Paper Doll: Poems about poems

Fallen Soldiers

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.

> 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

on a mission

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.

Finding Life

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

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.

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

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.

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