I like the old-fashioned "first line as title" convention. It takes the focus away from the title as the "key" to understanding it and puts all the emphasis on the verses themselves.


Temperature's rising, but any idiot would know that...

Each rung has an order
On the ladder of my
Nostalgic ascencions

They all, somehow, lead up to you;
My psychedelic drifts

When I lasso, lovingly, up in my arms
These paper-dry leaves,
I lift towards the sky,
In these shuddering fingers,
All my crumbling notions

They drift through the cracks,
And, they land in the pools of slow-swirling iridescence
That collect in the gutters
And ghettos
Of thought

Supported, for a moment, by that fluid film
That delicate skin
That crowns stagnant water

Then, sapped by the oily deposits
Of my carelessness and apathy
They're pulled beneath the surface

Their fluttering, halted;
Those unfortunate birds

I'm single. Yes, I know it's difficult to wrap your head around, but if you don't believe me, check my Myspace. Those things never lie.

You shake my hands
You jolt my heart
10,000 volts of icy cinders
I wonder when
You'll take the part
End this streak of blurs and benders

I used to like
The sun and warmth
Experienced outside your presence
Now it's like
My cup's gone cold
Leaving stains of starving crescents

I'm single. Yes, I know it's difficult to wrap your head around, but if you don't believe me, check my Myspace. Those things never lie.

Streetlights scratch a path between curtains that won't meet
And steal the dark from my eyes that would taxi me to sleep,
Until the sullen dazzle shakes my mind from its unrest
And weakness calms my body's need for sating, more or less,
But in those minute hours of staring at the paint
I long for your call to come, though I know that it's too late...

Wraiths drift about as I slip off at last
Into the arms of a dream that I will not remember:
Standing in an unfurnished room where we could live.
He says the rent is quite low because a tramline runs past
And a bell rings aloud as the train passes by,
Railing against the sleepers where they lie,
And by the house there's a river with a lock and a lever -
You can open the sluice and watch time wash away,
Dragging the dregs of the past out towards the sea...

And a pealing bell from the tracks chimes aloud and wakes us up.


Temperature's rising, but any idiot would know that...

Some really nice poetry appearing here, despite the deception of the title thread. Here's another I wrote this afternoon. This one does have a title. It's called Embers.

Embers

The embers in the fireplace,
Have burned themselves to ruin.
Consumed like last years bitter love,
A hateful seed still growing.

The embers in the fireplace,
Lie still and turn to ash.
I sit and dream of happy times,
And weep for what has passed.

The embers in the fireplace,
Will warm my heart no more.
I've left that fire far behind,
My past, my love, my soul.

When you've racked up so much time on an internet message board why hide the truth anymore? Persilots Myspace.

Take a gun and fire a shot to start the game
This race I run – fools’ mates of girls,
Bemusements and bored games
With dealers, cheats and jokers playing round
Drinking vodka, lying down
Upon a chequered flagstone in my chest…
_______________________

Waves are rising by the second –
Sirens wail and walls are crumbling
It’s been raining for three weeks
I think I need a hand to help me land
A map to find some solid ground.
Just a rock or rubber ring to cling to will suffice for now…
________________________

Raking through the leaves on autumn’s carpet floor
A windfall’s to be had.
The harvest has been good this year,
We’ve grown a chart of everything
We think, we hope, we feel, we might.
Transcriptions of an evolution mapped out in relief…

In reply to:

---

Now it's like
My cup's gone cold
Leaving stains of starving crescents

---

I love this image, it's great. Though you might find a better word than starving.


Temperature's rising, but any idiot would know that...

Sweetest Pain.

It cuts me like a carving knife,
It burns me like a noose,
There's nothing really left for us,
Just trashy, twisted, truth.

Where it's at I'm just not sure,
I know I'm losing ground.
I'm staring in your green eyes,
I'm slowly turning round.

Hit me up for wisdom,
Knock me down for six,
Bend my arm behind my back,
You can't afford the risk.

Yeah it hurts me like a paper cut,
It maims me like a knife,
Every day is sweetest pain,
Since you came into my life...

When you've racked up so much time on an internet message board why hide the truth anymore? Persilots Myspace.

Yeah, I wasn't too happy with that word, but I honestly couldn't think of anything to replace it. Just got frustrated and settled. Anyway, the input is always appreciated.

I like your writing very much. Especially Sleepers.

Here's something of a slightly sordid nature... The kind of poem that'd normally never leave the confines of my journal, (okay I don't actually keep one but if I did this is the kinda thing that'd be in it), so whatever.. I'm feeling particularly candid today.



his back bows with narrowed intention
of propelling his splintering arrow
the solder that's sintering sinew
that quicksilver stitch spun within you

that breaches your cervix
harpooning your cortex
lobotomizing into blissful submission
his hot, rushing current
his pulsating torrent
that's splitting you clean like an apple in fission

rejuvenate jigsaw of pain and disease
to see-saw the tree off in two atrophies
you rock in your sickroom
he jangles the keys
he's built quite a monster
that stops at the knees

he asks, like it matters, "you giggling or crying?"
you tell him it's equal, not sure if you're lying
convulsing, ecstastic, this spasming schism
till shudders subside into phantasmic rhythm

I'm single. Yes, I know it's difficult to wrap your head around, but if you don't believe me, check my Myspace. Those things never lie.

There's a nice urgency about that last one. Somehow appropriate...

I haven't actually written poetry in a long while, having made a decision to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. This is from about six years ago:


High up in the big valley
A child was awoken cold
"Be near me when he passes,"
Was her father's request

And it shocked her outright.
The old place was overgrown,
Her grandfather's body lay in ruins,
And she felt suddenly old.

"Don't go up there anymore,
So that you're my daughter now."
But she could not face her father again
For it was he who had broken the news.


Temperature's rising, but any idiot would know that...

In reply to:

---

And she felt suddenly old.

---

I like this line a lot. It creates an image in my mind's eye of someone aging quite rapidly, which wouldn't be the case if you'd placed "suddenly" one word back.

Here's my emo ode to unrequited love and the animals who knowingly, desperately perpetrate it.


You seem to care that no one dares
to read the threats my passage bears
You want to seem to care to see
this sable ink unfold from me

But, if you spied my plunging frown
I do not think you would swoop down
to snatch me from the brink, between
your talons, black, and eyes, citrine -

that claw my face with moonlight, where
my skull drapes backwards on the chair;
a dewy rose of numbing white,
that cranes itself to shake the night

I wait within your empty nest
to feel the warmth inside your breast
For, charity and arid scratching,
were egging on my backwards hatching

I am your helpless cub, instead;
a lanquid rainbow, colors bled;
leaked through the punctures from your fangs
to briefly slake your hunger pangs

Then, drug into your dusky cave
I'm hit with such a rancid wave
It's stinking with the spoil of
the victims of your nature, love;
your satiated hate for love;
your snarling mouth, agape for love


"What I learned from the future is Sharpie markers will replace facial hair and all men are impotent except Sean Connery. The future looks bright." - T.P. on Zardoz