deepundergroundpoetry.com
I NEED YOUR HELP !
I NEED YOUR HELP !
I ask if you do know, poets of great renown,
what gist this life can have, and what for people live.
We move from day to day; the change is just the date.
We look at time and say we are as always late.
We feel that life must have a meaning but we are
too lazy and too dumb to find its sense and depth.
I fear that time will pass while l'm still quite distraught.
Please, days, slow down till l can find my hidden wealth.
There must be something tucked somewhere but l need help.
Who can give me a hand to set my mind at rest?
Then l don't care if days are slower or the same
as l have found what l have reckoned my tucked aim.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
All rights reserved
____________________________________
I ask if you do know, poets of great renown,
what gist this life can have, and what for people live.
We move from day to day; the change is just the date.
We look at time and say we are as always late.
We feel that life must have a meaning but we are
too lazy and too dumb to find its sense and depth.
I fear that time will pass while l'm still quite distraught.
Please, days, slow down till l can find my hidden wealth.
There must be something tucked somewhere but l need help.
Who can give me a hand to set my mind at rest?
Then l don't care if days are slower or the same
as l have found what l have reckoned my tucked aim.
BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
All rights reserved
____________________________________
Published 12th Sep 2019
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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Commenting Preference:
The author encourages honest critique.
Why do you ask if well known poets know
the one essential point that life CAN have,
when, as all thinking persons
(not just famous versifiers) hold,
the issue is
what point life HAS,
assuming that it actually has a point at all.
And who’s this “we” you say is always late,
who is too dumb and lazy, too, to find
some sense or meaning in the daily, unrelenting march
and sway of time?
I do not know just how or why
you think that you can speak what’s true
for everyone (including me)
or really know the minds of “men”.
Do you possess omnisciency?
It seems you (oh so arrogantly – but certainly implicitly)
lay claim to do!
But why should anyone believe that what you say
is grounded in veracity
or real and in-depth understanding
of the workings of the world
and all the various ways of humankind?
Or is your statement posed the way it is
(so questionably so)
in order to achieve a tepid rhyme
rather than to write with sense and real felicity?.
And who is it that you so plaintively address
for the comfort that you seek to be “untucked”.
Is it poets of renown
or days in time that seem to you to run amuck?
You are confused, it seems to me
and show here just another instance of how much
your writing’s muddled
with regard to what’s the subject of your all tell “verse”,
and with respect to all the ins and outs
of what it is that makes a writing poetry
you are without a clue.
the one essential point that life CAN have,
when, as all thinking persons
(not just famous versifiers) hold,
the issue is
what point life HAS,
assuming that it actually has a point at all.
And who’s this “we” you say is always late,
who is too dumb and lazy, too, to find
some sense or meaning in the daily, unrelenting march
and sway of time?
I do not know just how or why
you think that you can speak what’s true
for everyone (including me)
or really know the minds of “men”.
Do you possess omnisciency?
It seems you (oh so arrogantly – but certainly implicitly)
lay claim to do!
But why should anyone believe that what you say
is grounded in veracity
or real and in-depth understanding
of the workings of the world
and all the various ways of humankind?
Or is your statement posed the way it is
(so questionably so)
in order to achieve a tepid rhyme
rather than to write with sense and real felicity?.
And who is it that you so plaintively address
for the comfort that you seek to be “untucked”.
Is it poets of renown
or days in time that seem to you to run amuck?
You are confused, it seems to me
and show here just another instance of how much
your writing’s muddled
with regard to what’s the subject of your all tell “verse”,
and with respect to all the ins and outs
of what it is that makes a writing poetry
you are without a clue.
28th Sep 2019 2:24pm
Dear Baldwin,
What you have written is not poetry at all. It is mere ideas written in prose, but you write these ideas in short lines to appear like poetry. It's a mere weakling, dressed in the uniform of a mighty knight, but he is so far from being a warrior. This is my true opinion, frankly speaking. You are still a dear friend to me, but please try to criticize without using hurting words. I love honest criticism without using aggressive words.
What you have written is not poetry at all. It is mere ideas written in prose, but you write these ideas in short lines to appear like poetry. It's a mere weakling, dressed in the uniform of a mighty knight, but he is so far from being a warrior. This is my true opinion, frankly speaking. You are still a dear friend to me, but please try to criticize without using hurting words. I love honest criticism without using aggressive words.
28th Sep 2019 4:01pm
What do you mean it's not poetry? It has the very elements that **you have claimed elsewhere** a writing must have to be poetry and not prose -- rhythm and rhyme. In other words, by your own definition of what poetry is, it **has** to be poetry.
28th Sep 2019 9:31pm
Dear Baldwin,
That's in your opinion but not in mine. There is no good subject, no deep ideas, no good rhythm, and you still call it poetry. Sorry to say so because l don't like to tell the truth when it is harsh.
That's in your opinion but not in mine. There is no good subject, no deep ideas, no good rhythm, and you still call it poetry. Sorry to say so because l don't like to tell the truth when it is harsh.
8th Oct 2019 7:50pm
With respect to the matter what renders an opinion worthless,
it can hardly be that it belongs to someone. It's whether it is sound.
it can hardly be that it belongs to someone. It's whether it is sound.
3rd Oct 2019 6:54pm
Well, now you have moved the goal posts. And even accepting your **new** criteria of what a writing has to have to be poetry, I have to disagree with you that my pieced has no good subject, that a writing has to have "deep ideas" (whatever those are) to be poetry, and that my piece lacks a good rhythm (whatever that is). If you'll note, it is consistently iambic.
More importantly, you are not being harsh. You are showing yourself as prejudiced, ill informed about what poetry is, and blind.
More importantly, you are not being harsh. You are showing yourself as prejudiced, ill informed about what poetry is, and blind.
5th Oct 2019 8:29pm
Dear Baldwin,
I noticed it is iambic, but you have flaws here and there. There are so many words where the stress is not accurate. Moreover, l don't like the iamb when the line ends with a missing stress.
Where did you get the word OMNISCIENCY from?
I have moved the goal posts. Yes, l have. I don't want to criticize more, actually as you poem is not poetry to me altogether. Thank you, Baldwin.
I noticed it is iambic, but you have flaws here and there. There are so many words where the stress is not accurate. Moreover, l don't like the iamb when the line ends with a missing stress.
Where did you get the word OMNISCIENCY from?
I have moved the goal posts. Yes, l have. I don't want to criticize more, actually as you poem is not poetry to me altogether. Thank you, Baldwin.
Well then, given your new (but question begging) criteria of what makes a writing poetry (i.e., that it has to have a good subject and deep ideas as well as a "good" rhythm -- what? no concrete appeals to the senses, no metaphors or similes, no sonics/musicality?), I think you'll have to judge the following as poetry since it has all of the things you claim a writing must have to be poetry.
My topic is a subject deep:
It’s whether the objective of
sweet Jesus and his love for men
is fixed, as Joseph claims,
upon a lifting up
of those who love him back
into an otherworldly, Spirit realm
above
to live discarnate lives
forever there
with him.
What can I say
except that this would seem
to be the world denying Gnostic heresy,
and not a core belief of early Christianity
which was, as Paul himself proclaimed,
one grounded in the certainty
that the experience awaiting men
within the "afterlife"
was their anew envelopment
in breath filled flesh
and makes a lie
of what is said in the Apocalypse
about how at the dawn
of the anticipated age to come
good people then will live again
a bodied life upon the earth
in the renewed (in concrete space and time)
Jerusalem.
My topic is a subject deep:
It’s whether the objective of
sweet Jesus and his love for men
is fixed, as Joseph claims,
upon a lifting up
of those who love him back
into an otherworldly, Spirit realm
above
to live discarnate lives
forever there
with him.
What can I say
except that this would seem
to be the world denying Gnostic heresy,
and not a core belief of early Christianity
which was, as Paul himself proclaimed,
one grounded in the certainty
that the experience awaiting men
within the "afterlife"
was their anew envelopment
in breath filled flesh
and makes a lie
of what is said in the Apocalypse
about how at the dawn
of the anticipated age to come
good people then will live again
a bodied life upon the earth
in the renewed (in concrete space and time)
Jerusalem.
Please point out where my "flaws" appear, where my stress is not "accurate", or where any metrical substitutions I might have made are not standard ones (http://www.everypoet.org/pffa/showthread.php?11320-Standard-Substitutions-in-Strict-Iambic-Pentameter&s=) and therefore not legitimate.
And speaking of lines that are flawed iambic, isn't this what this is?
I ASK if YOU do KNOW, POets of GREAT reNOWN
and this:
We FEEL that LIFE must HAVE a MEANing but WE are ...
and this:
WHO can GIVE ME a HAND to SET my MIND at REST?
pot, meet kettle.
As to omnisciency, I found it in the OED, the Free Dictionary, in Samuel Johnson, and in a variety of theological discussions on the attributes of God.
And speaking of lines that are flawed iambic, isn't this what this is?
I ASK if YOU do KNOW, POets of GREAT reNOWN
and this:
We FEEL that LIFE must HAVE a MEANing but WE are ...
and this:
WHO can GIVE ME a HAND to SET my MIND at REST?
pot, meet kettle.
As to omnisciency, I found it in the OED, the Free Dictionary, in Samuel Johnson, and in a variety of theological discussions on the attributes of God.
