The algebra of poetry. For Jim as if.
OK you’ve written 2000 crap poems you say.
Now pack up this arithmetical stuff:
there’s an algebra to poetry:
equations full of unknowns:
for a start, the 2001th poem that you write
will contain 2000 times the…
well it’s a complicated equation:
it starts with the familiar
x for the expression which has improved
a thousandfold since you began;
y stands for the hundreds of times more wise
you’ve since become, by just writing poetry;
zzz is the way, that half-asleep,
an unforgettable word or line can slip into your head;
z too, for zeal and zest, that Muses love
and fly a little closer while you write..
then, it wouldn’t be a real equation without
‘squares’: for all that’s squared within your mind as poetry takes shape;
and brackets: for that intrusive, brilliant phrase
that slips between the wagons of your train of thought,
sometimes so surprising that you’re not too sure
it’s true; but trust it; tomorrow, know it’s right;
and oh so much more to this equation
of knowns equalling unknowns, spelling out a poem;
mass, energy, and the speed of light
writing themselves into some new formula
which only humility may harness;
a light to light the world with words.
poem by Michael Shepherd
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Related quotes
Just Another One Of Those Poem Thingies...
Well as you can tell,
This is just another one of those poem thingies.
But I ask you,
'What is poetry? I mean,
Do people just write words in wierd orders.'
Well, poetry is an expression,
An opinion, well I guess it could be,
Anything,
From a very 'sensitive' piece of writing
To an essay that you wrote three years ago.
The definition that you find in a dictionary
Has nothing to do with poetry.
It is just a summary,
No an assumsion of what those fools writing the dictionaries
Think it is.
Poetry is whatever you want it to be.
So next time some person who thinks that they're too cool,
And that your so stupid because you like poetry,
Weather it's writing it or just reading it,
Tell them that they write it too,
Weather or not they consider it to be poetry,
It's their opinion and anything,
Can be poetry.
I have a love for poetry,
That can not be described.
I know,
That sounds obsesive.
But I really do love poetry.
I feel like I can say anything and,
It doesn't have to be serious,
I mean it can,
But it is not required.
Nothing is required of you when you write poetry.
It is relaxing,
A chance to step aside from life,
Even if it's just for a few minutes.
I do it for my own enjoyment an relaxation.
Why do you?
poem by Maddy Macleod
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Egoism of Poets
We don’t write poetry,
Poetry writes us.
How can we make poetry,
If we are part of poetry.
The world around us is poetry.
Poetry is already defined.
Calling ourselves poets.
Selfishness in every line.
Egoism in every word.
Stealing poetry from the world.
That already exists in every form.
It’s written in every mist,
Every tree, every bliss.
Who are we to write?
Calling ourselves masterminds.
Trapping ourselves in believe
That we are creating something unique
The world at our feet.
Just too full fill our need.
Even this poem is an act
of a selfish deed.
Every letter in ink.
Created through love and sin.
Writing on a paper
But it’s the world’s skin.
Pressing on the surface.
To see blue blood is our purpose.
Thinking poetry is ours.
Poetry devoured
By poets every hour.
Poems all around us.
Turning grey to dust.
Turning brown to rust.
We have captured the most
But there is still so much.
Bleeding away in disaster, poverty
And war.
Ink to us all.
A poet’s only lord.
His only norm, his only home.
His precious and beloved poem.
We should be ashamed.
poem by Nadim Lost Soul
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I Can Write Poetry All Day Long
I CAN WRITE POETRY ALL DAY LONG
I can write Poetry all day long
But what will it give me?
There is just so much others will listen to
If anything?
And what is the value of writing words to myself for myself
Even if I love them
And believe they are real poetry,
And know in my soul
That their music is real?
I can write Poetry all day long
Or think I am writing poetry
When I am not-
Am I writing poetry now?
I feel I am-
Within me there is the song and the sound
There is the music of poetry
But is it real
Or only my self- deception?
Can I write poetry all day long?
Can I write poetry at all?
I am writing poetry now
Or so I tell myself-
But as I write this
The music within
Is already fading
And I hear in myself
The silence of my own lonely sound.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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It Is A Habit
writing poems
when you really write poems
everyday and every moment of your life
even when you're in the middle of your
bread and butter eating thing
or even when you are defecating
writing poems becomes a habit
even when you sleep even when you dream
writing poems becomes a part of your system
you eat poetry you vomit poetry
you digest poetry you poo poetry
you breathe poetry you sweat poetry
you love poetry and you live with your poetry
and at the end you die with poetry
and your epitaph says: here lies the poet,
choked with poetry.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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There Are Days No Poem Can Be Written
THERE ARE DAYS NO POEM CAN BE WRITTEN
There are days no poem can be written
Grief and worry frighten the poem away
Yet the poem lives hidden
For our darkest moments our loneliest fears
Too need their poetry.
Poetry is a way of saying all we need to say
It is our deepest feeling most deeply expressed
It is all we are
The whole of our being
In words.
When a poet dies
Words die
When I will die
All I am will no longer be able to write
One more poem.
How afraid I am in the night
And how dark in the early morning before I rise
But now that I am here
Writing this
A bit of hope begins in me
And I can dream that
When I walk out the door
a few minutes from now
A new day will begin.
How many days I have left
How many poems to write
I do not know.
It is not light yet
And the darkness is still here
But I will feel the morning again
This morning
Thank G-d
You have given me so many poems.
A few small words
help me believe
I truly am alive.
.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Is No Poem To Begin The Week With
THERE IS NO POEM TO BEGIN THE WEEK WITH
There is no poem to begin the week with
Emptiness is the beginning
I try to think
I try to listen to some internal rhythm
I write words down
My thoughts are simple and self- referential
The green- yellow light is there outside my window
The world is moving
Am I writing a poem or simply writing whatever sentences come into my mind?
I sometimes think poetry never stops being written within me
At other times I believe I am just ambitious and pretentious
Today this is the beginning
These lines these words
A poem to begin the week with?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Revolution Poetry Is....!
Are you writing words of rhythm according to thoughts?
Or are you coining words of thoughts according to rhythm?
Or are you writing poetry both working at the same time?
Asking so, if they ask me how to write poetry, what shall I say?
Poetry writing is natural, spontaneous expression from heart!
How can this be taught to anyone to write poetry ever at all?
Poetry is a spontaneous flow of words direct from heart ever!
I wonder many a time how am I writing poetry at all ever!
But this is happening to my great surprise since longtime!
Due to engagements ever poetry only I am able to write
Though my aim in the beginning was writing stories.....,
Novels, short stories and nonfiction articles of criticism!
Poetry books too I have completed writing so since long
But what a pity there is no reception for poetry books...!
poem by Ramesh T A
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A Not a Poem Poem
A Not a Poem Poem
I will not write a poem
For I am not a poet
I cannot makes things rhyme
I’ve tried for quite some time
So will I write a poem?
NO!
I can’t write poetry
I’ve tried to all my life
Once, I tried to write a poem
About a husband and his wife
It sounded really silly
So I crumbled it up into a ball
That’s why I decided
That I couldn’t write poetry at all
Am I gonna write a poem?
NO!
Well, I’ll try to write a poem
But it will be really bad
It will be absolutely lousy
It will be completely horrible
It won’t be up to snuff
People will say, “Who wrote this stuff? ”
Will my poem be good?
NO!
Can I write a poem?
NO!
Will I write a poem?
NO!
Well, what do you know! ? !
I wrote a poem!
And it’s a pretty good poem, too!
I guess I can write poetry if I try
The next time I’m asked to write a poem,
Will I say no?
NO!
The Poem I Did Not Write Today
THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE TODAY
The poem I did not write today
Will never be written.
No one knows what it is
Or where it is
'How it can be? ' is another question
No one can answer.
The poem I did not write today
Never went away
It is always here with me and with you
It is the same simple poem
Written over and over again
In our everyday minds.
It is the poem of love of life
The poem of happiness
The poem of belief in God
And in the goodness in the world to come
It is the poem which believes too that poetry will help save the world.
It is the good poem
The happy poem
The poem I did not write today
Is the poem my life is writing now and always
And with you it says
‘What a miracle it is that we are here
reading and writing
and loving life as we do’.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Not Every Poem Knows Its Own Name
NOT EVERY POEM KNOWS ITS OWN NAME
Not every poem knows its own name
Or can have itself be written easily-
Not every poem lives in the light
There are dark poems also.
We, possessed of poetry
Often do not know where we are.
We would like to believe
That the light of our soul
And the light of our words
Are one-
But we know deep down
There is one poem somewhere
And another poem somewhere else
And whoever we truly are
Cannot be wholly found in either.
No poem is us completely
And we are not complete Poetry either.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Written Word Rules!
At the idea of poetry, some people seem to scoff,
As they consider it is an art form only for toffs.
They may think that the concept of poetry is boring,
And that it will leave them fast asleep and snoring.
There are all types of poems: modern and classical.
There’s something for everyone: it’s not boring at all.
The lyrics of songs are poems as such;
They often rhyme together very much.
People like to sing along with their favourite songs,
So why does the concept of poetry feel so wrong?
I’ve only started writing poetry in the last few weeks,
And, I have to admit that I thought it was just for geeks.
But, now I can see, that whoever you are,
Everyone has the potential to go really far.
I have to admit, I much prefer
The written, to the spoken word.
At night, I lay awake tossing and turning in bed,
With random thoughts running through my head.
By my pillow, I keep a pen and note pad,
To jot down any thoughts, which I’ve had.
At the top of the page, my thoughts I jot,
And I always plan out a really rough plot.
I like to include words which have a nice ring.
Words, like these, into my poetry, I like to bring.
I continually go through the alphabet time after time,
Searching for useful words which, pretty much, rhyme.
In simple terms, my ideas, I always like to express;
Complicated and fancy words, my mind doesn’t posses.
I’m sat here, writing this poem, on a speeding train,
As thought after thought, floods into my brain.
I’m writing notes on a mini pocket timetable,
In any tiny blank space which is available.
In my handbag, I’ve got no pad, but I’ve got a pen;
My scribbled notes, I just hope I can comprehend.
I really must start carrying a notepad everywhere;
To forget all these thoughts I’ve had, I couldn’t bear.
When I’m thinking of ideas, I just can’t relax;
My mind seems to buzz to the absolute max.
I’m not far now from my final destination,
And the train is due to pull into the station.
On this subject, there’s not much more to be said,
So, I’m now putting this poem well and truly to bed.
poem by Angela Wybrow
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poetry! ! Poetry! ! Poetry! !
Poetry! ! Poetry! ! Poetry! !
Why are we addicted to Poetry?
We Poets who write,
All day or all night,
That Poetry! ! Poetry! ! Poetry! !
There’s scarce a moment in time,
That thoughts don’t find words in rhyme,
To put into verse,
Whether better or worse,
In that Poetry! ! Poetry! ! Poetry! !
Why do we write all these Verses?
We must have better things to do,
But whatever we try,
And I don’t know why,
We write Poem upon Poem for you.
It’s funny how my style has changed,
It’s a Limerick today I’ve composed,
It wasn’t meant to be,
But it is ~ you can see,
Just Poetry! ! Poetry! ! Poetry! !
© Yisroel Yonatan Goldman [JGthepoet] - 26 January 2006
poem by Jonathan Goldman a.k.a JGthepoet
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There Was A Poem About Poetry
THERE WAS A POEM ABOUT POETRY
There was a poem about poetry
Written by a poet whose name was hidden within the lines-
The poem about poetry
Became a song in the night
And a distant metaphor
For the incomprehensible journey that is life-
It became anything it could be made to be-
Love,
A world of a kind,
A mystery,
The holy sounds of light far far away -
All the poems we know are like this,
In the darkness they say one thing
But in the light in the light
Oh how dark and deep and far and lonely they are-
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poetry Dream.
I drift Yeah ~ ~ ~ ~ drift,
Network at home and abroad to find changed,
Finally came to this piece of land,
This is the poetry of the static earth?
Hoped to write a good poem,
To allow them across the oceans.
They become afraid of heavy stones,
Not sensual in the sink into the sea!
How many years after writing poetry?
This life caught in the areas of poetry,
Poets seem to lose direction.
Not to warble his life sentence,
Poetry is difficult as the expense of my new hand,
He voted Shigao nowhere Monet,
Sometimes, as the water is no longer up,
Poet dead bodies over the sea.
Poems written to a basis
Vernacular into a good poem, rare words,
But thousands of miles seeking Hello,
Poetry does not seek out the words parallelism.
Present the most chaotic poetry,
Have you written in classical Chinese poetry Link old-fashioned,
Vernacular writing to another, then no taste,
But to one day rushed into cloud,
To break the shackles of poetry,
Create a new charm,
Freedom to write my hope,
Unrestricted write a new realm.
poem by Albert Wong
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Poetry by Meena Mustafa
My brain is a recorder
It stores all black and white
Each time I write a poem
It throws a different light
It makes the reader happy
At times it makes him sad
The love of poetry
And the poems that I have
Words pour like fountain
Imagination takes its place
On a journey to knowledge
Poetry we must embrace
Poetry is my refuge
And keeps me on the path
Expressions take new meaning
And words pour out at last.
Poetry is a song that sings to the soul
The rhythm of the words that a pen can hold.
poem by Meena Mustafa
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A Journey Of A Poet
A journey begins with
A thought in our mind
Words are chosen and formed.
Lines of poem
Well Written with meanings
With words of emotions and expressions
A poet starts with
An inspiration of mind,
An aspiration in soul mind
With reflection
On our life experience
We start to
Compose some
Wonderful poetry
Expressing our innermost thoughts
With deep contemplation
To put them in poetry words
A journey begins when
A poet takes his imagination
To a place where
No one ever dream or imagine before.
A poet's journey ends by
Writing another lovely poem
And deep reflection
A poet remains
As a poet
When he or she
Continue to
Write and Share
lovely poems with the world.
poem by Lawrence Hiung
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I Dont Write Poetry!
i dont write poetry...
i sweat poetry, i drink poetry,
i breathe poetry, i make love to poetry,
i fight poetry, i eat poetry,
i bleed poetry, i crap poetry...
too often i betray poetry,
sometimes i dropp poetry.
once i tripped over poetry,
got angry and kicked poetry.
i rocked poetry on a sleepless night,
i buried poetry on the hill...
i lived poetry, for i am poetry...
no, i dont write poetry,
but poetry writes me!
poem by Eric Cockrell
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Sometimes I Read Or Hear A Poem
SOMETIMES I READ OR HEAR A POEM
Sometimes I read or hear a poem
And know there is real Poetry in the world-
Poetry that takes me beyond anything I myself could know or write-
Poetry of a different kind of Beauty -
A language I never thought to hear
But once heard charms and delights me
As never before.
There is Poetry-
And there are real Poets-
And there are yet Dreams to be written-
So write on Stranger
Maybe you are the next one
A real poet
A voice the world truly needs and wants and loves to hear
Beyond any ever heard before.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poet 2 Poet
We all have different writing styles, and we
May not all have grace and poise.
But when we do write, it’s all to make some noise.
We want to be recognized by the co-poets
All fair and true.
For writing our poetry is what we all like to do.
So I welcome all my co-poets who take this beautiful ride
And all their dreams and visions, they do find.
We do not only write what comes into our minds
But we write from the heart
And this is where poetry gets its start.
So continue to write all that you see and feel
Because these are human emotions.
That from us, no one can steal.
WELCOME ABOARD THIS TRAIN OF POETRY.
poem by Louis Rams
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