Are You A Poet? Then Show It!

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m searching high, I’m searching low
For the Official Poet of the IMHO
Be it happy or sad, verbose or terse
I invite y’all to send in your verse

You can post in the form of a limerick
If you’ve got some original schtick
But if you put in a bucket
Or a girl from Nantucket
You’re chances of winning ain’t slick

Haiku can be used
Poetry touching the heart
Dreams of pulp and ink

So send in your best effort, and let loose your muse
All poems will be welcomed and none will I refuse

[I ask only that it be original verse To avoid nasty letters, or lawsuits, or worse :)]

2

Slythe, you rock! :slight_smile: I’d post a poem of my own, but I’m a bit shy. Maybe after a few others post theirs. Oh, what the hell. This one I wrote after my grandfather died.

Live Forever

The suffering is over, your painful days are too.
I didn’t get to say good bye or how much I love you.
Your life on Earth has ended.
Now you’ve moved on to Heaven.
I hope that soon we’ll be together, but in my heart,
You’ll live forever.

3

Silver_Fire is the first
I rather like his touching verse

4

He says if I’m a poet,
I have to show it,
says our mod Slythe,
so I will oblige.

On Dopers bright and witty I can go on and on,
this group whose goal is to drive ignorance down,
all followers of Cecil’s are we who are willin’
to call ourselves the Teeming Millions!

We post on the boards and we chat in the room,
we have us some fun and brighten the gloom,
we meet at the dopefests and drink way too much,
we agrue and debate and we do other such,

For the most part we get along with each other,
for there are those teemers I would call “brother,”
but there are fewer females that I would call “sister,”
as they’re all so cute, and me, I’m a Mr.!

I’ll end your pain here, folks…

5

::ahem:: Her verse, but I thank you anyway.

6

“Computers are fun,
they melt in the sun…”

7

This is one that I wrote that actually got published. I wrote it for quietgirl.

Kiss

I could sit here
on this hard wooden floor
and say how I felt when
(buried in the soft scent of your cotton shirt
regulating the throbbing of pulse)
I melted into you
laid as a living statue;
distinctly remember
the rarefied air
sliding into my mouth
(accompanied by the delicate interplay
of tongue, sweet sensation)

Yet such recollection
merely clutters this room, spartan,
with such sentimentality
as cannot be cherished without you.

8

I am right now a semi-finalist in a contest for this one. Wish me luck!

Quiet Angel

I scream, no one hears.
But there’s a quiet voice,
…there’s nothing to fear…
It’s always there,
I just can’t hear it.
An Angel’s voice,
Drowned by demonic spirits.
When the devils scream,
I tend to forget,
A gentle whisper
From behind a loving pulpit.
She comes to me on feathered wings,
She comes to tell me of heavenly things.
But sometimes I can’t hear her…
If you like that I have another at http://www.poetry.com
type in fiarman in the search box.
P.S. I like andygirl’s poem. 'tis beautiful.

9

andygirl gives poetry a whirl
And relic_11 shows a bit of his heaven
Guanolad’s verse is certainly terse
While 2nd Law flirts with all who wear skirts :slight_smile:

10

A sonnet is the way, that I will show my skill
To slyth, who poet of IMHO he is trying to fill.

The Love That Loves Me In My Head
I love you more each time I see you smile,
Passionate expression I may never know.
I long to waste away with you awhile,
To warm by fires and watch the soft, falling snow.

I shield my eyes from your glorious beauty,
That the rest of the world can plainly see.
For I know that there can never be us,
Your soul will always be separate from me.

But pine away for you I will not do,
My bird will someday have to take that flight.
Please forgive me because I don’t mean to
Hurt your feelings but fate I will not fight.

For even though this could possibly be,
I know now that it was a dream, and is a dream, to me.

How’s that slythe, I have many more,
If you like that one, I have others in store.

11

Please excuse my grievous error, see
I let the verse out much to early.

The last two lines I erred, and wrote in haste,
Please exchange these for them, oh what a waste.

“For even though this could possibly be,
I know now that it must be a dream to me.”

:smiley:

12

Though to silent_rob’s talent I will certainly bow
More than one poem per person I should not allow
Let’s give everyone a chance to give us their best
And see who falls on their face, and who passes the test

13

Well, here’s my humble entry…

Misery grips my beating heart
Piece by piece tearing my soul apart
Hope dwindles into a darkening night
My love struggles in a hopeless fight
Well fought but futile still
As pain destroys my remaining will
Damned is my life
Seemingly bringing naught but strife
Agony to friend and glee to foe
Damning myself to eternal woe
Chance plots against my success
With burdens and pains in excess
Joy and smiles are no more
My broken heart but an empty core
My love brought happiness in place of pain
Now it seems all was in vain
Nothing to her was I meant to be
Never it seems she will see
That I gave all that I can
But now I am but a broken man

14

A poem I wrote on a dreary college day,
Speaks of alienation and epiphany (in a Ricean way):

Can you really see me?
Do you know me for what I am?
Or do you only see
The illusion
Of an ordinary man?

I weave a web of shadow,
My darkness to protect,
And never know
Where my soul will lie
When the candle flickers next.

I touch the mortal realm
Like fingers trailing in a stream.
A flash of fangs in darkness,
A sleeper overwhelmed,
And a dark and endless dream

Can none see the monster among them?
I’m ready for the fall!
Let it be war,
Or a quick clean end,
Or are you monsters…all?

15

I wrote this last year. In a way, it’s about many girls that I know, but it’s based on one in particular. She got pretty pissed when I hung it on my locker and told everyone who asked that it was about her.
Plastic Makes Perfect

My pretty plastic angel,
You’re such a dirty whore,
You spoiled little princess,
You think you’re such a star.

Just like a Christmas ball,
You’re so shiny and beautiful on the surface,
So fragile and empty inside.
Christmas balls are shiny and beautiful,
But they break very easily.

My shiny little angel,
You always want some more,
Your head so full of nothing,
You’re just a falling star.

Who will save you when you’re falling?
After you stab all your “friends” in the back,
Twisting the knife in deeper
Each time you hug them
And say, “I love you.”

My empty plastic angel,
Lying shattered on the floor,
Your pretty face all broken,
You know just who you are.

16

Zen
Sometimes the glass is
neither half empty nor half
full, it simply is

Cendrillon
All I wanted was a ball;
a moment of beauty
in a lifetime of ashes.

Belle
My sisters wanted riches.
They found my simpler desires contemptable,
but mine was the better bargain.

Caution
Don’t speak to strangers -
a walk in the woods
is a walk through eternity,
and we are not taught to trust ourselves.

Girlchildren are born to be wise
but shadowed by the cloak of red.
Tricked to maturity too soon
by the wild of the woods.

Grandmother, share your knowledge with me.
Baba, should I trust myself, and
talk to the wolf? He only wants
to share the sweet of desire.

Or shall I circumscribe my life
with woodsmen? To them
I will always be a victim, in need
of salvation from my wild nature.

More poetry available at Ngwalme’s House

17

My apologies for multiplicity of verse
The error is mine, and so much the worse
I did misread our moderator’s post
And should have posted only one, at most.

18

For poems so fine, no apology needed
It’s for multiple posters that my note should be heeded.

19

Aw, hell, I’ll play.
Roman Roads

Another voice has fallen low; the ruins of Rome are smiling
And the Titans, glancing over dusty syllables of sundials,
Make a small and simple movement, cover one of us in shade.
Sympathetic shudders leap through our hearts
In metronomic memory, hastening cadence
As those unseen hands craft the rhythms of mortality
Frightened of the rising past, we shut ourselves,
Imposing interpretation upon Salieri: this is what he meant,
This is what we mean when we bite a stutter
From the lips of reason, saying ‘Shelley was wrong,
Ozymandias has had his season, but we will have ours.’
Spending that season marking time, damning deities;
Obliterating all implications of passage through the worlds.
This is why we shape you into fables of valor,
Myths of crafted darkness; this is what we are taught
In the “democracy of the dead,” the necessary republic–
Past on present, weighted down we march
Carrying ahead the voices of our teachers
Playing amanuensis, driven by heraldry
Poising the sacrament atop makeshift mountains
To be revered as fervently as the chosen color of our gods
In hopes of storm or cessation, amnesiac absolution
Transferring possession of legacy’s burden:
Snowden’s secret, finite, fruitless, come to dust.
This is why we tremble at the thought of passing on
This is what we mean when we speak for you
This is how we have come to this place, this is why
You see us smashing the face of every wristwatch
Against the mountain in dutiful three-quarters time
We echo the sentiments of Salieri
And hear only echoes, we disdain the Romans
And travel upon their roads, we expect divinity
But we have broken apart the measurements of the divine.

20

There, surrounded by the still
Sweet waters of the infant sea,
In Pangea, at the dawn of time,
Grew the scion of the eldest tree.

Long it stood, and grew alone,
And lofted limbs above the barren land,
And with it’s strong and slender roots,
It crushed the virgin rock to sand.

To no one there it gently whispered,
Softly in the borning breeze,
The quiet growing memories,
Upon the newborn mountain’s knees.

Long forgotten tales blew on,
Through skies in which no bird had flown,
To gather into cloudless rain
And fall where never crop had grown.

And as the passing years advanced
Though centuries, and eons, too,
Mysteries like drifts of leaves,
And wood and bark, and seed it grew.

And Oh! Imagine now the sound,
The crashing echos through the dales,
And the mighty bones of Earth are rent,
As the ancient trunk, is bent, and fails.

Soft now, the rotted trunk lies dead,
As forests spring up where it stood,
And poets merely dream of times,
And places where the eldest stood.

Triskadecamus