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furry arts discussion => poetry corner => Topic started by: photalysis on July 10, 2015, 01:31:39 am

Title: Seeking Salamanders
Post by: photalysis on July 10, 2015, 01:31:39 am
Ascetic self-aggression was well-deserved
Now unconscious suppression no longer preserves

Soft glow, gleaming so distant
Feelings within it, but I'm
Hard, unyielding, cold and unfeeling
(Futile without it)

Inhibition twisted me into an expressionless mute
Something neurotic and aphotic, want absolute
Though I yearn I insist on resistance
Might get burned...
(Better keep a safe distance)

Tired of this deprivation that I've mired myself in
When suddenly I see,
A stream of salamanders pouring out unharmed by the flames
Have something to say to me...
(It's okay)

Bright fire, flickering so near
Hope surrounds and dissolves the fear
Soft, annealing, hot and healing
(Feel good about it)

Paralysis is only a way to exist
Beacon of lucidity provides reasons to persist

Too hurt, too young to remember
Didn't know why I was chasing embers

   Just a light around the bend
   
Do not ask of me an impossibility
Cannot continue on like this
   
   It's not enough to pretend
   
Need to be complete, want back my senses
Don't care about the consequences

   Only want the frustration to end

I want to touch it, I want to give in
Please don't let it disappear again

   Painful void that warmth will mend

Salvation in immolation
I know it must be predestination

Show me the way to bliss


If you're curious what it's "about," I can try to communicate the indescribable as best as I can, but I feel that it can only be adequately described in terms of itself. The verse explains more. I will try anyway: It's a personally relevant poem about a life led without love and the mysticism of creative expression. But also, the freedom that comes from realizing this error.

It seems silly and trivial, but this is one of the more significant things I've done. I think it's fitting that a poem about the difficulty of expressing oneself should be one of the first and only things I have shared with anyone. I've never shared a poem before because they usually take on a surreal form that little resembles actually poetry, but this is the most coherent things I have written to date. I don't like verse 4 but the inspiration is gone and further alterations will only damage it.

Maybe I will try a visual medium next.
Title: Re: Seeking Salamanders
Post by: Old Rabbit on July 10, 2015, 12:29:34 pm
I don't know if you wrote the poem in a dark color to add to the feel of
the poem or not. But it would be easier for some to read if you used a
lighter color.

I have a vision problem that makes it difficult to see dark
colors myself. Others may as well.


Title: Re: Seeking Salamanders
Post by: photalysis on July 10, 2015, 01:50:27 pm
Oops. It looked alright on my monitor but I went back and changed it to default white. I mainly wanted it to stand out from my comments but I think the font change is enough to do that on its own. :)
Title: If I were a fire
Post by: photalysis on January 06, 2016, 04:01:52 pm
A short, naive series of lines scribbled out in class in response to a prompt. It looks like an afterthought to the themes I was exploring months ago. Has my life really progressed so slowly that I am still exploring basic dualism? The topic has been done to death throughout history.


If I were a fire I'd heat and sustain
I'd transmute and destroy without blame
Had I no reason I could be free
I wouldn't understand but I would see
Order can enslave or empower
(Depending upon use)
And creation lies at the golden mean
But if I had to choose just one extreme
I'd forgo death and surrender to the dream


I think I did what I set out to do, alright. Sincerity is all well and good, but what use are ideas that are only meaningful in an individual sense? Maybe it is time to find that mean, and create structure from the raw and unprocessed. Complete freedom is so lackluster.
Title: Metamorphosis
Post by: photalysis on January 16, 2016, 01:17:03 am
The medicine man lies on his back, bound in sheets of purest silk
Naked underneath, with cheeks sunken from fasting
A gossamer firmament stretches above him
In the domed cavern of impermanence

Concentric circles of bone and fiber radiate out
From the central dais which exalts a pyre
The most ancient of bundles fully illuminated
Further, innumerable figures outlined in obscurity

Sweetness lingers on his palate
As his garments are burned, and
A thousand ashen pairs of wings descend
Fluttering, in renouncement of stasis

Toward flickering light

Which draws nearer, blurring

With each lengthened heartbeat.


I liked this one, but didn't have the time to put into it that it needs. I may go back and re-write it. Experimenting with more typical quartet line breaks in an attempt to add structure, if not rhyme or meter, but the restriction is stifling.
Title: Guilt
Post by: photalysis on January 18, 2016, 01:21:34 pm
He prostrates himself upon the gleaming black stone
Shivering as shadow weighs down upon him
His neck enclosed in a cage, jagged shards of bone

Icy maw penetrates, drawing springs of ruby rain
Liquid penance issues but cannot restore
Wasted droplets nourish only his shame

Claws comb scarlet bands over his turned back
Delivering the destruction he selfishly craves
A reward fit for a coward, it does exact:
A mind rended by silence,
And a severed heart wracked

Weakness abates, a heavy weight is lifted
Slowly, he rises to face what was wrought
Gazing long upon the pain he inflicted

Reddened pools of water mirror his wounds
They cry for sanity, reach out in vain, pleading--
He merely flashes a smile, dabbing tear-stained eyes
As ashes fall and digits curl, finally--
He’s had enough suffering, it’s lost its allure,
He’s thoroughly done with bleeding.