Traditional Haiku

So to finish the set here is a traditional Haiku, at least as far as the English interpretation is concerned. Purely an experiment with the form, perhaps even a cliche, but then the haiku could be classed as a such, like all poetic forms that stick to such stringent rules.  However I love them, not as much as villanelles, but I have always had a preference for the least amount of words making the biggest impact. Hope you like it.

Haiku

Snow melts faster as
spring approaches, unveiling
her patient flowers.

Another Fake Haiku

Here is another fake haiku inspired by a random dream about a great poet, departed friend and ridiculously talented artist.

Haiku

Dreamt of you again.
Old times replaying a thousand
stubbed out cigarettes.

Pretend Haiku

I've called this a haiku while not sticking stringently to the idea behind the form.  It is rather a simplistic version of the ideal construction. There are no references to seasons and change, no initial statement followed by a conclusion. It is rather a statement in itself written in 5-7-5, which is about as loose a connection as you can get from the original Japanese. I simply enjoyed the restrictions of the English syllabic count, which can focus the mind and produce, in just a few lines, all you would like to say in a longer more elaborate poem. This is the short, sharp shock of truth, furnished with opinion and doubt.  Hope you like it.

Haiku

The great binary
anomaly within the
grand computation.

Guest Poem

For the first time, and hopefully not the last, here is a poem written by my good friend James Gibbons.  I love this, I hope you all will too.

Untitled

The clouds take umbrage with the earth

And from high pummels with liquid fury a poor belittled plain

a proud vista humbled by majesty and malevolence that a once clear sky

could turn and capriciously vent it's bloated anger

Rage sated the prismatic colours beam in multitudinous splendour

A spectrum bridge to the heavens.

O.C.D

I have always preferred poetry that is painfully honest, poetry that rips the flesh from our bones and displays the piss and shit of human truth for all to smell.  I am a pessimistic poet, a pessimistic man, but I can still appreciate the beauty of words no matter what they are trying to convey.  That's why I wrote this particular cinquain. Having suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder since the age of seven(my earliest memory of it) I have always been a slave to it's random rules, it's almost religious doctrines and insipid, relentless imaginings.  This poem is one of its results, one of its positive results.  Short, sweet and to the point.

O.C.D

I fold
my hands away
into parcels of sweet
comfort.  Shy and afraid they go
unused.

FutureShocks

So thanks to Tharg and an interest in physics I was able to write this particular villanelle in quite a short period of time.  I still find it strange that a few random lines in a book I found accidentally could have been the starting point for a full poem, especially a villanelle.  I guess it proves the more you read, the better you write. Hopefully!

Entropy

We only have one certainty
on which we can rely,
there's no escaping entropy,

the destroyer of infinity,
how ever hard we try.
We only have one certainty,

all order ends chaotically.
A rule we all live by.
There's no escaping entropy,

it acts on all things equally,
all that exists must die.
We only have one certainty,

the end of all complexity
is a fact we can't deny.
There's no escaping entropy,

it's a part of our reality
that no one can defy.
We only have one certainty,
there's no escaping entropy.

Pedestal

So here is the new poem I promised.  I had the first verse kicking around for a while, but the last two were written in a mad ten minute period that I had very little control of.  One of those wonderful, rare moments where it all comes together without much need for rewrites and alterations. Dark yes, true? even more so.

Pedestal

I could not allow such beauty
to touch the folds of my middle-aged skin,
to slide against the grotesque swelling
that hides the temple within,
As sweat oozes from the folds where
stale infection has set in.
Pooled like rotting vomit
with a blistered blood red sting
and a stench that would be resident
from decomposing skin.

In good conscience I could not permit
your flesh to rub alongside mine,
to scrape against the crusty, splintered,
noxious reptilian slime, that seeps from
every puss-filled crack, each widening
with time, as this bloated, over indulgent
gut slaps against your thin waistline.

In all honesty I could not forgive
my undeserving, retched soul,
if its repugnant stinking essence
began to take its repugnant toll,
as regurgitated bile dissolved
the parts that made you whole,
And took from you the beauty
that was not mine to control.