Poet Of The Week

This week I would like to shift attention from today's contemporary poets, to the greats of the past. This week's poet of the week is Pablo Neruda. I recently started reading more of Neruda's work since it was suggested by my professor. I instantly fell in love with his work. His imagery is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. He can go into sooo much detail, it's mind blowing. One of the poems my professor gave me by Neruda is "Toward an Impure Poem." My favorite line is "Let that be the poetry we search for." He is the piece for your enjoyment. You can view some of his other work on poemhunter.com.

Toward An Impure Poetry
by Pablo Neruda

It is good, at certain hours of the day and night, to look closely at the world of objects at rest. Wheels that have crossed long, dusty distances with their mineral and vegetable burdens, sacks from the coal bins, barrels, and baskets, handles and hafts for the carpenter's tool chest. From them flow the contacts of man with the earth, like a text for all troubled lyricists. The used surfaces of things, the wear that the hands give to things, the air, tragic at times, pathetic at others, of such things---all lend a curious attactiveness to the reality of the world that should not be underprized.

In them one sees the confused impurity of the human condition, the massing of things, the use and disuse of substance, footprints and fingerprints, the abiding presence of the human engulfing all artifacts, inside and out.

Let that be the poetry we search for: worn with the hand's obligations, as by acids, steeped in sweat and in smoke, smelling of the lilies and urine, spattered diversely by the trades that we live by, inside the law or beyond it.

A poetry impure as the clothing we wear, or our bodies, soup-stained, soiled with our shameful behavior, our wrinkles and vigils and dreams, observations and prophecies, declarations of loathing and love, idylls and beasts, the shocks of encounter, political loyalties, denials and doubts, affirmations and taxes.

The holy canons of madrigal, the mandates of touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, the passion for justice, sexual desire, the sea sounding---willfully rejecting and accepting nothing: the deep penetraion of things in the transports of love, a consummate poetry soiled by the pigeon's claw, ice-marked and tooh-marked, bitten delicately with our sweatdrops and usage, perhaps. Till the instrument so restlessly played yields us the comfort of its surfaces, and the woods show the knottiest suavities shaped by the pride of the tool. Blossom and water and wheat kernel share one precious consistency: the sumptuous appeal of the tactile.

Let no one forget them. Melancholy, old mawkishness impure and unflawed, fruits of a fabulous species lost to the memory, cast away in a frenzy's abandonment---moonlight, the swan in the gathering darkness, all hackneyed endearments: surely that is the poet's concern, essential and absolute.

Those who shun the "bad taste" of things will fall flat on the ice.

War Journal

So I decided to write my poem for this week's class about my favorite comic book character, The Punisher. I decided to take the scene from Civil War where Captain America is beating down the Punisher for shooting two super criminals who offer their help to the resistance. The poem is his thoughts during the beating and I hope I captured his character well. Let me know what you think and enjoy!

War Journal

Blood gushing from face
As fist makes contact
Adds a new scar
Scars build character

Good, stay sunny
Should be over soon

Face meets foot
Then knee
Blood dances through air
To lyrics of
He's insane
An animal
A psychopath

Don't Understand
These thieves and murderers
Vermin of the Earth
Deserve nothing less
Than the Hell I send them to

They think I'm crazy
Waging this one man war
But the true pyschos
Stole everything from me

And where were they
When it happened?

Off playing hero
Saving the world
But what about
Saving people from themselves?

Right under their noses
The pain, the suffering
Do they truly save anyone?
No, they can't truly save anyone
To busy being high and mighty
Fighting to see who is better
While the rest of us drown

They let you drown

Drop to the floor
Blood seeps down into my soul

It's cold
Know your watching me
And I'm sorry

Maybe this is all
So I can get to you again

There is no other road for me now
No redemption in the end

Pray this is all
So I can get to you again

Prose Poem

This is a prose poem I had to write for my class last week. It's an experience I've had that I just changed and put into a dream setting. The song I reference is "I Want To Now Your Plans" by Say Anything. Hope you enjoy!

She enters the lush Eden of my subconscious, this Eve to my Adam. She lies next to me among the bed of tall grass my mind so graciously prepared. Soft hands begin to gently rub the back of my neck. I can feel goosebumps race up my body, hairs standing on end. I sink my hands into fertile soil then grip tightly, trying to keep composer. She leans in closer to me, her breathe invades my lungs. I’m lightheaded, high off her essences as I try to keep my legs from squirming like a five year old. But I begin to fall into the never ending abyss of her eyes. Taking me to places that make this garden paradise I’ve created look like the tiny flower bed my mother tends to. I can feel the numbness in my limbs, but I somehow force my arm up as my hand begins to explore the delicate hills of her back. Music begins to play in the distance…

Your what keeps me believing
The worlds not gone dead

My hand grows the balls my subconscious self seems to lack as it pulls her closer, her body melding into mine. My lips seem to grow them next as they slowly crash themselves into hers. I try very hard not to faint. Try to keep my soul packed tightly into my body so it doesn’t burst out leaving me dead because let us be honest that would be awkward. I press her even tighter up against me as if afraid of never feeling warmth again. I pray it doesn’t end, pray I don’t wake up. Music continues to play in the distance…

Strength in my bones
Put the words in my head

It starts to rain in paradise as she stops kissing me. She breaks our tight embrace and looks at me with sadness in her eyes that could break the heart of a god. She tells me she can’t stay. Tells me that she has feelings for me, but can’t stay and she doesn’t want to hurt me. I go to respond, to ask her why, but my head nods in understanding like it’s no big deal. I try to force myself to speak, yet nothing comes out. I’m frantic, my body is betraying me the bastard that it is and I look to the heavens with pleading eyes. I’m begging for the music to play louder, but getting nothing in response. She tells me that she won’t be around anymore, that she may be back in a few months, but can’t promise anything. Says she is sorry but she doesn’t know where she’ll be in the future. My head still nods, but my mind screams “Wait! We can make it work. We may be at different points in life, but we can make it work.” The sadness in her eyes is driving me to the brink of insanity. She starts to walk away as my Eden becomes ablaze, her every step reducing in to ashes. I look again to heaven, with praying eyes asking for whatever muse to please sing to her, but still nothing. She disappears from my subconscious as I sit in a paradise lost. I weep to myself as music continues again…

When it pours out to paper
It’s all for you
Cause that’s what you do

Love Poems Continued

So this is another poem to expand upon my love poems vol. 1 that I posted back in August. Hope you enjoy!

Understand

Understand
That the words
I write on this page
Come from a sane mind
Because I don’t think
That just because I may
Dream
Day dream
Or otherwise
Think of you constantly
Should be grounds
For insanity

Understand
That as I lie
In bed
Waiting for sleep
To come
I think of you
And wonder
Why you’re not
Lying here next
To me
Because it’s just
So cold being
All alone

Understand
That I think
Your one of the
Most beautiful
Girls I’ve ever seen
And I would
Tell you that everyday
Through my best verses
And trademark them
With a passionate kiss

Understand
That just being
Near you makes me
Happy
Everything from
Your smile
To the sound
Of your voice
Makes me
Feel alive

Understand
That I really
Don’t know
What to do with
Myself when your
Not there

And
I guess what
I’m trying to say
Is that I want you
To understand
That I care
So much
About you
That I just wish
That you were here
With me
And to understand
How I feel about you

Just want you
To Understand

Seeds Of The Poet-Tree Work

This is just some of the stuff I have written for the poetry/performance art group that I am in at school. The first one is just about crushes and being a fly on the wall. The other is about players who think they're cool for screwing around with women. Basically the type of person I'm not, but anyway hope you enjoy.

“Fly”

A fly on your wall
My compound eyes
Capturing the thousands of things
That make you beautiful to me
Compacting them
Into one perfect image
That is you
And as I
Capture and compact
These images
My wings begin to flutter
Rapidly into a song
That I sing for you
In loud buzzes
Music from my heart
But yet I only seem
To take in the good side
Of you
And I fail to realize
That you misinterpret
My songs for only
Mere noise
And I realize this
Only as your swatter
Quickly descends
Upon me
And as I lie
On your wall
No longer a fly
More of a crippled mass
I start to see
All the things
I should have seen
In you
And as my eyes
Go blind I realize
That these crushes
Like a fly’s life
Are short lived
And they only
Leave you a mess

“Player”
“I don’t see her
As much” he says
“Not enough time”
He tells her
“But I’m glad you’re here”
The bait to his lure
Cool enchanting liquid
Making a feeling pure
By patching together
False emotions
“Never stop thinking of you, never”
Hollow words
Breathe life into an eager heart
Hands begin to touch bodies, words slur
Love potion goes down
Its current pulling
Together lips, this thief is wearing a prince’s crown
As bodies begin to dance
Upon a comforter lined dance floor
Elixir trances
As the world fades to black
And she wakes up realizing
He’s not coming back

Video Bar

So for some reason the video bar isn't showing the videos of my "poet of the week" and instead is showing some kid from Australia playing guitar. No idea way sooo here is the link to Ishle Park's videos:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ishle+yi+park&search_type=&aq=0

Comments

To people who stumble upon this blog and those who are currently following it:

PLEASE COMMENT ON STUFF!!!!!

The lack of feedback on my work and the poets I present has been making me very sad/depressed as of late. I want to grow as a writer, but without any criticism/feedback I will never truly grow. I'll just assume everything I write is absolute the most amazing thing ever to be written. It's up to YOU people of the world, to save me from my egotistical/narcissistic views of my own work. So PLEASE comment! Tell me you like these poems or tell me you think these poems are shit. Tell me what you like or don't like. I don't care what just say anything please. So if you are following my blog or just happen to stumble upon this page and you read some of my work, please give me some feedback. I don't think a little bit of feedback is too much to ask for right? You can even comment on this post! Tell me I'm a comment seeking whore, I don't care! As you comment I'll be sure to respond, so that we can start having some sweet conversations on the blog. Also, if you want to show me some of your OWN work, I would love to see it, read it, talk about, make love to it, whatever. So please DO NOT HESITATE to comment on any post on this blog!

With Love,
Michael Malpiedi

Poet Of The Week

So I've decided to start doing Poet of the Week again since I just realized I haven't done it in awhile. I promise to stay on top of this segment, a lot of stuff has been piling up in my life and it has been hard to keep up with every thing.

All that aside, the poet of the week is Ishle Yi Park. She is a poet I recently stumbled upon while going through Def Jam poets on youtube. Her poem "All I Have Ever Done Is Write You Love Poems" is really touching and an overall beautiful piece. It is by far my favorite piece that I have heard from her. Her poem "Pussy" is also quite good as well as very funny. I would check out all that she has to offer, so if you have the time check out the video bar on the right side of the page. Enjoy!

Nostalgia

This is my poem for poetry class this week, hope you enjoy!

Nostalgia
There is nostalgia I wish I had
As we sit upon this porch
Parents gone
Smoke filling lungs

There is a nostalgia I wish I had
Instrumentals blasting
As the band’s vocalist screams his lungs out
People going crazy on the dance floor

There is a nostalgia I wish I had
As I feel the warmth of her breath flow into me
Kisses taking me to a place that should be familiar
Presence that touches a soul that should have already been touched

There is a nostalgia I wish I had
Because when I feel nostalgic
It is for eighteen years
For which I never feel I never lived a day of

From Hell

My last assignment for my poetry writing class was to write a poem in which the speaker is directing someone who is in some way lost. I had an idea of what I wanted to write and I was going to write a poem about a father and daughter having a conversation about beauty. The father was to going to be the speaker directing his daughter away from believing that she had to look like the models in magazines; explaining to her that she is already beautiful as she is. Cliche, yes, but beauty is something I deal with a lot in my poems, and I wanted to write a poem addressing the idea of magazines and photo shopped photos. That's what I WAS going to write, then it all changed after I watched the movie From Hell. From Hell is a movie based off the graphic novel, of the same name, by Alan Moore and stars Johnny Depp. It deals with the investigation of the killings of Jack the Ripper and Depp is Investigator Abberline who is trying to track Jack down. The movie is excellent and I encourage you to watch it. What caught my attention was the use of a quote at the beginning in which the Ripper himself was to have said. The quote is "One day men will look back and say that I created the twenty first century." Now I doubt this is an actually quote from the killer, but it stayed stuck in my head. So instead of writing what I originally sent out to write, I wrote a poem as if I were the essences of Jack the Ripper speaking to a twenty first century killer who has just killed for the first time. The poem is basically telling the new born killer not to be afraid and to keep killing because he will live forever if he does. He would be his name would be know throughout time. Now I do not condone killing in anyway, this was just me experimenting with creativity and exploring the idea of the mythos of serial killing. I did enjoy writing this poem and I would like to work on it more, expand upon it one day, so I hope you enjoy what I have written now.

From Hell

I have given birth to you
Sweet child
You are a descendant of greatness
Look down upon your masterpiece
Do not fear it
Embrace it
For you are the artist the world
Will remember
Your message will run deeper
Than the words of any poet
And when the men
And the whores of society
Look upon your work
Cast you out
Smile
For you are their true reflection
Know that their fear
Is a mask for their envy
Since you will become
What all want to be
You have immortality
In your grasp, my child
You are a god
And once you have ascended
To your immortal throne
They will worship you
Remember my child
Have no fear
Look back
For I have created
The twenty first century
Continue, embrace your art
For you will live forever

More Class Poems

Hey Guys here are another two poems I've done for my poetry writing class enjoy.

This piece is about a girl who I've recently been intimate with and how it felt to me since I've never been intimate with anyone so it was a tremendous experience for me. Also in the assignment we had to use one line from every poem written the previous week.

A Dream

I am not really sure how it happened
Was like a dream really
She was beautiful, a pale figure
I invited her into my heart
Don’t know why
Just felt right
I mean, no one else lives
In any chamber
Just made sense
I wanted to tell
Her about all the poems
I could write from
The symbolism in her eyes
But spoken words dropped off
Like magic
As she kissed me
An invitation to a world of eccentricity
A rush of blood
As my heart raced
I began to ask myself
What it all meant
But I stopped caring quickly
Had been the one and lonely
Too long
This feeling
Felt like it could cause me to fly
I guess you call it living
Inject me with this feeling, I thought
I wanted this moment to last forever
Lying together
As we shake the last feeling of night
But life is primed to disappoint us
As I hugged her goodbye
Don’t have to leave
I thought to myself
Too late though, she was gone
Was like a dream really

This other piece we had to write a poem inwhich the speaker is hiding something or is keeping a secret from the people around him/her. So in my piece the speaker is hiding his virginity even though those around him who have had sexual experience can most likely tell what his secret is.

Alpha males

They like to call themselves
Quoting lines
From the romantic poets
Of our time
Pit Bull
Lil Wayne
Among the few
Laughing and bullshitting
Talk of woman
Not yet conquered
The trophies not yet won
The notches not added
To the belt
I laugh along with the rest
The black sheep that is me
Laugh like I’ve been there before
They can probably tell
I’m not like them
Can’t hide it very well
Hard to hide this
Leprosy that is
Actually emotion
Actually wanting
To care and love
Someone
Something
They probably know
I’ve heard you even can
Notice it just in the way you walk
Maybe that’s why
The female population
Always seems
To have their hand
At the level of their eye
Whenever I walk by
And I’m sure they see it
These alpha males
They can see the beast
Wasting away
Watching his rose petals fall
Waiting on someone who
Actually cares

I'm Back!

Hey so I know I haven't posted anything in a while and I apologize I just haven't had time to put stuff up on the blog (to the point I almost forgot I had one!). I'm looking into getting back into updating it again. I'm taking a poetry writing course this semester and I've been writing a lot more. So here are two of the pieces I have written this semester, hope you enjoy!

For this first piece we had to write a poem using terms from a math or science textbook. I wrote my poem based upon a friend of mine who had walked in on one of her boyfriends having sex with her best friend, so I compared this situation to the feeling of being/experiencing an earthquake.

Untitled

Their bodies shift
Like plates tectonically
She stands across the room
As the moment magnitude
Of his moans
Her panting
Ravage her veins
Fault lines
Leading to the epicenter
In her chest
Words like
"More, more! Harder, Harder!"
Increasing the amplitude
Of this quaking room
As tears begin to erode
The sediments
Of her cheek
He looks up
Eyes meet
As the magnitude
Of dead silence screams
Catastrophe
The damage is wide spreading
As the magnitude
Of dead silence pleads
God save me

For this piece we had to write about an abstraction, so I wrote about our society/ new generation's views on love and sex and how they have become interchangeable terms.

Love
“a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person”
As defined by the dictionary

See bullshit
I think to myself
This word should be an
Ashglobavin
In my eyes but this
Clusterfuckerish society
Renders it meaningless
As they replace it with its synonym

Fuck
“an act of sexual intercourse”
As defined by the dictionary

Didn’t know they were synonyms
Would explain why
When I told my friend
About this girl I’ve fallen for
He asked me
If I had fucked her yet
And why he told me
To stop being a pussy
When I said no

It would explain
Every song written
By the new generation
Romantics
Drake, Akon, Lil Wayne
And why dancing
Has become an orgy
Of dry humping animals
Synchronized
To lyrics such as
“I want to fuck you, fuck you. You already know”

Explains why
It’s cool to say
“Damn you got a wix nice ass shorty”
Instead of tell her she’s beautiful
And why wondering
If he’s got a big package
Over shadows the reality
That he’s an asshole who
Treats woman like shit

And I guess
That’s why every love poem
I’ve every written is beautiful
To a girl
Until they realize it’s meant for them

And maybe I’m being crazy
I must have just misread love’s
Definition:

Love

“an act of sexual intercourse”
As defined by the dictionary

I guess I’ve just had it wrong
This whole time
So for my next poem

Baby, I just want to fuc-
I mean love you