Miscellaneous:

Brass, Steel, Gold And Rainbows

There will come a day,
when soft rain falling, will conjure up
our days of youth, when we looked
for rainbows, and pots of gold
we knew were not there.

There will come a day,
when we will know that, what is there
is brass and steel, with flesh behind,
intent on dying.

There will come a day,
when we remember how rainbows
come after storms.... sometimes,
how pots of gold are merely dreams,
brass and steel, reality,
how flesh does always die.

[zaac]

i dont know what i like about this, but i do. i like that its more free form instead of straight verse. I like the imagery and I like the fact that it's a statement of what is real,, no misspent words or metaphors.

zaac

Hi Zaac,

Thanks for the reply. I think as we get older in this hobby, we tend to write less and less of rhyming stuff. I do some but only when the muse takes over at the start and the theme suggests it. Very often rhyme is critiqued as "forced rhyme" when, in my opinion, all rhyme is forced. Take a good look in an anthology.

Free verse has more versitility. The main problem here is sounding like prose easily. After readig the best poem I did last year, one said it wasn't poetry, it was prose. I have fretted over this ever since but I am not changing a thing. Ever since William C. Williams, et al, free verse has sounded like prose and no one seems to object much.

I like to see similies, metaphors, meter, etc., but modern poetry gets along without it very often, of course rhyme needs meter to be effective.

I have avoided, until recently, writing "war" poems. This is my first one. I don't like to write about the blood and guts stuff so that is probably why you have trouble finding the meaning.

Thanks again.

[nomadicrhymer]

Oh, I really liked this one, Ralph! It suggests an autumn season of life where we appreciate and more fully understand what has gone before and are a little more accepting of the inevitable. It doesn't seem like a war poem as much as a philosophical one, to me.

This is my favorite stanza... it speaks of my favorite expectation for the future...Hope.

There will come a day,
when we remember how rainbows
come after storms.... sometimes,
how pots of gold are merely dreams,

I am a rhymer by nature...it automatic...but I have been training myself out of it...just for the reason of not having a forced feeling to my poetry...sometimes it comes naturally, and I leave it there...but then I think I end up with a hodgepodge and no set rythm to the piece? hmmm..shall have to explore that some more.

I believe there is a little bit of a war aspect in my "The Point I Make", but it's more of a ramble than anything else. Anyway, nuff said! Or I will soon start extolling MY virtues!! LOL! and THAT we wouldn't want...

The Nomad

Hi nomadicrhymer,
Thanks for your reply. No one else has indicated this poem is any more than a war poem refering to the Iraq war. To get that meaning you have to finish the last stanza (follow the punctuation). Your reply points out how a poem's meaning can be different between readers. Or there can be no meaning to some readers. and that's ok. There are lots of poems out there that have no meanings, or if they do, no one can figure it out 8-) Take Gertrude Stein for instance. I'd give anything to figure out what she was up to besides being a lesbian.

I'd like to read "The Point I Make". Being new to this site, I am having a time finding anything, how do I get to it?

[nomadicrhymer]

Hi Ralph...I get the reference to the war, but the overall poem for me doesn't seem to focus on war itself, only as another part of life...this may be a female perspective, not sure...depends on whether your previous indications were all from men? no matter, the poem is very meaningful. I think it would be a waste to have a poem with no meaning, since I feel that we all write for a reason, some only to experience the cathartic element, and others to send a message. I attempt, and I say attempt to have a message or at least some meaning that others can relate to...in my poems.

If you have trouble navigating, do what I do...I click the link for Today's Posts in the upper left of the site...and that allows you to see most current or recently commented on. Otherwise if you are in a particular poem, you can go down to the bottom right of the page to the Forum Jump link and select other forums from there. Another way is to click on any random member's name that you want to check out and go to their private profile...it has a link there for all threads started by that user. Hope you have more success navigating!!

Nomad

here is the link to one of mine...http://jpicforum.info/miscellaneous/...make-2478.html