The Write Frame - Poetry by Nab.

I do believe you are one of my favourite poets on INO

I have a "poetry" assignment - an anthology of poems that appeal to me, to share - I have been asked to complete for my English class, featuring six of my own poems, and six written by various other people. I was wondering if you wouldn't mind - (but don't be afraid to say no; I respect that) - me featuring your poem "Painters" as part of my assignment, quite obviously fully credited to you.

I'd love to share it with my class, and my teacher - I love it.

Thankyou, regardless of whether you wish me to use it or not, for sharing your poems (your soul) with us.

No, thankyou.

Now at least one of the assignments in the class will have poems with (a lot of) actual substance and meaning in it. I read "Painters" a little while ago, and loved it, but I never left a comment. I was in search of it because I knew I wanted to use it the second my teacher handed out the assignment - I'm just so happy I actually tracked it down.

Thank you so much for letting me feature it Shall I simply credit your username and a link to this post in my assignment?

Not sure about this one, I haven't been writing poetry recently.

Rep Tile.

I take it
that each line is written
before I can even
perform the action within it.

I’m just playing the game.
Spinning the dice,
Splicing the mental tension as if the clean black
case of a Russian roulette is
unconcernedly built.

The next blow can be written in
a neat haiku. Five, seven,
five.
The next triumph as
an afterthought,
if ever mentioned at all.

Suppose,
that this dilemma is my snake.
My success if nothing but the
broken ladder.
I take it that each line was
written before
my commitment to it.
Suppose I’m just my own token;

when two grids away from
the century, my fate reads three.

Stage.


I’m the best kind of failed attempt you can ever achieve.
The one losing hope over having talent
at being nothing, the one with astuteness
hidden beneath blunt force trauma.
I’m the crooked-smiled
encompassment of all undesirable traits in one.

We’re single-styled.

We’re fifty of them and ugly, or nothing at all.

Not getting any older even if we try;
Then beating ourselves over everything,
and every other day,
when we can even stand to see the world,
We sit feeling sorry for ourselves.
That kind of disposition -
The best type of human letdown to ever roam our streets: only,
only,

I want a little bit more.

The little cold drafts, the suspect clarity of vision,
we all want a little more. I’m settling myself down for failure
but only as the over-achieving prototype.
Nothing more.
I claim merry weathers and silver tides, but, really
Mostly?
Mostly I’m just one perpetual state of disarray.
An embarrassing chaos you’d want to avoid.

It’s only when they speak
that I take notice of how they do it. The
words tend to choke with a mouthful of pity, a gurgle of
“What a kid.”
A swallowed spittle of “What a rightful mess.”
What a kid, what a mess.

Always spewing fright and thrills.

Always stuck in the shiver,
in the eye of it.

Always the best at being the worst;

I’m getting there,
passing through my personal thunders.
My compact self-destruct button.
I’m fifty of ugly,
or nothing at all.

Old Laughter and Other Stories.

I want to tell a story about how everything goes full circle.
The coming-of-age tale about the sad, illicit children of nature
trapped under woes of ignorance and army missionaries.
War walls they built against themselves to keep their friends out and their stealthy
mortal enemies in.
They’ve gone 29 years without social sustenance,
and life, as it seems, would be well and weary without everything pressed against
the windows.
Clouds and dust and light and broken cigarettes, and
sighs and old laughter and yellowed memories,
and tips of fingers in boxes tied with an imaginary ribbon as their symbol of finality.
The glass will crack but mend and refuse to break.
The glass will cut and un-bleed you.
And you build the walls and brick after brick, leave people out from your
sanctuary, your meagre
hide-hole.
Then you make your spawn of the sad children,
telling them that the only way to trust is
to trust no-one.
So they keep their backs against the home and each other,
never talking, hardly listening, except with themselves,
to themselves, and the generations would flit by like clouds and take odd,
assuring shapes and they grow up to fight a war of rightful
ownership.

I want to tell a story about how everything goes full circle.

Dried Mouths.

There’s a reason for all these idiosyncrasies and
rhythm that we build upon, then hide, as if in a
deafening journey into nowhere
in particular.
I’m sure you’re tailing the best people
you know; I’ll follow my personal track and risk
this death, or another injured commission.
Tongue on ice, flesh in flame. They are not your ritual
buddies, I have to warn you that.

We’re only dealing with this the
best way we know how, but we don’t know much,
and we don’t ask.
I have my excuse of asphyxiation,
fear and self-loathing, what do you have?
You’re always saying how your mouth runs dry and
those palpitations don’t go unnoticed, but, love,
we don’t pay attention to the cries
for help.
I think you’re just damaged, but not in the
bad way. I think I’m just piteous, and not
in the good way either. See how we’re both running out of
life and excuses?

Not sure what to call this.

____

The longer you look at yourself
- really look, maybe even pick apart the
clean or blotched sheen of
finely-tuned words and epidermis and the silly grins you
like to make in photographs;
the harder it is to stomach.
You tell your stories as if you know its beginning
and you wear the mask like a crown.
You, well,
you’re the stoic, relentless one.
You hide well. You like to play the predator, but
really, behind the long grass and that
funny skin you like to call unique,
it’s a whirlpool of bedlam.

I am no expert in the field,
but in retrospect, we’re the best at the art of concerning
ourselves.
Sometimes with ridicule,
mostly with self-pity and other sobering tales.

And the
longer I look at this and all of its failed
novelty, of its attempts of sorting
out the bad from the rotten, the longer I
look at the glass.
Really look.
Pick apart everything, or what’s left in the stories,
like stupid dreams, and the hopes of becoming a real person.
Between the good old dread and the bad poems.
The confessions of time and fingers and brick walls
and all you’ve ever wanted in a broken thing,
in something existing and mulling,
toying with the idea of life.
The harder it’d be to fall in love with me.

But you’ll tough it out, won't you?
I like to have faith in that.