Stage-World

Wow! No-one has posted on here in a really long time. I guess everyone's like me - busy, busy, busy! I haven't had time for much poetry lately, but here is one that I wrote.

Stage-World 


Set-piece clouds,
Drifting by.

Azure backdrop,
Clean and high.
Verdant stage,
Enter: I

Quote my pieces,
Never borrow
From the scripting
Of tomorrow.
 

Copyright 2012 The Aspiring Bard

I'm also in the shaping and reshaping process of working on two other poems. They might show up on here eventually. ;-)

Attempted Word Pictures

'I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definition of prose and poetry; that is prose; words in their best order; - poetry; the best words in the best order'
-S.T. Coleridge

With this, and the thought that less is sometimes more in mind, I've attempted to draw some short word sketches.

Scent of Chamomile After Rain
Honey
And spice -
Wholesome,
Clean,
And good.

Garden
Green islands
In a furrowed sea
Churned by careful plows.

From The Aspiring Bard

Spring Verses

My muse has been suffering from laziness, over tiredness, or something of that sort. But today, it unexpectedly decided to get its bum off the couch and give me...

Portrait of a Spring Day

Black roads

Brown clay

Fresh blooms

Cold day

Dark sky

Sun ray

Rain drips

Calves play

Green fields

Clouds grey...

In one

Spring day.

Rainy 4th of April

Daffodils crouch down

To weep, to drown,

Beneath a sobbing sky.

Timid April shivers -

Cold breeze passes by.

I'm wondering...is it really OK to use the words 'muse' and 'bum' in the same paragraph? I feel like I might have just torn a hole in the fabric of the universe.

From The Aspiring Bard

Los Viejos

Hay conocimiento
En los viejos
Hablen
De tesoros
De lágrimas
De risas
De la sabídura
Para y eschuchales
Saben
De que
Hablan

There is wisdom
In the old ones
They speak
Of treasure
Of tears
Of laughter
Of wisdom
Stop and listen
They know
Of what
They speak

Facility

It is strange how one works easily at times. I wrote this so quickly that I might almost say I had reached the end before I had come to the beginning. In such a mood I wonder why everybody does not write poetry. Get a Roget's Thesaurus, a rhyming dictionary: sit before your typewriter with a strong glass of coffee at your elbow, and just click the stuff off. 


So easy 'tis to make a rhyme,
That did the world but know it,
Your coachman might Parnassus climb,
Your butler be a poet.

Then, oh, how charming it would be
If, when in haste hysteric
You called the page, you learned that he
Was grappling with a lyric,

Or else what rapture it would yield.,
When cook sent up the salad,
To find within the depths concealed
A touching little ballad.

Or if for tea and toast you yearned,
What joy to find upon it
The chambermaid had coyly laid
A palpitating sonnet.

You baker could the fashion set;
Your butcher might respond well;
With ever tart a triolet,
With every chop a rondel.

Your tailor's bill...well, I'll be blowed!
Dear chap! I never knowed him...
He's gone an written me an ode,
Instead of what I owed him.

So easy 'tis to rhyme...yet stay!
Oh, terrible misgiving!
Please do not give the game away...
I've got to make my living.

From Robert Service's Ballads of a Bohemian 

Inspiration by color

There are days when inspiration comes from maybe the tiniest of birds flying through the sky or perhaps a magnificent sunset, with purples and oranges bursting over a mountain range. There are days when you are inspired from music or a child's laughter, from a creek chuckling through a forest or a field of wild poppies, waving gently in the wind. And there are days, when inspiration comes from color. Royal purple, crisp and cool blue, golden red, creamy white, shiny silver, emerald green, cranberry red, and lemon yellow. All of them oh so beautiful, but today, one stands out in my mind more than all the others: yellow.  So I will share with you some bits and pieces of yellow; please do enjoy. :)

...
A storm was coming up by dark gradations.
But what was curious about this was
That as the sky seemed to be taking on
An ashy blankness, behind which there lay
Tonalities of lilac and dusty rose
Tarnishing now to something more than dusk,
Crepuscular and funerary greys,The streets became more luminous, the world
Glinted and shone with an uncanny freshness.
The brickwork of the house across the street
(A grim, run-down Victorian chateau)
Became distinct and legible; the air,
Full of excited imminence, stood still.
The streetcar tracks gleamed like the paths of snails.
And all of this made me superbly happy,
But most of all a yellow Checker Cab
Parked at the corner. Something in the light
Was making this the yellowest thing on earth.
It was as if Adam, having completed
Naming the animals, had started in
On colours, and had found his primary pigment
Here, in a taxi cab, on Eighty-ninth street.
It was the absolute, parental yellow.
...

From "Apprehensions," by Anthony Hecht 

 

Nature rarer uses yellow
 Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,--
Prodigal of blue,
 Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly
, Like a lover's words.

 By Emily Dickonson  


 All the credit for the photos belongs to.....
Car in street at Mexico by Joshua Singh 
Horse in field by Agnes Garami 
Man running in dessert by Alexandre quillet
 Elephant by “Wannabe tramp” 
Subway by Thomas Lottermoser 
Truck in field by Perrine 
Sunflowers by Markoni M. Photos

Loner

My heart was heavy as a stone
As I stood there,
All alone,
In a world of human faces,
Brick and pavement,
Airs and graces.
All alone
Without a tree
Or wild thing
To comfort me.

From The Aspiring Bard

Lament

The hand of the bard has withered,
The pen has been laid aside.
The door to Faery is closing,
And dreamer's dreams have died.
Music has fallen silent,
And magic is gone from our shores.
Genuis is wrapped in mourning
As she paces the corridors.
Paces the hallways of legend,
Where man, in inspired prime,
Twisted the gossamer webbings
Of story and song and rhyme.

Grey is the rain on the tombstones,
Mingling with my tears,
As I lament the passing
Of more enlightened years.
Heavy the heart inside me,
For the lovelier things have fled,
Leaving me to a harsher world
And a place amongst the dead.

Poem from The Aspiring Bard

Daffodil

Poetry from the poem Daffodils by William Wordsworth Longfellow

Photography by Whimsy Lens Photography