touch me

[joel]

When, like a lapdog lately come awake
with tongue-extended stretches and an arch
inverted spinal pose, sensations shift
across my seated thighs and reminisce
the fullness and the friction of a slip
of someone else upon my skin—my hands
I wrangle mindlessly together till
I’m conscious they the only other fill—
and then I slap them (silly reprimands
for self-assessing nudity) and rip
them far apart; I need much more than this—
please cast an anchor foreign touch adrift
upon my empty undulating march
of open hands and be my holder stake.

[Totenkopf]

Not bad: for like 1700 or so.

Ever hear of WC Willliams, man?

(No ideas but in things---which is to say,
your more imagistic work moves
more). Can you hang with dat? You said you wanted
comments. The trick (which I admit no mastery o'er)
is to hint at forms classic, meter, themes, etc,
while bringing in the
powerful image, or juxtaposition.............
The Mingo is close to modern poesy,
ie post-45, post Pound/TS, Stevens.
Or the other school (beats like Corso /Lamantia also in dat)
more Rimbaud, visions, surrealism---that chick izzy does it,
sometimes, on occasion..........when the daemon's there.

Don't be hatin'...............................

[Doreen Peri]

Totenkopf - You just can't resist slamming people, can ya? The more things change, the more they stay the same. Cliche, yeah, I know.

Not bad: for like 1700 or so.

Ever hear of WC Willliams, man?

(No ideas but in things---which is to say,
your more imagistic work moves
more). Can you hang with dat? You said you wanted
comments. The trick (which I admit no mastery o'er)
is to hint at forms classic, meter, themes, etc,
while bringing in the
powerful image, or juxtaposition.............
The Mingo is close to modern poesy,
ie post-45, post Pound/TS, Stevens.
Or the other school (beats like Corso /Lamantia also in dat)
more Rimbaud, visions, surrealism---that chick izzy does it,
sometimes, on occasion..........when the daemon's there.

Don't be hatin'...............................

[joel]

i agree with you--
and thanks for the thought/comment.

i haven't had much of anything compel me to write for a long time (but sometimes I guess).

i kinda force myself to write something,
especially now that i have no job/home/schedule/life--
i need to think and to force myself to think...
...and for that, it helps me to have a set form and to think inside it.

so these are more my excercises in creative writing than attempts at or offerings of good literature.

and the high skills of good poetry far exceed me.

but i love a form and i think in standard meter--
without the confines, i ramble even more.

and there's a security blanket for me in the form...especially in fourteen-lined iambic pentameter of any rhyme scheme. these are my thoughts in more of the dead common first-person memoir-blog style. so they become my way to interact, but i agree with you--they're probably not something i would pick up and buy or use to edify my life.

every once in a while, i think i trip onto something good--and every once in a while, someone seems to connect to a piece i think was total crap.

i could censor myself i suppose, but frankly, this is my therapy as much as anything else (and i appreciate being able to share it with anyone who decides to read).

my compromise on censorship is to limit myself to forms, usually my 14 comfort lines...

otherwise i ramble...

in case anyone hasn't noticed....

[Totenkopf]

You said you wanted comments. No slams: just some trips, er tips. Sort of depends on what ya wanna do. Old-school meters, even ala romantics, Keats, etc. are pretty much dead except for nostalgia freaks, Readers Undigested, biddies, etc. Though there are a few traditionalists left (or recently deceased, like Larkin--read some of his stuff--you might like it).

I would say, however, that by and large few writers use the traditional forms, or even hint at the Shakespearean or Augustan style: it's more abstract, diffuse, imagistic, with oriental influence, like Basho. One has to undertake frenchy or German as well--if not Latin and other tongues, and that's no cakewalk (as Pound knew---literary dilettantes sort of like humans who want to play Chopin's concertos on a piano in a few weeks).

Wallace Stevens' Harmonium (the entire book): that is modern poesy--though the surrealist school (say Lamantia, beats) also influential, if a bit trite at this stage. Online poesy is, alas, mostly a hustle and bad lie................with .some exceptions....................