Meaninglessness

Meaningless fills my pupil
Blinding me with its hallow truth

And binding me to my darkness

In shackles
I traverse through
Infinity

Soggy puddles of silent tears
rust the chains
leaving stains of pain
upon my flesh

I sludge through.

Crows
Whisper in cackles
My skin absorbs their cankerous echoes.
My body only knows how to muffle words of passion.

I listen to the symphony of the crying crows.

Is there no meaning in silent sorrow?

Kristalyn,

Such beautiful words…Such a beautiful description. When you get into that place, the only thing to do is to go through. I would venture that meaning is found in the going through.

A

i really enjoyed the poem from the “crows” point on.
i’m going to ask you a question someone asked me. please answer if you fee like it:
what do you think about using words like “nothing”, “infinity”, “silence”, and “eternity” in poetry?
they are completely abstract and can’t evoke a real image. they are terms or concepts. i’ve been criticized for using these words because, supposedly, they take the reader nowhere bc the words are merely expressions.
i disagree with this mostly because i don’t like rules in creative writing. for the same reason i’m resistent towards people who feel like they have to rhyme. but, i don’t know. i think there could be something to this critique. you used the word “infinity”, so what do you think?

Kristalyn,

This poem is so beautiful, I could only think: “I love you,” with a heavy heart upon completion.

Kristalyn,

Your poem made my heart hurt; if I had tears to shed, I would shed them for you – I am deeply moved.

“Soggy puddles of silent tears
rust the chains
leaving stains of pain
upon my flesh”

I really love the simplicity of the image of
“puddles of rusty tears
beneath chairs”

it is a surrealist image
as well as one
we have all seen
on those rainy
days in town
when puddles
lie all over the street!

interesting
poem of
ideas

Thanks for all of your responses thus far.

Alexistentialism,

I use the words infinity, silence, and nothing to show the nonspecificity of that one event. Because the word/description is abstract, I feel like the reader can relate better because they will have to use their experiences of feeling nothing or hearing silence etc. to relate to the poem.

Yet, sometimes the abstract words are just used because they create an an unusual idea or beautiful picture. Traversing through infinity can be pictured, but it is not a definite picture. It is a picture that depends upon the viewers experience with the notion of infinity and what they associate with it. However, it must be noted that shackles are mentioned prior to the phrase and so even the word infinity in its juxtaposition near “shackles” binds the word infinity to somewhat of an empty and alone void.

And “silent tears” I think can be pictured. Are they not only repressed tears or already wept tears that have stilled in front of the individual?

I hope this response has adequately touched upon your question and I apologize for the rambling-like nature of the response.

The Underground Man,

Why don’t you post more of your poetry here? (I read some of your poems on your blog.)

Thanks for your response. It stilled my existence for a moment…however it scared me.

After several compliments, I think you’ll be ok if one critisized.

You poem did not move me, it aroused indifference from me as it struck me as indifferent to the Nietzschean attitude which is the only thing that can move me because I will to the power of a true man.

Uniqor,

Thanks for your criticism. What is a true man? And specifically how did I or the poem not coincide with this notion?

I posted most of them here allready – and the most recent one, I can’t post because I can’t get ILP to let me play with the line spacing.

As for scaring you, hmm… sorry (I guess). All it means is your poetry seems to be preforming its function: evoking an emotion in the reader – and getting them to stop and think. Anyway, again, I really like this piece.

May I ask, if you don’t mind, in what kind of a state were you in when you wrote this? Do you like, for example, get into a trance-like state when you write? Or do you carry certain ideas with you for a long time and then write them down, or what? (Hehe . . . I’m obviously looking for tips :wink:

To be utterly honest, I don’t remember what sort of state or what specifically caused me to write the poem in the instant it was concieved. However, I would guess that I was probably in a very deep contemplation of my subconscious. My poems are almost always written in one sitting in a matter of 10-15 minutes, although there are some exceptions.

I might have spoken of this in previous posts/topics, but my poetry is a release of excess thought and feeling. Or perhaps the description of them being a release of excess feeling is inaccurate. Instead they seem to be the only appropriate, productive, and comforting outlet for my feelings and thoughts to be shared in.

The only tip I can think to give you write now is to refuse yourself what you want and use the anquish and distress that results from this denial to deepend and intensify your words.

that’s really really good… i wish i could write poetry. or anything.

i can’t even write a paragraph (i suck)

Uniqor,

Thanks for the Nietchze quote. I can see how I or the poem could be seen as “indifferent to the Nietchzean attitude”. Perhaps I need to ruminate on the sounds of the crying crows.

Hey. Actually, that was my favorite line of your poem, “I listen to the symphony of the crying crows.”

It’s fantastic imagery if you ask me.

The “voluntary begger” - the one who voluntarily being existentially desolate and pessimestic - voluntarily nihlistic. Nihilism is as you probably have already noticed: a stance that Nietzsche restlessly hammered on. Hence the attitude between your poetry and Nietzsche’s, is not surprisingly in exact opposition, so exact so that ironically, the similarity is almost striking. Should you be interested into comparing a little, not in the literatural aspect but attitude towards life, then hvae a look at the following rhyme prose. It’s a favourite poem from Nietzsche, translated by Kaufmann.

Venedig

Venice

An der Brücke stand

At the bridge I stood

jüngst ich in brauner Nacht.

lately in the brown night.

Fernher kam Gesang:

From afar came a song:

goldener Tropfen quoll’s

as a golden drop it welled

über die zitternde Fläche weg.

over the quivering surface.

Gondeln, Lichter, Musik —

Gondolas, lights, and music —

trunken schwamm’s in die Dämmrung hinaus …

drunken it swam out into the twilight.

Meine Seele, ein Saitenspiel,

My soul, a stringed instrument,

sang sich, unsichtbar berührt,

sang to itself, invisibly touched,

heimlich ein Gondellied dazu,

a secret gondola song,

zitternd vor bunter Seligkeit.

quivering with iridescent happiness.

— Hörte jemand ihr zu? …

— Did anyone listen to it?

Ks work needs to be looked at as a meditation on a family of moods more than a commentary on the human condition. For the luckier among us, images so one-sidedly dreary and hopeless tend to be an oversimplification of the human experience. In my world, you spend your twenties myopically dissecting your own pain, and your thirties curing it. The more species of hopelessness you uncover in your twenties, the more curing them will be like shooting fish in a barrel in your thirties. K’s poems don’t acknowledge the brush strokes of hope or bliss, which are as ephemeral and arbitrary as despair, and just as worthy of poetry…if poetry merits truth. What you’re doing when you combat darkness with joy is ultimately a poetic act. If one must be a poet, one must not oversimplify. Life would be so easy if it was meaningless. Unfortunately it has meaning, and light, and you have to etch it out the hard way, line by line. K’s work can be summed up as ordinary pain expressed extraordinarily…a description of a comic book frame…and this reader would rather hope to see extraordinary pain expressed ordinarily, instead; the visionary capturing the butterfly instead of painting preternaturally colorful pictures of it. Perhaps extraordinary pain involves something less obvious than crows. And if we are to be healed by K’s pain (and before it flies with me) she has to find her Scarlet Taniger – black wing on bright orange.

What/who will be my scarlet taniger? How desperately do I want to etch out my pain upon the space that surrounds me! …Yes, I rarely allow hope into my poetry for the little I have must be preserved in the tabernacle of my mind. It’s with words that I purge myself of the abundance and intensity of despair and pain that consumes me. If the scarlet taniger is silent, may it flutter inside me so that I may feel its existence. For the pain is too loud, and any sound too soft to be heard.

I can’t find it for you. I just know that until you find it, your poetry will be written with one eye closed, and destined to be read with one eye open. There is orange and black. Think back, when was the last time you felt hope? Retrace your steps, little sis. Find it, and free it. The world was cold until the first brave woman rubbed two sticks together. You did know that, didn’t you? A woman discovered fire to save her child from freezing. Black…then orange. Find two sticks and rub hard my dear. Hurry now, your unborn baby is dying. Look in his eyes. No lies. Just love.

See her now, in the fire’s warmth surrounded by big black air dotted with ominous eyes. Ask yourself, why is she the one laughing? Because fire dies in a tabernacle, but grows in a brush. The predators will die in a blaze and she will warm and caress all the seconds of her life, each second will be annointed as it passes by, carrying its message of love, chocolate mangoes and monarchs into the abyss, filling it drip by drop, leaving stains of pain upon the flesh of death. You either play the game or the game plays you.