My Writings

The recent merging with a2k and philforum has deleted my other writings, for some reason. So, I'll post them again over time, so as not to suffocate you with an overload of my ramblings. Here's a new one.

FruitionHere's an old one.

Plenty more...

Hi Mike,
Fantastic! I love it when the mature mind reflects on the ignorance of innocence. In verses like this you might like to try being cruel to the extreme, then flip the spectrum to the extremity of pure kindness.
Give it a go.
I'll be watching for it, my friend.
Mark...

Hi Mark, thanks for the response.

As always, your wisdom has shone, my friend. I feel certain kindness to the naivity of my young self, and I think it would be redundant for me to condemn too much the child in me, which begs to be set free at the worst of times! Because, afterall, if it wasn't for that child, there wouldn't be the 'me' who is now.

Thoughts?

Hi Mike,
This is why I regret not one single thing of my past, good or bad.
Because all of those things are the sum of my being. Would I alter any one of them?..................NO WAY!
Thank you Mike.
Mark...

Is there a mod I can contact that can fix my posts in this thread?

Any help would be great.

Hi, and welcome to a2k. I usually do not comment on original writing of others, but I enjoy to look in and read from time to time.

Thanks! I like it here.

Transcend, some of my stuff was messed up too in the conversion. At the bottom of the page, click the Contact Us link and submit a ticket describing the issue and also a link to the post in question.

Cheers Chad! I should have realised - silly me

I've contacted the site and my newest writings will be put up again when they conduct maintenance. In the meantime, here's a new one.

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Names
I describe her ‘sapphire eyes’;
I call it ‘golden’ when the sun shines;
Smoke becomes ‘a silver slither’;
The ‘pearl white’ rose begins to wither.

The mower mows the ‘blades of grass’;
The logger logs the ‘armies of trees’-
Limbs ‘dance the war dance’ as men pass;
They’re ‘full of hate’, those bumblebees.

‘Cotton clouds’ look fit to sleep on,
Like a ‘tissue’ one could weep on.
The birds do ‘sing’ with all their might;
The birds do sleep in the ‘dead of night’.

Why do we do it, I wonder?
On these ponderous names I do ponder.

Transcend,

I'd like to encourage you to not let negative comments about rhyme affect your atittude toward poems that rhyme, including your own. I think most poets agree that it can be very difficult to write a poem that rhymes without sacrificing sense to sound. But there are many poets who do it well. One of my favorites is Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. He once said "Writing a free verse poem was like playing tennis with the net down." I think he went a bit too far with that comment, but he was very good at writing pithy, meaningful, truth-bearing poems without sounding childish, trite or sing-song silly.

I do think that your poem could be improved by giving more thought to how the rhyme will affect some readers. You could change your line breaks, for example, to produce more internal rhymes. Or have every other line rhyme so it doesn't call as much attention to itself. But I didn't feel as if your end rhyme was forced, as if you were stabbing in the dark, so to speak, to keep it going.

It's become a hard and fast rule to avoid cliches. But rules can prevent the specific situation from speaking to us. And cliches have become both popular and widespread for the very reason that they capture simple everyday wisdom in clever, pithy, memorable ways. So if a cliche has not become stale from over use, it probably won't distract your reader from the focus of your poem or story. It might even improve his or her identification with what you are trying to convey. It's risky, of course, especially if you're trying to get your poem published. But if we can find a way of saying what the cliche conveys, tap into its phrasing in a fresh new way?

--Bill

Hi Bill, thank you for your reply.

I'm not in the business of letting people's opinions get me down, for the simple fact that it is unreasonable to believe that everyone is going to find my work agreeable. You can't win 'em all.

As for rhyme, well, I'm going through an experimental phase in my writing and am trying all sorts. I like rhyme though, which is why I write in it a lot. I have been meaning to look at other methods though rather than the simple couplets and alternate rhymes.

I like cliches, I really do. I like them because people find them disagreeable simply because they think I put them there out of laziness, or dramatic effect. Which isn't true; I think about what I put in my pieces, and cliche serves a purpose in them all. If it resulted in me getting rejected by a publisher simply because they wouldn't publish a cliche, then good riddence to them as they've missed the point of the writing, so I wouldn't want it published by them anyway.

I put the last poem to my acoustic guitar, and as a result I've edited it (in the post below) because I found it clumsy and unfluid when singing it. I hope you'll check it out, but don't feel pressured into commenting.

Thanks again, Bill.

Mike

Edited version of my latest poem

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Names
I describe her ‘sapphire eyes’;
I call it ‘golden’ when the sun shines;
Smoke becomes ‘a silver slither’;
The ‘pearl white’ rose begins to wither.

The mower mows the ‘blades of grass’;
The logger logs the ‘armies of trees’-
Limbs ‘dance the war dance’;
They’re ‘full of hate’, so it seems.

‘Cotton clouds’ look fit to sleep on,
Like a ‘tissue’ one could cry and weep on.
The birds do ‘sing’ with all their might;
The birds do sleep in the ‘dead of night’.

Why do we do it, I wonder?
On these ponderous names I do ponder...

Dear Donkey
Find your footing amid treacherous stones.
Carry without question man’s heavy loads.
Do not rest until you are allowed.
Do not be a beast that is at all proud.
Become a silly symbol of idiocy.
Trudge along silently and piteously.
Do not cry any tears of no need,
For they will be wasted when paid no heed.
Eat the scraps of food they toss to you.
Drink the filthy water they lead you to.
Take the beatings when you walk astray.
Keep trudging along till the end of your day.

I Wish It Were a Souvenir
It was a fleeting thought, so I thought.
A life short like a souvenir bought-
Novel for a sunny day, then thrown away.
But no, the thought I met forgot to forget;
Lingered around like a resonating sound;
Seemed to expire but in the corner did retire.

Then in the night it shot into sight,
From the depths of my mind, to give me a sign:
In a frosty voice it said, ‘You have no choice;
You must remember me...’