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LazyLinePainterJohn —
In solitude, in entropy
Published: 2005-08-20 18:49:27 +0000 UTC; Views: 4017; Favourites: 65; Downloads: 237
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.In solitude, in entropy In solitude, in entropy
In edgeless cadences of heat In edgeless cadences of heat
Unmake me here with summer skies Sun smother me in summer's sheet
And fall on me, a star that shrives And I will bear a summer's high
And scars the kneeling day, repeats A kinder cavalcade to find
In solitude, the enmity To soothe silent cacophonies
Of solitude's relentless beat
Unmake me here with summer skies
Sun smother me in summer's sheet And fall on me; a star that shrives
And I will bear a summer's high And scars the kneeling day, repeats
In sunbeaten severity In sunbeaten severity
The cadences of memory The cadences of memory
Let slip a cavalcade of sighs Let slip a cavalcade of sighs
Distended by the sun that meets Of solitude; let me release
The edgeless solitude of mind The bonds of circumstantial grief
An absence candles over me
A kinder cavalcade to find
To soothe silent cacophonies In solitude the enmity
Of solitude, let me release Of solitude's relentless beat
The bonds of circumstantial grief Distended by the sun that meets
An absence candles over me The edgeless solitude of mind
My solitude bleeds edgeless cries My solitude bleeds edgeless cries
This summer wrought our elegy This summer wrought our elegy
.
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Comments: 96
I first stumbled upon this years ago, and haven't looked at it since-- yet, I find that it pops into my head quite regularly.
This is, possibly, one of the best things I've read on this site.
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Once I went to see a purse work out at a gym to write a poem about The Basque Inquisition (because like nobody would expect THAT, specifically), but the weights were all like, it's part of Spain dude, I call cliché, so cliché called us back and he like screamed "NO I CAN'T TALK RIGHT NOW I'M AT MY FUNERAL! YES, FUNERAL! FUCKING CHEAP ALUMINUM COFFIN FUCKING WITH MY FUCKING RECEPTION! GOTTA GO!" and my purse totally said it should be "aluminium" while the weights giggled at go, misunderstood in their tiny genital brains as "to die", and I just cried and cried uncounted crimson tears for the death of cliché.
And then I lived happily ever after.
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That's exactly what I always say.
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wow..
People who do fixed poetry in such a beautiful, professional way -- amaze me.
It's all open poetry for me, with a fistful of rhymes wedged in between.
It wasn't the words of this poem that sprouted visualizations in my mind, but the rickety syllables and the rhythm of them.
And it made me think of summery song-speckled rain drifting into the ears of two lonesome lovers with a big fat mound of distance dividing them apart. And the supple sunbeams pierce into their skins and gently yanks out their heartbeats one by one.
This is quite beautiful, and toe-curlingly icecreamy.
Thank you for flipping my frowns.
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Why shucks a daisy, thanks so much.
Personally, I rate the fixed form. There's very many simply marvellous creations in the open style, but to combine the discipline of form with the creativity of expression, and to do it well... there's something magical about that. (Of course, there's nothing worse than unhappy meter and squarepeg rhymes, and I'd never suggest "it's not poetry cos it doesn't rhyme", but I hope you see what I'm saying.)
"It wasn't the words of this poem that sprouted visualizations in my mind, but the rickety syllables and the rhythm of them."
Brilliant description, if I might be so bold, especially rickety. The words, in this poem, are secondary. They have to be, cos they're not very good. And mostly they've been picked for rhythm and cadence rather than merit (cf, last two lines, left side, are poetically horrible).
"And it made me think of summery song-speckled rain drifting into the ears of two lonesome lovers with a big fat mound of distance dividing them apart. And the supple sunbeams pierce into their skins and gently yanks out their heartbeats one by one."
Yup. That's pretty much how it was, only less eloquent.
For the abundant compliments, the fecund praise and the sheer entertainment value of another of your comments, 1) you're extremely welcome, and 2) thank you muchly.
PS That Cummings reminds me of a Borges line from "Tlon, Uqbar...". I'll try and track it down.
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Hmm.. Borges? I guess I should be reading more published poetry. I read stuff from dead poets society like once every two months.
anyways... you seem to be a very experienced writer.
If you don't mind me asking, how many years have you been writing?
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Borges mostly wrote prose, actually. It's certainly in prose where his genius lies. Any collection of his short stories would be a good place to start - I got Labyrinths and went from there.
I've been writing mere days over one year. Before then I was still "a writer" in my head, but I never wrote anything ever. I hope I've come a long way in a year, despite still hardly writing, and I hope I've got a hell of a long way to go.
Incidentally, you're so young and talented it's almost worrying.
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I can relate to everything you said in the third and fourth sentences of your comment.
I'd have to say I've been seriously writing and devoting myself to poetry and art for about a year too.
The feeling you get after finishing a poem/ artwork is the the best in the world. It's just a beautiful bucketful of temporary joy and it feels as if you've created something simple that makes this complicated tangle of messy faces, places, traces and faces, and beliefs -- make sense. Even if it's just for a moment.
hmm.. that reminds mee..
I will share my analogy of poop and art.
------------------------------------------
We eat emotion. Yes we do. The moments, experiences, places, spaces, and traces of faces that tumbles into our lives every day all bottle up into our minds and cause emotion. So we eat it all up -- emotion goes down our throats, through our digestive system, and plops smack-dab into our heart. But there is always a time when our heart gets bloated with such a toppling amount of emotion that we simply needs an artistic outlet for it. Therefore it soaks into the bladders of our pencil and is let out in the forms of art, poetry, and music.
When our pencils poop emotion – it becomes art, because art is solid with varying colors and so is poop.
When our pencils pee emotion – it becomes poetry, because poetry flows and so does pee.
When our pencils fart emotion – it becomes music, because music cannot be seen – it is just pure, melody-milled Sound. And so is fart.
and also the feeling you get after you poop /pee/ fart is a very comfortable feeling. just like the feeling you get after you finish a poem/painting/drawing/song.
YAY!
Be
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It's a good feeling, yeah. But it lasts about forty-five minutes until I start to hate it. This is why I don't write very much. I'm quite happy to announce that nothing I've ever done pretends to make sense of anything ever and it's better that way, but if you can make an order in the chaos, kudos to you.
I'm not sure how far I take your poop-art-emotion theory, but it makes me smile a lot. Especially the last line.
YAY! indeed. That's almost worth a second exclamation point. Here, have a raisin.
("Be" -- actually here, I have to disagree.. just being is as far as most people get. To be content with existence is to tantamount to being content with nothing. Contentment is complacency, which is the destruction of all striving, and hence all value. At least, that looks right at the moment. Maybe I've just been reading too much dialectic philosophy.)
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"be" actually was the first word in a sentence that somehow got caught off.
But I'm amazed that you managed to burst a single two letter word into such a bucketful of wisdom. 
But I think that if you're content with existance during childhood, that is definately alright, because those childhood years are the only times of your life where the whole world is pure, puddly and unrehearsed, and natural ignorance leads you to believe that powder-blue peace is all that this world is and every end of every dream can be buckled to every beginning. And you weren't trapped in the awful frying pan of choice and change back then.
And after we leave childhood, the only thing we should do is to fight and never stop fighting.
Because life says fight.
Time is a one-sided war. Life's a sacrifice.
Life says fight. We fight for peace, we fight for power, we fight for passing grades, we fight of jobs, we fight procrastination, for passion, for happiness, for religion, for faith, for oil, for elections, for food, for money, for acceptance, for knowledge, for change, for a thing called humility.
And all this fighting just leads you to thinking that there isn't really much of a point centered around it all. because nothing lasts in this world. Except for your soul.
But there is one way that we can pull together this endless race of property and privilege to be won. one way to lose ourselves and get our hair tangled in the stars like nothing else mattered more. Like everything was simple.
And we haven't experienced it yet, it is in the future, and it shines brighter than anything else. One thing.
To Love and to be Loved.
----
ok. yay. my rant is done.
and I am wondering, if you have time, could you drag your eyes across this poem by any chance? [link]
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That's a damn good "rant" actually -- to condense meaning, or at least purpose, into one word 'fight', though for some reason I prefer the word 'kick'. Also aloud.
Will overdrag eyes gladly.
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thank you.
Yess. kicking is a wonderful word.
So much better than punching or slapping or hitting or wrestling. Wonderful way to release a big fat bucketful of anger from your insides. Always fun to spank the butts of your stuffed animals with a rickety kick.
However, elbowing is by far the best! Also head butting! never ever forget head butting!
And also butting itself! Butting the refrigerator shut is a puddle wonderful feeling.
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Yeah, stooopid refrigerator. But it gives sweet, sweet food! Oh, now I'm conflicted.
I live on the second floor (that's the third floor in American), and have no kitchen-storage space. I've been a-wandering downstairs to the kitchen with arms full of pots and pans and culinary accoutrements, opening cupboards with my head and stopping doors with my face. It's nobody's loss.
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AH!
So I managed to dig up this conversation we had nine months ago, and began basking in its' peculiar randomness.
I laugh at how strange and jumbled up I was. Screaming about poop to strangers, what was I thinking?
Anyways, merry late new year, and goodluck with your lack of kitchen storage space, yes one day you will move into a voluptuous cottage with a majestically large kitchen filled with a russia-sized refrigerator, automatically-opening cupboards, blooming with awesome-sauce food.
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Goodness me, that was a long time ago. Ah, I was in Venice. [sob]
You mean you don't scream about poop to strangers any more? That's the world's loss. Fortunately, I can report that I now have decent-sized cupboards, a functional kitchen, and my own wok. I'd swap it all for a voluptuous cottage, though.
How've you been?
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In fact, i still do scream about poop to strangers! People know me as the girl with the poop fetish! Though I think it's kind of dissapearing slowly...
At this moment I am being digested by art, and the indecencies of being stuck in an American Highschool with crazy asian parents. Honestly I don't even know what I am doing here, alive, anymore. Argh, I want to run away dive into peace of mind, escape velocity, activism, this moment, this milisecond, right now. Maybe take a walk and walk in a straight line forever.
I guess the repetitive mundane cycles of school and drowning in textbooks in a stuffy room is just annoying me, and i can't help but long dive elbow-deep into the actual world. I feel liek so much is going on in Seattle, and in the lush humongousness of the real world... and I long to discover every hidden nook and cranny and meet strangers from all walks of life.
But I am going to Europe for ten days in February. Exciting. Maybe I'll hunt you down and give you a collapsable voluptuous cottage that is portable and all fits in a fist-sized box.
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Sub Pop records is going on in Seattle. That's a reason to be cheerful. Where are you going in Europe?
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I think this is superb. I worship people who can use metrification with such mastery in their pieces. The poem runs smooth all along, with an unbreakable cadence. Also, every word makes me feel a tad more melancholic than usual.
I'm no poet and I'm only beginning to try and use metrification in poetry I write in my mother tongue and find it extremely difficult already, so I guess I'll only have the guts to try writing any kind of fixed poetry in English when I'm over 50 years old. 
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Ah, thanks! But if you must worship a DeviantART poet, go to =zebrazebrazebra and deposit your love there. I'm no poet either, to be frank. I was very lucky to get a DD with this one, because it's just the verbal equivalent of tracing patterns in the carpet. And you are evidently far superior in English than I am in any foreign language, which is enough for me to worship you.
And there's nothing wrong with writing when you're fifty... *Robsonnet happens to be brilliant at it. If you like metrics, you'll revere this man as a god.
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=zebrazebrazebra is in my to-read list, actually, I've taken a quick look at some of her pieces, but haven't gotten the time to comment on them as I'd like to yet. She's superb indeed.
Nah, I still have to improve my English quite a lot; my writings in this language sound a bit too stiff and foreign for my liking...
Actually, I meant that it'll take a long time till I gather the courage to write fixed poetry in English, since I'm only 17 now. 
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Hey, my writing in English sounds stiff and foreign too. My favourite authors are all translated: Borges, Kundera, Marquez, Eco, Calvino - I write like a bad translation. Good luck with Sarah (zebra) and Ed (robsonnet), they're first-class.
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Your writing stiff and foreign? No way.
Yeah, most of my favorite writers are translated as well; John Steinbeck being the only exception I can remember right now. But not all translations are bad.
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Hey, I was very close to performing this in a poetry open mic night at my library, but unfortunately the other person had to drop out at last moment. It was dissappointing, as I was really getting ready to blow everyone at the open mic away with it.
Alas, it was not so. Maybe when next year comes around.
But still, thank you for this piece! I really enjoyed it when we practiced together (it takes awhile to get the same rhythm between two people). Great work.
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Ah! That would have been absolutely amazing! The very idea of something I wrote being read at an open mic night (and in a library too) makes me oddly tingly. Such a shame it didn't happen.
But thank you so, so much! That means more than sixty favourites or a thousand pageviews. The very fact that you even tried it as a duet delights me beyond words.
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intriguing. i might just have to recruit someone to read it with me to hear what you are talking about.
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I'd love to hear what I'm talking about too. 'Seat' and 'pants' come to mind, but please tell me if you do try it out and if it's any good like that.
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I'm a bit torn on this one, because it's a fascinating technique, and I can imagine that it would sound fantastic. You've got all the soft sibillants in there which mean that this poem is bound to work out loud. Reading the actual words, however, I found it slightly insubstantial with perhaps too much repetition of the word 'solitude' for my taste, in a poem about solitude. But since I'm finding it more-or-less impossible to articulate my objection to it in a helpful or useful way, feel free to disregard my gut feeling.
It sounds pretty, which is all a poem needs to do, sometimes. Definitely a worthy DD for the unusual technique alone.
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I agree with you completely about the repetition. I like this poem less and less the more I read it, but that's neither here nor there. It's insubstantial and doesn't really say anything or go anywhere, but that aside... yeah, I agree it sounds kinda pretty. Many many thanks for the critique, it's the most appreciated kind of feedback.
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O.o sveet, i love complicated forms of poetry, i can't really tell which way to read it but either way i read it, it makes an interesting effect, i also tried 2 voices inside my head trying to read two lines at once >.o hurts my eyes, but meh. congrats on the DD
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"Hurts my eyes..."
Is that the definition of blinding poetry?
Dear lord, I deserve to be kicked off DA for that one.
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XD no its not like that, i tried to read 2 lines at once, so its my fault, you dont deserve to be kicked off
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This has to be the first time that I have ever seen a poem as daily deviantion. And it defenatly deserves it. I think this is brilliant. Excellent work.
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Thank you! They're not usually given pride of place (the preview ain't often that gripping) but they're usually excellent when they're picked. Which just leaves me even more confused as to what this is doing there. Thanks for the compliments.
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Stunningly beautiful. I don't know what people are talking about when they say they got sick of the repitition of words; for me it flowed nicely and made perfect sense. To each his own, I suppose. It almost reminded me of the first Lord of the Rings movie, when Galadriel is talking in english and her words are repeated in elvish in the background.
I would give you some 'advanced critique' but I honestly can't think of anything that would improve this poem. It's absolutely amazing as it is. I think I'd have to be a better poet than you to think of anything, and I'm not, so there you go!
PS. My favourite lines were the last three in the left column. Very powerful ending.
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I'm stunningly flattered. Thank you so much, and for taking the time to comment. I'm actually one of those people inclined to think it repeats too much -- to be honest, I'm less keen on this one than on a few others I've written -- but I'm gratified you think it works as-is. I remember that Lord of the Rings bit now... hmm, now that's interesting! I'll keep an eye out for that.
I'm glad you like the ending. I like it too, though it might be a touch melodramatic for my tastes. Where's your signature-quote from?
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^^ There's always time to flatter a fellow writer. My signature is from 'The Lady of Shalott' by Alfred Lord Tennyson.
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im mostly speechless....but i can talk just enough to give you this comment. this gives a wonderfully soothing (for me) feeling that just beat down like the rapping of sunlight. ok sorry...a little melodramatic but still 
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Thanks! If it soothes, then that's a good thing and it makes me happy. And if sunlight comes into it, well, it is about a day in summer, so I suppose that's as apt a description as any! Thanks a lot. And do get up, of course you are worthy.
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Brilliant work.. (and yes I do understand and take literature and poetry so I will critique...lol) this is a lovely concept and not something done often simply because our society doesn´t do nearly enough actual readings of poetry anymore. While I can see why some people might have had an issue with the repetiveness of the poem thanks to your happy accident of adding the second voice it totally works. Even when the first voice is repeating, you´re caught in the second´s pull and almost don´t notice it. It´s a very hypnotic feel and I like it.. so there... :grin:
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I don't understand literature or poetry, but I appreciate the comment! Regarding society and poetry-readings, one of the most pleasurable evenings out I have spent this year was at a poetry contest. I was thinking about how that would sound at something like that, with another voice, when I decided to stick the right-half on. A happy accident indeed! I like your description of the second's 'pull'. Thanks for liking it!
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:grin: you're most welcome! I wish I could FIND poetry readings/contest like that out here where I am.. the closet I get is my classes.. oh well aye? I hope you continue with your writing!
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i really like this,
it has a classic sort of way about it,
but goes so much further.
i visualize so much from this,
which may have been the point
im not sure.
its beautiful though.
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I'm not sure either. Maybe I should pretend I had a grand vision for this one, but I was fed up with having the first two lines and bugger else and so I just wrote things down, and being too lazy to reach for a thesaurus I repeated a lot of words. Could you tell me what you visualise in this, please? Thank you for the beautiful-comment.
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im so sorry this has taken me so long to respond to.
i just realized i hadnt responded.
well im not entirely sure that i have the same visual now when i read it, as i did the first time.
but i visualize a spring type,
green day.
being beautiful, and being painful.
maybe because its so beautiful.
i havent slept in a while,
so this is probly really jumbled.
i just see beautiful and
painful images.
it makes me smell seasons.
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