Here is a poem and what might have been the lyrics to a grunge song (if I had written it ten years ago). When I attempt poetry at least half of it comes out as song lyrics, predictable rhyme scheme and all. So, my apologies in advance for those of you who hate that sort of thing. Plugged in The sound floats over the green To you Drives over the green Through you Electric rhythm Like a D-cell on your tongue And the things around you come alive As if it was their state of being That changed When you entered this world And not yours The mirror don’t put your trust in me won’t you just let me be it makes me self-conscious to be praised and all i want to do is hide or just be erased all of my life hunger and strife and it’s my own fault locked in my own vault by shame’s assault it’s not alright to say can’t make my tongue relay how all the lies you told me now come true and yet you set fire to my mind and the flames burned blue electric touch feeling too much choking to tell you heart beats a tattoo it is a clue why can’t i be the man i see in the mirror of your eyes
Well I'm not good at describing poetry, I always sound very technical and removed. I liked the first one abunch, it has this neat drum-beat syncopation to it. As well there is this delicious jolt of sorts between the 6th and 7nth lines where the rhythm undergoes a sudden change. For the second one. There is an oddly uncomfortable familiarity to it, especially the first stanza. Now don't get me wrong I use "uncomfortable" here to describe a feeling inspiried, not my opinion of your poetry. It [The Mirror] inspiresthis feeling of uncomfortable openness, it [the poem] is also vaguely familiar for some reason. By the way, do you live in the British isles or Ireland?
I'm glad you liked the first poem. I think I know where you are getting the idea that I've comr from the UK or Ireland, but no, I'm from the U.S. midwest. I just read a lot and I liked the color reference "the green" gives me. I don't play golf - LOL. When you say the other poem seems uncomfortably familiar... I'm not sure I understand your meaning. Does it seem derivative of something else you may have read? Some of the phrases in it describe things I've written about in posts to the previous incarnation of the forums, but those were more along the lines of prose essays, and I don't think you had any replies on those threads, so I don't know if you read them. This worries me in some way. I know some of the lines (like "all of my life, hunger and strife") seem sort of over used phrases - well, they do to me, anyway. But I don't think I am copying any other poetry or song lyrics I have read/heard. Just to be sure, I just did line by line searches on the google engine, some individual lines come up alot (like I said, they felt overused) but nothing which would lead me to believe that I might have plagerized or stolen them from anywhere. Certainly no set of two lines have come up on the same page of any of my results, and very little poetry at all. Still, this worries me. Perhaps I should edit the post and withdraw the poem.
Plugged in The sound floats over the green To you ---Nice concrete image to open with ---I wonder if you should capitalise by 'sentence' or some simlar unit rather than every line, to make it easier to parse/understand? Drives over the green Through you Electric rhythm Like a D-cell on your tongue --- I love this simile And the things around you come alive ---Another good line As if it was their state of being That changed When you entered this world And not yours ---I think there is something really good in this line which ties the poem together and gives it a message, but I am groping around it a bit. I am not sure what you could me by 'yours'. The person is in your/shared world making it more electric/alive. But I have trouble seeing how they could be in a world that was only theirs? Overall, pithy, technically clean and thought-provoking.
Actually, It was your use of the word "tattoo" as a kind of beat or rhythm. A tattoo is a kind of pipe and drum number often played in Scotland, Ireland, and England, yet in the U.S. it is used almost exclusively to mean skin art. Oh no, not "familiar" in the sense of having read it before, or that yours is not original work. I mean familiar in the sense that the feelings that you are describing seem oddly familiar to me, in a way that is non-specifically uncomfortable. This kind of thing though is a mark of effective writting. Please do not withdraw it
Thanks for the clarification. I won't withdraw the work. I'm glad it produced an effect, however unsettling that may have been.
