A poem by moi

[Albie]

According to how many topics are posted in this poetry section, and how old they are, I am assuming that poetry isn't really popular among these parts. So naturally I decided to post one of my poems, lol.


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The blood trail will lead to me for my skin is at the cleaners
Soaked and rinsed the bacteria will surely be gone
Stained by the salt of life burned by the cold bleach of sunlight
A memory deemed nothing but fiction no matter the eon

Brain dead and brought to life to do as they say
Their tongues whip as I hold the heirloom
The scent of fresh air tainted with the smell of the corpse
For into my conscience is buried the tomb

The curdled blood tries to boil
For my love is turning to hate
The hate will remain as it always was
My feelings of crimson in a colorless fate

The makeup plasters the hideous scars
A portion of my soul escapes as the boils burst
Attracted to the moon as a moth to flame
Hidden in the craters amongst the lovers who are cursed

The porcelain spine holding the tree of life
For the succubus to drink the sap that is poured
Living forever I will lie at your feet
Crushed under the boot from my only lord

I can see the furthest atom in the Milky Way
As faithful as your eyes
A figment of extinct compassion is shown in imagination
As the guillotine comes down I pray I’m wise

My life may be before my eyes
But my life is not a flicker in yours
Born with the luck of the living
And dead with the same that restores

Your teeth which I had seen for a smile
And so too as a grimace
Not for your love or for your hate
But for your feeling of indifference

That had been the past and the future
For the present is a pain to bear
I shall always defend you in hell
For you bent my knees and had me pray to air

I tire of the hiking to only leap off a cliff
For just a moment of cool air to hit my skin
I’ll look to the sky and see the clouds drift away
As the stones come close I’ll meet my new kin

Just the emotional being waiting for your love and compassion
With disappointment waiting amongst the unique pyre
For if you were to ever show me love
My suicide shall be justified by believing a liar

Your death for me I may deem harsh
And I will never understand it on the surface
And in a thousand lives I will live
Just to repeat this purpose

Anger and sadness come with joy and fortune
Although the recipe for each varies
The spices of mine will be ground
And held as real as gods and faeries

So convey me back into your heaven
To see your desires and smell the folklore
For mine will be scattered in the dreams of the buried
To try to collect once more

[MikeW]

I'm not a reader of poetry, so that's not surprising.

For one thing, I'm more of a visual, than a word, person. For another, I was functionally illiterate until around age 28. Of course, I *did* know how to "read and write," sort-of, more or less you might say. But I've always been suspicious of words, their ability to entrain, mesmerize and beguile. Words are SPELLS cast within the mind making us believe we know things we don't. Like ourselves and one another.

I was a painter:

=(=)= • Oil on Canvas, 1987 • 72" x 60"
Private Collection, Chicago IL.

A painting, by comparison, is silent. It speaks but only if one cares enough to look, to immerse one's self in its field of force. It does not demand "comprehension" so much as simply "attention".

Another problem with words is they usurp meaning; as if they are needed to "explain" everything that would otherwise be "incomprehensible." What, after all, would we BE without them? What would we use to tell ourselves what paintings are, what they're about, how to look at them, what to see in them, and what, if anything, is important, interesting or significant about them? They are, obviously, more important than the paint.

So, no surprise that I'm clueless.

[Albie]

[MENTION=20947]MikeW[/MENTION] I find it funny that you say that you are suspicious of words as they can mesmerize. I have that same feeling with most paintings.

Words are defining. If you do not know the meaning, you can look up words on your own and interpret what the speaker is trying to say. In a painting, I cannot see the meaning. Even when I am told the meaning, I can never see it. And when I am told it is only the words of the explanation that I use to try to see it in the visual.

A painting is silent and because of that it cannot speak to me. Even if I do not understand the meaning behind an author's words, as the author is recounting their own experiences, I can find similarities to my own life and experiences. That is why 99% of the music I listen to has lyrics.

I cannot paint, so even if I see a beautiful painting I can't get any connection with the painter as I feel they are on a different level than I am. Whereas words, anyone who knows the language can express their emotions through words and then I can feel that connection.

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[MENTION=22540]CharlesConley[/MENTION] Thanks. You are now my favorite poster on this forum, lol. ^_^

[MikeW]

[MENTION=20947]MikeW[/MENTION] I find it funny that you say that you are suspicious of words as they can mesmerize. I have that same feeling with most paintings.

YAY!!!! A conversation!!!!

One of my mottos: Words are more abstract than paint. Names are not the things named, maps are not the territory mapped, but, in *some* instances (by no means all) a painting can be the thing it is, representing nothing other than itself, irrespective of title or associated narrative.

I'm not sure what you mean by, "even if I see a beautiful painting I can't get any connection with the painter as I feel they are on a different level than I am," but let me entertain you with one of my shaggy dog stores…

I grew up on a farm in the rural mid-west, mid past century. TV was a brand new invention and no one had yet walked on the moon, or barely even thought about doing so. Of course science fiction was apart of our culture and, being the very strange farm boy that I was, I loved sci-fi comics, cartoons and movies. But at age 8 in 1956, the first satellite was still a few years away.

I had two older sisters, one 1o the other 15 years my senior. By this time they'd married and moved out of the family home. I didn't mind, I hadn't felt particularly close to either of them, but I sometimes found things about them of interest. One day I discovered that one of them had borrowed a song book from the high school library and apparently never returned it. I didn't know anything about music at all but what interested me was the book contained a few reproductions of paintings. Most were not very remarkable and by little known artists…

However, there was one painting that was like nothing I'd ever seen before. "One Center," by Wassily Kandinsky…



I had NO IDEA what I was looking at. Every other painting in the book had been of a person place or thing… WTF was this!?

I showed it to my mother and asked her what it was. She adjusted her glasses to get a better look…"Well, I can't say as I rightly know what that is. Somebody's idea of a painting, I guess." That my mom did NOT know what this was made it all the more interesting in a way. She usually knew what things were… but not in this case.

So… indeed… what was it? That's what I wanted to know.

I sat down on the living room couch with the book in my lap. I can remember all this quite vividly as I've told this story many times over the years. It was a hot day and the late afternoon sun was coming through the tall window to my right. I couldn't say why but I just had this *funny feeling* that if I tried hard enough, I understand what this painting was. I tried concentrating and studying it but then, somehow, I just gave all that up. I JUST LOOKED AT IT without trying to figure it out -- and it was in that exact instant that my whole life changed

I *saw* the painting. Even though I was only looking at a small reproduction of it in a book, it opened up its inner world and I fell inside it. I knew *exactly* what this was a painting "of!" I became VERY excited because it was like real life magic! I'd been transported to another realm just be LOOKING at something -- something made up of lines and squares and circles and colors and -- well al that "stuff" that make up a painting.

I became SO excited about it that I got up from the couch, found my water color tin, pencil, ruler, compass, protractor, brushes, and news print. I wanted to make that happen too!

BUt, sadly, despite what amounted to a lot of concentration and effort, none of MY drawings/paintings did ANYTHING at all. It was very frustrating and kind of unnerving, TBH. How come *THOSE* colors and shapes do what they had done but MINE did nothing?

I spent a good part of my life researching that question.

[Albie]

I say that painters are on another level, because I believe that is a gift that someone who cannot paint can learn. I know people who taken art courses and know the techniques but still cannot create anything good while others just pick up a brush and they create something amazing.

Writing is different. Anybody can write. All you have to know is what you want to say and how you want to convey the text. So in a painting, I can see good technique or colors but it is of nothing that I would ever think about in my life as all my thoughts come in words. Good words can have a fluidity like an ocean and like an ocean it can be calm or it could be angry all based on the writer's mentality. I find that fascinating, as I like to understand people and what better way to understand people than by listening to the words they speak?

[MikeW]

... Anybody can write. ...

Perhaps, but can just anybody write well?

[Albie]

Perhaps not at first, but if anybody has something to say they can convey those thoughts in writing. You can also change revisions if people don't like what they have written.

[meridannight]

this is actually very similar to the type of poetry i write. it has a lot of imagery. this is how i do it. it's called image poetry. it's supposed to call certain image/s to your mind. instead of reading words, you are reading pictures.

[Albie]

Do you have any of your poetry posted anyplace? I like to find inspiration from others.

[meridannight]

Do you have any of your poetry posted anyplace? I like to find inspiration from others.

here's a sample:

ANDROGRADE
You don't feel the frisky chill in the air
Though this place is colder than the night outside
You don't feel the hunger, the thirst, the fear
Inherent in the lack of an exit from this hide

Still your naked flesh gives away your lies
It shivers and trembles in the room imposed on you
And the cuffs tear at your skin eliciting cries
You insist they're a song about love through and through

You sit out the silence, the dead quiet calm
You wait till the hours are long past daylight
You enter the night illusions unharmed
But you're a prisoner committed for life

Never heard of betrayal, of patience worn thin
You play the suffering lover on demand
Tolerating the torture inflicted on your skin
Baring your body for more at command

Tied to the bed blindfolded you plead
Your voice and achievement of sacrificial passion and dream
When I run the cold blade across your chest you bleed
I watch as the droplets of red scroll down you into the sheets

Your breath gets caught when the moment arrives
A scare indistinguishably saturated with pleasure
Your heart speeds up -- I feel it beating into mine
Like a potentially fatal radiation exposure

I take control of your body, reclaim it as mine
A possessor let loose on a lost territory
You give yourself up -- your surrender a sigh
A whisper of agreement -- its testimony

Mind out of focus you beg me to rape you
As the temperature peaks and you liquefy into a translucent desire
Losing the game and the reason I obey you
Abandoning myself and alighting inside you on fire

A comedown I'm unable to distinguish from feeling becoming extinct
In my fuzzled state of senses you look like an angel, a salvation to me
Your presence a hypnotic derivative in our four-dimensional space district
Your sweet low voice a music -- our love's theme