Dust (poetry)

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The poems by fade and chevalier reminded me of two poems I'd written recently, inspired by - of course - unrequited affection. If you're easily offended by religious imagery, stop reading now! (Or just chalk it up to fantasy - this is a fantasy board, after all.)

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I'm convinced that it's my place to smile.
It's not that I'm trapped in denial -
I fully feel the force from all the friendly fire I've sustained.
But still there's nothing to be gained
from advertising how I'm pained,
and so with cheerful guile I'll laugh and grin though all the while
my face betrays that it's my place to smile.

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There's nothing quite so disconcerting as the sudden realization that we cannot ever truly trust ourselves.
Madness knows my name, and I can't count the times I thought I had it beat before succumbing to its spells.
We spend our lives constructing mental barricades and emotional redoubts to hold back the poisoned tide -
but the soft, insistent whispers that rain down upon our spirit know the words to rot and rust us from inside.

Thank God our God's a God who knows that each of us is dust
and yet sees fit to wash the dust from off our feet.

Christ commands that we must love our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind, but I freely confess
that lately I can't seem to love myself, or life, or anything at all, and daydreams drown in dreariness.
My passions have betrayed me, and my thoughts are tautly tangled, and restless sleep still dominates my day.
My prayers hit the ceiling and fall back like fallen angels, and I lack the will to send them on their way.

Thank God our God's a God who knows that each of us is dust
and yet sees fit to wash the dust from off our feet.

I have a hundred well-intentioned thorns sunk shallow in my skin as souvenirs of reckless sympathy.
I have a hundred deeply-buried talents that were never reconciled with my ambitious entropy.
I guess, in theory, grace should be sufficiently intense to resurrect my broken dreams and pull the thorns.
But oh, my Lord, I cannot guarantee that I will even want Your grace when I have been most badly torn.

Thank God my God's a God who will not leave me in the dust
but is the One who weeps and washes off my feet.

 

I admit that at first I didn't like the poem because it seemed to switch from prose to poetry, but on further reading I started to get the rhythm. It breaks down a bit in the first and stanza (technically not stanzas, but you know what I mean) with longer lines, but in the third I got it, and it actually works quite well. You might want to take out the conversational asides like "in theory" and "oh, my Lord" because they break up the rhythm.

The best part is your imagery and repetition. I like the repetition of 100 thorns/100 talents and the repetition of the refrain with the dual "dust" references. Extraordinarily cool insight, that. Wowzers.

 

Well, I'm terrible when it comes to "getting" poetry (and even worse when it comes to writing it), so it took me awhile to "get" these (and I probably missed the boat anyway).

The first one was OK, but I really liked the rhythm of the second. Of course, I probably got the rhythm wrong, but still...

 

Well, I cheated...I put the piece to a piano background, so it flows better if you sing it. Music is a cheap subsidy for hasty poetry.

 

Nice imagery, good read.

I am probably worse at poetry than Splunge; I get hung up after "Roses are red...", but once I got into an awkward loping pace with the second, I was able to concentrate more on what you had to say.