Paper Doll: Poems about poems

[Bret]

Do you have a poem in which poetry takes a central role? here's one-


Paper Doll

With a bold hand
she wrote a poem
about a man who
was never insecure
always kind and true.
Satisfied with her work
she folded him up and
tucked him in her pocket,
right over her heart.

[Ted]

Fallen Soldiers

Getting drunk for fun
because no girl would put up with our
rebel yells, bad taste jokes, all the swearing,

we called the empties fallen soldiers,
then flung them into the universe
so everyone would know
we were young and having fun.

My fallen soldiers today are pages of paper,
empty but for a line or two of bad poetry,
ripped from the printer and tossed away.

Casualties of the rewrite,
words broken and jumbled,
the flow of meaning lost forever,
drained as into hot, foreign soil,
thin blood from the gaping wound
of my dead imagination.

A wasteland of ruined paper surrounds me;
I’m littering with the literary, ahem.

[Bret]

fallen soldiers. I esp. liked

"we called the empties fallen soldiers,
then flung them into the universe
so everyone would know
we were young and having fun."

I hung around a similar girlfriendless bunch of beer swilling idiots in my late teens. In my twenties we still had beer and even dumber behavior but for some reason there were girls.

KTC, this was vivid and horrible-

"Mouth moves closer
To the mic...
Smells the residue
Of past poets,"

It made me want a tetanus shot :)

I was in a band that had a sexy girl singer. I remembered the windscreen on her microphone was always smeared with pink lipstick. I thought it was hot. My mind probably went there as a defense mechanism against the poet's residue. ha ha.

[P.H.Delarran]

> profusely sprays disinfectant before speaking<
KTC, improvising that poem on the spot is an incredible testimony to your talent. you have a great knack for describing immediate emotion.

Causes pause,
A jump,
An extra beat
In a heart
Ready to crumble.

[P.H.Delarran]

Bret, the visual metaphor of Paper Doll will stay with me. :)

[Eveningsdawn]

Here's mine, written for the Poetry Game.


writing poetry
without purpose
can trap you
backing your words
into a corner
and penning them there.
but writing poetry
without purpose
can free you
handing your words
the wings you
always wanted to give them.

[Bret]

handing your words wings. thats perfect. it reminded me of this quote from Samuel (not that I think your image is in any way derivitive)

"The LORD was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground."

They must have had wings!

This one's refusal to use its wings resulted in a particularly nasty and coercive poem:




This Little Poem


is a bluebird perched
in a fine and fancy cage
pampered and well fed she is
but stubborn as a stone
if the coming dawn reveals
her song is still unsung
her cage door will be opened
her tiny neck be wrung

[kdnxdr]

Here's a little one I splurted out one evening, first year at college, 1972:

words written
on frosted window glass
last long enough
to gratify your thoughts
and short enough
to keep them secret

[kdnxdr]

I think I posted this one before, but I have fun reading it:

out of my head

white stark nothingness
torments
the ink of my pen

words and scribbles
vomit
across the page

the spew
of vowels and consonants
a gross repulsive mess

poet fever
grips my soul
the antedote
write the poem untold

[Pat~]

This is one I've posted before on the haiku thread -- about writing haiku:

Haiku

unleashed emotion
in tight, little verse is like
dancing on a dime

[Bret]

It is like dancing on a dime! great image of haiku.

k., I dig that words on frosted glass picture.

[Bret]

pinocchio

it was a day like this-
with maple leaves turning
and the sun riding low,
that I bid farewell
to a little poem
cobbled together
from the spare words
lying on my desk
with the placement
of a crucial verb
it coughed and blinked
and looked at a world
that as individual
articles and adjectives
it could not concieve of
with a nod it ventured out
into whatever life
such a thing can make for itself
from time to time,
when the ivy turns red,
when i smell apple pie,
I wonder how it's getting on-
that little poem
so small and frail

[kdnxdr]

stealthy
like a black fighter
in the night

whirring
past, undetected
under scrutiny

payload fired
megatons imagined
duds to the ground

and my poem
whimpers
into obscurity



Bret, I just shot this one off, just for you.

[ddgryphon]

Words flowed
onto the page
a void in want
of expression

Each thought
randomly fell
and crossed
and moved
and formed

Complete
seeking
a reader
a soul
to harbor
and extol
the wonder
of its being

What was not
now is
and in you
now lives

[Cassie88]

Fire Burning in a Fifty-Five Gallon Drum by Seamus Heaney

Next time you'll notice them on your way home from work
or when you drive by that place near the river
where the stockyards used to stand, where everything

is gone now. They'll be leaning over the edge
of the barrel, getting it started--they'll step back
suddenly, and hold out their hands, as though

something fearful had appeared it its center.
Others will be coming over by then, pulling up
handfuls of weeds, bringing sticks and bits of paper,

laying them in gently, offering them to something
still hidden deep down inside the drum.
They will all form a circle, their hands almost

touching, sparks rising through their fingers,
their faces bright, their bodies darkened by smoke,
by flakes of ash swirling around them in the wind.

[Bret]

Metaphoria



this little poem
sits in a folding chair
facing a blank white wall
devoid of metaphor
stripped of rhyme
all you can see is
the back of his head
shaved of symbolism
entirely

[Cassie88]

Feathers and Fat

Some poems are
born of feathers
of simple verbs

floating

of nouns
in the gloaming
with streamlined faith

exploding on the tip
of a dropped

pin

Time ladles lard
and yards of string
pick up adverbs
like leaden

wings

and the rhyme
of adjectives weigh
like a ton of silly golden

things

Pure voice
ball and chained
rattles and clangs

A polluted poem
stuttering sputtering
and choking on the

very last words
the feathers full of
burrs and

fat

[Bret]

i wrote

some clouds, some stars

and a banana colored moon

into my poem.


when they began to move

in a slow peaceful arc

i put down my pen

and went to sleep

[kdnxdr]

poem of my tomb
my epitaph
will laud my life,
get the last laugh.
extolling my virtues
remembering my past
hiding my secrets
my word's the last.
come and visit
my quiet spot
don't bring a book
I talk alot.
criptic and wise
a puzzle to quiz
I have my critics
but with words, I'm a whiz.

[kdnxdr]

austere, your skin draped as
a majestic canopy over your soul
where marriage of heart and mind consumate;
simplicity a crown of regal tolerance
your spirit trophy held ransomed,
self pitted to self,
the victor a poem