Poetry thread: New, newer newest

#1

I buy lots of stuff at thrift stores. I know that some of it comes from estates, or the homes of old folks that have passed away. Mostly, none of the relatives ever want their clothes.

I have wondered about those shirts and pants and shoes. And what their stories are. So I made this song. I hope this skeleton can live without its own clothes–the music. (It’s set in a slow 3/4 waltz time)

‘waltzing in a dead man’s shoes’

And I’m waltzing in a dead man’s shoes
I’m just so glad to be dancing with you
‘Cause you’re lighter than air and I feel that way too
I could stay up all night, and stare at the moon
And watch for the cow and the dish and the spoon
Waltzing around in a dead man’s shoes
**
I bought these shoes at St.Vincent de Paul
‘Cause its better than buying them down at the mall
When I paid at the counter the clerk she told me
They belonged to a man who had died tragically
Seems he took his own life with his very own hand
When he found out his wife had up and left him
**
And I’m waltzing in a dead man’s shoes
I’m just so glad to be dancing with you
You spin pirouette, then we both fall
Stumble back up and dance down the hall
I’m floating along on the air like a loon
Waltzing around in a dead man’s shoes
**
Well I paid my two bucks and I turned for the door
When the clerk said she’d tell me a little bit more
Seems the last one to own this same pair of shoes
Was not the first one, no he’d not bought them new
They had come from the house of a widower man
Who had ended his life with a gun in his hand
**
And I’m waltzing in a dead man’s shoes
I’m just so glad to be dancing with you
But the mirror’s reflection that hangs on the wall
Shows a man with a dress in his hands, and that’s all
Except for the flash of some gunmetal blue
And these droplets of red on a dead man’s shoes
**
And I’m waltzing in a dead man’s shoes
I’m just so glad to be dancing with you
‘Cause you’re lighter than air and I feel that way too
I could stay up all night, and stare at the moon
And watch for the cow and the dish and the spoon
Waltzing around in a dead man’s shoes…

#2
#3

And I was Taylor-rolled.

#4

love this HL!

can you post a youtube of you singing it too? :stuck_out_tongue:

#5

Thanks! I would post a youtube but I don’t know howto use the internet.

:hushed:

#6

I had to write a Pantoum (poem with a particular repetitive rhyming structure) for my writing class this week:

Disorientation

The geese are calling to me through the fog.
Hanging in the dark above our street.
Like noisy ghosts above the misty rooftops.
Suspended, with their journey incomplete.

Hanging in the dark above our street.
My heart goes out to them in their distress.
Suspended, with their journey incomplete.
I send them luck and hope they find success.

My heart goes out to them in their distress.
They’ve yet to start and have so far to go.
I send them luck and hope they find success.
Will they make it out before the coming snow?

Honking hard, they seem to let me know.
Like noisy ghosts above the misty rooftops.
There are ancient ways that soon they’ll start to follow.
The geese are calling to me through the fog.

Helen L. Storey 23/01/17

#7

lovely poem!

those damn LOUD geese :wink:

#8

I’m not really big on obvious rhyme at the line endings and I usually run away from rules and structure in poems but I gave it a go and sometimes it’s good to be outside your usual area.

#9

That’s me too.

I always found it a challenge to write a poem for assignment

But I did win 3 poetry contests in my college class

And all 1st place prizes were these awesome books of poems hardcover and brand new

I won for best original, best haiku (1st and 2nd) and then best poem in the style of emily Dickinson

That’s my crowning achievement in college :stuck_out_tongue:

#10

Elegy for a Year
Joseph Fasano

Before I watched you die, I watched the dying
falter, their hearts curled and purring in them

like kitfoxes asleep
beside their shadows, their eyes pawed out by the trouble

of their hunger. I was
humbling, Lord, like the taxidermist’s

apprentice. I said
yes, and amen, like the monk brushing

the barley from the vealcalf’s
withers, the heft of it

as it leans against his cilice.
Winter, I have watched the lost

lie down among their bodies, clarified
as the birdsong

they have hymned of.
I have heard the earth sing longer than the song.

Come, I said, come
summer, come

after: you were the bull-elk in the moonlight
of my threshold, knocking off the mosses from its antlers

before it backed away, bewildered, into foliage.
You were thin-ribbed, were hawk-

scarred, were few.
Yes, amen, before I heard you giving up

your singing, you were something stumbling hunted
to my open door; you were thinning with the milkweed

of the river. Winter, Wintering, listen: I think of you
long gone now

through the valley, scissoring
your ancient way

through the pitch pines. Not waiting, but the great elk
in the dark door. Not ravens

where they stay, awhile, in furor,
but the lost thing backing out

among the saplings, dancing off the madness
of its antlers. Not stone, not cold

stone, but fire. The wild thing, musk-blooded, at my open
door, wakening and wakening and

wakening, migrations
in the blindness of its wild eyes,

saying Look at them, look at how they have to.
Do something with the wildness that confounds you.

#11

I liked that.

#12

Cold Comfort

Now it hangs on the back of the kitchen chair
and I can’t bear to move it. The dark shape
a comfort in the gloom when I come in
from work, seeking light.

It reminds me of garden days:
you leaning over the borders, announcing
the latest arrivals with your baritone
in the Latin that I never learned.

It used to be green, like the moss that grows
on the path each year, then dies
when the sun hits it - reduced
to a neutral shade of nothing.

Sometimes, at night, I sit in the chair,
wrap the arms of your jacket around my waist
and feel your chest closing against my back
opening me up like a map.

Helen L. Storey 31/01/17

#13

wow.

#14

You like? I just wrote it today. Was struggling with the task for this week’s class and not getting anywhere. I found some "automatic writing " that I did and this poem just grew out of it. Probably wants some work.

#15

yeah i like. it builds up …emotion. imagery.

the title says it all right?

#16

Just finished writing this one:

Windswept

Windswept and blooming,
Your smile drizzles like the first pollen of spring,
My heart skips a beat, and I forget my feet
and I trip and stagger into your rhythm

Christmas lights line the foreheads of trees that guide the night;
Our hands stacked on your waist,
And your lapis dress, soaking in the rain
Paints the path to somewhere out beyond the great beyond

The sun sneaks up on trembling skin;
Quiet salutations hushed beneath quaint covers,
Laced with emblazoned kisses
That trace out fresh memories across ecstatic eyes and impatient hands

The long walk home is peppered with a maze of buildings,
casting shadows of future scenes;
the radio plays your favorite song
and I know where I belong

#17

Love it!

#18

Thanks!

#19

A new one:

A Magazine of Memories

Your dark brown hair rains down your face
Like a season trying to keep up the pace
Your silver necklace reflecting moonlight, it floods the room
Like an oceanfront fracturing in a monsoon

I’ve been singing you songs from my balcony at midnight
And sometimes babe, it feels alright
And other times, I think I’m just losing sight
Of you, of me, of the things we know aren’t right

Your black mascara is haunting your eyes
but who am I to criticize?
You were beautiful then, and you’re beautiful now
but things change, and I don’t think you’d remember anyhow

I’ve been writing you letters from my front porch at sunset
And sometimes honey, there’s things I wish I’d forget
And other times, I think I’m just browsing a magazine of memories
Of you, of me, of the things we thought were destiny

#20

Four Score Years

There is a story
in the photographs
told by your hair as it morphs
from a soft baby blonde
to the shock of thick, dark brown
fading to sparsely scattered grey
joined by a beard that seems
to say, I may be old
but I’m not over yet.
The smile is the same
throughout, lighting you up
and covering the pain
that crept in for a while
but now has ebbed away
leaving you sculpted
and strong, pictured
with the same woman in your arms
who remains.

Helen L. Storey 21/04/2017