"bildungsroman" poems
(Mangroves shake the boy
Rapture tempts his will-
He will not eat tonight.
Only blue shades fill
a hole so deep
covered
with
ashes
he
eats
- Himself -
an ardent fill
of bruised light,
like chimeras on
the mantel.)
Nov 20, 2012
Nov 20, 2012 at 8:00 PM UTC
Confide in me
the irony
of laughter as a crutch to keep
with self descriptive Bildungsroman
in view of Schadenfreude's Ad hominem
Mask the image, compensate, compensate
Power struggle, shift division, relegate, relegate
Egocentric discharges inhabited by identity crisis
Circumstantial Deus ex machina, plastered on by streams of vices
No wreck, no head on, but a path beset by tolls and diversions
Somehow I must find a way to make these scattered routes converge
Dead and othered language roams the fields of pomposity
More ironic self aggrandizement, an appropriation of ferocity
Paint them a picture in the mind's eye of your blurred forward vision
I want to see the target marked, but attention is a competition
I'm Viable, I'm Jovial, I have the means to take these chances
I'm lying now, it's one or the other, let's hope I make the right advances
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 2:21 PM UTC
If I were to write a life-long poem
A line every day, so to put on display
The simple happenings of life
To weave verses together, an enduring tether
Of all life’s joys and strife
Would it have rhythm and beat? Skip and repeat?
Or would it just flow easy and free?
Would it charm or would it harm, this rhythmic yarn
That weaves the fabric of me?
Would this rhyme be a bildungsroman?
Charting progress, growth and learning?
Or would it compel, by whom it was written
To not publish but set it to burning?
Lumps and bumps, and dreary spells
Momentary lameness and drought
Every epic has its lows, as any writer knows
‘Tis what life is all about
Would it conclude with pride and nothing to hide
Confident and self-esteemed?
Would it spell to its reader, whoever at all
The tale of life lived and not dreamed?
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 11:22 AM UTC
Four years later, and I still sit up in the same bed at night with salt-stained cheeks.
I wonder how many lives have been lost in between these sheets.
how many loves are still embedded in the fibers of the comforter,
how many rib pieces lay stashed in the pillows from those horrible, heavy sobs.
You know the ones,
Where the fire dies in your hot air-balloon lungs, and they collapse in on themselves.
You can’t say anything, or feel anything but the crushing weight of your self inflicted silence.
All you can do is gasp, and gasp, and gasp for breath, but nothing comes out. It never does.
No one ever knows how much your heart bleeds for the people you can’t stand.
You offer them olive branches, while they offer you bile, and spit poison into your eyes with each syllable from their God-forsaken lips.
Do you remember when Jesus loved you?
When His face shined upon you, and He kissed the top of your head telling you that the light you possessed was greater than the shadow it created?
He was right.
But you’re afraid of the dark,
and have to turn on every light in the house just to make it to the bathroom.
So what good are your heroics if you burn yourself from the flame inside you?
You were supposed to be great.
You were one of the chosen ones,
the Lionhearted heroine
with a heart meant to fit inside two people,
but it was stuck in your small frame by mistake.
You can’t dance to a heartbeat that powerful.
Your bones know how to waltz,
but they’re old and tired from the thousands of dances
from the thousands of lives before yours.
You understand, don’t you?
Your hips just don’t curve like they used to.
But when the song ends,
and quarter notes turn into full rests,
maybe then you’ll get some sleep.
We both need it.
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 1:54 AM UTC
Ten minutes ago I cried
wracking, heaving, red-faced,
closed eyes, no-sound sobs behind
my hamper in the corner, craving him
even though he sleeps uncomfortably
4,000 miles away 6 hours
into my future, hostel walls akin to
secrets within--
twenty one pilots blaring
in the space behind my face
and above my throat, unsettling
the anonymity of my lifestyle, indebted,
growing thinner than my frame as
we both fall to the circumstance of youth
chanting the war cry in pub crawls
and hub drawls where his best friend
sits across from the smug smoke in
between cherry lips,
our kissing knees
begging me
to repeat
history--
in an unadulerated, first-time
draft ripped open and stretched
for my next big "portfolio"
that's worth more burning by my own
hand as I run blistering (drunk) through
a hallway which will never be mine like
the bills-rent-direct-deposit rinse repeat
cycle spinning my eyes into glazed over
acceptance of my lot.
But he still sleeps out of reach
while I'm too paralyzed behind this
******* hamper.
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 9:30 PM UTC
Drunk off delusion-
or youth
or the fantasy they spoon fed us from birth
Even in the cynical world of poetry,
and the bildungsroman novels they imposed on us in high school-
I believed that believing was enough
Call it naiveté,
to have known the flaws and still jumped towards your good
without a life line, or a hope
I am free falling into an unknown abyss
trusting what I know to be concrete
to catch my fall
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 29, 2014 at 12:44 AM UTC
Tamir is Israeli. I don't know what that means beyond he speaks Hebrew, came at one point from that area, and keeps dark-skinned friends.
I'm trying to cultivate a lethal talent
because one day I want to **** people
by painting them as they are
(and when you're known
as yourself
you have
nothing else)
but all my days are micro montages, characters
grandiose, come and go
drink a beer, do a line, perhaps
chat about the politics of
Germany France UK Belgium a
little high.
and then they go.
this is a great city on maybe
the world's longest coast
and odds are tomorrow, 87%, the whole day will be
grey and fog and a halfdark cloak
with a sort of haphazard mist that isn't rain, but
somehow in the grey condenses enough to
slippen tiles, dampen jackets, water roses
where everywhere it blow.
within four weeks men in black jackets, ties
sunglasses and training will come for me
and though I have accomplished much and
in a way am capable I
will try and throw myself from a nearby cliff and I
dream at night of the slope, of
wonder how far out I'd have to leap
to hit the highway below.
(and honestly politely hoping I
don't disrupt too much traffic when I go)
because there is a life lived and a life worth living and this
molecular decomposition holds
no loyalty on me. but I guess I had some
faith that I would live to....
that I would live.
I saw my life a grand tapestry. thought my
idolatry would eventually
coalesce into at least one great novel, Bildungsroman, tale of
development and
I guess that's been taken away from me.
and I've prepared ill-ly only exercised in
beat/postmodern poetry. l will
maybe soon stumble from the cliffs or
handcuffed bite my wrists, and
take any artery I might rend open
and all particles, unfettered, heartless bits. nonwritten novel, this is it...
there is the west and then there is the ocean.
Jun 29, 2014
Jun 29, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC
I thought we were on the same page,
Turns out we weren't even in the same book
Reading a classic romance, I stumbled across you and thought that this was it
While you only wanted to finish and restart your little Bildungsroman
The repetition must drive you insane
You say my book isn't thick enough, there isn't enough plot and that it's not what you want to read
But I say I like every inch of your book, it makes you think and it's just thick enough
You say my book won't sit well on your shelf, it's too different
But I say that it fits perfectly, your bookshelf needs some variety
You say that the happy ending in my book isn't what you want
But I say how do you know what you want until you've tried it?
I can bicker and banter, reason and fight,
but it won't change the fact that you are stuck on page 3 in your little novel
And you chose to tear out my part before actually reading it
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 11:50 PM UTC
freakout. let’s all hide this from our parents together
i want so desperately to impress you, i want so hugely for you to like me
i love nirvana (as of this morning), but i’m not faking
i really do love Floyd the Barber (as of hearing it this morning)
Kurt Cobain died on the cross almost thirty years ago
he’d be fifty seven and I have a headache
this **** smells like that guy who gave me my guitar
my godfather (close enough), my childhood (ending rapidly)
and barbecues in the backyard
douse me in axe body spray and tell me it’s lynx
it is lynx, i’m the one who’s wrong
i feel real for the first time in years, and shorter than i thought
5”4 and sinking into the ground, so dance with me
let’s take our shoes off in the street
two songs, one movie, one podcast
all playing in the background, and we’re off every beat
I love nirvana (always have), I have a headache (always will)
I’m teetering between high and not
is this the kind of **** that makes you creative?
look at the little bag you brought, it has bats on it
it makes you so happy, look at you dancing
look at you on the driveway, in your Kurt Cobain sunnies
this is what he would have wanted
Jul 18, 2024
Jul 18, 2024 at 8:05 PM UTC
Life never seems quite so bad when I’m holding your hand.
Only major chords ring from the strings that hold my heart
with a melody somewhere along the lines of I hope we’re never apart,
a carefully constructed piece of coming of age bildungsroman art.
Before you I was perfectly content with being a one man band.
You threw me into a new key and helped me find a comfort within myself -
a sort of lovers arrogance, because I found the perfect girl and nobody else comes close.
I don’t need drugs because every moment with you is already ecstasy.
An hour with you is a minute without,
and when we’re together the world runs in double speed yet I’m unaware of it being there.
Because you are my world and there’s nothing I’d change
Just the love of my life and maybe one day I’ll be lucky enough to call you my wife.
Mar 24, 2019
Mar 24, 2019 at 7:11 PM UTC
those precious pages have turned into light whisky colored books
faded flowers and witching hours kept them safe and sound
stories of a prince on a horse to a woman being crowned
would be like watching books playing theater in a round
late night, trying to make the best type of Irish whisky
wearing an old favorite coffee stained t shirt and pasta that's being browned
making everything look brisky
wondering about the books that turned into musical,
they try to sway
the phantom of the opera ,the joffery ballet
or the Norwegian wood that shows a bildungsroman play.
crime being bizarre where detectives seize the day
left a remarkable fascination, they say.
the sticky notes on walls having a catchphrase collection
is like achieving a type of rare perfection
from all the fiction to contemporary
it ends up to a classic enraptured literary.
from chasing words to make a captivating name
its like en tracing a never ending game.
Jun 15, 2020
Jun 15, 2020 at 1:14 AM UTC
And she looked at the man mostly named for a color
He had a real name, of course, but the color was so much more true than that
Names are just sounds, identified
“Oh, you.” A smile, recognized
Maybe she knew him from his own words
or a long, dark wall filled with names from a war from before she was born
or maybe it was more than that
“Oh, you.”
Homecoming
Cliff jumping
A Bildungsroman novel in 18 years
Here it is, hear it coming? You have to listen closely,
it’s in the whisper between two friends
then and now
When is it that we realize we are all just mirrors of each other in the circle of time? Soon, very soon-
We’re coming around the bend of it now, hold on tight and-here: immortality
Oh, you: immortal.
Oct 2, 2020
Oct 2, 2020 at 11:48 AM UTC