one poem a day, every day, starting today, for a month. They will be up by midnight. EVERY SINGLE DAY.
That being said, you are in for some craptacular poems. My goal is for you to enjoy at least one of them.



On Heroes

There are certain people I've always wanted to meet
someday, just so I could bow to them
(or shake hands or something, as I guess bowing
would probably make most of them uncomfortable)
because they were such heroes,
and I could never imagine being that kind of heroic,
or even, really
any kind at all.
But that's okay, I think,
because I'm more of a continuer anyway
and heroes tend to live short lives
(short amazing beautiful lives)
and on the day after the heroes,
the world would be a pretty sad place if
there was no one left who wanted,
in some deep but sizable portion of her soul,
to in her actions bow to them.



Well, not too bad considering I forgot my self-imposed deadline until an hour before it hit. However, this is a prime example of how I am physically incapable of deciding whether I want to be serious or not. Expect this indecision to plague you for the rest of the month.
*Side note: this occasionally happens to me with respect to fictional characters as well. It is a source of deep and everlasting frustration. Sigh.