[GaesII]

Orfantal said:

Yeah hun...guess trapped was definitely the feeling I was going for at the time...I suppose trapped in despair and possibly self loathing

Yeah, that self-loathing definitely comes through. A very emotive piece:)

[Orfantal]

well hun.. guess that's something I can tap into!

Here's another one...in a similar vein, got a couple of other bits and pieces I need to try and finish off too


My Love

My love I cried for you last night
for all that might have been.
The dreams I would have built with you,
the sights we could have seen.
The moments I’d have lived for you,
the breaths that we’d have shared.
The way that I’d have cherished you,
the souls that we’d have bared.

Those memories surrounded me
to settle like a noose,
stifling and suffocating,
refusing to let loose.
The ghost of you was haunting me,
your face in front of me.
Your eyes are still accusing me,
you’ll never set me free

For though I gave you everything
you threw it in my face.
You chose to give it all away,
another took my place.
So now I lie here next to you
as you are cold and still
and contemplate the love I felt
that drove me on to kill

[Chaos]

Having been constantly hounded by the kind comments you guys gave for the last piece everytime I log in I made myself sit down and write something else. Only took a couple of minutes and more of a ranting structure , although we all know the S word is nigh on blasphemy when it comes to my view of poetry



Indiscriminate imprisonment of all,
Rough packing with no care or caution,
Cramming the masses into concrete boxes
That stink of the anethema of dreams.
I'm locking it away,
Throwing away the plastic key
Remenents of childhood daydreams
That are too painful to hold on to.
Unable to look at you
Lest my resolve crumble once more,
I am careless in my entombing
Throwing it all in now,
Blind to the blood on my hands,
Blind to my faltering heart,
My weeping eyes,
That shed tears born from emotions
That no longer exist.
And ,finally, I stop,
Finished,
The cell door behind me sealed forever,
Crammed full of my hopes and fears,
Of dreams and desires,
Of me,
And I sit in my empty blank cubicle,
Free from it all,
Free from you
Free from me,
And think of... nothing.

[Orfantal]

Like this matey.... think it'll need a few reads to sink in though...loads of stuff in there to think about

[Shield Anvil]

I finished a re-read of DG a week or so ago and this one has been haunting me since so I gave it a go. It's not finished but I've kind of got stuck and would appreciate some criticism. Come on pull out your cleavers and butcher this piece for me please, I know you want to

Lament to the Chain

Can you hear the rattle?
The rattle of chains
dragged by those ragged dogs
And the dogs
voicing their grim howls
Foolish as they are

In their wake Hood strode
Casting his shadow
upon the chain of souls
twisting over a continent
soaked in blood

One rode through the madness
drawn into a stronghold of will
ever observing
Burdened with the duty to witness
what none should ever see;
to remember the nameless

Some betrayals cut deeper than others
but the Trembling Hand?s cut through
thousands of hearts

Do you spot the Crow flying above
A single feather falling
to shatter his pain
to free his soul for the winds

[Orfantal]

Shield Anvil...interseting...I will comment on this when I have a moment .. and I still want to come back to yours Chaos!

Anyway..a couple from me :

Funeral Pyre

I wander endlessly
on ragged bloody stumps,
staggering and stumbling.
Searching ever blindly
but driven on and on.
Drawn always round again
in a tightening circle,
flailing, faint and futile,
at harsh necessity.
Struggling but still compelled
I trudge slowly onwards
through the damp gritted sand
of my desolation.
A landscape bleak and bare
devoid of life and light
until ahead I see,
at last, a fitful spark,
baleful and forbidding
in it’s isolation.
Gradually approaching
I see a blazing fire,
a pyre, that waits for me.
Gladly I surrender
and step within the flames
that grasp me eagerly
and as I am consumed,
my flesh burning to ash,
like all my hopes and dreams,
I smile and laugh within.


Butterfly

I flutter by lightly,
a butterfly on gossamer wings,
brushing against this
sadness painted on the
parchment of your skin.
The story of your life
etched deep in heavy letters.
My kiss is brief
and transient
yet poignant in intensity
as I smudge that hardened
grimace into a
tremulous smile.

[GaesII]

Orfantal said:

Shield Anvil...interseting...I will comment on this when I have a moment .. and I still want to come back to yours Chaos!

Anyway..a couple from me :

Funeral Pyre

I wander endlessly
on ragged bloody stumps,
staggering and stumbling.
Searching ever blindly
but driven on and on.
Drawn always round again
in a tightening circle,
flailing, faint and futile,
at harsh necessity.
Struggling but still compelled
I trudge slowly onwards
through the damp gritted sand
of my desolation.
A landscape bleak and bare
devoid of life and light
until ahead I see,
at last, a fitful spark,
baleful and forbidding
in it?s isolation.
Gradually approaching
I see a blazing fire,
a pyre, that waits for me.
Gladly I surrender
and step within the flames
that grasp me eagerly
and as I am consumed,
my flesh burning to ash,
like all my hopes and dreams,
I smile and laugh within.

Hun, I'm gonna have to read this a few times before making a proper comment.........but just wanted to say that that is a damn good bit of poetry there....and the last line just well and truely got me!!

Orfantal said:

Butterfly

I flutter by lightly,
a butterfly on gossamer wings,
brushing against this
sadness painted on the
parchment of your skin.
The story of your life
etched deep in heavy letters.
My kiss is brief
and transient
yet poignant in intensity
as I smudge that hardened
grimace into a
tremulous smile.

Loved this one.....just proves that poetry doesn't have to be complicated to have an impact. :)

[Orfantal]

Aww hun :) glad you liked them! First was hard to keep within the 6 syllable structure..and I was worried i got lost along the way ... but the second was a lot freer..and more fun

[Chaos]

I'm normally quite reluctant to read other people's work based around Erikson because it's such a high mantle to reach for but I actually found myself quite liking this piece. You wanted criticism, which I suck at, but the only thing that really stuck out was the first stanza:

Shield Anvil said:

Lament to the Chain

Can you hear the rattle?
The rattle of chains
dragged by those ragged dogs
And the dogs
voicing their grim howls
Foolish as they are

The middle two lines, mainly the repetition in such quick succession of the word dogs, seemed to jar the rhythm. I think it's because I read it as "The rattle of chains dragged by those ragged dogs and the dogs" and then only when i'd been jolted and read ahead did it make sense. Punctuation at the end of the lines or slight alteration to the second line, I dunno? But overall really liked it actually.

Orfantal said:

brushing against this
sadness painted on the
parchment of your skin.
The story of your life
etched deep in heavy letters

Loved this bit. Especially the last line there, the use of heavy just seemed to suit the mood of the piece without being overly stated/dramatized. I was always told it was the sign of a good poet when a single well chosen and placed word could take a well crafted piece and just make it something that bit more special. I don't think I've explained that quite well looking back but it's hard to explain. I'm a fan of multiple meanings I guess I'm trying to inarticulately (sp?) say.

edit: oo just got another meaning aswell. Like christmas

[Orfantal]

Damn...there's now so many things I want to come back to on here...need to find some time ... in the meantime here's another..this was a bit of fun last night when I got bored with the work I ws doing...and Switzerland/Ukraine was so awful!

A Phaory Story

In the divided land of death and dust
a shiver of fear ripples as darkness falls.
“Nile desperandum” the locals mutter
as the sun god’s final languid wave
sends shadows dancing among the reeds,
and the stygian gloom descends.

Amid the crumbling monuments
to pyramid selling, something stirs,
awakened from an unquiet rest.
A desperate muffled scratching
fills the night, a sighing susurration
of scrabbling withered hands,
that even has the craven crocodiles
holding hands beneath the river’s veil.

Within a thousand pointed prisons
the unhappy inhabitants stalk and stagger,
lurching through the darkened corridors
stiff jointed and stiff necked
searching for discarded organs
and the odd mislaid extremity.

Swathed in material bindings
these dusty denizens stumble
through a soft shoe shuffle,
a uniquely dry wrap and dance.
While in his shuttered palace
Pharoah cries “Oh Mummy!”
Luxur-iating in an ever pressing
pressure in his ancestral piles.

A grim and ghastly murmuring echoes
from a thousand tongueless throats.
This ghostly dirge to dull eternal life,
a poignant paean to painless posterity
The withered wail lasts on till dawn
approaches with her grasping rosy fingers.

At the jagged break of each new day
the decrepit wanderers retire once more
to settle down grumpy and disgruntled
into their well worn resting niches
mumbling jawlessly about the way
things were better in their reigny day
and how that damn sand gets everywhere
and why did no one tell them about dry rot!

As a nation breathes a welcome sigh
of gentile and embarrassed relief…
Hu-Ra! the people cry…. Amon to that!

[Dr Trouble]

Here's a little something I wrote in Ninth grade when I was at the peak of my angry years I can look back and laugh at it now, but I'll still share

The Human Stain

Two boys walked along a beach,
Ane one walked into Deaths reach.
The first boy screamed,
but the other thought he dreamed.

He walked the endless hall,
searching for one that called.
He came to the room with the looking glass,
He put his eye to the lense andwatched the world pass.

Out before him he saw all,
And endless existence big and small.
Life in all it is,
A sad sight for a kid.

Death, hate, and all of destruction,
Was all he saw when the lense functioned.
He cried out at all he saw,
Famine, Pestilence, and endless war.

He cried and yelled to Death,
If this is life then I am glad I breathed my last breath!
To which Death replied,
Son, all men should wish to die.

----------------------

It's interesting looking through my old books and realising what a state my mind was in back then. I was not a happy boy =

[Gem Windcaster]

Oh, yes I write poetry, much of which are too weird to even try to understand. This poem doesn't have a title. Maybe you can help me with that. Oh, and it was written long before I read S.E., so any imagined connection doesn't exist. The poem was however a direct result of a special time in my life.

~ There was a time
when everything was enlightenment.
And I learned.

Then one day
I moved on.
On to the next phase.
Now I hold on to the memories.
But even they
don't taste as they used to ~

[Orfantal]

Chaos - hope you don't mind but your piece inspired me, so here's a reinterpetation

Prison

Imprisoned indiscriminately,
packed roughly without care or caution,
crammed tightly into concrete boxes
that ooze with sweat.
A stink that is anathema to dreams.

I’m locking it all away,
throwing out my plastic key.
Shards of broken recollections,
remnants of childhood memories
that are too painful to hold onto.
They cut too deep.

I cannot look,
I dare not see
lest my faltering resolve
crumble into dust once more.

Blind, I throw it all away
careless with desperation
I fill this tomb
with the ghosts of my life,
oblivious to my torn hands
and stuttering heart.

My eyes shed tears from reflex,
mourning lost emotions
I no longer feel
and cannot find.

Finally I stop,
I’m done.
The door is locked behind me
sealing away my hopes and fears,
my desires.

And I sit alone
in my empty cubicle.
Freed from it all,
from you,
from me.

And think
of nothing at all.

And realise at last
the prisoner is me.

[GaesII]

One day there's hardly any poetry to comment on, then all of a sudden everyone becomes inspired:rolleyes: ......gonna take a while to get time to comment on all of these........but I will get round to it.

(little aside...there's a freakin' spider on my desk:outta: .......yeuchhhhhhhhh!!!!!):eek: :eek: :eek:

[Shield Anvil]

Chaos said:

I'm normally quite reluctant to read other people's work based around Erikson because it's such a high mantle to reach for but I actually found myself quite liking this piece. You wanted criticism, which I suck at, but the only thing that really stuck out was the first stanza:

The middle two lines, mainly the repetition in such quick succession of the word dogs, seemed to jar the rhythm. I think it's because I read it as "The rattle of chains dragged by those ragged dogs and the dogs" and then only when i'd been jolted and read ahead did it make sense. Punctuation at the end of the lines or slight alteration to the second line, I dunno? But overall really liked it actually.

thank you, yeah I understand that I'll maybe find myself in to deep water concerning this piece, but you seem to be quite a writer yourself so maybe you know the feeling when you just have to write "it", eh? . the giving of criticism can sometimes be simple, just read it and point out the parts that didn't run smooth, that's how I do it, and sometimes (rather most of the times...) there isn't an explanation...

But to your criticism: I don't like punctuation in poetry so I try to avoid it and instead I only use capitalized letters to indicate the beginning of a new line. The part can surely be misread but the only thing that I can think of that would ease it a little would be to capitalize the ?d? in the second "dogs". A change I still have to make since I remembered that it was "the Foolish Dog clan" and not "the Foolish dog clan".. A detail to do matter since I want to tie close knots with The Chain.


and Orfantal: I'll hold you to it, heh heh.

[Chaos]

GaesII said:

One day there's hardly any poetry to comment on, then all of a sudden everyone becomes inspired:rolleyes:

tell me about it, logged on today for a quick read and possible comment and actually had to SCROLL DOWN!! The outrage!

GaesII said:

(little aside...there's a freakin' spider on my desk:outta: .......yeuchhhhhhhhh!!!!!):eek: :eek: :eek:

Have you actually managed to move yet or has it been a rather long night? hehe. Glass and paper, works like a charm.

Annnnyways...

@Trouble : Yeah I know what you mean, I found a folder a few months back read it and had a good laugh. Bizarre how something at the time can seem so bitterly sharp can appear so laughable a few years on.

Gem Windcaster said:

Oh, yes I write poetry, much of which are too weird to even try to understand. This poem doesn't have a title. Maybe you can help me with that. Oh, and it was written long before I read S.E., so any imagined connection doesn't exist. The poem was however a direct result of a special time in my life.

sounds like a challenge , feel free to post away, this entire thread's earlier years were consumed by my weird ramblings. And they don't have to be Erikson related, infact Shield Anvil's is the first such one for quite some time now.

Orfantal said:

Chaos - hope you don't mind but your piece inspired me, so here's a reinterpetation

Hood no, greatest compliment to make someone be bothered enough to do a rewrite. Just don't make it TOO much better

Orfantal said:

Prison

Imprisoned indiscriminately,
packed roughly without care or caution,
crammed tightly into concrete boxes
that ooze with sweat.
A stink that is anathema to dreams.

....

And realise at last
the prisoner is me.

The first stanza especially was a big improvement, I struggled with that one enough to in the end just decide to keep on going and maybe go back to. Which of course I never do

Funnily enough I almost wrote something similiar to the end of the piece aswell, couldn't decide which was better. If I'd have thought to seperate it from the rest of the main body to give it greater impact I probably would have followed your direction.

Shield Anvil said:

But to your criticism: I don't like punctuation in poetry so I try to avoid it and instead I only use capitalized letters to indicate the beginning of a new line. The part can surely be misread but the only thing that I can think of that would ease it a little would be to capitalize the ?d? in the second "dogs". A change I still have to make since I remembered that it was "the Foolish Dog clan" and not "the Foolish dog clan".. A detail to do matter since I want to tie close knots with The Chain.

That's cool, poetry should be written for you first and everyone else after, maybe



PHEW! enough typing for now !

[GaesII]

Quote

Have you actually managed to move yet or has it been a rather long night? hehe. Glass and paper, works like a charm.

With one eye on the pesky spider I made a rather swift exit:D God I'm such a wuss!!

[Orfantal]

Chaos - glad you didn't mind ... and it was in tune with your thoughts. Really enjoyed it and it just got me thinking

[Orfantal]

Shield Anvil - quite enjoyed Lament, and you're very brave to post something based on SE. Found it evoked the feeling of the Chain pretty well but felt I was expecting more...like the way you had different sections picking up different elements ... but perhaps needed to expand on the parts more...liked the last part expecially.....or else to focus on one idea and really zero in on it...like the Duiker section... pretty interesting though

[Orfantal]

Chaos said:

Loved this bit. Especially the last line there, the use of heavy just seemed to suit the mood of the piece without being overly stated/dramatized. I was always told it was the sign of a good poet when a single well chosen and placed word could take a well crafted piece and just make it something that bit more special. I don't think I've explained that quite well looking back but it's hard to explain. I'm a fan of multiple meanings I guess I'm trying to inarticulately (sp?) say.

edit: oo just got another meaning aswell. Like christmas

Chaos - pleased you liked this, it's one i was pretty happy with enjoyed layering the meaning but especially liked the image of the painted face it conjures up, and the thought that by a simple smudge the sadness could be changed to a smile