#two verse poems

[youre-ackermine]

SONNET XVII

- Pablo Neruda -

 "I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

.

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   

so close that your eyes close with my dreams."

-

Pablo Neruda - “One Hundred Love Sonnets" - 1959

Translation : Mark Eisner (2004)

[stagefoureddiediaz]

I have you fast in my fortress, And will not let you depart, But put you down into the dungeon. In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever, Yes, forever and a day, Till the walls shall crumble to ruin. And moulder in dust away!

The children’s hour (last 2 verses) Henry Wandsworth Longfellow

[xvnfixations]

i am ─ 🕊️🍃

a personal poem revised into a piece for the nameless bard + venti ( genshin impact )

03.02.2023

" i am "

life is a never-ending challenge of will

a test of patience, courage, and skill

freedom ー before the sky, beyond the sea

i was, i am, and i will be

free ー to dream, to wish with a heart that spills.

to be found within or beyond the hills

this world, this city, will thrive to see

the joy, the beauty of being free

let this rhyme live past history

to be more than a tale, a legacy

a song for souls to remember and sing

for faith be found on wind and string.

~ @xvnfixations

[ragewrites]

for @nosebleedclub‘s january prompts

[hauntedfutures]

Snowgrave

Every voice is a supererogation

Of divinity’s immortal blizzard.

Sacred commands of monstrosity

Proceed in gregarious brutality

And the anatomical heart of a soul

Feels lost in ancient determination.

She holds the world in a snow globe

Cast upon eyes of fluorescent white

And hands sculpted in rigid sight.

If strength was every icebolt strike,

Then the world would succumb to the

Lost fountain of the roaring knight.

It is every voice that powers her

And every jolt of frigidity tugging

The strings of the underworld.

It is every ache of renewed reality

That speaks in words of aphonia

In graves of frigorific dystopia.

[milfygerard]

i miss talking about gender in mcr. do yall remember drowning lessons?

[salovie]

I really hate to do this to you, but

it’s something new and

I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, so

if you could help me

find a spot for this love?

And by the way,

What would happen if you only had one

but you took really good care of it?

What would happen if we didn’t move

for a hundred years?

[will2will2will2]

"near oxford" - will2 8/10/2023

touched up the first stanza a bit

[definegodliness]

Quiet Man

Count to ten; swallow the flame; Spit it out In the sink;

Crack the mirror;

Think — think (!) Before speaking equals: Never say a thing again.

Quiet man,

Self-flagellate. All this Rage, the default State, hidden. Simmering; awaiting;

Begging 

Spontaneous Combustion; incineration’s Redemption; fires Roaring; 

Ashes. Obliteration. At long last

Pulverized ‘tween fingers, the embers That sear the sternum.

[broke-on-books]

Question

What is a child?

A quiet between two bombardments.

-Ilya Kaminsky, Deaf Republic

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[Untitled Haiku]

They went wherever

They had to go to escape

All the tests and drills

-A. S. King, I Crawl Through It

[peggy-sue-reads-a-book]

[creatediana]

"Lines on Pondering the Plural Form of Zeus" - a free verse poem written 3/29/2024

[highbot710]

the voices the voices

be like

art not a

"real job"

for broke

no body

like you

the voices the voices

want me

to spend

the $$$

left

on neck

tattoos

frightening

every

"real job"

away

from us

forever

[ragewrites]

Altered Haiku, Untitled, Lianna Schreiber 05 / 12 / 2022 § Read a book of haiku...the old bug I had for them has once again caught me. Few ways to pass the time are more pleasant.

[suckitupsunshine]

Summer Dog Despair

school holidays are almost up and puppies

pine pitifully

behind six-foot, solid metal fences

the static of the still, hot air

holds their howling close

like humid hours before a summer storm

press the sweat back onto my skin

the whimpering is pushing in, down

a cloying pressure, it’s intolerable

it is new, it is old

summer suburbs

containing regimented boxes, perimeters

holding us neatly in, rigidly apart

pressing us too close

radiating heat

spilling onto the streets

our dozens of cars and wheelie bins

and none of us in sight

occupied, being squeezed

by institutions and the atmosphere

waiting out the sun

summer season is winding up

sucker punch

the nights are hot and restless

we are

wrung out and flattened by the evening

in solid air, no room to stretch

no time for puppy play

no time

new dogs make sad little noises

under the bright white moon

the quiet shrill despair

cuts through solid fences

through the window, to my heart

prone and impotent upon the bedsheets

small, sad sounds and silence pressing in

I will myself to be inert

I will the dogs to dream

the air before the dawn is heavy

I let it weigh me down

held close in summer’s arms

I fall away

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The thing with the Mari Lwyd, though, is that it's being... I don't know, 'appropriated' is the wrong word, but certainly turned into something it isn't.

Thing is, this is a folk tradition in the Welsh language, and that's the most important aspect of it. I feel partly responsible for this, because I accidentally became a bit of an expert on the topic of the Mari Lwyd in a post that escaped Tumblr containment, and I clearly didn't stress it strongly enough there (in my defence, I wrote that post for ten likes and some attention); but this is a Welsh language tradition, conducted in Welsh, using Welsh language poetic forms that are older than the entire English language, and also a very specific sung melody (with a very specific first verse; that's Cân y Fari). It is not actually a 'rap battle'. It's not a recited poem. It is not any old rhyme scheme however you want.

It is not in English.

Given the extensive and frankly ongoing attempts by England to wipe out Welsh, and its attendant cultural traditions, the Mari is being revived across Wales as an act of linguistic-cultural defiance. She's a symbol of Welsh language culture, specifically; an icon to remind that we are a distinct people, with our own culture and traditions, and in spite of everyone and everything, we're still here. Separating her from that by removing the Welsh is, to put it mildly, wildly disrespectful.

...but it IS what I'm increasingly seeing, both online and in real world Mari Lwyd festivals. She's gained enormous pop-culture popularity in recent years, which is fantastic; but she's also been reduced from the tradition to just an aesthetic now.

So many people are talking/drawing about her as though she's a cryptid or a mythological figure, rather than the folk practice of shoving a skull on a stick and pretending to be a naughty horse for cheese and drunken larks. And I get it! It's an intriguing visual! Some of the artwork is great! But this is not what she is. She's not a Krampus equivalent for your Dark Christmas aesthetic.

I see people writing their own version of the pwnco (though never called the pwnco; almost always called some variant on 'Mari Lwyd rap battle'), and as fun as these are, they are never even written in the meter and poetic rules of Cân y Fari, much less in Welsh, and they never conclude with the promise to behave before letting the Mari into the house. The pwnco is the central part to the tradition; this is the Welsh language part, the bit that's important and matters.

Mari Lwyd festivals are increasingly just English wassail festivals with a Mari or two present. The Swansea one last weekend didn't even include a Mari trying to break into a building (insert Shrek meme); there was no pwnco at all. Even in the Chepstow ones, they didn't do actual Cân y Fari; just a couple of recited verses. Instead, the Maris are just an aesthetic, a way to make it look a bit more Welsh, without having to commit to the unfashionable inconvenience of actually including Welsh.

And I don't really know what the answers are to these. I can tell you what I'd like - I'd like art to include the Welsh somewhere, maybe incorporating the first line of Cân y Fari like this one did, to keep it connected to the actual Welsh tradition (or other Welsh, if other phrases are preferred). I'd like people who want to write their version of the pwnco to respect the actual tradition of it by using Cân y Fari's meter and rhyme scheme, finishing with the promise to behave, and actually calling it the pwnco rather than a rap battle (and preferably in Welsh, though I do understand that's not always possible lol). I'd like to see the festivals actually observe the tradition, and include a link on the booking website to an audio clip of Cân y Fari and the words to the first verse, so attendees who want to can learn it ahead of time. I don't know how feasible any of that is, of course! But that's what I'd like to see.

I don't know. This is rambly. But it's something I've been thinking about - and increasingly nettled by - for a while. There's was something so affirming and wonderful at first about seeing the Mari's climb into international recognition, but it's very much turned to dismay by now, because she's important to my endangered culture and yet that's the part that everyone apparently wants to drop for being too awkward and ruining the aesthetic. It's very frustrating.