poem a day

[moches]

Re: poem a day

I had a rocking Friday and I wrote a poem about it.

to-do list

Notes: We all have these days, don’t we?

sleep in until the sun burns through the glass and your sheets have become a furnace
then spend twenty minutes holding your little sister’s teddy bear
(well, it was yours before)
rub your hands into the fur, look into eyes eternally pure
hurl it into the air with abandon and fly with it as it falls back down

find a nice quiet park, where the basketball courts are empty and there’s only two hands embracing one another on the benches
sit on the grass, just so you remember what it was like
breathe in forgiveness and humility and wonder and
AWE
at how you are here
in a little stitch of the earth
with only the melody of a child and the laughter of the birds in the trees

wander around the streets with nothing but a five in your pocket and a natasha bedingfield song wedged into your brain
if you see an ice cream shop, enter it
ask for three scoops
two flavors you’ve loved from the age of five
one flavor ripe with the taste of new promise

and if you cannot check these off all at once
check off what you can afford to do
but when nobody’s looking, try and check off one more

[moches]

Re: poem a day

i'm messing around with rhythms! rhythms!

the train

Notes: On intimacy, connection, and the crappy ventilation on public transportation.

rumble tumble whisper ROAR
bullet rushed straight down the floor
lovely, lonely, hungry, bored
into its carcass people poured

one stop two stops three stops four
faces piled up more and more
lost your hand or you lost mine
two ants stuck in the city grind

four stops three stops two stops one
engine purrs, it’s had its fun
stragglers dotting empty seats
brows dripping in the evening heat

WHOOSH a chugga stutter click
the doors push open, this is it
found you again, bound by design
and i’ll hold your hand if you hold onto mine

look up

Notes: All it takes is one look and everything comes flooding back.

sometimes i melt into the concrete the people pass me by
 but nobody can touch me
 we’re all stuck in bubbles 
one missed call and chats unfinished and unlimited 3G plans trapped in our screens
 what would it take for me to pop my glass barrier what would it take for me to breathe again

look up
from the middle of your jungle

look up into the void

nothing but miles and miles of a black

we turn on our neon signs

and all it does is chuckle silently to itself

where did the stars go?
are they hiding?
are they gone?
can we find them again?

[moches]

Re: poem a day

today's poem went better than usual.

hidden heaven

with a stomp
and a stare
and a finger in the eye
they will steal every little piece of the puzzle that is you
tear your lego dreams apart
and use the rubble
for yet another batch of concrete

hide them away
in a box
under a desk
behind a screen
hide them away
and build something grand for yourself

almost thirty days into this project now!

[TheSaxRunner05]

Re: poem a day

There once was a women from Venus
Who said she could Charlie Sheen us
Without a moment to waste
She presented with haste
Her enormous, six foot vacuum cleaner

[moches]

Re: poem a day

I wrote a poem about poop yesterday.

[moches]

Re: poem a day

today I fought with my mother (more accurately, my sister did and I watched from the sidelines in horror)...it makes me sad. how they can't ever communicate with each other because their ideas of what constitutes consideration and love and respect are completely different. and it makes me feel like a guilty piece of shit for not cleaning my room because that's what technically started this entire argument.

anyhoo.

clutter

first there was the doll you brought me
because it was soft
and its eyes reminded you of me
then there was the backpack
with the broken zipper
with nowhere to go but the landfill (so in it went)
then there were my drumsticks
the tips worn from years of nothing
but battering
and battering
and battering
and i don’t know what happened
and i never saw it coming
and i suspect neither did you
when you got up
and began picking at the motes of dust on the floor
and you began coughing up a storm
and you threw up the sheets in a fit of terror
or was it glee?
i tried to reach back but i lost you
behind the walls of the
shit we stacked for so long
piled into corners, boxes
every square inch of the closet
that we just threw stuff into
a black hole of suppressed bits and pieces
we never bothered to organize
and maybe you had to do this
and maybe it’s my fault
but it’s only when you raise your voice in a fearsome
ROAR
that i can see you again
when your voice has unraveled into a scratchy whisper

[moches]

Re: poem a day

I'm releasing a compilation of my best work soon

If there's anything you guys want to see in there, I'd love the feedback!

http://poem-per-day.tumblr.com/

[moches]

Re: poem a day

criticism PLZ

[moches]

Re: poem a day

just updating to say I just hit 20 followers

:')

[EzExZeRo7497]

Re: poem a day

You actually made a poem about shoes lmaooo

[moches]

Re: poem a day

you can write about ANYTHING

[axith]

Re: poem a day

criticism PLZ

It's really difficult to give criticism to free verse beyond, "I liked/didn't like it." Overall I like the poems. Lines that are twice as long as the next longest line in the poem bother me though, so I think you can break up the long line in counting sheep (removing the 'and'). I noticed a case that rewording would help how the poem flowed. It was something about 'looked over the edge of the glass'. I can't find the poem right now, so you probably edited it (or more likely, I'm blind). Any how, just changing it to something more simple like 'looked over the rim' would work fine as you had established the metaphor and the object you were talking about just a couple lines before that.

Criticism's difficult with free verse (also when you write well). I especially liked 'from the toilet seat'.

[moches]

Re: poem a day

thank you for your feedback! : ))

the poem with the "glass" is from July 28, imo. I just figured out how I can fix it thanks to you, so I did. you might be right about the lines; cutting "counting sheep" into three stanzas made it flow a lot better. I really think you pointed out my biggest issue, which is flow (maybe I just need to try actually reading the poems aloud before posting them?)

I appreciate that you took the time to read <3

[axith]

Re: poem a day

One thing you might think about is the meter in your free verse. I'm not talking making everything iambic, but paying attention to the stresses of the syllables. Reading out loud would help. Judging by your many music reviews (I check wasfuersohr daily), I'm sure you have the ear to figure out when something doesn't quite fit, such as a break in an individual line or an awkward wording. One major thing that separates poetry from prose is how it sounds aloud.

Regarding your edits, I had something more like this in mind for counting sheep:

"the people who have looked the other way
the people my soul weighs upon
the people whose souls weigh upon mine {you could drop the word 'upon' and just use 'on' here}
the people i have betrayed"

Didn't mean to say to break into anther stanza. I was quickly writing my post before going to work today so I wasn't to specific. I feel like you lose some momentum with stanza break. If you want to break it, I'd put the lines with similar ideas together, "others to me" against "me to others" or something similar. All these are suggestions. And I'd like to stress that point.

Your statement of a person being able to write about anything for poetry is true. Charles Bukowski has a poem about a computer processor (he then launches that into a really cynical statement about reliance on the computer). He also wrote however the hell he wanted and was a fairly successful recent poet. If you find something in your poems that you can't figure out a way to make "work" for you, just shoot me a pm. I'll try to help out.

Putting this in spoiler because I think it's cool, but doesn't really have a direct correlation with my post. You can take manipulating the sounds to the extreme. This poem by Robert Creeley, is kinda odd in the way the syllables are arranged (as well as how ambiguous the subjects of the ideas are). Just take a listen to the audio of Creeley reading the poem on the page.http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171564

[moches]

Re: poem a day

Late response!

Yeah, I'm starting to read stuff out loud (the past few poems have all been read-outs). I dunno about the stanza break you suggested: I guess maybe it's a nice way to suggest the sorta hazy dream-state that poem takes place in, but I think breaking the two sections into separate stanzas makes for an interesting pause in the middle, like maybe a moment of clarity where everything you thought you know gets flipped on its head. Both are interesting, but when I look at the poem, I kind of prefer the way it is now. Interesting how one line break can change so much, though!

And yeah, that poem is positively baffling. What an interesting read, too. I appreciate the find!

PS. Bukowski is one of my favorite poets.