[Poetry] Some Scant Poetry: "Angst in Progress"

Originally Posted by Anju_Amnell

I have no idea what influences your writing...

We live in a world rich with wonder, saturated with history; what inspiration is there not to be had? Through such tapestry there is an entire civilization that exists behind these eyes, a country far green yet as bleak as can be. I can't control it, only tell of it and hope that some scant few might come to understand it as I have strived to.

Disorienting rhetoric aside...me neither. I can't really explain it, can't foresee what might come next. It just simply...is. I write and it flows. I can't sit here and think it up. I think I might have a poetic demon inside of me that is influencing my thoughts....

The ocean breathes with every touch of the tide
A distant memory that’s caught in your mind’s eye
It’s far away, but not too far to be seen
A fading glimpse of heaven behind all the seams

Bury your feelings lest you might have to let it all known
An age of wonder now but lost to winter’s throes
Buried secrets in the ice grow thick in the storm
Rain from the stars to hide that which is forlorn

Now in summer’s gaze, your course is steadfast
A ship in shallow waters never treads far from the past
A new dark is coming, one worse than before
The clouds of regret threatening to come from ashore

A lighthouse stands vacant upon a rocky escarpment
It’s darkened tower and bailey standing like that of a dolmen
The widow’s walk empty, yet haunted by memories
A love left behind bequeathing feral, bleak energies

She waited and waited for the return of her sailor
Claimed by the sea, he promised, yet failed her
Cursed she now walks upon the high, fettered rise
Cursed by the waters to never again see the sunrise

Her sailor is you, first mate to the grim last
Witness to the ice, still your course is steadfast
Infected by hubris, you damn your paired souls
Never again to feel warmth, even when raked across the coals

But when sunlight and twilight meet at autumn’s fickle grasp
A point in time trapped within the sands of the glass
A breath of the memory washes o’er the cursed, wandering brace
And the Starry Messenger docks for just a moment’s embrace

And the lantern of the lighthouse burns bright in the storm
To perhaps save some others who are lost, but not yet forlorn

Lonely footprints grace the darkened sands of high tide
Wandering along the cusp of the sea like a madman
The tracks remain, though the man has fled
To the relative safety of a shattered mind

He mutters to himself of stars and of gods
Of times long since passed, of battles not yet waged
He sees eternities wrapped in the guise of a wayfarer’s caul
Understands the universe exists on a whim, on a breath

A divine wind that courses throughout the bleak heavens
Lighting anew worlds not yet to be birthed
Time stands irrelevant and exists only to peeping wizards
Misunderstanding the unclouded keys to immortality

The tide comes again, filling footprints like a salve to a wound
Washing away the madman’s comings and goings
Soon the universe would forget he ever even came
For all is as it is, and His paintbrush is far more broad

The Great Voice, for all of its musings, grows quiet
Mankind deafened to the call of thunder and brimstone
It is the role of the father to guide his fair flock
Till that day comes when the pupil masters the peer

Yet the madman’s muttering continues to echo
Against the halls of sanity and the realm of consciousness
They call him troubled for his speaking of inopportune truths
A soothsayer barbarically cursed to speak, but not teach

He feels himself the harbinger of a doomed generation
The murderer of his children, the destroyer of worlds
For they would not listen, no matter the price paid
Far too enamored by the Golden Fleece to take care

The ruin of a lost child
The pain of a forgotten father
The bittersweet parting of flesh and of better
And to the footprints in the sand do the waters come

Worlds beyond measure pass by beyond my window
The stars stretching as if beads of rain and light against black
The cold, dark outside beckons me to enter
A wandering nomad seeking out the unknown

Such a surreal loneliness that is to travel the heavens
Your breath becoming a grain against the universe at large
Immortality, it seems, pales in comparison to such scale
For what a man is cannot outweigh what he is made of

The calling of the stars comes to one and all
When we, as children, would look to the night sky and wonder
What lies beyond our delicate membrane of oxygen and carbon?
What magic still exists that these eyes refuse to see?

To flesh a soul is anchored, fastened by primordial stitching
But when the tether is lost, to where does it flee?
Where do we travel when not burdened by gravity?
How long is the road that will lead us to home?

To home is where my ship’s destiny lies

I only wish that the journey did not have to be alone
For in my bleak lifetime, many hearts have I touched
But this final voyage that has embarked for the indefinite
Is not just one of passing, but of self-discovery

We define ourselves through others in our lives
In that we are stronger, congruent with the Beat of the World
But to grace the eyes of the gods you must shed your humanity
Strip clean the fallacies that hinder your footfalls

The Great Attractor calls, beckoning our return
Gently whispering to us in our dreams and our thoughts
Cast out for a time to remember that which we had forgotten:
The secret of everything

Sunlight breaks across a sanguine moor
A kiss of warmth seeding into the fickle frosts of January
The lay is quiet, a heaviness upon the air like iron
And the scent of an expired battlefield pervades

Rising from the mass grave as if a flower in bloom
Shedding the ice, the rifle; the blood upon his hands
A soldier’s breath becomes fog against his brow
His countenance subdued by the evil stillness about him

He once knew their voices, one and all of those at his feet
Their throats caught with chains, silencing their tongues
Fetters and gags forged by cannon iron and musket lead
Paint a horror of the imagination too stark to be fantasy

Is it no different, to himself he ponders in madness
That his fellow man be cloven and boiled in his own liquids
Like that of a beast culled to feed the essence of another
Never knowing the “good” it has done by its sacrifice

Though such a waste it has become to us all
To kill without need; to slaughter, yet never be sated
The kill left to wither and putrefy in the heat of the sun
As the coming of spring thaws the fell winter in our bones

We were soldiers; to himself, the man justifies
Valiant warriors to king, clan, and country
Though kinsmen are lost, forgotten upon the cursed moor
Their glory lives on as the trumpeter calls

Nay, the man seethes no glory to be won
Save furlough from death upon another grim day of battle
Soon rather than late is the violence of ill-offered choice
With blood gifted to the earth as penance for the fools upon the hill

Teardrops upon a firestorm grace my furled lips
A call of yesterday echoing through my mind’s eye
Flasks in fists, we dance to the silent requiem of chance
Words desperate to invade the rule of between

Times when I’m alone, I start to wonder
What on this highway is still threaded with stars?
Dreams drilled through your eyes like a cotton candy lobotomy
Are sweet to the taste, yet only cocoon the deft sour

Long and spindly fingers dangle above us all
Like some ♡♡♡♡ed-up claw crane lurking in the brumous cloud cover
Waiting, chasing, daring to lash out without warning
And pluck you away from your indistinguishable stuffed friends

Wounds notwithstanding, they come time and time again
Reavers of your humanity, doppelgängers to the good fight
Riddles with ersatz thoughts and copy-pasted reactions
Programmed to do as bid, not as built

Technicolor nightmare, perky Prozac prostitution
How long will it be until naught remains but the automated whores?
Take a number, eat your Soylent Green, and be happy?
Time will tell…that, or the politicians

If I were the keeper of time in a bottle
A flawed, flimsy deity still human in nature
I’d take back the pain hidden deep in your eyes
And make you forget the day after yesterday

If I were the keeper of secrets in a box
Of fairytale wishes and forgotten, wild dreams
I’d take back the sickle-words caught in your throat
And make you remember the night before tomorrow

If I were the keeper of memories on the table
Of good and bad, of sweet and sour to the taste
I’d cut and splice your open thoughts like celluloid
And make you see them all as they should have been

If I were the keeper of hate in a pillbox
So fine a line between one extreme and the other
I’d swallow the barbiturate, let it devour my insides
And spare you the bitterness of a life lived in longing

If I were the keeper of love in a teardrop
So precious a treasure, yet so easy to misplace
I’d keep it for myself and safeguard it always
And dance with you into the sunset one more time

If I were the keeper of life in a glass
With power over breath and wasted days in the sun
I’d give it all up just to see you smile again
And make you feel the fires of youth in your veins once more

If I were the keeper of death in a grain of sand
So small a thing as to choke upon its own weight
I’d blow it away in the wind and let it fall into the ocean
And make you…no, want you to live forever

If I were the keeper of anything in my hands
So narcissistic in my view of my station in this life
I’d pretend the world to be a better place than it is
And hope you see me for what I think myself to be

Thank you Doran, all I needed was another Jim Croce song in my head.

By the way, the celluloid thing is gross. *gag*

^ Croce? Right....

And I believe you to be mistaken, Anju: celluloid is a plastic compound that was once used in photography and film; cellulite is not the subject here.

Oh yeah, I'm a dork. :p

Yeah, Croce, only yours is better if you ask me.

If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I'd like to do
Is to save every day
Till Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you

If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I'd save every day like a treasure and then,
Again, I would spend them with you


But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with

If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you


But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I've looked around enough to know
That you're the one I want to go
Through time with

Terrible song, it was one of the songs in one of dad's guitar books.

What...the...hell....

Well, I guess that just goes to prove that it is, indeed, impossible in this age to write much of anything and have it actually be original.

Far o’er the sea is a child of the long-lost
Looking to the stars for whence he had come
To home is the call of an unseen future
Whether he goes only destiny can tell

The blood in the fields is the grit of the sands of time
Forefathers laid to rest beneath the tall grasses
All Souls’ Day passes to the sway of pagan sound
Dancing lights timed to pipes among menhirs

The voice on the wind is the sound of the ancestors’ cry
Roving the hills and mountainous streams
Their story is told through the winding rock and grass
Breathe in his past and feel the Gaelic in your veins

The hunger in his soul is the road to the sea
To return to the land that had born him hence
To lay eyes upon that which his birthright would claim
And see for the first time where his blood did arise

So...this one might not be the best of ways to celebrate this thread passing 5000 reads, but it's all I had on my mind.

There’s a fight on the horizon
There’s no denying
Blood’s gonna hit the ground this night

I’m starting the fires
Please don’t expire
It’s now time for your last stand

Fists of steel and a mind of rage
Can’t take the pain inside this cage
Gonna tear someone up this night

Too late to stop this time
You’re the scene of the crime
No escape for the big mouth

Fuel the animal that sleeps within
Bring out the beast that overcomes the man
You push and you shove; always get your way
No, not again, this dog’s gonna have his day

Back up your ♥♥♥♥
Heard enough of it
Turn the tables ‘round this time

Better shut it down
Before you’re hell-bound
You’re walking along a thin line

Pushed me to the brink
No more time to think
I’m taking you down one inch at a time

Grind out your woes
You’re nothing but a joke
Time to put you back in your grave

Feed the animal that bites the hand
You’ve summoned the beast; run while you can
Try to push and shove – I won’t be kept at bay
Yes, it’s time again for this dog to have his day

Time for you last stand
Last chance to be a man
Stand up for yourself for once
Now that it actually counts

Can’t use me for your ♥♥♥♥♥
No more; I’ve had enough of it
Time to feel the searing burn
The table has spun; now it’s your turn

I actually like this one alot, it could be sung, and tells a pretty clear story.

I did have an imaginary hard rock tune playing in the back of my head (something along the lines of Adelitas Way was how I envisioned it) when I wrote it -- if only I could play an instrument, I think I'd probably do okay as a songwriter.

So, now that the July writing contest is over, here is my entry. The theme was "Faces in the Rain".

The writer’s hand holds still upon the blank page
Her quill grown dry and weary from an insipid grip
Dewdrops bead from her eyes and take flight
Painting deeper tones than her words dare endeavor

‘Tis weeks since the voice of her calling had spoken
As if an age against the grain had settled upon her mind
The realms of her inheritance lay just upon the cusp
Of her mind’s eye; victims to the beat of the world

Flickers of celluloid and print give scant comfort or solace
To a shrinking view that has lost its gleam and luster
“Why won’t you speak,” she utters in vain to the pages
Turning to desperation, rather than the muse’s whim

For we are mute, came the answer she sought to supplant

A hushed thundering envelops the small space and consumes
A young girl’s heart pulsating from a fire in her thoughts
Disbelief soon transmutes into a dangerous curiosity
And her drying ashen eyes reach out for her canvas

“Why won’t you write,” she articulates against her breath
Holding her lungs still, afraid to neglect another missive
Her ears strain and dry fingers entice the white parchment
Though only silence routes through the soft-spoken demigoddess

Rain again threatens upon her undetectable paints
If both enclosed and mad, she fears a hidden face come to light
Plans within plans gracing the seal of something far greater
Now threaten to grow dormant and recoil for the winter

For we are ignorant, the unheard voice murmurs

The page curls in her gelid fist and shudders
Pain wracked upon her own tormented birthright
The quill remains dry, hovering o’er the page like a knife
“Why won’t you listen,” she pleads with the demon

For we are indifferent, the plain words etch upon the page

Inked in the tears that would color the world
A soliloquy only to be heard by bare walls and peering insects
She sets down the quill; releases the blade at her neck
And for once sees what true realness there is to be found

Crude words diminish in the shadow of the ghost
That once stood behind the writer and whispered

There’s always somewhere better than what we’re given
We’re always thinking of finding some far-off heaven
When paradise is always there to be had at your feet
If you’d only open your eyes, you’d finally begin to see

Time erodes away the promises given in youth
Untold secrets kept by so many, then so precious few
For there is a door that lies just beyond your perception
If you’d but abandon your mind and the search for perfection

She is calling to you, the voice of the unseen
Coming to you in the elusive form of a dream
She speaks only truth, of what you need to hear
Though often in riddles do the answers appear

Unplug from the system, come to know your true self
Fight for the slaves, don’t accept what has been dealt
Free your mind from the confines of your purposeless life
Become the bringer of destiny and end an era of strife

But in reality….

When it’s come time to lay your body down
In that quiet place down in familiar ground
Do it gently, let yourself sleep on forever
And dream of that day when we’ll again be together

Perhaps not in this life or even one that is off further
The calling of the soul is unlike any other
The rules have been rewritten, cast off into the wind
So who knows what will be lying just around the next bend

Just remember as you embark into the unknown
Where you have been and to where you might go
Faith is indeed blind, hope even more still
But know that you have it, encased in that red pill

Sunrise dies into another sunset
They’re all the same, digressions made in vain
The elongated days and truncated nights
Of a peaceful man become estranged

Fearful thoughts creep into your dreams
The keys in your fist cold before the locks
Out there is a world you have never before seen
An imaginary Eden just beyond the panes

You see yourself upon distant shores
Waves crashing against your bow as you sail
You see yourself upon a mountain high
Cool winds soothing to your city-bled skin

And then you see Sonara, but the memory splinters
Into the dust of your nightmares

Back in your flesh, but for a moment
The locks still stand waiting, wanting
Needing to fulfill its dark purpose and revel
In the ghosts of the night once set free

So you flee from your choices stark and raving
From the bricks laid at your feet with much care
And bleed wildly into the moonlight without reservation
Thinking adventure to be found elsewhere

When deep in your bones you choose not to realize
The folly in an ever-chasing dream

man
don't your fingers ever hurt
it is beautiful tough

What, this? This is nothing -- you should see the keystroke counts on my novels.