And this is where the party starts.

THAT got your interest in your message centre, now didn't it?

So.

I was talking with *imperfect about this and that and poetry, and in sending an information file on a certain poetic form, I forgot that two gods-awful angst poems (in that particular poetic form) were part of the file.

Needless to say, I cursed my lack of forethought

Anyway - several good laughs later, it was suggested that I put up some of my worst poetry from my old days of angst for comparative purposes.

And so, without further procrastination, rambling forwards, and ado, I present to you:

DarkCrescendo's Poetic BEFORE and AFTER!!!!
Don't worry, it gets worse from here...

BEFORE

*The Discourse of Lunacy.*

A futile life, a hollow shell,
A shattered man, a living hell.
Dream of anger, live in pain,
Then go through it all again.

Value the life, throw it away,
Listen to none, hear what they say.
Visions of madness, who is to blame?
Think of the self, don't say its name.

Evading the truth, live the delusion.
Vanquish the dream, make the illusion.
Percieving nothing, sense the dismay,
Listen to phantoms, hear what they say.

Invoking the outer, evoking the inner,
When all has been lost, who is the winner?
Words without meaning, all in a frame,
When all's said and done, I am to blame.

A futile life, a hollow shell
A shattered man, a living hell
Dream of anger, live in pain,
Then go through it all again.


Oooh. Ow. The angst. Could you feel the grating of insistent endrhyme shredding your insides? Yeah. I thought so.

AFTER

*Shades of sleep*

Another blue ceiling, shadow-choked and unfamiliar,
stares back in sympathy - withered paint crackling
with unshed dust and old-man's tales of long ago,
a silent confidante with blown-bulb twilit wisdom -
It's comfort as cold as this half-empty bed.

Cataleptic - a midnight-waker with four hours lost
and the ceiling is shadow-smothered, blue gone grey
like old-man's ashes spread out over this dark grave
of a room - dust unto dust in the throat, and coughing
with all the enthusiasm of russian roulette.

Pull the trigger on the TV remote to no effect -
3am and the damn thing's still dead, the traitor
with screen black like a post-midnight moodswing,
mourning the absence of love, laughter, light-bulbs
and illumination lost to night's darkened thoughts.

No time for sleep, but dreaming away of such escape -
a 5am fugue with pre-dawn gloom glaring intensely.
Black goes to grey and then back to the familiar view
of weeping cracks in the sarcophagus ceiling above -
tortured eyes read their decaying-paint epitaph.

The tombstone bed restrains this living carcass -
even as the chaplain, Dawn, lays the night to sleep.
'There's rest for the wicked, but none for the weary'
reminds the open-window memorial, annoyingly bright,
and as comforting as the broken bulb above.

7am sneaks in, apologetic, and another day begins.


Similar emotional states sparked both poems. You really wouldn't know it, would you?

Okay.

On to the next part of this JOURNAL LENGTH EXTRAVAGANZA:

DarkCrescendo's 'WHAT NOT TO DO - learn from his mistakes!'

Now when speaking of Angst poetry, the phrase 'Dear gods. How could they?' pops up all the time. I'm guilty of causing that response too, fear not.
(Although, I have NEVER used crimson tears/oceans/rivers etc, a fact which relieves me.)

What I AM guilty of is the following poem.
It is written in the form of a pantoum.
That, comrades, is no excuse for what I did.

*Dark Meditation*

I sit in a cold room
Darkness then descends
I meditate on doom
I cannot make amends

Darkness then descends
I settle down to sleep
I cannot make amends
I feel I'm in too deep

I settle down to sleep
I ponder on my life
I feel I'm in too deep
I look upon a knife

I ponder on my life
I feel that all is gone
I look upon a knife
and decide I will go on

There you have it - The infamous rhyming of 'Knife' and 'Life' that I may never live down

And, that's about all I can stomach of that.


There is a moral to this story:

I wrote those shitty poems a little over a year ago.
A YEAR.

That's not long in the scheme of things, now is it?

My point is this:

If you take the time to learn the craft, if you train your mind to think creatively, you can DO this poetry shindig.
It isn't -easy- but it's not overly difficult either.

It's all about finding an aesthetic, and expressing yourself within it.

Anyway, that concludes another episode of *procrastinating from working on a poem because the octometer is beginning to annoy me, and there is a damn dactyl screwing with my rhythm*

(Oh, and Tim, if you do happen to read this - THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT. )

Benedictions all!

_______________________

Poems I am willing to call good [Narcissus that I am]:

Tales in Read

Half a Glass

Shades of Sleep

Winter

Tapestries

Blue

Anything else in my main gallery is of average or slightly above-average quality.
Quite a few pieces are on the back-burner until I think of a way to fix them, or decide to scrap them.
Anything in my scraps section is either a picture, or a piece of writing that I find unworthy of being in the main gallery.

Benedictions