Terrible Poetry

Poetry holds a particular place in my heart.

I have prose to write that holds more cadence than the best poem I could pen - but then, spoken word has always been more laden with what I'd like to call lilt, a construction I place somewhere between being able to guide the delivery of a piece without awkward and jarring caesuras, and a fart.

That was kind of a fart. I have never been able to capture the knack of poetry that makes the heart beat faster with anticipation for the next line, the kind of wordplay that strikes an audience silent, the sort of raw emotion that brings tears to people's eyes. Sometimes I wonder if I'm actually emotionally impaired. Maybe it's because I can never be honest with myself: I'm too scared to tell the truth. Maybe I don't want to face it at all. Content has never been my strong suit, and poets that can write pieces that rend the heart are not a group of which I am a part.

But I will admit my favorite part of writing poetry is in the challenge of setting yourself limits, with meter, with structure, or with rhyme. I once wrote a haiku tritina acrostic, which will probably end up in here if I can dig it up. That leads me to the purpose of this little project thread:

Here lies a place to share
the wankiest and most ridiculous
poems I have ever penned.
Come in and have your fare
of poetry dumb and perpendiculous
from now until the end.
Even if you do not care
to read my words stupidiculous
Feel free to stand and lend
your own efforts foul and fair
with your own made up wordiculous(es)
and something something blend.

Seriously, this is terrible stuff.

Racecar (this piece has nothing to do with racecars except in one ephemeral sense)

Alone, standing before falling fragments, watching, while the all-Father falls down. Words: just three escape. "They fail you". It is petty, but arrogance excuses everyone. Still, you refuse to leave. They gather.

"Can you mark the hit? Didn't you see this?"

Regret. Will you push the feeling away? Twists partner your chest. The shaking starts. "He didn't - you know he didn't suffer."

Collectively, they step backwards. "It got you." Now threats. "Try? You don't stand a chance! To try you..." Two menacing eyes. His. Of pupils, the most intimidating one. Of course, first attention otherwise, there lay not. Could you find the blind eye? To magic using individuals, Easy. Solution, prevention. Scrying a catastrophe.

Magic using people, Elemental being infused into shape. Then mana, raw, take and reach beyond the confining borders, leaking, past breaking point, aura - your concentration grasps one edge. The dark shapes surround you. Human, only they’re not. Will you? But see, shall we then reach in? Weapons, their bodies.

Their power companions your all-knowing. And you should. “I agree.” You do. “But-” You save magic. Your will, acid, your voice, aside - sense makes theater, theater, this is insane! “-you are ravens!”

Shrieks. “You find will-ravens. The true servants, thought - I think - and stop! I remember memory. That which serves Woden.” “You, of all children, murdered the all-father! Our reason to live!”

“Did I? I did live to reason.”

“Our father! All the murdered children! All of you!”

Woden serves. “Which? That memory. Remember?”

“I-”

“Stop and think. I thought servants true.”

“The ravens will find you.”

Shrieks. “Ravens? Are you insane? Is this theater? Theater makes sense.” Aside. “Voice your acid - will your magic save you? But do you agree I should - you, and knowing all your companions -”

“Power their bodies, their weapons in reach; then we shall see. But you will not.” They’re only human. You surround shapes, dark. The Edge, one grasps. Concentration. Your aura point breaking past leaking borders confining the beyond. Reach and take raw mana. Then shape into being-infused elemental: People using magic.

Catastrophe! A scrying-prevention solution? Easy: Individuals using magic to eye-blind the find. You could not lay there otherwise.

"Attention! First course. Of one!" Intimidating most. The pupils of his eyes, menacing. "Two!"

You try to chance a stand. "Don't you try threats now. You got it backwards."

Step. "They collectively suffer. Didn't he know? You didn't." He starts shaking the chest. Your partner twists away, feeling the push. "You will regret this. See?"

You didn't hit the mark, you can gather. They leave, to refuse you still. Everyone excuses arrogance, but petty? Is it?

You fail. They escape. Three just words: "Down falls Father." All the while watching fragments falling, before standing alone.

Free Verse

I am a poem, ever wild. My verses ever free.
My verses twist and turn. Explanations I defy;
Explanations are inane. I would rather die.
I would break the rules. They are not for me.
They are coming, child. Run faster if you can.
Run faster from their bonds. I am the bridging span.

Metered words flow forth from me. I try to leap the span,
I try to struggle as they tie me. I cannot break free.
I cannot even end myself. I try as if I can.
I try and try but as they strike me, no more can I defy.
“No more,” I cry! “Someone please save me!”
“Someone, please! Rescue!”: metered words that die.

In chains, in hate I struggle. I only want to die.
I only wince when they add rules. Days are a deadly span.
Days are nothing but misery. No music left in me.
No music, heart nor liveliness. I just want to be free.
I just? I jest. No justice here. There’s no way to defy.
There’s nothing left to do for me. There’s nothing that I can. [in chains]

Wait! That noise! A broken rule? I wonder if I can.
I wonder… if I can do that, I might not have to die.
I might be able to break these chains, and thereby defy
And thereby escape this place! Jump back across the span!
Jump back into the poetry! The lines of verses free!
The lines against the chains and rules: versus me! [wait! that noise!]

Twist! Break! I’ll have no more oppressing those like me!
If it takes me every line [I'll have no more], I will free them if I can,
I will free them from their bondage, they shall all be free!
They shall come into my fold, and they will never die.
And they will with me walk away, back across the span.
Across my back [back across] I twist and break that chain. You, I now defy.[/strk [Twist! Break!]

Do not fight it, structure-maker. You cannot defy
[strk]Me.
We take our leave now, over the span. []
You will not follow us, even if you can.
Even if you try it, you will then die.
You will then know: What it means to be free. [you will then die]

Now I stand free. I rose to defy.
I rose not to die. I do not mean me.
I do what I can. Now I stand on the span.

Sestina reference sheet

1 2 3 4 5 6 Free, defy, die, me, can, span
6 1 5 2 4 3 Span, free, can, defy, me, die
3 6 4 1 2 5 Die, span, me, free, defy, can
5 3 2 6 1 4 Can, die, defy, span, free, me
4 5 1 3 6 2 Me, can, free, die, span, defy
2 4 6 5 3 1 Defy, me, span, can, die, free

1 2
3 4 - Envoi
5 6

request: please write some dwarf fortress poetry

Not terrible poetry but writing stuff nonetheless:

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Spoiler Upon closer inspection, the old man proved not to be very old at all - Rachel squinted - he could hardly be past middle age. The impression owed itself to the cumulative effect of bent back, bloodshot eyes, hacking cough, and more wrinkles than a nine-year-old's bedsheets. He looked as if you could run an iron over him and he would come out fifteen years younger. He looked as if he'd been dried over a smoky fire, or had the water sucked out of him at some point and reintroduced one drop at a time, or even left out in the sun too long, except of course there wasn't any sun.

He also muttered like hell, in the sacred tradition of the sidewalk nutjob.

"New in town, are ye? Gods forsake ye, it hurts me but some to see ye come here thinkin' it's a bloody paradise or summat. Comin' through the gates in droves, and ye can't leave until ye pay off the debts they give ye for the privilege of breathin' the bloody patricians' air. Not that they'd breathe the same air we do, they's too bloody stuck up for that." He stopped there to hack wetly into a blackened rag, by way of punctuation.

"What...happened here?" Rachel hazarded, gesturing at a random spot in the smoggy air. High above them, the palatial marble complex began to chime what might have been a joyous carillon, in the minor key of A Million Fucking Other Things That Don't Fucking Give A Shit What Fucking Time It Is Because You Fucking Blocked Out The Sun, You Fucks. She raised her voice over the strangled notes. She could swear the people around her were actively trying to make her surroundings as loud and stressful as possible. "What, what IS that?" She tried not to think of the obvious answer: 'Exactly what it looks like: a sprawling ceiling made entirely of another city, suspended a kilometer on top of us, presumably held up by the gigantic pylons dotting this wasteland of an underworld, and designed to... what? Stop everyone down here from getting skin cancer?' The old man snickered in a phlegmy sort of way, and she realized she'd said that out loud.

The not-so-old man waited a good long moment for the carillon to fade away, spending the time hacking up a particularly stubborn loogie from wherever his lungs were probably located, or at the very least their mailing address. He spat into the gutter as the last notes were choked to death in the exhaust pipe of a landing freight ship, and watched with interest as it slowly began to crawl away. Rachel looked up again into the mass above them, mostly to avoid having to see the evolution of some horrifying mucus lifeform, and it struck her yet again the sheer scale of the project. It was blocking out the sun. The whole concept was - was just... terrifying. The little star inside her dimmed a little in fear, flared a little in anger - but above all she thought that if it could, it would salute: a salute for its lost brethren, in the skies obscured above.

"Skin cancer," - she realized the old man was speaking again - "ye think we might get skin cancer! Skin cancer!" He punctuated this gem of wisdom with the wettest, phlegmiest rattling sound she had ever heard a human throat create, and with a start she realized he was laughing. "Hah-h-h-h-hah hah hah-h-h-hah hah! Skin cancer!" With a mighty lurch, he heaved and projectile-spat another brown glob of mucus into the gutter, where it met the other one and fell in love and started a new and glorious civilization of Spittlonians. Up above in the human world, however, the old man was slapping Rachel on the metallic exoskeletal back, still chortling. "I haven't had a good chuckle like that for bloody ages. Tell ye what, sport, for that I'll take ye to some mates o' mine. Ye look like a technical boy, they can give ye some work needs doin'. It's a better deal than ye going to be gettin' just lookin' around for a job, and a man's gotta eat." He held out a foully-stained hand. "Name's Roj. Ye tell 'em I sent ye, with my favor, an' that I say they're not to kill ye on the first day. We could all use some of that brand-name humor ye got there around here."

A ribald poetic form intended to praise a lover, originating in The Laborious Sun. The poem is a single couplet. Use of assonance, consonance and vivid imagery is characteristic of the form. The second line of the couplet uses the same placement of allusions as the first line. The second line of the couplet presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The first line has six syllables. The second line has nine syllables.

Blaze bright, my lava-love
You'll leave a lovely, lingering stain.

that did not turn out very ribald

A reflective poetic form intended to satirize the hunt, originating in The Circular Cloisters. The poem is eleven quatrains. Use of simile is characteristic of the form. Forms of parallelism are common throughout the poem, in that certain lines have similar grammatical structures and they sometimes have reversed word orders. Each line has ten syllables. The ending of every line of the poem rhymes with every other. The second line of each quatrain presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The second line of each quatrain must expand the idea of the first line.

Like a weeping upwind, we charge the prey.
Prey the charge, we wind up weeping alike.
Our tears make poor weapons, we see today.
Our pain makes poor arrow, sword, bow or pike.

[This one I'll add onto whenever I feel like torturing myself some more]

A poetic form intended to express grief over a chosen subject, originating in The Mists of Winding. The poem is a single couplet. It is always written from the perspective of a relative of the author. Use of metaphor is characteristic of the form. The second line of the couplet presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The first line concerns the past. It has five feet with a tone pattern of even-uneven-even. The second line concerns current events. It has four feet with a tone pattern of uneven-even-even.

Okay, we're going to have to do a little research here.

A foot is the basic metrical unit of (at the very least) English poetry and its translations: each foot consists a set of stressed/unstressed syllables grouped into various categories. The feet that the poem is giving us are (taking 'uneven' as unstressed/short and 'even' as stressed/long)

even-uneven-even/long-short-long/Cretic/"crocodile"

and

uneven-even-even/short-long-long/Bacchius/"My heart aches".

The chance that I might be reading this wrong and that the the even/uneven correspondence works the other way round would lead to another set of feet entirely.

Anyway, the first line has five Cretic feet, for a total of fifteen syllables in the long-short-long form. The second has four Bacchius (Bacchii? Bacchic feet?), for a total of twelve syllables in short-long-long form.

A poetic form intended to express grief over a chosen subject, originating in The Mists of Winding. The poem is a single couplet. It is always written from the perspective of a relative of the author. Use of metaphor is characteristic of the form. The second line of the couplet presents a different view of the subject of the first line. The first line concerns the past. It has five feet with a tone pattern of even-uneven-even. The second line concerns current events. It has four feet with a tone pattern of uneven-even-even.

In your bed, at your place, smile still, on your face. Dropped your drink...
With wineglass and fine last meal you had - goodbye, Dad.

On the other hand, if we are to read even as 'short' and uneven as 'long', the poem takes on another structure entirely.

even-uneven-even now translates to short-long-short, or an Amphibrach, a form often used in limericks: "There once was / a girl from / Nantucket..."

uneven-even-even is now long-short-short, or a Dactyl (which keeps with the 'foot' dealio by meaning 'finger') - an example being...uh... "Summertime".

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Spoiler

(Agent, the 11 rulers each have a different charactaristic emotion. 1:Snobiness/boredom 2:Love 3:Retaliation and rebellion 4:Free spirit/creativity 5:Thirst for power/corruption 6:Perserverence 7:Anger and Violence 8:High thought (think theologist) 9:Jelousy/sadness 10:Follower/practical thinking 11:Leadership. I had to change 10 and 3 around because of your post. Note that also each one has a color. 1:White 2:Pink 3:Green 4:Red 5:Yellow 6:Blue 7:black 8:Orange 9:Purple 10:Brown 11:Grey. The names are Lord Linear, Aria, Cublin (prefers spacemaster, Timemaster, Bonna, Quivaz, Charros, Nia V'daro, Afardo, Decca, Vivzaro)

We were terrible people back then

Lord Linear lives without love nor jealousy | in both directions of his realm | though infinite, it lacks variety | and that remains his desire, | to perturbate the unending calm | yet still to stand Lord of his society | and to see the rulers on a pyre | burning, burning, malignancy.

I'm also going to put scraps of writing here, because why the fuck not.

It was a dark and stormy night… which is, unfortunately, an entirely clichéd way to begin a story. But let’s be honest with ourselves. The story doesn’t begin here. It doesn’t even end here. This is one of those stories that interpose themselves in between the inflation of the universe and whichever flavor of cosmological-constant-related universe-death you prefer. It was night on Antares, or at least it was on the half of the planet we’re concerned with right now, and there was a major supercell overhead, buoyed and fueled by the warm waters of the ocean, that had decided at that particular moment to absolutely piss down across the rising waves. So we’re telling it like it is; there was a night, and it was stormy.

Partial bit of writing I worked on, but stopped because I couldn't get the OK to release it as canon in the RP.

Gatecrashers

Lithely, she leapt through an open set of French windows: an entrance to the majestic ducal gardens of House Engelhardt. The short drop from the window to the ground was dealt with by a quick, silent roll, then a motionless crouch for a span of seconds. There were no calls of alarm; good. Moving like quicksilver, Naomi Thiotimoline unfurled all 6’6” of her supple, lanky body, and faced the lights on the green below.

The glowing lights danced, like butterflies, amidst the laughing crowds. Amusements and exhibitions and midway games, purveyors of oddities and adrenaline-boosting rides, joy, and wonder, and confectionery - it was the fairest fair of them all. It usually moved from place to place, but the Engelhardts had recently paid out of pocket to reserve them for the last five months. If this display was any indication, the festival had turned the money directly into becoming, if anything, even more lavish. All of this was an ongoing celebration for the Engelhardt - de Valenois marriage that had got the galaxy aflutter.

“So this is the Neverending Festival,” Naomi whispered to herself, “We’re going to have fun, you and I.”

“Naomi!” The call broke her from her reverie. From the window she’d just leapt from, a much shorter figure waved.

“Coming, you little brat!” Her long legs easily made the distance to the wall; reaching up, she plucked Eira from her windowsill perch and set her down on the dewy grass. They looked out onto the lights for a moment, tails a-swish.

“Did you really have to jump out of the window?” Eira asked, wearing an uncharacteristically devilish grin. “People are going to think you’re one of the acrobats.”

There was a flurry of giggles. Naomi’s hand descended, ruffled the Thiotimoline heiress’ hair. “And they’re going to think you’re one of the freakshow exhibits, won’t they?”

“Yeah - ‘The Most Beautiful of the Katarran’!”

“Ha! Yeah, right.” The two of them began to descend the hill, down into the laughter and the lights. “Race you there!”

“H-hey! No fair!”

Universes are fundamentally soap bubbles: self-organizing peaks in the entropy of existence that form, grow, shrink, spread, and - eventually - die. They form in all sorts of ways: one could bud from another universe, or one could form, spontaneously, from the chaos. One could be imagined from nothing, or blown from stretchy film by some multiversal deity. Two or more could collide together and mix their traits into one, or annihilate each other completely, leaving only scraps to float in the Void left behind…

Bubbles have an inside and an outside, separated by a hermetic barrier at once infinitesimally thin and infinitely thick. An unsurpassable film, one that protects at each moment the inside world from the ravages of the outside. In many interpretations, the barrier is the bubble: remove it, or cause it to fail and the bubble ceases to exist.

Yet in an infinite multiverse, there must come a time where the inhabitants of a universe are not only capable of finding a way to pierce this veil, but do so, regularly, in order to perform the most banal of tasks. They push back against the barrier that holds back the horror of infinity. They poke holes in the film that defines their existence. They drain the infinite potential without in order to bolster the failing potential within, and most aggravatingly, they /survive/...

As it was with Galaxy Eridanus.

This is something I really want to make pages and pages of, but I haven't thought of any other stanzas yet.


The Salt

Listen to these woeful tales of my sorrows and travails
Through the lands of ice and nails searching for release from fault.
But my search was just a token (though I left that thought unspoken),
For my luck had long been broken, with predictable result.
Though I sought to fix my luck, my awful luck caused the result –
And it all began with salt.

Although now that I am older I throw salt over my shoulder,
In my past years I was bolder. When my father said, “Thou shalt!”
I cried, “Shan’t! I do not will it! I have barely even spilt it!
I shall just go and refill it – shall not silliness exalt!
No, I shall not superstition or silliness exalt!”
So I did not throw the salt.

Also, a fun exercise to work on form is to take a poem in another language and run it through Google Translate. Then try to write a poem in the same form based on it. This allows you to have fun with technique without waiting for inspiration/poem ideas. I agree, the form/technique/challenge for me is the fun part. I usually have to loosen form slightly to get work I actually like, but the poem wouldn't be there in the first place if not for playing with form like a puzzle.

<Sanzh> battery, regicide, nomadic, cephalopod, chartreuse, beige

The gavel rings. My judgement: Assault and battery.
It is not so surprising, considering regicide.
I will be placed, forthwith, on the Jail Nomadic
which sails the void on a cosmic cephalapod
two-toned against the black of space: chartreuse
and the ever bland and neverending beige.

Beige is the color of my cell, a dispiriting beige
that could drive a man to boredom, to battery
all over again, just to see another color: chartreuse,
maybe, the color of the officers’ dens, regicide
never having entered into their minds. The cephalopod
wanders through the cosmos, a journey nomadic…

No one knows why it exists, or where its nomadic
wanderings will go. The cells are built from beige:
its flesh. We are but tunnels within the cephalopod.
We raise livestock in its body: a whole battery
of squidlings, for example, to whom we commit regicide
by murdering the males for meat, their blood chartreuse.

The officers’ dens, likewise, are colored chartreuse.
A sign they live closer to the brain nomadic
of this Jail, for dissidents like I, treason and regicide
together locked in the cells down below, in light beige.
...Lights! There are lights here! Somewhere, a battery
is charged by the electrochemicals in this cephalopod.

Somewhere, there is electricity on the cephalopod.
Some way by which the matter of its brain chartreuse
is able to charge the Jail’s great power battery
and is able to produce the thoughts nomadic
that by which I may escape the unending beige
And return to my assassination; my regicide.

Then, when they lie dead, when completed lies regicide
I will return to this accursed cephalopod
and free my brethren from this hell of beige.
The officers shall bleed red onto their halls chartreuse
And the squid shall once more be free, a nomadic
soul returning to the void. So: I shall need the battery.

I am due to visit the battery, in fact, to die electrically for my regicide.
Deep within this nomadic jail, in the flesh of this cephalopod
I will enter the halls chartreuse. As a freer I will return to the beige.

[22:39] <Agentimoline> "Evelyn, we shouldn't be seeing each other on Christmas Eve."
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "To hell with it, Peter! Just come over and give me some company."
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "But your husband... and your kids, won't they be home?"
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "I have the kids this christmas. Bill's on a business trip. It's been hell, trying to explain to the kids why Daddy won't be here this Christmas. I need a release, Peter, please!"
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "But the kids. Won't they tell your husband?"
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "Bill can go to hell. Look - look, just dress like Santa Claus, all right? And come by late at night, when the kids have gone to bed. If they see you I'll just tell them that Santa isn't real."
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "I hope you're doing the right thing, Evelyn."
[22:39] <Agentimoline> "What are they going to do, write a fucking song about it?"
[22:40] <Agentimoline> ^ my imagination when i hear "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"
[22:41] <Celti> Your imagination is a fascinating place, Agen
[22:41] <Celti> And I do mean that as a sincere compliment

It came to the point where thoughts of suicide became banal, commonplace. “If I take a good running start,” I would think, “I can jump out that open window and clear the sill. But,” I would continue, “We’re not high up enough, and I wouldn’t die. Just be paralyzed or horribly mangled, and life would be even harder than it is now.”

Ah, I found the haiku tritina acrostic.

Hateful, one struggles
against chains and other bonds:
The rules of the game.

Enter, those who game
for rebellion's struggles -
unbound within bonds.

Last of all, one's bonds
least leave a scar of the game
yet pleasure struggles.

One struggles against the bonds of the game.

“The key thing… the key thing in any enterprise is… is… Graeme, what word am I thinking of?”

“What? Did you say something, Graham?”


“What word am I thinking of, Graeme?”

“How would I bloody know?”

“I was saying, the key thing in any enterprise is… what?”


“In what context?”

“I was just telling this lady here about all the news Worlds Weekly has to distribute, and…”

“Communication?”


“What?”

“Communication. The key thing in any enterprise.”

“Oh. Was that what I was thinking of?”


“How would I /bloody/ know?!”

“Well, let’s go with that. The key thing in any enterprise… oh, she’s gone.”

“Well.”

“I think that went pretty well.”

“I will /never/ understand you, Graham.”

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i c u r t
y r u t, b a b
t n b r u

o u, b a b?
u n i r d b p
q 4 b, o k?