Submissions by Baldwin
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
8th Feb 2020 7:30pm
8th Feb 2020 7:30pm
A Challenge to J-Z -- and anyone else here who might find it fun to imitate Byron, Yeats, et. al.
I challenge you, J-Z, to write some verse that has
a filled capacity to make a woman swoon
and fires desire in her to run headlong into
your arms, all breathless, sighing with her love for you .
Now this would mean you’d have to fill your measured lines
for once with true erotic charm, avoid cliches,
and also then eschew the awkward phrasings and
the rhymes predictable and dull you’re wont to place
inside the dreary lines you set upon the page.
Now given that you’ve claimed to be a writer who
has mastered every grace that gilded...
a filled capacity to make a woman swoon
and fires desire in her to run headlong into
your arms, all breathless, sighing with her love for you .
Now this would mean you’d have to fill your measured lines
for once with true erotic charm, avoid cliches,
and also then eschew the awkward phrasings and
the rhymes predictable and dull you’re wont to place
inside the dreary lines you set upon the page.
Now given that you’ve claimed to be a writer who
has mastered every grace that gilded...
#WritingPoetry
434 reads
8 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
7th Feb 2020 9:36pm
7th Feb 2020 9:36pm
The Traditions of the Best English Poets
I wonder now if what you claim is true:
that all the versifiers of the golden age of poetry,
when reigned Will Shakespeare and his ilk
(Rossetti, Marlowe, Milton, Donne, Traherne, Carew)
and those who wrote before free verse became the rage,
like Browning, Byron, Shelly, Keats and Pope,
Thoreau, and Hardy, too,
felt free, if not obliged, to give
all leave unto themselves
to think it so that they, to get a cunning verse
or two,
had liberty, indeed a mandate then,
to throw good grammar to the wind,
and felt that it was never...
that all the versifiers of the golden age of poetry,
when reigned Will Shakespeare and his ilk
(Rossetti, Marlowe, Milton, Donne, Traherne, Carew)
and those who wrote before free verse became the rage,
like Browning, Byron, Shelly, Keats and Pope,
Thoreau, and Hardy, too,
felt free, if not obliged, to give
all leave unto themselves
to think it so that they, to get a cunning verse
or two,
had liberty, indeed a mandate then,
to throw good grammar to the wind,
and felt that it was never...
#WritingPoetry
346 reads
0 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
6th Feb 2020 12:50pm
6th Feb 2020 12:50pm
How Many Times?
You ask how many times
that I must have your kiss
before I would be satisfied that you were mine.
As many as the winds that hasten all the trees
beyond the sea.
As many as the rains that from the earliest of dawns
to this
have fallen on the earth, its slanting hills,
and turned to rime.
As many as the stars that line and surge the sky
when nightfall comes,
though even these may never be enough.
But let us use this day, and all to come,
to see.
that I must have your kiss
before I would be satisfied that you were mine.
As many as the winds that hasten all the trees
beyond the sea.
As many as the rains that from the earliest of dawns
to this
have fallen on the earth, its slanting hills,
and turned to rime.
As many as the stars that line and surge the sky
when nightfall comes,
though even these may never be enough.
But let us use this day, and all to come,
to see.
#lover
350 reads
0 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
6th Feb 2020 12:45pm
6th Feb 2020 12:45pm
truth
I
wonder
if it’s true
that plunderings
of hearts, and sharp sun-
derings of self lead on
always to a soul renewed.
I think that those who say it’s so
have known a life of little pain, and
remain close sheltered from the aching world.
wonder
if it’s true
that plunderings
of hearts, and sharp sun-
derings of self lead on
always to a soul renewed.
I think that those who say it’s so
have known a life of little pain, and
remain close sheltered from the aching world.
#sadness
386 reads
0 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
5th Feb 2020 8:52pm
5th Feb 2020 8:52pm
Longing
You are the shape of sleep,
moon sung,
sky voiced,
star graced,
and I a threadbare wanderer,
night lost,
in need of you.
moon sung,
sky voiced,
star graced,
and I a threadbare wanderer,
night lost,
in need of you.
#separation
471 reads
11 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
5th Feb 2020 1:45pm
5th Feb 2020 1:45pm
Your Name
Your name
will not be voiced by me today,
an anniversary of sorts.
I will not let my tongue
evoke its panoply.
Your name
will not be mouthed by me
from dawn
to dusk
and I’ll not let it touch my thoughts,
or fill my dreams,
now husks,
from darkened sun to morning’s rim;
the lust of it, your name,
that sin upon my lips,
caressing me,
all sere this dunning year,
if spoken out,
will do me in.
will not be voiced by me today,
an anniversary of sorts.
I will not let my tongue
evoke its panoply.
Your name
will not be mouthed by me
from dawn
to dusk
and I’ll not let it touch my thoughts,
or fill my dreams,
now husks,
from darkened sun to morning’s rim;
the lust of it, your name,
that sin upon my lips,
caressing me,
all sere this dunning year,
if spoken out,
will do me in.
#lust
411 reads
1 Comment
LOVE POEM
Published
4th Feb 2020 5:14pm
4th Feb 2020 5:14pm
Grey Wing
A grey wing beats and numbs the day
and hollow indecision drapes itself unbidden
all along my limbs,
like bleaking fog seeped over Autumned paths,
a caul that's smothering my breath.
My hours that should be joyed with work
are dulled and trail away before my eyes
like lulled, stooped shouldered men
paced aimless, shuffling,
slow along their way.
No livening's left to me now;
in sway on everything's a chill,
a lowering, a winter's pall.
She is not here.
She's distanced all.
and hollow indecision drapes itself unbidden
all along my limbs,
like bleaking fog seeped over Autumned paths,
a caul that's smothering my breath.
My hours that should be joyed with work
are dulled and trail away before my eyes
like lulled, stooped shouldered men
paced aimless, shuffling,
slow along their way.
No livening's left to me now;
in sway on everything's a chill,
a lowering, a winter's pall.
She is not here.
She's distanced all.
#heartbroken
411 reads
8 Comments
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
4th Feb 2020 4:07pm
4th Feb 2020 4:07pm
Quit Telling Me that Heaven Is My Home
You say it is my destiny,
if I show “faith”,
to end up as essentially a ghost
that stays for all eternity
within an otherworldly ghosty place
sans all the flesh
that stands now as
the sign and seat of my identity.
But isn’t this a lie?
For after all, it’s something that
quite fundamentally denies
the import of the proclamation that
the I Am said
when he created in fixed form
the earth
to be man’s dwelling and his home;
that it, and not
some disincarnate realm
beyond the...
if I show “faith”,
to end up as essentially a ghost
that stays for all eternity
within an otherworldly ghosty place
sans all the flesh
that stands now as
the sign and seat of my identity.
But isn’t this a lie?
For after all, it’s something that
quite fundamentally denies
the import of the proclamation that
the I Am said
when he created in fixed form
the earth
to be man’s dwelling and his home;
that it, and not
some disincarnate realm
beyond the...
#spiritual
309 reads
1 Comment
SPIRITUAL POEM
Published
3rd Feb 2020 10:31pm
3rd Feb 2020 10:31pm
My Ram
What did you think
when you, when young,
and laid, as young lambs often were
within Jerusalem
upon the Temple's altar, saw
the priests’ sharp knives
directed at your throat
was their intent to do?
To play some ticklish games
upon your wool
and over which they all
eventually could laugh?
Or was it then
to spill your blood,
to slash your life away?
Let’s thank our god
that I was able then to rescue you
from sacrificial death
and raise you up in frolicked
circumstance
to be a...
when you, when young,
and laid, as young lambs often were
within Jerusalem
upon the Temple's altar, saw
the priests’ sharp knives
directed at your throat
was their intent to do?
To play some ticklish games
upon your wool
and over which they all
eventually could laugh?
Or was it then
to spill your blood,
to slash your life away?
Let’s thank our god
that I was able then to rescue you
from sacrificial death
and raise you up in frolicked
circumstance
to be a...
#WritingPoetry
371 reads
5 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
25th Jan 2020 10:05pm
25th Jan 2020 10:05pm
I wonder
I wonder how the quality
of things I write would be assessed
by writers in the know
(those truly educated in the elements
required for lyrical felicity
like Pound and Eliot, and Pope,
with Yeats and Hardy, too)
if I engaged in messing with,
ignoring so,
the places where some articles
were needed by grammatical
and sensical necessity
to go,
and then, as well, with regularity,
inverted words to get a rhyme,
or wrenched the syntax of my lines
quite out of joint to score some points
(in my own...
of things I write would be assessed
by writers in the know
(those truly educated in the elements
required for lyrical felicity
like Pound and Eliot, and Pope,
with Yeats and Hardy, too)
if I engaged in messing with,
ignoring so,
the places where some articles
were needed by grammatical
and sensical necessity
to go,
and then, as well, with regularity,
inverted words to get a rhyme,
or wrenched the syntax of my lines
quite out of joint to score some points
(in my own...
#WritingPoetry
419 reads
7 Comments
MISCELLANEOUS POEM
Published
5th Aug 2018 7:31pm
5th Aug 2018 7:31pm
Joseph's claims
#redemption
466 reads
0 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
26th Jul 2018 5:01pm
26th Jul 2018 5:01pm
Regret
I send you all the poems
that only some few days ago
you said I won you with –
an eager time for both of us,
a shining time,
a time before I,
senseless to my senselessness
made you think my caring centered
only on myself.
I send them
hoping they will mold you
like a small cry on your heart
into a softer memory of me.
that only some few days ago
you said I won you with –
an eager time for both of us,
a shining time,
a time before I,
senseless to my senselessness
made you think my caring centered
only on myself.
I send them
hoping they will mold you
like a small cry on your heart
into a softer memory of me.
#emptiness
541 reads
3 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Baldwin
