My recent poems

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Hope you enjoy them.

Dying Trade

Another speculative morning shows
itself in thrown-on clothes, with budding eyes;
it won't liaise with me because it knows
I've shuttered up my love before sunrise.
In case it catches my pre-coffee mood,
I'll barricade my face in printed walls;
that's not because I'm ignorant or rude
but hesitant to deal and you're the cause.
You force my understanding to mature,
reminding me that love makes no demands
but it's a quiet smiting I endure
preemptively, from self-embarrassed hands.
It's not a healthy business, loving you;
the assets are intangible and few.

***

When Hopkins woke and felt the fell of dark,
he did not only taste his own disgust.
The yeast was less himself - but more unjust,
its gall was all the bent unmaker's mark:
a universal horror since the spark
lit matter's oven, where we all encrust
with one another's pains, with heat and dust.
We laugh and crumble; death is dry and stark.

We sweat our failures during border hours.
A sense we're lately stale overpowers
the lightness breathed by love that lets us rise.
Although we're love's long-battered followers,
self-blame for destined frailty mostly sours
the tiny glories loosed from nature's ties.

***

Your heart's elastic on this hollow night.
Your laugh could scatter crows from graveyard trees.
Intently crude and glamorous, you might
bring humdrum admiration to its knees
with force-of-nature sashays, well-played glares
and how you catch the dancefloor unawares.

You have desires I guess clod-heartedly.
Image and action are singular signs,
unreadable by cameras, sense and lust.
You show your mind like cleavage: furtively,
with cheek. The conventional me resigns.
The wilder me makes bets on winning trust
but loses as we'll never know the score;
we both won't play for keeps, we're insecure.

***

Anxiety is bounceable, I learned
at home, where mirrors, t.v. sets and eyes
reflected vigilance about my dad's
return from toil. We waited as he turned
his key and barely swore. Could we disguise
our daily mess? Not really - like most dads,
this one thought women organised their lives
as naturally as loveliness survives
anticipated disappointment's bane;
we girls were human but loved all the same.
His Grumpiness was mostly irked by work
but work was done. We cluttered his domain
with our relatedness; we got the blame.
Don't slog yourself hostile or be a jerk.

***

An overdue bill rings alarmingly;
neglect has coughed black mould across my sill
and consciousness arrives here staringly;
a dry-mouthed dream distracted me until
the smell of money wafted from nowhere;
it led my thoughts nowhere with verve and guile;
this new non-place was cold and more threadbare
than straitened, cold-tea, common denial.

And now the vows I struck are on display,
all touchy-feely upon screwed-up bed;
I love it, though - the way you have a way
of casting ghosts of money from my head.
Our work is cheap; our sneaky play is dear;
our pleasures make our poorness disappear.

I love these. Your imagery is amazing.

Thanks

Your poetry is inspiring me to write as well.

You have a similar orientation in terms of how one obtains imagery (i.e., from the mind).

Are you a flapper in real life? I think your icon depicts a silent star (Mary Pickford? or Clara Bow?)

Theda?...

It is Theda Bara. I don't think I'm a flapper in real life. I think I can only manage to be one in my imaginary life.

kraftie: I do grab my imagery for sonnets from my mind. I used to write haiku and pull everything from the external world. Even writing haiku involves editing and selection though - so the haiku is still touched by your mind even though it's trying to be close to concrete. With sonnets, I'm trying to make the world inside my head concrete instead of making the external world symbolic.

Here's my latest:

What compares well with the language of Hell?
Is it much like the grey trickle of fear
beneath all strands of thought, or like the swell
and snare of oceans round a worried sphere?
Is it a standard form of resentment
or some argot of shame, blame and insults?
Our other mother tongue is contentment
but that's not used as much when we're adults -
or ever. Lies we can't disprove let peal;
a mass tinnitus drains us all of ease.
Our grammar's made of error. Doubts of steel
vibrate with tones we chant like devotees
of dark arts, such as making sense of life.
No noise, effectively, can couple life.

I will now try to destroy all my poems with emotion. I will make an artistic point of doing that. I prefer the rest of the poem to the first quatrain, actually.

The enjambment is mostly to mimic thought patterns; I don't like the neatness of quatrains sometimes.

Thanks for your comments, though. I don't worry about my writing; it's one the few things I don't worry about because I would write whatever level of skill I had. I would still write poems even if I had a terrible brain injury and lost 95% of my vocabulary.

Before I go to bed with you, I pause;
an overlit affront is gawking back.
I can't be bothered with myself because
I planned forgetful efforts in the sack -
but still I stare like witness to a crime,
which ego is, however humbly-dressed.
This self-regard's a waste of urgent time
that should be spent on joy and not regrets.
You will absolve the sins a mirror can't;
forgiving more than nature or my sense.
I mustn't be so doomed if you will grant
me such indulgences with no pretense.
I trust your ministrations rather more
than these acquired doubts I can't ignore.

It's okay. I found it interesting when you said 'destroyed' by emotion because sometimes things feel that way. I figured a poet could do a sort of emotional violence to their verse to reflect life, if they wanted to.

I didn't *personally* like your poems (I'm not really a fan of the specific style or content), but they are very well-written and you definitely have talent! Definitely some of the better ones I have seen on this forum, keep up the great work!

Your love-sprung faith can't redeem like it should;
I am against my will: I don't add up
but nor do you. This disjoint won't let up;
there's always more to be misunderstood.
When reckoning ourselves, we account falsehood
of no exact amount; we develop
records of ghosts whose figured lines break up
and seem of questionable likelihood.

But when we cease to squint at dull symbols
and open eyes to what's surpassing real -
impossible events that brashly go
transpiring like most ordinary scandals,
at once banal yet pleasantly surreal -
we gain the clout that differences bestow.

A tired mare's pressed against the fence; it's gazed
at rain-smudged hills all noon with dumb malaise.
I stop my heart here. I can't be amazed
by freedom, just the awkward way it stays;
it pines for you when there's nonsense to do,
though it's nonsense itself; like clouds, it clears
to show one more enclosure left for you
to send frustrations to to mate with fears.
This horse can see repeats; it thinks repeats
and lives them: rain and grass and sun and rain.
My loves are knackered rituals of repeats
like histories; their deterrents self-explain.
A bed of sun is laid on paddock earth;
its warmth tells me what freedom isn't worth.