I learned what I fear today:
Intimacy. I can’t seem to face
my raw emotions bluntly; in fact
I despise them for being unpoetic
Why be vulgar and direct
when I can hide behind my
metaphors, my harbor; my fantasies, my
buffer—between reality and
my brain cells too proud to be seen
scattered, sprinkled all over—
well, nothing
Even this moment I struggle to simply
write: I’m messy. I’m hurt.
I’m lone and gloomy and primitive and violent.
I can’t speak of my love and hatred in
raw honesty, no—I must be filtered
so when I scramble myself undone on paper
I no longer belong to
me. I’ll be
safe, from me; an
outsider, from me.
Critics say a raw poem
whispers secrets like readers are old friends
But I have long forgotten,
how a girl usually lets her voice confess
poetry
beautiful, romantic
reading, composing, musing
poesis, literature, essayistic, unrhymed
writing, paragraphing, clustering
wordy, unpoetic
prose
to whom I offend
gift my unpoetic end ~
I fall on my pen
A day’s routine so easily holds me captive.
I confess to mindless, museless departures,
Brainless unpoetic habits so unreflective,
That I cannot dwell in momentary textures.
But January ripens oranges on my neighbor’s tree,
Marking spring’s beginning in California.
Midwestern groomed; such play awakens me.
Fat, lush oranges tumble all over the area.
Bold bright balls, they must be painted,
Landing in my drive, my car mashes them.
With this mortal crush, I breach life sacred.
Yet, once I eat one, it’s no longer a problem.
Tree of oranges brings fruit reviving passion.
Luscious harvest renewal of vibrant conception.
Resting your eyes
through the tears slowly falling
Feeling the ache
of the loneliness seep
Thinking what if,
though it bears not a reason
Silence is loud
as you fall off to sleep
Life is a joy
holding days that are heavy
Nothing it seems
ever runs quite as planned
Distance becomes
something so unpoetic
Hearts tend to hurt,
that you must understand
Still if you look
back on moments so happy
Words you have shared
on the edge of the stage
Chapters become
what we hopefully make them
Offering thoughts
as you’re turning the page
Each day will find
there’s an end to the rainbow
No pot of gold
but so much more it seems
No one is lost
if we always remember
Soon we will see them
again in our dreams
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.” ...
Leonardo Da Vinci
What if there was no poetry in this world?
Unpoetic world with no more poetry
No more perfumes to permeate flowerbeds.
No more glossy beads of petrichor cloying.
A blindfolded moon in veil hunts for solace
moving a canvas of craters, in clouds motionless.
Voice of unspoken words wilting away,
locked in deep thickets, an infinitesimal space
clog a lump in throat of breathless syllables.
reckless tender feelings transmute and displace.
No urge to transcend, No boundless and free...
An unpoetic world with no more poetry.
A lovesick heart no longer rambles
Only blaring sound in bleary eyes,
as known faces devour unknown shorelines.
No more open waters , no more endless seas
No misty mountains, No opaque night walls
Only sunsets fade into shattered dreams.
Butterflies swarm around in colorblind paths,
in search of red and green, they find no more.
No more rhythm ,
No more rhyme,
Only pattern of time ticks in twenty four
The Useless Joy of Poetry,
With us, she is no more.
Dated 24 th January 2019
"Time to take the Soup off the stove,"
a little birdie whispered in my ear:
'Tis the Sabbath Queen that's drawing near."
But the Soup's not done, I dared to say
in an unpoetic, defiant way
The little birdie just looked at me
with pity, but not with sympathy
Shook his head and moved his beak:
"Sabbath's come; the Soup is done.
~ So's all your work for this week!"
Words seem to elude me at this crucial moment
So I'll express this as unpoetic as possible
You aren't flawless, but their exist beauty in your weaknesses
And with the rejected and broken pieces of you, I desire a paradise that will have forever as it start
Beauty and brilliance in synergy
Virtuousness in a vision-veiled world
I'll be immortal to promise faultlessness
But in every dark moment ahead, never stop basking in the knowledge that this heart is decisively-incapacitated to bring you pain
I dream a time in tomorrow when you'll read this and smile with wordless joy
You've got me wishing you.
the conjurer
his fingers dive like seagulls
swooping in mid air
a voice half gravel
half creme caramel
soothes and goads
like granny with a rough cloth
he washes faces in life
strain the ears incredulity
with incantations
rough and unpoetic voices
speak through floating horns
companied by sea swells
pungent curses rain as fire
upon a gapemouthed audience
all invisible worlds
shunned for niceties sake
pass before reluctant eyes
as his truth is painted over
by mechanics still
the beguiled wait
for the next sign
Because my brilliant hooks read indirect,
But bait directly one illiterate,
They likely slip stripped fish-net intellect,
Thus, now, I’ll lure completely different:
Just like the redwood trees that grow sooooooo tall,
Gapetto’s puppet’s nose Pinocchios,
And since I’m not a strung-out ancient doll,
I guess it’s you who picks the snotty rose.
You might believe you harness magic string;
The pixie dust of Pan in Neverland;
But don’t forget what came of Gollum’s ring
Once Frodo lost a finger from his hand -
It was rewound, re-reeled, forged gleefully,
Forever lost in false reality.
3/18/2017
Note: In keeping with John’s “Something Completely Different - Monty Pythonesque” theme I wrote this after randomly pointing to 14 different words in a Hustler magazine article that I then forced myself to integrate into a sonnet, one per line, in the order they were selected and implemented a rule of “no-edits” after a line was complete. The list went like this:
hooks, *****baits, fish-net, I’ll, grow, nose, strung-out, guess, harness, never, what, finger, glee, lost
Urban dictionary says "narwhal; an amazing, magical combination of a unicorn and whale"- oh ok,
I'm sure one can find beautiful things about a narwhal. The same way we find beautiful things in raindrops and matching sock. And like all beautiful things we write about there are always things that threaten the inhabitants of those thoughts implanted in our subconscious. There is something so personal about comparing ourselves to beautiful things and then pinning terrible things to the people that make us unbeautiful.
Like... I am a narwhal. And how I swim through my sea of thoughts, filled with colorful imagination. And how the only thing that makes me thankful for the Horn on my existence is you. Sleeping soundly in the oil spills that linger in my blowhole- despite the fact that the word "blowhole" is super unpoetic! Even more than the word super.
But that's how you make my little metaphorical narwhal heart feel! You're the one with the harpoon words and gallons upon gallons of wasteful, wishful thinking that you're better than me. GOD DIDNT GIVE A UNICORN HORN! HUH?! No that was ME!
Earthworm is dying in sun.
A lone poet,
an unpoetic family.
I should have been contented with squeezing out
neat verses from jumbled, random thoughts,
with fashioning stanzas pretending profundity,
and with dashing off lines of serious lyrical nonsense.
I should have been detached and insulated
from pedestrian dalliances with the raw jubilations
and searing sorrows of the all-too-familiar souls.
I should have taken to heart the art of being aloof
to the stirrings of the mind about what to you
are such artless triflings with good and evil,
with justice and inequity, with ethics in politics.
Then I would have been to you a true poet,
your cold comrade at the shrine of your stoic art
of the brain, not of the heart.. but I'm the unpoetic.
.
its very hard to say who i love the most
i love all poets from coast to coast
dickenson, poe, frost, shakespere
an endless line of poets i fear
but when it comes to real poetry
and some not all may agree
there is none better than sorrow or greif
to bring to life ones poetry
they awaken a ghost living inside me
holding my attention ever so silently
they share our spaces with a sombre pride
tell their stories with tears in eyes
they aim there words at broken hearts
and with a tired line they start
others unpoetic they wail
but all from abuse and death they hail
they bring the words that stir our equlibrium
make us cry when our spirits meet with them
laughter and happiness they have their place
but saddness and toil you cannot erase
i'll screem my sorrows as high
as the listening skyes
rage with anger as if my soul died
and with my words dampen every eye
inspire, unite, defy, denigh and teach
make it seem as though i preach
make them look up to the stars
and think about there own scars
(I would have won that contest.)
it would have been so easy to squeeze out
neat verses from jumbled random thoughts,
or fashion stanzas pretending profundity,
or dash off lines of serious
lyrical nonsense
had I taken to heart the presumed propriety
to be aloof, numb to the muffled stirrings
of the mind over artless triflings
with good and evil, justice,
ethics or politics,
had I been detached and insulated
from pedestrian dalliances
with the raw jubilations
and searing sorrows of
too familiar souls,
and I would have been to you a true poet,
your cold comrade at the shrine
of a stoic art of the brain,
not of the heart...but I'm
the unpoetic.
Sub Categories
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.