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Posted By: The Filmchick Sep 11, 2003 - 04:06 pm

So, looking through my poetry packet in nostalgia, I decided I'd post this - I'd forgot about the poetry forum for a while, but just commented on one.

Since this site is supposedly all about fantasy/SF/horror and such, this is the closest one I've got. Have at.

Precious Moments
Above the finest cherry parlor shelves
sat Pretty Mommy, hair all wrapped in lace,
and, next to her, Poor William by himself.
As time had wiped the grin from his clay face,
he could no longer even force his lips
to aim a kiss at mother's painted hand.
So thought the boy whose mother's stewardship
of porcelain was more than he could stand,
and he, Poor William as he knew he'd been,
would watch her ruby nails upon the dress
and study how she touched up Mommy's grin,
or see her daily braid a golden tress.
She set them up in lines so soldier-straight
it hurt to look; he watched in rising hate.

The doll that was his mother used to sit
atop the shelves, its arms wide, clutching air.
And though it took a pretty heavy hit,
he toppled her from china shores, to where
the face could break, the grin would crack, and still
far wider than her arms the pieces flew.
He watched ceramic dust, the flying swill
aglitter while it scattered like the dew.
His foot created powder from her arms,
while somewhere she was staring at the light,
appealing to the deities with dead charms,
reciting spells to keep her through the night.
And while he drove his toes into her teeth,
he heard her fractured gasp; she broke beneath.

Posted By: Zacert Sep 17, 2003 - 03:59 pm

Jesu Cristo! amazing. Thats exactly the kind of writing I want to do... I love the symbology of the clay figures.

Posted By: The Filmchick Sep 17, 2003 - 07:10 pm

Heh. Glad you liked it. The theme was to take an image and expound on it. I got back to my room, for some reason browsed across the poster for 'Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?', with the broken doll face, and decided to use a broken doll as my image.

Unsurprisingly, though, this was not my mom's favorite poem that I did for that poetry class, heh.

This was, and is also fantasy-themed (the assignment was to write about mythology, and I chose the Scottish selkie myths; the form is cinquains. That was not assigned, but I was the only formalist poet in the class - everyone else wrote free verse - so I decided I'd try a new form):

Mermaid
I saw
her watching me
beneath the wavy grass,
I pulled the rushes from her eyes,
stared, rapt.

An arm
extended out
beneath the wavy grass,
encircled mine, and held me there,
chill-crept.

I thought
of sealskin touch,
beneath the wavy grass,
I pulled away and watched her die,
eyes trapped.

My arm
was icy-wrapped;
beneath the wavy grass,
entrancing eyes still gazed at me,
still wept.

I left,
my net in knots
beneath the wavy grass.
I pulled my oars and set for home,
warmth sapped.

The arm
still bears her chill,
beneath the wavy grass;
a rustling taint as rushes break,
long kept.

...

And this was my dad's, which is sort of fantasy-seeming, and was the last poem in the packet, supposed to be our Grand Statement on Poetry (cue 'Pomp and Circumstance'). Instead, I had a little fun screwing around with the idea of Grand Statements(which I think is pretty laughable anyway), and also including paraphrases from Keats' 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' and Yeats' 'Among School Children' to further throw the idea of Grand Statements into question - which I guess was my Grand Statement, heh.

Substantiation
All ill-at-arms and quill-at-hand:
so sat the poet, deep in thought,
until a phrase was dancing there
upon the air (and quickly brought
down, like a gut-shot bird.)

And then the poem had found its bones.
So then the poet scratched a curse
(upon the paper’s stylish skin,
on “how things go from bad to verse”)
down, to the final word.

All skeletal and spindly thin,
the words slept on, their brains made dumb,
determined not by drink or drug,
(not alcohol or laudanum)
down to a fatal blurred “---.”

Posted By: purr_verse Sep 18, 2003 - 07:59 pm

You are clearly a very good writer. Lovely stuff, beautifully constructed. I LOVE the last line of the horror sonnet, although I think my favourite of the three poems is actually the last one. It has a lovely rhythm, and manages to be a great example of a poem about poetry - most of which fail fairly miserably.

Got any more?

Posted By: Syrinx Sep 18, 2003 - 08:11 pm

Wow! think i'm a wee bit jealous.