Poetry Submission and Discussion Thread

[Arcturus Novus]

It's been quite a long time since I've written anything; here's something I finished yesterday, I'm quite proud of it.

oh, dear Jericho

if you knew that your walls
were so easy to topple,
why would you let me approach them?

why would you let me put the shofar
to my lips
and play for you?

why would you let me send myself
down your narrow streets
through alleys and corners
and say that you were now
truly mine?

you knew that this was not supposed to happen.

if you knew what would come of this,
if you could change history

would you have made your walls
stronger?

your foundations
deeper?

would you strike me
down
as i approached the gates?

would you spare me the agony
of six days
of waiting
to prevent our disaster
on the seventh?

or would you let it happen
all again
just to hear my song?

===

"and they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein;
only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and iron,
they put into the treasury of the house of Adonai."

[New Jewlan]

Bitter arguing
Rages in the neighborhood.
Who will stop
The killer cop?

You must have a crystal ball! I like your poem, it wastes no time in getting to the point :-)
Nice flag by the way, I agree with you 100%.

[Liminal Space]

This is one of my favourite Chinese poems about nature and the fleetingness of life.

"这雨，出生于天，死于大地。中间的过程，便是人生。我之所以看这雨水，不看天，不看地，看的也不是雨。而是这雨的一生……这便是生与死。"— 耳根 《仙逆》
This rain was born in heaven and died on the earth. The middle process is life. The reason I look at this rain is not to look at the sky or the ground, nor the rain. It is the life of the rain ... this is life and death.

-

Here are a few nature haikus I came up with:

1.
Autumn rain falling
Mist covers the pond willows
Wind steals the blossoms

2.
Smoke covers the moon
Washed away by the spring rain
A new beginning

3.
Red-crowned crane with grace
Stands alone on mountain peak
Head raised to heaven

[MC United]

This thread has motivated me to post one of my own poems.

Partial inspiration for the poem is Swinburne's "Nephelidia": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45299/nephelidia

WAVELETS

From the tips of the tops of the teardrops that trickle as Titanian droplets of drizzling methane,
To the puddles and pools that perform as impluvia, receiving the rancor and rantings of reavers,
Flow the feelings and fears and the fevers of fortune as they siphon and seep with the speed of a slurry,
And vanish as vapors when viewed through the viewscreens that monitor views of the vastness of space,
As the lightning that lightens the landscapes with longing for scenes and sensations both sacred and profane,
While darkness descends over dark desolation and deadens the senses of dreadful deceivers,
Awakens as witnesses worthier wonderers whose view of the welkin brings never a worry,
Enraptured by visions of vast evanescence so envisioned that tempest nor time can erase?
Far from the Hadean heart of the heliosphere raging and roiling with raw radiation,
Far from the floes of ice frozen and flowing by shorelines that shimmer and shiver in silence,
Reflections of radar reveal the ripples that scatter and struggle and strive to see starlight,
The horizon being hidden by haze of a hue being blander than brighter and yellower than redder.
The farther the features that fascinate farers who stagger and stumble in frore fascination,
Perceived through the presence of polarization that varies in valence and wavers in violence,
The nearer the nexus of nightshade and noontide, of luminous littorals illumined by far light,
Of lakes lined with ice that lies deeper the denser, surmounted by substances colder than wetter;
Clouds that conceal both crestlines and canyons from curious crews with constrained consultation
Cling to the cliffsides that channel the courses of clear cryogenics to basins unbounded,
Heavy as the heartbeats that hammer till homebound through miles unnumbered and moons in their myriads,
Now as a mist of mysterious gravity, now as a fog that chill climate distills.
Engaging the grandeur of transformed terrains at the rarefied height of the crown of creation,
Perception partakes of perceived panoramas from dreaming enthralled to awakened astounded,
Till a voice from the void voices salient syllables in sidereal seconds and orbital periods:
“Science is the sense of the sources of secrets that hover and hide in the heavens and the hills.”
With piles and pylons and cranes for construction of structures both stolid and apotropaic,
Strongholds of sciences spring automated with heavy-hinged hatches and sky-facing windows,
Exotically exigent shelters extending toward heavenly orbs offered up as oblations,
The earlier established their frigid foundations, the sooner the soaring of space-spanning spars.
Arcs and antennas arising like axioms with airs analytic and arts algebraic,
Pioneering probes on elongate ellipses, spectacular scenes of hexagonal wind-flows,
Radiant ribbons of rapturous ringshine emerging from umbras of orb’s occultations:
All steps on the staircase through pathways empyrean that leads to the light of the life-lighting stars.

[MC United]

I used to post a ton of poetry in the writing discussion thread years ago, when it was consistently active and I was in high school/undergrad. Looking back at it now feels very strange.

I mean, here's an alliterative sonnet about zombies:

Post Zombie Stress Disorder

They burst through boards, and broke each barricade,
unfeeling, fleshless fingers flailing wild.
The scratching, soulless sounds they sometimes made
could make a mighty man a mindless child.
These hellish hunters, horrid, hard to kill,
Unliving, lurched and leapt, alert though blind.
Around the ruined roads they roamed, and still
they haunt my head, and hunt my helpless mind.
Each shadow shakes me, shows my shame inside.
Each sudden sound will scare one scarred as I.
I fear these fiends, though false, and flee or hide.
In bed, with bated breath, I beg to die.
I live no life alone; the living dead
still screech and stumble, stuck inside my head.

I wish I could say that my writing has improved a lot since then, but to be honest I haven't written anything substantial in years and I'm kinda sad about that.

Alliterative + sonnet = good job

[Greater Cesnica]

Seeing as this thread has stagnated, here's a poem I wrote about Zuko and Katara (zutara) from Avatar: The Last Airebender

A dance of steam unfolds, with a ferocity borne of fluidity,

This skirmish of heat and cold, ordained to continue for all infinity,

Draco's wrath was tempered, soothed through Aquarius' determination,

The duo's sorrow now remembered, memories comprised of past tribulations,

Through the well of memories a miasma permeates, where blood meets skin and flesh,

Nevertheless the pain abates, replaced by the comfort Aqua sought to impress,

They remained all too reticent, their passions and despairs guarded,

The fruits of fire and water's intelligence, a patience destined to be regarded,

Masters of their fates and souls, the ultimate guardians of their love,

Their vigor charted on ethereal scrolls, their virtue evident as that of a dove.

[MC United]

Seeing as this thread has stagnated, here's a poem I wrote about Zuko and Katara (zutara) from Avatar: The Last Airebender

A dance of steam unfolds, with a ferocity borne of fluidity,

This skirmish of heat and cold, ordained to continue for all infinity,

Draco's wrath was tempered, soothed through Aquarius' determination,

The duo's sorrow now remembered, memories comprised of past tribulations,

Through the well of memories a miasma permeates, where blood meets skin and flesh,

Nevertheless the pain abates, replaced by the comfort Aqua sought to impress,

They remained all too reticent, their passions and despairs guarded,

The fruits of fire and water's intelligence, a patience destined to be regarded,

Masters of their fates and souls, the ultimate guardians of their love,

Their vigor charted on ethereal scrolls, their virtue evident as that of a dove.

Nice image of fire meeting water. I also like the structure and the rhyme scheme. Well done.