Rather than tell you what I think a poem I like is about, I'll just let you read them yourself and tell you why I like them. I would love to know what your favorite poems are... let me know via the comment feature on my Neocities profile, and maybe I'll feature them here!
I'd consider this poetry, but it's not quite your typical poem. I would strongly encourage you to listen to the entire Voyager record, which you can easily find online. One of my favorite parts are the greetings recorded on it for whoever out in space finds it, spoken by many people from all over the world. You can read all of them here.
Here are a couple of my favorite greetings:
for any ruffian of the sky your kingbird doesn't give a damn- his royal warcry is I AM and he's the soul of chivalry
in terror of whose furious beak (as sweetly singing creatures know) cringes the hugest heartless hawk and veers the vast most crafty crow
your kingbird doesn't give a damn for murderers of high estate whose mongrel creed is Might Makes Right -his royal warcry is I AM
true to his mate his chicks his friends he loves because he cannot fear (you see it in the way he stand and looks and leaps upon the air)
I like the diction of this poem (both the world choice and the word sounds themselves). It reads like a condemnation, it reads like praise, it's a little edgy, a little achingly gentle.
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then to cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is to come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy
This poem used to remind me of myself and my longing to feel what everyone else seemed to feel, but now it reminds me of my husband, who I fell in love with because of how brightly and intensely he loved the things he loved, how his love spilled from him, how it still seems to infect me when I'm nearby.
I won't put them in their entirety here, but feel free to click below and peruse yourself. Though not the most beautiful piece of text ever written, I like the internet-tabloid-esque way these are written, and how they say a lot of things that are true but I don't want to admit. Loneliness and anger are almost siblings to me, akin to friends who I forgive over and over even though I should no longer entertain them.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived
the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all
hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half
given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere.
Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends:
some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the
smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no
use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly
beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name,
the lilt of your laughter: these are illustrious toys you have
left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them, I find them; I tell them
to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life...
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you
have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile
--that lonely, mocking smile your cool mirror knows.
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged
suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long
at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living
men have honoured in marble: my father's father killed in
the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs,
bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a
cow; my mother's grandfather --just twentyfour-- heading
a charge of three hundred men in Peru, now ghosts on vanished
horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness
or humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow
--the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with
dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic
and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my
heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger,
with defeat.
I love these poems even more now that I've met my husband. They know such tenderness and intensity. The feeling that you love and admire so much that even the darkest, deepest, most awful parts of yourself can't even dream to hold it all, and not even the most beautiful things in the universe can compare. The ache to be able to communicate this feeling, longing to be able to reach someone you love. "I want your hidden look, your real smile", and the quiet question, "What can I hold you with?" are things I find myself asking...
I don't know the authors of these poems... they're silly and nonsensical and reminds me of fucking around with my friends in high school (I found these with my friends in high school during class lol) the caption of them are " My friends and I write one of these a day in study hall. They're weird and make no sense whatsoever, but they're amusing to write, and funny to read. Each of us writes one word and then passes it on, and this is how they turn out." These were written in 2009... I wonder where these people are now. Maybe I just like these because I feel like I have to preserve them somehow...
Jake the moon
Jumps over the sky
With Oedipus the king
Thinking this will make pie.
Soon they learn how
To fly among geese-cheese
Golden knitting cow
Turning to moo "please."
Flowery flowers in pink
Bloom in colorful colors
Showing that skunks stink
But Jake the moon has Oedipus.
A/N: So yeah. Crazy right. But it was fun to wright.
Literature makes the world fun.
Math stinks like a ton of Vivian.
History has many conversations.
Chem tastes delicious like Allison.
Biology flies have a certain grossness.
That causes Jake toy smile.
And Scott uses a pan to roast lists
Adelina enjoys excellent chocolate bile.
A cow says gees cheese when feces are
Jumping off Adelina's roof
Jake sprained Scott's face with a car
Tater tots are superyummy to tooth.
Mother Vivian is silly like a room...
A/N: And then the bell rang.
Orange monkeys fly
But do not wonder why
Because they have wings
That sing while they ring
Green mules prance around
Because they crown Allison
A fairy godmother for Dr. V
"Semmas" moos he, all eternity shory.
Now, Jake leaves for home
Because he's cursed
But Dr. V doesn't wish to know
About time or Jake's happiness.
When Allison calls the wand for help
She jinxes Hermione and Hugo bleeds jellyfish
Ron weeps with Voldemort who yelps
Because Adelina danced badly while breaking a dish.
Yay! Vivian dances on glass
Her tights run away to class
Adelina really drives into Princess Peach
King Boo kills all who reteach
Vitamin filled irons are scandalous
And zinc loves magnesium
But Hydrogen wishes for superfluous
Polonium drinks Red Bull for sodium.
A/N:Names have been changed to protect the innocent. (Even though none of this is real) Another crazy poem from another crazy day. GO READ MY REAL STUFF!
Sparkles glitter much too much
And they combust tremendously with lust
Pretty cheerios roll down hills
While Mt. Everest explodes into a bajillion pills.
Thomas Jefferson cartwheels over George Washington
But John Adams eats Edward Cullen for fun.
Kaleidescopes spin because the earth is flat
PNC Bank jumps through fire bats
Insulting Cyrano's nose is pedantic
But Elephants' trunks are sick
Jacob Black dances naked in
The moon like a pin.
Voldemort munches on Bella
Who squeaks loserly a capella
Ron struts around like a duck
Dometimes I scream so I have luck
Puumba feverishly snorts like Simba or Adelina
Therapeutic breaths make pineapple Vivians baah.
Disney World loves Disneyland not Allison
Because trains find too few to make gin.
Here lies Jake
He danced on a lake
but this is not safe
So Vivian drowned Jake.
A/N: Yeah, this doesn't make sense. I don't own any of these people (even though I want Jacob)
Zebras strip their ears away
Jake screams girlishly while neighing
Like Adelina when she talks astray
Now the zebras cry because Adelina is singing.
Sobbing cows hate Vivian when she moos
Like Jake when he hears himself listening to Vivian baa
Like Zebras when dying because of Dr. V's voice boos
Semmas. He moos for Scott because of unrequited love for a zebra.
A/N: I wasn't involved with this one, but my friends wanted me to post it and ask for comments anyway. Semmas is a word that our teacher, Dr. V made up, if I didn't already say that.
From an 88 chapter long Homestuck fanfic written like a how-to guide for Sburb (the game in HS) players. It's what you'd expect from a hs ff, but I guess I read this after someone I knew died, so it's stuck with me since then.
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Okay so you confirmed deaths and recovered pendants. Now you can take a deep breath and let the events sink it. You're gonna have to deal with the fact that people die. One way or another, the game must go on. I don't have a lot to say about this so it's gonna be short alright.
When it comes to dealing with the subject of death, most people just writhe like a flagellum and puke melodrama. It's always the same bromides. "Oh it's so hard but I understand what you're going through, oh it's difficult but you're strong, blah blah blah, death is sad and you'll never get used to it because everybody is a unique snowflake and this is totally not an excuse to pretend to be a motivational speaker."
These people are full of shit. They don't know a single thing about death that doesn't come from a TV screen. So I'm just going to say it like it is.
You're gonna get used to death
And it's not a bad thing.
It's not a bad thing because death makes you learn more about yourself. I'm not entirely sure how to say this so bear with me. It's like this. You are defined by everybody that you meet. Right? It doesn't matter if they were pretty cool guys or if they were assholes, you always react to people. These reactions leave a mark behind. All of these marks are then color-coded based on your feelings and arranged into a mosaic that paints your portrait, pixels by pixels.
And everytime you lose someone, there's a part of yourself that is going to die. It's like something was ripped out from your portrait and it leaves a hole behind.
It's not sad or traumatizing or anything like that just by itself, it's just a hole. But you can TELL that something is missing. Like when you can't remember something and you know that there's something you forgot but you can't do anything about it. That kind of hole.
So you'll find yourself thinking about casual stuff and it'll lead to thinking about someone that died and it'll lead to a void and you'll be like "oh right, there's a piece that is missing". That's the death of a person, right there. You'll go through this crap even if the person was a dick. In fact, the death of assholes is often the most confusing of them all because you don't understand why you miss them.
Yet the the thing is, you'll grow up. You'll get over it. You're just going to paint over the hole in your portrait and you'll keep on going. In the end, the person's death didn't really mean anything. Unlike in fancy stories, deaths are anticlimatic and pointless. I mean, real events don't have any moral. They don't need to have a moral.
I think cliche stories are harmful in that regard, they lead people to expect proper denouement from things that never promised to make sense. And then these people don't know how to cope with it. They'll squint with their eyes and look everywhere for a moral secretly woven in the wax and wanes of their adventure. But there isn't anything hidden. It's just stuff that happens. And people dying is a part of stuff that happens.
The looming feeling of loss that comes with death is just a concomitant overgrowth, a superficial extension to a meeting by happenstance. There is no logic to be found in these individual events. There's nothing that can explain why someone had to die because shit, there's never a good reason for it.
But still there is a point of interest in all of this. It makes you discover something important about yourself that you can't see otherwise. It's when you realize that no matter how many times you lose parts of yourself, there's one part of you that never gets replaced. It's a part of you that just doesn't die.
And it's the part of you that isn't defined by other people.
I mean, it's like how you can't smell your scent, or how you don't recognize your voice when it's recorded. You're blind to the part that defines you the most because it's drowning in all the parts that come from other people. You can only find it when you start losing things. And you'll only meet it face to face when you lose everything.
It's like looking at a night sky where all the stars go out one by one, until there's only one star left. You used to think that it was just a faint blinking light among all the other stars. Well now it's the only thing you have left so you start to pay attention to it, you take a closer look and you realize that hey, it's a motherfucking star. It's a thundering deluge of constant themonuclear fusion blasting at full throttle. It's burning harder than you could even imagine and it was always there. It's like an ocean that was inside you all along and you just started hearing the rumble of its crashing waves.
I don't know, maybe it's a Might player thing.
It was during my fourth session that it all clicked. It was a session wipe. You know, a session where you are the last survivor. The next to last dude in the game was a PK, he had four kills on his head, I probably should have died too. Well I'll spare you the details. Then it was just me, my roadsignkind abstratus, the eight pendants around my neck and the wreck of a burning session.
I found myself humming the lyrics to that stupid cartoon that pre-installation puts on every damn universe. The show with the octopus crap and the tentacle buddies. You remember the song?
wake up in the morning
there's a brand new day ahead
the sun is bright and the clouds smile down
and all your friends are dead
Now that I think of it, that was when I started writing the FAQ.
I think I rambled too much.