Best Othello Poems
Everyone is so uptight.
I just came to drink and they all wanna fight.
Some sixfoot seven pissed off dude.
Just blacked my eye.
Cause his girlfriend just happened to be in the mood.
Got thrown in jail after I eat some special brownies
and decided to go to the library naked to read othello.
Cops tazed me twice.
Why does everyone have to harsh my mellow.
They wont let me return to the local bar.
Just cause last week I crashed into it with my car.
Everybody thinks I should hang it up but Im no quitter.
Just cause I misplaced a couple of kids.
In my last foray as beng a babysitter.
I swear to tell the truth eventhough Im a liar.
How was I to know the gas grill in the living room
would catch the house on fire.
Im a crook a drunk and a liar but other than that im a
nice fellow.
Just cause i enjoy a few cocktails while driving the school bus.
Why does everyone think they gotta
harsh my mellow
You said you loved her
Out loud for the world to hear
Truth comes in silence
by words and deeds done silent
For your love's so fake!
Inspired by William Shakespeare's Othello~~~~~~~
Why does the wind spin in the hollows
and makes the leaves and powder fly,
whereas the ships lie in calm waters,
a breeze is their best desire?
Why from dark rocks, past a white tower
an eagle soars, with ease and power
to a dead tree? Ask better him.
Why Desdemona, on a whim,
loves her Othello, her black moor,
like a new moon loves gloom of night?
Because the wind and eagle's flight
and heard of maiden take no rule.
So poet, rhyming, building forms
accepts no rules, no laws, no terms.
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This is a translation from Russian
of an excerpt
from the A.S.Pushkin's poem Ezersky.
Translated by Pavel Nichkov
2012-08-28
With beads of sweat on my forehead,
And my arms and legs cramped.
I concealed in a little locker
Away from the horrid mayhem.
Damp and worn; fear and torn
I seldom gasped for breath,
And even tried reciting
Othello, Macbeth and Hamlet.
Alas, all in vain!
Aware with each passing minute,
That I would face the same brutal end
As my tutors and friends.
I heard them moving closer,
I say a silent prayer.
With final memories of my beloved -
I await those crazy monsters.
"Bang, Bang!" I hear them shoot.
But it now sounds so afar.
I drift into a deep slumber,
When the door goes ajar.
The element of handkerchief in the plot
Becomes its important pivot symbol
A heritage he got from his mother first
The Desdemona’s virtue sexual.
Losing or giving away meant her fall
Was laced with strawberries’s image design
On a wedding sheet bloodstains recall.
More interpretations one can define.
Iago used it on Desdemona divine
With the help of his wife stealing it
And placing it in Cassio’s confine
Enough proof for Othello to excite
He kissed her, killed her by smothering her
Then killed himself too lying near his dear.
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A Spenserian Sonnet:Rhyme scheme : ababbcbc cdcdee, with Iambic five feet
Othello was in heat of passion’s fire
Being truly locked in love with his desire.
Seeing Desdemona gave the Moor new life,
Eloping in the night to make her wife.
Soon Iago executes a devious plan.
So, Othello will think Cassio’s his wife's man.
In Othello’s eyes, she was a worthless shrew.
Obsessed with rage, his lovely wife he slew.
Not long after, with his sword he kills self too.
7/19/17
OBSESSION
Sponsored by: Silent One
Cowardly this loathsome fellow
In old west they’d call him yellow
I guess that was his biggest flaw
Jealous greater than Othello
He wanted more, the more he saw
Hauling around his gaping jaw
What’s to come of this man of greed
Lied until his scruples were raw
He stole from innocents in need
It would run green if he did bleed
So a deal with the devil struck
To warnings he refused to heed
After years of passing the buck
It seems this man ran out of luck
His broker dragged him down to hell
One more trade up a sleeve to pluck
Scamming incoming clientele
He found a job he could do well
Now he is Satan’s man in charge
Of telemarket personnel
There's an assumption that torment
was invented by Dante for his Inferno,
it's actually a kind of obsession that
we ourselves battle with like Othello!
Some of us show it in laughter, others
in anger: which one do you act upon?
I like the ones who jump up and down,
thinking they are performing clowns!
Torment is also the need to get one's attention,
how frustrating it is when all fails expectation!
It's another form of calamity worsening things...
and spinning in a whirlwind, we break in tears!
Another form of torment was my relentless envy
towards others wealthier than me, but not happy;
and not being rich, I couldn't brag about anything...
even luck deserted me, my world was collapsing!
I've stopped tormenting myself about my material needs
by obliterating insanity, apologizing and making amends;
I saw a diverse image of myself in a mirror of stark reality,
realizing that fate didn't depend on stars, it was absurdity!
Strange, yet a reality none the less:
the oppressed destroying themselves
for the sake of the oppressor.
The battle of creatures of the sea
has now become that of the humanity
of the conquered land. A bizarre misguided
catharsis born out of guided mind bending
of victims killing selves for the sake
of molded daily bread of the oppressor.
The dehumanizing of common human bond
etched into souls by Middle Passage bondage
and stitched into long landed psyche, has
yet to be extricated from psychological slave mentality.
Its debasing scraping—like the depths of the sea—continues
to run deep and wide as the long ago Passage.
The sea that spat upon the shores of a strange land,
swallowed the anchors of satanic ships laden
with remnants of the booty of their sooty cargo;
a sooty cargo whose songs made no sense in a strange land.
Shackles may be broken and fall clanging from their physical
grasping; but minds may remain invisibly chained—unaware.
In nature, the causes of demise often remain unseen—veiled.
And liberation becomes a misconceived deception; seasoned
by the salt of the sea—rather than burning with freedom’s fire!
America, a deception in disguise, has revealed herself in reality;
but like Iago’s ego, the true self remains among the unknown.
Yet she rings the bell of justice till it cracks—stilling its silent tongue;
and in veiled blindness hang scales to seek their own balance.
They stripped the heaven-ward pole of its clothing;
but the colors remain in altered stripes and stars—
flushing a noose-like wave in smoke filled skies reeking
with the murderous smell of spiraling gun powder residue
lingering in air as they echo purity while simultaneously
orating mass hued skin perdition.
Though we are of the same seed of our brother, Othello,
we shall not let this adopted land ‘…roast in sulphur…’
nor be washed ‘…in steep-down gulfs of liquid fire.’
Nay. We are of the soul of the phoenix—
rising black doves roosting—plucking feathers of injustice
from the bleeding breast of a forgiven nation.
When I read Othello with my child’s eyes, I saw a master’s artistry at work;
Foul, devil plots, a hopeless love, a monster created but refused.
Victims and sinners alike debased, I saw worlds crushed and a giant fall.
Convinced of character and poetic muse, I was led through vague words to light passages.
When I read Othello with my adult eyes, I saw an artist bargaining with his theme;
His faceless blocks moved to a sympathy Mass,
Searching for learning I found divested acts, all meaning and diversity consumed;
My awareness full, so was I then led back and the subject failed.
As I reflect the reading of Othello: two journeys made, one path to follow;
A world was opened through my child’s eyes, for adult eyes to swallow.
I pleaded-you enjoyed,
I cried-you laughed,
You pleaded-but I couldn't be Othello at your tears,
The virtuous white ewe of the black ram
Shifting her loyalty like her mother
As she wanted to live as she loved him
Oh, Alas! She has secretly married the moor.
Tricked by Emilia and pitched sexier
Both the women differently portrayed
Contrast between the two is key factor
The three women are used, abused and misused.
Emilia quite ahead of her time
Through her the bard comments on relation
Between husband and wife of a lifetime
Women as submissive in tradition
She goes on to suggest wrongs of women
Are the result of mistreat by husband
The ills of husband instruct the women
The three women are used, abused and misused.
Bianca is in great contrast in theme
Presenting the lowest call of woman
Something that is most apparent in crime
The way in which she is treated by men
Iago plays on great contrast between
Casio’s good treatment of both instead
The three women are used, abused and misused.
Women in Othello used in number
Of ways with class of the women differed
The way men act towards strangely rather
The three women are used, abused and misused.
* Rhyme scheme - 'ababbcbC ababbcbC ababbcbC bcbC',
======================================
I have revised the refrain "C" as this one is an old poem
Dr.Ram Mehta
5Th Place win in
Contest: Gothic or Romantic by Giorgio venetto
No asseveration can appease
my Othello suffering husband
despite an axiomatic love
held only for thee.
Yet an altruistic devotion
runs deep within me.
Love is blind you see.
To see or not to see...
that is the question!
Home was never forsaken by me
On sun-blazed hills these feet trod
Millions of stars followed me
Exhausted of the long travels
Serenity came only at night
Without asking me of my troubles
Enraged by her insensibility
Everything I wished for myself
Turned nights into trepidation
Horrified by those future events
Othello could have startled me
Moments of fear kept me trembling
Even moonlight had a faded glow.
Dipping into Beowulf with Grendel,
and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales;
Wading into Paradise with Milton,
then submerging with the Bard:
Sinking deep into Lear and Othello
Hamlet and Macbeth, trying not to
drown. Rapidly surfacing to the
Tempest! gulping some fresh air.
Now sailing toward the Five Romantics,
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan...
Water, water, everywhere!
and so many drops to drink...
Poetry aficionados reside on dry land,
Yet life, fully savored, lies deep in ocean sands.