I. Midnight [Blue]
And the sky shone in the deepest of blues
With shadows streaking stars, with nothing to lose
Silence reigned a downcast earth
Strands of humanity discovering their worth
We wrote letters, but they'd never match the feelings
Staring at the night sky, wondering where we all fit in
The time seems to slip by, and never return
I wrote down the answers, but the paper burned
In the heart of summer, 1997
I stand alone in the steps of my fathers
For it is all I have

II. Out
In the midst of winter
Silence seems so bitter
Lying seems so simple
As eyes begin to dwindle-
It's official
Devolved into the flipping of a nickle
Only pray that it'll ripple
As the flame burns out

III. Melt Down
Like fireflies, melting down
We lost ourselves, in the shadows of our town
This place, like the back end of an echo
Lived my life searching for the pinnacle
And I'll do it all again
Only praying for an end

Sunsets, fading
Is the darkness invading?
Or has the light just ran away

Eyes crawling, blinking, running, escaping
The gaze can't exist- dating, aging
Until it falls apart- weeping, seeping
Hiding from the feelings, I drowned in the dreaming

Carving truths to granite
The maddening lack of panic
As if the world's spinning
And I just care if it's sinning

Fireflies, they melt down
All the bad nights, they melt down

IV. Touch
All backseat driving and speaking in tongues
The flicker of a flame fades waiting for the day the rain comes
Staring at the streetlights, away from the gridlock
We painted the world, from pavement lined with chalk

I don't know if things will work out

Summer's the loneliest time
All my friends are leaving
Fading, without a touch, without speaking
Or moving away, and I can't tell which one is worse

I spend all my days counting seconds
Why even speak to you, I know it won't last
Why even try, I won't break the glass

I don't know if things will work out

I just wanna watch the cityscape
I just wanna sit and speak
I just wanna spill my heart
I just wanna find a spark

V. When The Flame Burns Out [Red]
[But if I can see the sunset tomorrow
I'll find a way to work it all out]

I woke up to the sound of silent sirens
Like sirens into the midst of the early morning mist
Nobody spoke about them, newspapers and coffee
Provided a good enough excuse

I always knew when the world ended
It'd be mid-morning

And the people sleepwalked
Through shower - breakfast - traffic
So they never really noticed
The blue sky's just a backdrop

I always knew my last words would be
While drinking coffee

Epilogue
Will we be alive when the flame burns out?
Will we be alive when the feelings run out?
Would I regret not perishing with the rest?
Or would I awake to find that, nothing really changed?

/
First poetry stuff written after I was 15, which is pretty cool. Some things feel different, but it's pretty much the same. Comments are appreciated! Be constructive, though.

Qwyn

United States2781 Posts

August 09 2015 02:35 GMT

These read like the lyrics to a metal song

. I've been listening to too much metal, lately, so don't mind me.

Good progression here. Can see the blossoming of your style in the formatting and sentence construction, especially with how you lead one line into the next and use punctuation. I notice that a common motif in all of these seem to be flame, heat, and summer. Very fun imagery to work with.

Eyes crawling, blinking, running, escaping
The gaze can't exist- dating, aging
Until it falls apart- weeping, seeping
Hiding from the feelings, I drowned in the dreaming

Carving truths to granite
The maddening lack of panic
As if the world's spinning
And I just care if it's sinning

Strongest lines of all right here. Very evocative, especially the second stanza. Frantic!

You were quite the budding poet at the age of 15

.

You have inspired me to dig up some of the old poetry which I wrote. Here's one that I found from 2011:

I am the sole claimant
of the night:
The cruel and treacherous tides.
wash over
in noise-ridden waves

Wait, and wield
black waters. weep with dreaming
madness sleeps
too close, my vacant veins -

Cry out to me!
Scream and so yield
to me that weight which has troubled you,
So that the riddle
recedes

Upon the darkest of tides
Do I strain to bring light
against time troubled waters
I rally the might of the sea:

Crash down and shatter
My fingers climb like cables
outstretched to sever
the lock-ladled horizon,
the truth which I find
lies just out of reach

Of my heart.

Soularion

Canada2764 Posts

August 09 2015 05:09 GMT

On August 09 2015 11:35 Qwyn wrote:
These read like the lyrics to a metal song

Show nested quote +

Strongest lines of all right here. Very evocative, especially the second stanza. Frantic!

You were quite the budding poet at the age of 15

Hey! Thanks a lot for the comment- I appreciate it a lot. I decided to just take it in a more traditional, easy-to-read type of direction, as opposed to the occasional weirdness of my past stuff, and I'm glad to see that it's worked out well. Awesome to hear that you liked Melt Down's last couple stanzas, I was pretty happy with them when I wrote them. I'd say it's probably the 'best' poem on the collection, although I think the creativity of the intro/outro both worked really well, and the personal-ness of Touch makes it easy for me to enjoy.

As for your own poetry, I really like it! It's different to my own style, but a lot of your imagery is strong and works very well with your style. Thanks for sharing! <3

P.S. - A lot of the heat/flame/summer stuff comes from the current time. Just like how a lot of my early poetry was more rain/winter-based, it's just easier to channel an emotion when its around you. Still, it's definitely a running theme, so it's good to see that you caught it! A fun little concept that fits quite well but wasn't necessarily intended is seeing each poem as a different 'end of worlds' type thing. Midnight is about being overshadowed by technology, Out is sort-of a 'global freezing' of sorts. Melt Down is a brash, violent up-throwing of your personal world - the world around you - while Touch is more held back and reserved. And then, of course, When The Flame Burns Out is pretty self-explanatory. It's a cool little them that led to the title, although it's pretty vague. I just love it when people share 'behind the scenes' stuff, so I decided to do it myself!

paddyz

Ireland628 Posts

August 11 2015 13:56 GMT

Thank you for sharing! I quite liked it. Sorry I do not have the energy for constructive feedback now..maybe sometime later this week I will revisit it (If I remember).

I did like how it felt like time was always slipping away and people never seemed to make that time seem worthwhile. How the world around people was beautiful, but they didn't seem to notice or care much as they just "sleepwalked" through life. It also felt like there were things out there for people to understand, but very few even thought about it much less understood.

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