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Liz Nov 2016
Light of my life,
The slings and arrows
Of outrageous fortune
Bloom a rose
In the deeps of my heart.

And so I came forth
But could not behold the stars.
The slings and arrows,
They trespassed upon my thoughts.

And I cried that I came
To this great stage of fools,
But it echoed loudly within me
Because I am hollow at the core.

That outward existence which conforms,
This inward life which questions
Confusion now hath made his masterpiece of.  

I don't exactly know
What I mean by that,
But I mean it.
This is made of quotes from some of my favorite pieces of literature
Stanley Wilkin Nov 2016
TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.*

W.B.Yeats




In a time such as this, in darkening days
        Without screeching witches
Frightened banshees, buggered old men
Searching for solace, eyes streaming with icicle-lust-
Gangrene facebook: torn-up, shredded twitter

The cries of the disconnected,
Wailing!
Wailing!

In a time like this, in darkening days,
The disconnections come in waves!

Searching for reason amongst the unreasoning,
Hunting for sanity within the insane,
Identifying the dead from amongst the living.

Wailing!
Wailing!

Email excreting venom
Internet exfoliating lies-politicians wrapped
                         In deceit-
A cold time of it, a wretched time of it.

Only within our hearts does hope lie.
                      Only there
Away from conflict and disorder
                             Away
From the capricious cacophony of biased debate.

Wailing!
Wailing!
Nigel Finn Apr 2016
I've got that feeling once again,
After staying up til 3 A.M,
When insecurities start to creep,
And I curse myself for lack of sleep.

It seems I have no way of knowing,
Which way my thought process is going,
One day I'm happy, the next I'm glum,
And console myself with smoke and ***.

I try to find a compromise-
Get blasted drunk, and close my eyes,
But the world keeps spinning round and round,
Bottle's empty- no peace found.

Like the Irish airman in the sky,
I seem to watch as other lives flash by,
Then I pass out, hoping I'll never know,
The places those tormented souls must go.
A Sassoon inspired poem (the last two lines are almost completely stolen from "Suicide in the Trenches"), with a nod to W.B.Yeats with the Irish airman reference. Two of my favourite poets.

Written whilst feeling a bit guilty that I'm just a small, insignificant person with not much power to change anything, and being quite drunk. Never a good combination.
MsAmendable Feb 2016
Oh come to me
Sweet human child
In the water and the wild
Taste the berries picked with glee
Join the brazen revelry,
Turn back not,
Or be forgot,
Come to me, dear child.

Come this way
Oh Little one,
I'll break the rain to show you sun,
With the waves we sing and sway
And will take you far away
From your past
Your pain won't last
Come this way, my sun
Inspired by Yeats'  'the stolen child'
Stella Cleere Nov 2015
Often we have disagreed, but now I refuse to hold my tongue
and shall raise pen to meet pen, watch the words clash in the air,
for how could you grant such a way of living superiority?
When the sensual and the intellect can meet as one
in capturing a young man's beauty in such a way
that he leaps from the page,
causing the reader to sail away away too.

But even if we saw eye to eye, as shortsighted as each other,
lack of intellect be ******.
I could not wish to travel there
to a place devoid of him, of all that encompasses him,
devoid of green eyes and jet hair,
a space within which his voice does not resonate
and participate in such an unequal trade
as to exchange immortality for a life without him.

Revered as you are, I do not agree.
I shall champion the dearth of intellect,
revere in all things sensual, as this is all I am fit for in your eyes,
but I shall be in love
and it is this I choose
over an infinite rhapsody of lifetimes.
When you are older but have not aged,
And lie restlessly with the cat in your arms,
Think of injustices you once against raged,
Or perhaps of that gauzy fairy’s charms?

The nightingale hours pierced by larks,
Recall the ones that we once shared,
As each new lover leaves red marks;
I think of how your heart once cared.

My memory will have begun to fade,
Less of a “belle dame” than a shade -
Paler than you, my vampiric soul!

To you, dark bat, I give my dreams,
As the fire's embers cease to gleam
And leave in their wake the coal.
A poem for that guy I keep writing about. I guess he must be my muse or something. Inspired mostly by Ronsard's "Quand vous serez bien vielle" but also referencing Baudelaire and Yeats.
Glottonous May 2015
The forms of lions reported were false.
It was a body of men with no heads.
They were no one, but everyone was it.
A cannibalistic **** of Self.
Gaping yaws with no faces to give word,
Unable to hear their own glottal calls,
Guttered incoherence for none to see.
Their fire and power were unlike those stored
In our hundred buried years of Mundis.
Unbound viscera – black, boiled, and souring:
Replaceable parts via war and tea;

Served with flesh overdeveloped to taste;
Served to slouching tongues and beastly fingers
By those for whom labor is cause and curse.
Adrenaline and other chemicals
Oiling their blood, charging minds, taxing nerves,
Traumatically driving their will to serve
Their bottom-toothed anathematic maws.
Those best who remained born of conviction
Died with the worst unexceptionally.
We now ask not what is coming for us,
But how long we will allow it to feed.
A re-working of Yeats' 'The Second Coming'.
rsc May 2015
Pressure puckers &
a migraine blooms
parachute leaves looming
from my mind,
moonscapes of bare rock.
I've been waking up in a tomb again,
mouth mummified &
crusted over with drool as
my body jolts up at 6
6:45
finally 7:
I rise from the dead once more.
Yeats spoke to the Beats & he speaks to me,
feet creaking old floorboards
in a house with no internet.
"Pensive they paced along the faded leaves,
While slowly he whose hand held hers replied:
'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts.'"
I ate artichokes for lunch on pizza &
lost a piece of my soul down
the toilet of the coffee shop bathroom.
I came out of the womb once & I think that was enough.
I cough up brown mucus
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
One of my ribs pokes out
& picks my lunch for me,
pointing rudely,
leaving blood on the gleaming glass.
People around me discuss
the value of places they've never lived
& a homeless man sleeps with his mouth open.
I drink an infinite iced tea
that refills itself whenever I get thirsty &
a prehistoric potted plant
belches dinosaurs back into existence.
I clean my teeth to become
the princess of the salad greens,
eating olives with the tips of my fingers
the way monsters eat eyeballs
in the nightmares of children.
Everyone shakes,
terrified to look at each other
mouths bleeding confetti & glitter.
A remedy to bitterness: simple syrup.
I want to write love letters
to the boy who broke my heart &
still has all the shards.
I found out yesterday
that I'm a woman of hard angles,
that my moon might always be fighting
to whole its halves.
My calves are sore
& I'm glad I quit smoking.
I'm afraid of empty bird cages &
waking up without a tongue.
My lungs do a dance under my rib cage
& shake my skeleton out of my body.
Hot toddy & we drink on Tuesdays.
Any available body will do.
Picasso's blue period never seemed more lifelike
than when I try to jump
head first into the nightlife.
Nothing can be proven true
but I think my respiratory system
is at least not false.
If I believe hard enough,
I can feel my pulse.
Mike Essig Apr 2015
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
---Those dying generations---at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unaging intellect.

II
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

III
O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity**.

IV
Once out of nature I shall never take
My ****** form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
Yeats as an aging poet looking for the reasons why...
Brian Payamps Jan 2015
Is time to pay homage to those who paved a path for me. Had a "Dream with in a dream" like Edgar did. No kiss upon the brow, we shook hands and drank tea. Spoke about love and death and all its synonyms like I am to he. Did you kissed her because she died? Were the grain of golden sand that creeped through your fingers  from her broken hour glass? Is this life a reality or yet a dream? For the poor it must be a nightmare to sleep and not see reality. As he vanished right in front of me and left behind a black feather with ink as it came from a Raven's wing.

Pinched my self to wake up from this dream or nightmare. Scared of what might come next. I see snow flakes start to fall from the sky as if heaven is coming down towards me. I look up with my mouth open catching snow on my tounge. I hear a horse gallop and is getting close. He stops right before and asked if the woods are mine? He says, "I know he know he still has miles to go for promises he must keep before he sleeps." As the horse harness bell shakes he ask "before I depart how far I'll go before I sleep in the woods that are lovely, dark and deep. Remember my name Robert Frost, for when I sleep and arrive at your door but For now I must go I have promises to keep, I have promises to keep before I sleep." As he vanishes right before my eyes horse and all I hear the gallops far far away and a solid snow flake falls right between my eyes.

and I blink and I see 21st century man ask a stranger where am i? He smiles and sarcastically said "the land of the free" "we were named New Amsterdam but now is called Manhattan, this hear is Harlem. I'm Langston Hughes let's sit by the river. Asked him how's life? "Life is fine" "I was born for living as are you." "You'll be dogged if you let them see you die for love, so live. You'll make your mark I'll all come one night." Took the elevator to the 16 floor asked him if I was dreaming? He said "of course I died in 1967" as he jumped this time for the first time he yelled "don't let it dry up like a raisin in the sun, dream don't defer". Just like that he was gone.

As time moves back and forth between centuries. I hear murmurs, see things I can't understand stop please the voices are to much for me. Troy, Troy is it burned yet? Homer and William Butler Yeats discuss Odeysseu's journey, Helen and Menelaus king of Sparta.
Stop! Stop! Stop! As I fall from space in fear of my death. I wake up and see the sun beaming through the blinds. The smell of pancakes enters the room and in to my nose, glad is on my face. She said "How you sleep last night, bad dream again" As I eat with my left and write with my right. Time to pay homage i said. Time to pay homage.
Time to pay homage to those Poets I love the most.
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