Discussion What poem defines you?

[notreallynow]

Evening Lounge​

BY AFAA MICHAEL WEAVER

The humid nights are best and worst, best
because the birds sing at two in the morning when
you cannot get back into the other world, worst
because it is the moist heat that makes the skin supple,
makes you want to rub against someone else, a woman,
and there is nothing but the long list of lost chances,
things you could have said, perhaps the simple question
of will you sleep with me so that it is not just you
and this shell of a home, this place where it feels
the walls are another layer of my skin, and that is neither
best or worst. It is the holding of the dead stink,
the memories that was over him, holding them back.

It is the utter singleness of being the only person
here, the way the thoughts think themselves down to
accepting that this is really just me here wondering who I am,
just me here wondering why I am awake at two,
which trigger it was, knowing all the time all too well
the way the war of life is connected to the nervous system
of the world, the ganglia of our shared horrors, either
mine so large, or so people tell me, and here it seems
to be the membrane between the skin of my bones
and the skin of this home, the absorbing shock of space
that gives when the memories burn their way in or
out of me. I would lie here wondering how to tell her
I am wrestling with the angel, wrestling with memories
in the crevices and cracks of my body, of how I feel
right now, what it felt like then, in those times, and I am
glad she is not here, and I wish she were here, and she
has no name because this is some woman I do not know.

I practice in the silence of my thoughts the different pitch
and rhythm of how I might ask will you sleep with me,
afraid of what to say should she say yes and this decade
of my monkish life should lie open and I have to say why
I am sitting on the edge of the bed, why I have woke her from
the sweet smile I assume she has when I assume her horror
is smaller than mine

 

[wordsonscreen]

this is a poem i wrote myself from my pov.

The Mirror

In the mirror I search so desperately for the girl that I once knew.
But all I see are eyes sunken in, and a face that seems so blue.
In the mirror I search so hopelessly for the girl I seem to've lost
But in the end all of my searching came at a cost
In the mirror I search so helplessly for the girl that welcomes death
I'm sorry, I'm way too late I said, taking my last breath

In the mirror you search so cautiously for the girl that was here
Hoping and praying she didn't disappear
In the mirror you search so carelessly for the girl you miss so dear
Please stop searching, it's only becoming clear.
In the mirror you search so doubtfully for the girl that must be gone
wondering where everything had went wrong

In the mirror you see my reflection
the scars, regret and hate, inflaming my depression
In the mirror you hear my cries
Screaming, breathing, living, die
In the mirror you feel my presence
And I know you'll never accept it

​

also people are always asking this about songs so i think this is a cool change.

This is so beautiful!! <3 Thank you for sharing

 

[WornOutLife]

A MAN SAID TO THE UNIVERSE, by Stephen Crane:


A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

 

[x~Sophia~x]

 

[notreallynow]

I hardly read spanish, it is only a little intelligible for me because I understand french and the languages are very similar, but you can get a little of the original's music, reading them side by side.

The Labyrinth

Zeus could never untangle the nets
of stone that surround me. I have forgotten
the men I once was; I follow the hateful
path of monotonous walls
which is my destiny. Straight galleries
which curve in secret circles
as the years wear on. Parapets
cracked by the usury of so many days.
In the pale dust I have deciphered
tracks that I fear. The air has brought to me
in the concave afternoons a braying
or the echo of a braying, desolate voice.
I know that in the shadow lurks the Other, whose lot
is to fatigue the long solitudes
that weave and unweave this Hades
and to unnerve my blood and devour my death.
We two look for each other. I wish that
this were the last day of the waiting.

—Jorge Luis Borges (translated by David Bowles, October 2003)

El laberinto
Zeus no podrá desatar las redes
de piedra que me cercan. He olvidado
los hombres que antes fui; sigo el odiado
camino de monótonas paredes
que es mi destino. Rectas galerías
que se curvan en círculos secretos
al cabo de los años. Parapetos
que ha agrietado la usura de los días.
En el pálido polvo he descifrado
rastros que temo. El aire me ha traído
en las cóncavas tardes un bramido
o el eco de un bramido desolado.
Sé que en la sombra hay Otro, cuya suerte
es fatigar las largas soledades
que tejen y destejen este Hades
y ansiar mi sangre y devorar mi muerte.
Nos buscamos los dos. Ojalá fuera
Éste el último día de la espera.
—Jorge Luis Borges

Can't sleep heres more poems.

Pad, Pad​

By stevie smith

I always remember your beautiful flowers
And the beautiful kimono you wore
When you sat on the couch
With that tigerish crouch
And told me you loved me no more.

What I cannot remember is how I felt when you were unkind
All I know is, if you were unkind now I should not mind.
Ah me, the power to feel exaggerated, angry and sad
The years have taken from me. Softly I go now, pad pad.

‐-------
2 of my favourite Baudelaires + translation. Translation is not so accurate but I like it as poetry more than some of the closer ones.

LES PLAINTES D'UN ICARE​

Les amants des prostituées
Sont heureux, dispos et repus ;
Quant à moi, mes bras sont rompus
Pour avoir étreint des nuées.

C'est grâce aux astres nonpareils,
Qui tout au fond du ciel flamboient,
Que mes yeux consumés ne voient
Que des souvenirs de soleils.

En vain j'ai voulu de l'espace
Trouver la fin et le milieu ;
Sous je ne sais quel œil de feu
Je sens mon aile qui se casse ;

Et brûlé par l'amour du beau,
Je n'aurai pas l'honneur sublime
De donner mon nom à l'abîme
Qui me servira de tombeau.

LE GUIGNON

---

Pour soulever un poids si lourd,
Sisyphe, il faudrait ton courage !
Bien qu'on ait du cœur à l'ouvrage,
L'Art est long et le Temps est court.

Loin des sépultures célèbres,
Vers un cimetière isolé,
Mon cœur, comme un tambour voilé,
Va battant des marches funèbres.


— Maint joyau dort enseveli
Dans les ténèbres et l'oubli,
Bien loin des pioches et des sondes ;

Mainte fleur épanche à regret
Son parfum doux comme un secret
Dans les solitudes profondes.

TRANSLATIONS

Happy men who fornicate with whores
are satisfied and fit,
while my exhausted arms are impotent
from clasping only clouds.

I have not hollowed out the heart of space
nor touched its boundaries.
Beneath a fiery gaze I cannot meet
I feel my pinions fail.

I burn for beauty, but I shall not have
the highest accolade,
my name will not be given to the abyss
which waits to be my grave.

‐---------

Flesh is willing, but the Soul requires
Sisyphean patience for its song.
Time, Hippocrates remarked, is short
and Art is long.

No illustrious tombstones ornament
the lonely churchyard where I often go
to hear my heart, a muffled drum, parade
incognito.

'Many a gem,' the poet mourns, abides
forgotten in the dust
unnoticed there.

'many a rose' regretfully confides
the secret of its scent
to empty air.