A Common Addiction among Poets
Intoxicated by the inspiration
Of his trade—
With mental powers at work,
A true poet rarely sleeps.
His mind ever churning
With powerful imagery
That produces thought,
Sound, rhythm and gesture.
He molds with metaphor,
Shapes with simile,
And paints with irony—
To produce a beautiful symphony
(Like some great maestro) ,
For himself and all who would enjoy.
Little wonder he rarely sleeps.
© 2009
poem by Walterrean Salley
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Related quotes
My Crime
I get lost in metaphor,
I'm confused with simile
Or what analogy is for,
Though I try some imagery.
I transgress with my meter
And force with my rhyme,
I guess as a writer
That is my true crime.
'A man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.'
...................................... ..........................July 23,2009 Philippines
poem by Cynthia Buhain-Baello
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Serenade from “The Spanish Student”
STARS of the summer night!
Far in yon azure deeps,
Hide, hide your golden light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
Moon of the summer night!
Far down yon western steeps,
Sink, sink in silver light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
Wind of the summer night!
Where yonder woodbine creeps,
Fold, fold thy pinions light!
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
Dreams of the summer night!
Tell her, her lover keeps
Watch! while in slumbers light
She sleeps!
My lady sleeps!
Sleeps!
poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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While The City Sleeps
What goes on behind closed doors, private wounds, open sores
Youre your own worst enemy and cheap thrills bring you to your knees
Its thumbs down for someone you know, and its easy come and easy go
Chorus:
Burn your bridges, take what you can get
Go for the throat cause you paid your debt
Livin well is the best revenge, so give em hell
While the city sleeps - its all there in black and white
While the city sleeps - through the eye of the needle, gotta thread your life
While the city sleeps - while the city sleeps
Its a hit or miss, an eye for an eye, live for today, and dont ask why
For better or worse, you bought and sold
They love you while youre hot and leave you when youre cold
Chorus
While the city sleeps - yeah, better run for your life
Take your troubles to the night
While the city sleeps - yeah, beggars, thieves and losers, theres no relief
While the city sleeps - theres no relief, while the city sleeps
While the city sleeps - yeah
Chorus
While the city sleeps - while the city sleeps
While the city sleeps - while the city sleeps
While the city sleeps - yeah, theres no relief
While the city sleeps
song performed by by Kiss
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Rough Ride
The path of love is rarely smooth
but love can obstacles surmount.
True love will find a way to soothe.
Objections which it can’t remove,
pitfalls too numerous to count.
The path of love is rarely smooth
These words I say are simple truth.
An old adage which I recount.
True love will find a way to soothe
With the resilience of youth
if you should fall you will remount.
The path of love is rarely smooth.
You know just what you have to prove
and play your cards to good account.
True love will find a way to soothe
Though you have hurt feelings, forsooth
a lesser or a great amount.
True love will find a way forsooth
the path of love is rarely smooth.
11-Jul-08
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poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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We Rarely See
In our busy world, we rarely see
what is right before our eyes.
The sky that leaks its teardrops
to cleanse and refresh the day.
The two hearts that beat as one
before one of them has to go away.
The patterns of a snowflake
on a wintry day.
The turning of each season
that passes on its way.
We rarely see the things we should
that help to shape our lives
as we are trapped on the treadmill
of earning money to pay our way.
One day we may notice them
when we step off the treadmill
letting the rest of the world
go on its merry way.
Then we will see what we rarely see
the life and love we are living.
14 July 2009
poem by David Harris
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The Chattahoochee River
The Chattahoochee River is muddy and deep,
Rolls restless in her bed, and never sleeps.
She churns, whirls, and sometimes creeps,
But the Chattahoochee River never sleeps.
She cascades, crashes, her falls are steep,
So the Chattahoochee River never sleeps.
A child, in innocence, in her water leaps,
Unaware, the Chattahoochee never sleeps.
She snatches him down, his little body to keep,
Cause the Chattahoochee River never sleeps.
He struggles for his life, so tender and meek.
Oh! the Chattahoochee River never sleeps.
She steals his breath, while caressing his cheeks.
Careless Chattahoochee River just never sleeps.
poem by Willie Wilburn Walker
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Sleeps With Angels
She wasnt perfect
She had some trips of her own
He wasnt worried
At least he wasnt alone (too late)
He sleeps with angels (too soon)
Hes always on someones mind
He sleeps with angels (too late)
He sleeps with angels (too soon)
She was a teen queen
She saw the dark side of life
She made things happen
But when he did it that night
She ran up phone bills
She moved around from town to town (too late)
He sleeps with angels (too soon)
Hes always on someones mindhe sleeps with angels
He sleeps with angels
song performed by by Neil Young
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Go Mental
Out of the hospital out against my will
Life is so beautiful Ive gone mental
Mental mental
Ive killed my family they thought I was an oddity
Life is so beautiful I am a vegetable
Mental mental
Ive gone mental Ive gone mental
Staring at my goldfish bowl popping phenobarbitol
Life is so beautiful Ive gone mental mental mental
Sitting on my window sill life is so beautiful
Ive become irrational Ive gone mental
Mental mental Ive gone mental
song performed by by Ramones
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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12 Midnight
Now the master sleeps
Leaving you some of his poems
Now it is midnight
Now the master has to sleep
Take care yourselves
Take care of his poems
They are now yours,
All his disciples
The master sleeps.
Now, see, how the master breathes
Listen to the rhythm of his sighs
Some poems are coming out from
His nostrils some poems are coming out
From his mouth and ears
The master poet is asleep
Even in dreams he weaves some images
Dreamy, surreal, ephemeral, his sleep
Has rhyme & rhythm, he is a soul breathing
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Language Of Poetry Is Metaphor
The language of poetry is metaphor
And irony and ambiguity
And beauty-
Beauty is the language of poetry
And metaphor and irony and ambiguity
And irony -
Beauty is the language of metaphor
And poetry without beauty
Is like poetry without metaphor
Like poetry without simile-
Poetry is poetry
Like beauty is beauty
And metaphor, metaphor
And language language -
Ironically
Without themselves they are something else
Or perhaps another variant of themselves
Ironically.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Man only indulges at night
Tigers sleep, deer sleep,
Cats sleep, rats sleep,
The water sleeps, the earth sleeps,
Everything sleeps when the sun sleeps.
But human beings are awake,
Only at night, in bed, thinking of sex.
12.07.2001, Pkd
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Sorrow is better than insomnia.
Neither a sister, nor a daughter,
Nor any one by blood you are.
Yet my sorrow never sleeps.
Never a tryst, nor a rendezvous,
Nor an innuendo, you granted.
Yet my sorrow never sleeps.
Glamour, splendor, or pretext,
You never played to gravitate.
Yet my sorrow never sleeps.
Formidable and forbidden you were.
Sojourn was so short.
Parting was abrupt and aborting.
Yet my sorrow never sleeps.
Every beginning has an end.
An episode should, however, end.
But abortion and usurpation?
May be, by a boon I’ll see you soon.
That can retrieve our past monsoon.
But the crop is already gone.
So my sorrow never sleeps.
Time was over before I could score.
No more game is set up in the court.
That is why my sorrow never sleeps.
With your parting, came to an end
All my springs and monsoons.
Let my sorrow never sleep.
It is better than insomnia.
08.05.2001, Pmdi
poem by Rm. Shanmugam Chettiar
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Real, constructive mental power lies in the creative thought that shapes your destiny, and your hour-by-hour mental conduct produces power for change in your life. Develop a train of thought on which to ride. The nobility of your life as well as your happiness depends upon the direction in which that train of thought is going.
quote by Laurence J. Peter
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Baby Sleeps
The wind is loud in the west to-night,
But Baby sleeps;
The wild wind blows with all its might,
But Baby sleeps;
My Baby sleeps, and he does not hear
The noise of the storm in the pine trees near.
The snow is drifting high to-night,
But Baby sleeps;
The bitter world is cold and white,
But Baby sleeps;
My Baby sleeps, so fast, so fast,
That he does not heed the wintry blast.
The cold snows drift, and the wild winds rave,
But Baby sleeps;
And a white cross stands by his little grave,
While Baby sleeps;
And the storm is loud in the rocking pine,
But its moan is not so deep as mine.
poem by George A. Mackenzie
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Below Her Window
Where she sleeps, no moonlight shines
No pale beam unbidden creeps.
Darkest shade the place enshrines
Where she sleeps.
Like a diamond in the deeps
Of the rich unopened mines
There her lovely rest she keeps.
Though the jealous dark confines
All her beauty, Love's heart leaps.
His unerring thought divines
Where she sleeps.
poem by Robert Fuller Murray
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In America, people rarely stay in the town where they grew up, rarely stay in close proximity to their parents throughout their lives. You rarely find parents in their old age being taken care of by their children.
quote by Robert Benton
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Poets Are Born
Good poets are born, not fashioned.
The masters of sterility
write verses in prose and christen
them in the name of Poetry.
Meters are measured arrangements,
rhyme is correspondence of sound;
But devoid of inspiration
results, if ever, rarely found.
A poem must be a poet’s breath:
On inhalation he creates,
the exhalation, he narrates
Breathing life into words once dead.
poem by Albert Ahearn
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For Karin Anderson
Karin is what I call
the metaphor queen
she writes her poems with them
and it makes them gleam.
In every style, she writes
the rhythm is just precise
and the beauty in her words
always shines bright
from this Australian rose.
I don’t know what style
you might call this poem
only that it was written with care
in a way of thanks
to another poet whom I call a friend
for her works that I enjoy.
8 October 2009
poem by David Harris
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The best laid plans for J.T Ellison
The best laid plans
He sits and thinks but rarely shares
the subject of his pondering
He is convinced nobody cares
to hear his views on anything.
He does not like to watch T.V.
unlike the other residents.
He’s happy sitting quietly
Reviewing long ago events.
When he was self sufficient.
Intelligent and capable
‘til a cerebral accident
which rendered him incapable
of living independently.
Forced his reception into care
although it’s very plain to see
He would much rather be elsewhere.
Though he’s disabled physically
His mental capability
is not impaired apparently.
He accepts philosophically.
Life rarely goes as you have planned.
We meet with things we don’t expect
for fate not man is in command
What fate decrees we must accept.
22/04/2009
http: // blog.myspace.com/poeticpiers
poem by Ivor Or Ivor.e Hogg
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A Gift One Gets
The ones who assumes,
What others initiate to do...
Had them specifically in mind.
Especially when their time to live,
Had not yet arrived.
Thrives on a me-me-I-I-aspects of life.
A gift one gets to enjoy it,
Is given to express...
What for them they do is best.
And rarely has nothing to do,
With those who chance upon it to view.
The ones who assume,
What others initiated to do...
Had them specifically in mind.
Especially when their time to live,
Had not yet arrived.
And those who wish to take credit,
For one's gift...
Only motivate its existence.
But should not perceive themselves,
The inspiration one finds to create from one's mind.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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