The Writers Block

I Even Hate The Ground You Walk On

You know, sometimes I hate you:
I even hate the ground you walk on.
I used my woodcraft (carved from a lifetime of hard knocks)
to find a special stick in the disenchanted forest
with which I could beat the path you trod-
beat it, mash it up, disturb the gravel;
then I squashed those special berries on it
(the bitter heart-shaped ones), stamping them into the stony surface
until the whole road looked like a gory bloodbath-
as if a tragic creature with an open wound, tracked relentlessly
by its own demons, had limped along there, looking for a place to die.
Still, in retrospect, the end result was not entirely desperate:
the glistening red effect does look quite romantic in the moonlight,
almost like a poem, squeezing sunbeams from the darkest night.

I see you have no comments and maybe you deserve a reply even though I haven't noticed you reply on this forum, that's not to say you have not replied, it's just that I have not noticed. I undertsand you are writing from the viewpoint of your work going into songs and yet this is a poetry forum. My first impmression is that you might get away with some of the words you use in a song, modern songs use lyrics like sound bites and the music and beat is probably 60% of what makes for success, even so, some of your sentiments are a long stretch from reality.

I think my main critisism is that your work is unreal, it is imaginery feelings and thought, made up, contrived and the reader will spot that of course. I think you definately have a way with words and I think you can probably write well, better than this. This poem does nothing for me, its based on a weak preception of what poetry is and as such fails to lift the reader in any way. You have however illicitated in me a poem from your spark, and I thank you for that. My poem isn't much better if it is better but I would suggest it is more down to earth and more real.

I would encourage you to keep going on this forum and in your attempt at poetry.

Ed. Wards a Dare

At the time I felt little but annoyance
and as the years drifted by I would
occasionally bump into you and nothing
had changed about you. Your false bon ami air
the affected manners and condensation from
way down there. It wasn't that you hurt me
at the time, although I knew of your grumbling
your rabid preoccupation with the sexual lives
of others, something you never had.
You were clever in malice

There were puzzling events that disturbed
me, silent accusations from my colleagues
that I never understood until time unravelled
them for me. And when I understood what
seeds of lies you had sewn I felt nothing but
sadness that you wasted your life merely
to destroy the name of others, in your envy.

It's not that I hate you, it's just that
you now have a hold of my mind and
I am reduced to imagining my revenge
and that fills me with a despair that I
could ever sink into a pit of malice
That's what I resent the most about you.

If only I had made a friend of you
and taught you but you were always
a bumbler an echo of you father's tales
of Africa, the things you could never do.
Your fake anger frightened mere boys
you blustered your way with lightweights
and with the heavyweights you whispered
their demise with your inventions.
Poor you, poor sad and lonely you.

I read of the rape of a virgin in this one.

I had not intended to reply, but just a few moments ago, I dropped a bilingual edition of "Harsh World" and Other Poems, by Angel Gonzalez, and found a poem that is closer to another variation of the love/hate poems posted by MCE. I am a terrible correlator, this is purely an amazing coincidence:

Letter Without Farewell (by Angel Gonzalez)

At times
my egotism fills me
with evil,
and I hate you so
that I almost do harm
to myself:
it is jealousy, envy,
disgust
for man, my abhorrent
fellow man, like me
corrupt and hopeless,
my beloved
brother and equal in misfortune.

At times--or rather:
once in a while--
I hate you so that I see you as a different person,
Neither in heart nor in soul do you resemble
the person I loved only a moment ago,
and even your body changes
and is more beautiful--
maybe because it's distant and unattainable.

But hatred also modifies
me,
and when I try to understand
I am someone else
who does not hate,
who loves
that unknonwn woman whose first name is yours,
whose last name is yours,
and who,
just like you,
weas her hair long.

When you smile, I recognize you.
I identify your profile first,
and I see you again,
at last,
just as you were, as you go on
being,
as you will always be, as long as I love you.