Poetry in Progress

I’m not sure how many people read the “About” section of this blog (lie: I check the Site Stats page more regularly than is healthy), but I’m fairly certain that I mention in that my love of poetry. This is actually quite a recent thing; I wrote my first poems around a year ago but decided they were rubbish and left it for short story writing. But in March this year I wanted to start writing more again (I fell out of practice with school work and the internet), and I didn’t have time for short stories (although I did start a screenplay and a script-explain the logic of that decision to me please?). So, I started writing poems. And as of today I’ve written 25-of which about three are acceptable for eyes not genetically linked to mine.

Anyway, to cut what could otherwise be a very, very long post short, here is one of my poems. It’s a more recent one, and I know it’s not perfect, but it was one of my first attempts at getting a structured rhyme scheme (it’s so tempting to write poems stream of conciousness, even when you know it doesn’t fit right). And you know what, I am quite proud of it.

It’s also appropriate for the setting (you’ll see).

Living on the Internet

Living in a technical generation

No time for talking, or a toast and tea,

Only for digital stimulation

Which won’t fulfil you nor please me.

 

The clinical coldness of LCD,

The scraped bare virtual inbox.

Not a bone left, emotionally clean

And no warmth in pixel crosses.

 

Beeping beeping everywhere, but no voice.

Buttons to accept everywhere, but no choice.

Pay be cash, by credit, by card-

Never mind that you’ve already paid with your heart.

Poetry to Change your Life

No, this wasn’t written by me (un poco obvio, no?). But I honestly think that this poem is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever read, and no, that’s not because it expresses “my inner angst” (don’t think I have any). I studied John Clare very briefly last year, and I’ve since read more of his work (as should you), but this is one of my favourites. Enjoy.

I Am, by John Clare

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death’s oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
And e’en the dearest—that I loved the best—
Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil’d or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.