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Canada2764 Posts
Stay [On The Light Side of Darkness]
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A war of light and dark
Waged with love and falling stars
There's a beauty that lies in collapse
Where the stars flutter against the water- for you, they dance
When all you can do is stare
As the settling, rising breath joins the air
A fencing of sorts, with eyes as swords
A moment to last an eternity- if I had the words
An inexperienced tongue
But I knew the light had never won
With souring eyes and a smile to match
And eyes that read and plead- it might
But the darkness won and said, no more
With letters strewn across the floor
It takes a special heart to say
For you - I would stay
The Moment
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The fires burn like ashen veils
When eyes plea, make nothing change
Windows to better times, a better blaze
Nameless in the feeling, the pause
Of hearts when breathes synchronize
An alchemy, made a difference
To thoughtless from indifference
Love wears its flag on all, eventually
A flag of crimson - lips and cheeks
And pink - your room - and blue - mine
And black at times, but we never knew what for
Ignorance shifted silent gray to blue
The grand recesses of minds, where the twisted lies lie
The eternal numbing fate of separation
A twelve step program to and from elation
Only to vanish into the night like breath
Just death
Seven Days
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When nothing really changes
Yeah, all the days are faceless
The falling, fallen angels
Who lost their lives to labels
The crimson - the golden
The royal - the broken
The kings of lying pages
Met the real kings of ages
In golden paradise
In golden paradise
It took them seven days to realize
The spoken, the assured
That the sickness had been cured
And normalcy was just a plague
Upon the court
To trick the peasantry
Into thinking they were special
To trick the peasantry
Who lived their lives for medals
In golden paradise
In golden paradise
It took them seven days to realize
The outcasts, the scum
Who lived amongst the slums
We dared called a palace
When we were young
They silenced the court
With brilliant beams of thunder
Left every breath cut short
Amongst the sound of wonder
In golden paradise
In golden paradise
It took them seven days to realize
[That nothing was the same
That nothing was the same]
The truth fades to lies
And the wonder fades from eyes
And the spectacle that fetched the crowd
Was silenced again
And the hands that fetched the crown
Were never hands at all
And it all seemed so real
In stolen paradise
In stolen paradise
In stolen paradise
It took them seven days to realize
[That nothing was the same
That nothing was the same]
Sleeping In My Head
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Stars fall from the shadows to hide from the light
Streaking their trail against a sugar-coated night
It felt different- it felt important
As if we're all pieces of a puzzle bigger than the moment
Bigger than the next, bigger than an infinite rest
An endless nest of good ideas and worse expectations
First impressions that last like, little generations
But if you stare at the night - beauty wouldn't be this bad..
Right?
Through the last breathes of
Sunsets and mornings
I promise you, until it all ends
You'll be sleeping in my head..
[I wouldn't trade one bad decision
For another five years of this]
...You're sleeping in my head
When the madness stops, I will be
Somewhere different with a different life
There's no lies in me
The darkness, it pours from the cracks in the pavement
To help coat the sky in sugar-coated statements
And lies - thunderous roars, crafted by goodbyes
And nights of planning in dark rooms with a dozen alibis
Under sheets, kept it neat for the cometh of comets
That set blaze a sole promise to sometimes be half-honest
But that just means pain, and pain just means the rain will last
Forever
You're sleeping in my head
I can't wake
This isn't happening
This isn't happening
This isn't happening
This isn't happening
The Bridge of H
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Like a hundred waves betting
On which would crash first
You can always see the sun setting
It's been that way since birth
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Tick, tick, tick, stopping
Like sunsets and sunflower fields
In the day my marks grow smeared
But sometimes, the night yields
A scribbled, somewhat-message
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Tick, tick, tick, stopping
Like the watchful guise of a not-so-grand jury
In a room guarded by a thousand fates
Colliding with collusion
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Anyway, it's all just an illusion
Tick, tick, tick, stop
Like prisoners and silence
Eternity should be feared
And to put all this behind us
Means no one can be here
Tick, tock
(And no one should be here)
Tick, tock
(And no one will be here)
Tick, tick, tick
(And then I don't even exist, do I?)
Stop
Nothing exists - I'm convinced
All of my life is just this
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Living in the eclipse
Lifeless and lists
Tick, tick, tick, stop
I'm forgetting, I'm forgetting
Like everything I've said
Has all come to an end
Just ashes in paradise
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Tick, tick, tick, stop
Like I've spent all my life getting
You can always miss the sun setting
Nothing in return
We all wish it could all burn
Tick... tock
Tick...
Like the passing of a friend
Eternity just ends
There, I was given the best advice of my life
And it went - 'I will never remember'
Of &
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Trust me, I'm getting better
Oh - trust me again
The slipping succulence of..
It never ends
I really love the passing, but it never loves me back
I think I fell in love with a - heart attack
An empty train station
Sold my tales along the road
Where passions go to die in a
Sweet abode
I think I love the passing- yeah, I wanna paint it black
But it always quite became a - heart attack
The sinking ship of kisses
Leaves to only bitter marks
So I thought it was simpler
To fall back to new starts
I thought I loved the passing - so much I painted it black
But it still always felt like a - heart attack
As if it's love from a diary
Rather love to our own
Shaped by cigarettes and burns
I think it brought us home
And I think it loved the passing - so much I never loved it back
Til' it was just the falling ash of a - heart attack
Yeah, the cutthroat- ribbons left adorned
While the fables' Alexandria burns
And nothing was the same again
I wish I didn't say it then, but I..
Always loved the passing, yeah, only wanted to paint it black
Came to find it settled like a - heart attack
/
This one's weird.
I'd appreciate comments, but honestly - if any of you bother to figure it out, I'd be surprised :p
 
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There's a lot here! You seemed most interested in comments to the last one, so that's what I'll attempt.
First, let me admit the stuff I'm puzzled by:
Line 4, "It never ends",
where I can't identify the referent of "It".
In line 8, "Sold my tales along the road"
How can an empty train station sell things? And to whom? In what currency? I can't really follow this metaphor.
Line 11's "yeah" sounds a little like an affection of pop music.
Line 13 & 14, "The sinking ship of kisses / Leaves to only bitter marks"
It apparently means that when the sinking ship finally leaves, there is nothing left but bitter marks. But if that is all that is meant, the grammar is unnecessarily difficult. But maybe I'm missing something.
Line 20, "Rather love to our own"
Again the word "to" confuses me.
Last line: do heart attacks settle? I'm not sure what that could mean. I suppose it suggests death? But but has a heart attack "settled" in a dead persons heart? Hmm... Maybe I guess.
And I found the rhythm throughout very loose and sometimes dissonant. The rhyme scheme is also erratic... sometimes present and others times not, apparently as a matter of convenience.
But now, things I liked:
Line 3, the word "succulence".
Line 7, the image of an "empty train station"
Line 9 & 10: a sweet place for passions to go when they die.
Line 13: "The sinking ship of kisses" I'm not sure why I like it. But I do.
I enjoyed reading it and I really appreciate the bravery of your posting! It's great stuff and I hope you continue writing more.
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did you actually rhyme "difference" with "indifference"
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Canada2764 Posts
On May 24 2015 04:45 Ej_ wrote:
did you actually rhyme "difference" with "indifference"
It's not a rhyme so much as it's a rhythm. The rhymes schemes here are a lot less formal than in previous collections :p
On May 24 2015 04:42 Textual wrote:
There's a lot here! You seemed most interested in comments to the last one, so that's what I'll attempt.
First, let me admit the stuff I'm puzzled by:
Line 4, "It never ends",
where I can't identify the referent of "It".
In line 8, "Sold my tales along the road"
How can an empty train station sell things? And to whom? In what currency? I can't really follow this metaphor.
Line 11's "yeah" sounds a little like an affection of pop music.
Line 13 & 14, "The sinking ship of kisses / Leaves to only bitter marks"
It apparently means that when the sinking ship finally leaves, there is nothing left but bitter marks. But if that is all that is meant, the grammar is unnecessarily difficult. But maybe I'm missing something.
Line 20, "Rather love to our own"
Again the word "to" confuses me.
Last line: do heart attacks settle? I'm not sure what that could mean. I suppose it suggests death? But but has a heart attack "settled" in a dead persons heart? Hmm... Maybe I guess.
And I found the rhythm throughout very loose and sometimes dissonant. The rhyme scheme is also erratic... sometimes present and others times not, apparently as a matter of convenience.
But now, things I liked:
Line 3, the word "succulence".
Line 7, the image of an "empty train station"
Line 9 & 10: a sweet place for passions to go when they die.
Line 13: "The sinking ship of kisses" I'm not sure why I like it. But I do.
I enjoyed reading it and I really appreciate the bravery of your posting! It's great stuff and I hope you continue writing more.
It was more meant as comments on the collection as a whole, haha! But yeah, it's totally fine and I absolutely appreciate you coming in and telling me what you think. <3
1 : It never ends is more left to interpretation. But, there's two main ways you can interpret it - one is as a continuation of 'The slipping succulence', in which case it's about something losing its luster. That something would be 'it' - judging from the rest of the collection, the most fair interpretation is probably love. The other way is as an after-word, where something else is losing its luster and that process will never end. In essence, all good things will eventually come to an end. At first, there's a beauty in that, but after a while it just fades away.
2 : 'An empty train station' is meant to paint a setting, while 'Sold my tales along the road' is meant to paint an action. Rather than the train station being the do-er of the action, it's the place where the action is being done. Probably could be formatted better, admittedly!
3 : It's more to piece apart the admittedly-weak rhythm. I'll get into this more later.
4 : Again, the addition of to and only there (instead of just one) is to help with the rhythm. I personally don't think it clutters the meaning too much, and it helps keep a very certain rhythm that is present in most of the verses. It also works because the entire poem is about being overwhelmed, so it'd be out of character for it to be 100% 'formal' and always with the most correct way of writing. Sometimes, sloppiness gives character to a poem - which is what I was going for here.
5 : This one's just straight up a mistake! I.. don't really have an explanation for it. It's meant to be 'of' - as in, instead of being what most people think of when they think of 'love', our love is our own - but, yeah, you caught me there :p
6 : I guess - it's pretty messy, but you more or less got it!
7 : Yeah, you're right, the rhythm here is very.. confused. It's not neat, and since it's built around being a song more than a poem - a characteristic you can probably find in a couple other spots - the general use of instruments (which would work as a way to bring the messiness together) doesn't really work here. Basically, the rhythm shifts which look pretty strange to the eye and to the ear are due to how blunt the transition is from verse to chorus - or at least, I think so.
As a whole, the last poem is /definitely/ an experimentation, and I'm happy to know which parts worked and which parts didn't. Most of the poems here are pretty fucking weird in my eyes, except for 'Seven Days', but that's the fun part of poetry, isn't it? It's always fun to do something new. Something you haven't done before. Much, much more fun than the routine :p
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I definitely take your point that 100% formal, standard English wouldn't suit the poems. I enjoyed reading it, for whatever that's worth.
I didn't give an overall impression because I was trying to form very clear / constructive comments about at least one or two poems. You mentioned Seven Days, so I read it more carefully.
Overall, the theme here is familiar (which doesn't mean bad, it means familiar): the bad rich tricking and oppressing the good poor. Religious or fantastic references are common tropes of this theme and are found here as well.
I should admit straightaway that I'm less familiar with more modern and post-modern styles of poetry. I love almost all of T.S. Eliot and Ginsburg's "Howl" was a lot fun, but I'm mostly familiar with more traditionally coherent styles. That said, the second stanza felt abrupt and very difficult for me. By the third stanza, I'm pretty lost, and no matter how often I re-read the first and second stanza, I can't seem to find my way. So we have falling angels (falling, fallen - I like that), and then a list of colours vaguely symbolic but I can't decipher it and I don't feel like the poem has given me the tools to decipher it yet, and then two different kinds of kings and then a paradise. Alright, so I'm puzzled, but I proceed assuming that I will discover connections and clues that will help me make sense of this later.
Next, another abrupt stanza - the spoken what? I'm now heavily waylaid with confusion. I'm hoping there will be some resolution or insight or suggestion or clue that helps me make sense of all these turns, twists, and ambiguous words. AND: most crucially, I am hoping that this confusion is itself meaningful. What is the purpose of this confusion; why am I meant to feel this way, and what is the author trying to point out by it? In Wasteland and Prufrock it is clear that internal confusion, anxiety, and lack of certainty are central to the poems, for example.
Then arrive on the line: "normalcy was just a plague / Upon the court". This is a big relief; I get a connection back to the kings. There are two kinds of kings and I don't know which one we're talking about, but anyway, something to do with kings and that normalcy is bad. Normalcy may connect to good? Good to angels? The sickness is only called a plague and there are liars in the poem so maybe it's actually good which links to the falling angels and the tension in status (goodness/badness). Things are still pretty distant, but there is a suggestion of coherent meaning or at least tone.
Then there is a suggestion of revolution? This again may connect to falling angels? The kings of ages are peasants?
Anyway, that is my reading of it. I would say that it is a little crowded with abrupt and cryptic lines. If you read Prufrock or Wasteland, the changes are actually more abrupt, but there are fewer of them - Eliot develops complete thoughts and statements in poetry, sometimes quickly sometimes in a more extended way, and then suddenly switches to another complete thought. The key is that there are complete thoughts and that the transition itself is meaningful; from happiness to fear to anger, for example, so that the abruptness isn't just stylistic, it is integrated into the whole meaning of the poem.
BUT! Eliot wasn't writing music. You said you are writing lyrics to go with music, and as lyrics I think these are perfectly appropriate and great.
Once again, big thanks for posting.
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Canada2764 Posts
On May 24 2015 14:50 Textual wrote:
I definitely take your point that 100% formal, standard English wouldn't suit the poems. I enjoyed reading it, for whatever that's worth.
I didn't give an overall impression because I was trying to form very clear / constructive comments about at least one or two poems. You mentioned Seven Days, so I read it more carefully.
Overall, the theme here is familiar (which doesn't mean bad, it means familiar): the bad rich tricking and oppressing the good poor. Religious or fantastic references are common tropes of this theme and are found here as well.
I should admit straightaway that I'm less familiar with more modern and post-modern styles of poetry. I love almost all of T.S. Eliot and Ginsburg's "Howl" was a lot fun, but I'm mostly familiar with more traditionally coherent styles. That said, the second stanza felt abrupt and very difficult for me. By the third stanza, I'm pretty lost, and no matter how often I re-read the first and second stanza, I can't seem to find my way. So we have falling angels (falling, fallen - I like that), and then a list of colours vaguely symbolic but I can't decipher it and I don't feel like the poem has given me the tools to decipher it yet, and then two different kinds of kings and then a paradise. Alright, so I'm puzzled, but I proceed assuming that I will discover connections and clues that will help me make sense of this later.
Next, another abrupt stanza - the spoken what? I'm now heavily waylaid with confusion. I'm hoping there will be some resolution or insight or suggestion or clue that helps me make sense of all these turns, twists, and ambiguous words. AND: most crucially, I am hoping that this confusion is itself meaningful. What is the purpose of this confusion; why am I meant to feel this way, and what is the author trying to point out by it? In Wasteland and Prufrock it is clear that internal confusion, anxiety, and lack of certainty are central to the poems, for example.
Then arrive on the line: "normalcy was just a plague / Upon the court". This is a big relief; I get a connection back to the kings. There are two kinds of kings and I don't know which one we're talking about, but anyway, something to do with kings and that normalcy is bad. Normalcy may connect to good? Good to angels? The sickness is only called a plague and there are liars in the poem so maybe it's actually good which links to the falling angels and the tension in status (goodness/badness). Things are still pretty distant, but there is a suggestion of coherent meaning or at least tone.
Then there is a suggestion of revolution? This again may connect to falling angels? The kings of ages are peasants?
Anyway, that is my reading of it. I would say that it is a little crowded with abrupt and cryptic lines. If you read Prufrock or Wasteland, the changes are actually more abrupt, but there are fewer of them - Eliot develops complete thoughts and statements in poetry, sometimes quickly sometimes in a more extended way, and then suddenly switches to another complete thought. The key is that there are complete thoughts and that the transition itself is meaningful; from happiness to fear to anger, for example, so that the abruptness isn't just stylistic, it is integrated into the whole meaning of the poem.
BUT! Eliot wasn't writing music. You said you are writing lyrics to go with music, and as lyrics I think these are perfectly appropriate and great.
Once again, big thanks for posting.
Hey! Sorry for not responding earlier, I've been plenty busy with real life.
I think what you've ran into is a problem where you're both looking at it too simply and not simply enough, so you over-complicate the first meaning while not really grasping the others. Presumably this is also because the secondary meanings more-so tie into the rest of the collection as well.
Anyway - just to go through stuff..
First stanza gives a mood - emptiness. Then, people and an event. Good people (represented by angels) who lost their lives to labels. Labels generally refers to a lack of freedom, the pressure to conform. Good people held back by 'normalcy'.
The second stanza lists crimson and golden, two colors generally associated with royalty. Then, it connects the royals to the broken - pretty standard. However, just as royal and broken is one good thing and one bad thing, crimson and golden is one bad thing (crimson representing blood) and one good thing (gold, which represents a ton of stuff that you should be able to get a jist of, just in general culture). The Kings of Lying Pages = the kings we speak about in history books. The kings we're told of, aren't actually the most influential. At least, in the situation I'm describing. Basically, this is describing a person with power finding out that there's always gonna be someone with more power. Describing the plight of the powerful in this story, if you will. Just like the first stanza described the plight of the not-so-powerful.
The point of this poem isn't 'the evil rich are oppressing the good poor'. The point of this poem is to operate on that scale - the duality between the rich and the poor - but to paint it in shades of gray rather than to make everything black and white.
The golden paradise therefor has two meanings, one connecting to the rich and one connecting to the poor. For the poor, it's a bit of irony. All this emptiness is taking place in a glorious world of gold. A paradise. This can connect to actual, modern life as well. For the rich, it's the same type of thing. Lamenting that what they thought was a golden paradise was just realization that there's always gonna be someone more powerful than you, etc.
'The spoken, the assured' is pretty vague.. until you read the next couple of lines. 'The spoken' refers to words. What are these words? We don't know yet, keep reading. 'The assured'. Alright. That's also vague in context, but thats a context we'll see by continuing to read. 'That the sickness had been cured'. Oh, alright. The spoken and the assured are the rich and the poor - and this is about the rich telling the poor not to worry. The problem has been solved. 'And normalcy was just a plague, Upon the court'. Now, this ties it all together. The sickness isn't a literal disease - it's normalcy. The pressure to conform I mentioned earlier. Being 'normal' is something we all fight to avoid, but in doing that we fall to it. Note that the king is not actually part of his court - the court here is meant to represent everyone close to the king. That means two things. Either you interpret it as being everyone he influences, in which case it talks about the poor, or you interpret it as being the actual court, in which case it talks about the rich. More duality.
The next stanza goes more into normalcy, and why it's a problem in this world. Again, the world I'm describing is not ours - but there are places where they reflect. Just like the worlds of the rich and the poor.
The rebellion you mention isn't actually a successful rebellion, by any means. It's just the poor trying to show the rich that they mean something. But, as is explained in the last verse, this is pretty much all just a dream. To give a couple more examples of what I was trying to do - contrast the poor and the rich - look at the third verse [after the second repetition of the chorus], first stanza. Also, look at 'That nothing was the same'. The way you're probably used to read this phrase is as a confirmation of change. But, there's a second way. 'That nothing was the same', as in reflection. The rich look at the poor (or vice versa) and see the same problems.
Again, I think the problem that you're looking at is that you're seeing these poems as something you can very easily read through and extract all the meaning from. But.. that's not how I write poetry. I don't write poetry to try and be understood by everyone, and for everyone to get a fair amount of meaning. I write poetry for myself, honestly. I write what I wanna read, and what I wanna read is stuff with depth. If you look through any of the poems in this collection, you'll see that type of depth. Well- except the last one, probably. 'The Bridge of H' is the best example of this. 'Sleeping In My Head' works as well, while 'Stay' and 'The Moment' are a little simpler - mainly because I wanted to the set the scene before diving in.
Anyway, thanks for your criticism.
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EPT
