E. E. Cummings: Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Gladly Beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

White Light

A little girl
Lost and frightened
Found her way
Inside of herself
Deep within
Where a flame warmed the space around
And she danced and sang
Until the monsters came
And dragged her down
Into the floor.

Underneath the smog and the clay
The stones so cold
And the pavement so gray
She lived in a palace
Of ash and soot
And looked around
But there was no light
So she fell and stumbled
And tripped all night.

Many years went by
She always the same
Innocent and young
And quiet of face
But one day a man came
From the world above
And he was trapped
Just the same as she was
So together they suffered
In pain they grew to love
Then one day he said to her,
"I'll take you above"
To which she replied,
"I believe you, my love."

In the dark they stayed
For many years
But one night
The man grew still
He felt his lover
Close by his side
Motionless and cold
And he knew she had left him behind
So he mustered up some courage
And felt around for a large stone
Then he slammed it into his head
And as he bled
He remembered his promise
He saw a white light.

-by Me

Random poem I wrote tonight around 11pm. I haven't read it all the way through. I just wrote it and I'm going to leave it in its raw form. Tell me what you think if you'd like to.

Spontaneous Poetry

ephemeral escape

So I've been having to write quite a few poems recently and am now in the mood for it so I asked my friend to send me an image. Any image at all. I wanted to just kind of let my emotions out in a simple way. I've found that I love writing poetry that connects to an image. So here's the first attempt. Remember, they're not designed to be "good." They're just for fun and I try to do them quickly in free verse so that my emotions are more prevalent in the poetry itself.

Untitled 1

The light mixes
Orange and blue
Black with shadows
And the vibrance
Resonates with the sound
Of a glittering wind
Blowing across the glass-strewn desert
Picking up the shards as it moves rapidly
Through the valleys of slick stone
And finally reaching into the forests
Coating the trees with the colors of the world
Landscapes long forgotten by our people
Only the spirits of the ancients can recall
The days of glory
When all was bright
And generously colored with hope
Of a new beginning.

“If” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

One of my favorite poems

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it.

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.

Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three A.M. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.

-- Taken from The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

A Poem I Wrote

Fallen Angel

A breath of frozen ice
Filmy, white frost in the air
She breathes…in…out
A safe haven inside,
She is not there

The boys, peeking at her through the tiny cracked window
Made of glass
Frost forms on the transparent surface, condensation for them to trace shapes in
A happy scene of family togetherness

But that girl lies there on the snow-packed ground
Outside that lovely haven
Helpless in the endless white expanse
Her wings heavy with snow

The boys, this time peeking through the door
A hole right in the middle where the wind whistles through on the best of days
Then – the door opens
The boys, cautious and silent, make their way across the path to the tree
The white birch fallen, its roots torn from the ground
They touch her bark tenderly and lift her, the snow falling from her branches
Which flap like the wings of an angel
She returns to her glorious height
And the rays of the sun shine through the gaps.