Poetry is awesome. I have always loved to read, and lately poetry has just helped me through some depressing situations. I just love that feeling you get after reading a really great poem. It's a great feeling. I have written poetry for over two years, but I never thought of it as anything more than a way to pass time until a couple months ago, when I really started spewing out poems. I don't know what happened, but something did. My poetry is not what I want it to be, but then, nothing ever is. But here are some of the better poems that I've written, as well as some poems by other people that I've taken a liking to.

Michelangelo (by Lorine Niedecker)
The Finder (by Robin Blaser)
Disgustipated (by Tool)
Self-Discovery
Untitled
A Few Witches Burning
A Message to Those Who Invade the Privacy of Others
Friction
An Identity Crisis

---

Michelangelo

If matches had been my work
instead of marble poems
---sulphur---
I'd suffer
less

-- Lorine Niedecker

The Finder

on the windows, the dirty film
in the sunlight shaped by the shadows
of apple trees dry winter branches

on English Bay a ship appears,
its hiding over two masts, a doubling
of the cross two Christs

one matching the other where
the world dies

the tabloids of fire, a Sunday supplement
to the San Francisco Examiner out of place,
in this time rises from the page

in a lightning storm which holds
this man at the horizon in his apocalypse
a war burning, if the heart scores

bodiless, a curious blood and reasons
in ourselves inheriting the intellect
from out there defined by a President

who is violence in this world,
a definition of this destiny we have
effected all's well without

'your' intelligence where the world dies
I bend 'you' to my mouth and suck 'your' breath away
only worlds caught

in the glinting lights of those
pieces of glass found in the
forest under a tree crushed

and shining

-- Robin Blaser

Disgustipated

It was daylight when you woke up in your ditch
You looked up at your sky
that made blue be your color
You had your knife there with you too
When you stood up there was goo all over your clothes
Your hands were sticky
You wet them on your grass
So now your color was green
Oh, Lord, why did everything have to keep changing like this?
You were already getting nervous again
Your head was almost empty
It always hurt you when you woke up like this
You crawled up out of your ditch onto your gravel road
And you began to walk
Waiting for the rest of your mind to come back to you
You could see the car parked far down the road
You walked toward it
If God is our father, you thought, then Satan must be our cousin
Why didn't anyone else understand these important things?
You got to your car
tried all the doors
They were locked
It was a red car and it was new
There was an expensive leather camera case laying on the seat
Out across your field, you could see two tiny people walking by your woods
You began to walk towards them
Now red was your color
And of course
Those little people out there were yours too.

--Track #69 from Tool's Undertow LP

Some of my own poems:

Self-Discovery

I gave up long ago
trying to believe in something that has no meaning for me.
I had weak faith in the beginning
it just grew weaker as time went on,
as I learned the truth.
And I was educated by myself.
Stopped believing in the void beliefs of others.
Strangled the faith that never ceased to cling on.
Stalked the the trued meaning of love and trust and
I touched the face of the false god
the god living in me, invading my vessels and veins,
trying to talk me into terrorizing myself.
I have a strong heart that will not be corrupted.
I have intelligence that will not believe
what others believe.
I have a love for the truth that I am haunted by.

This  song   without  words
 
walks   toward my   mind as

the   sun  burns holes into

my eyes.       My eyes burn

holes  into  your mouth  as

words--empty and unspoken--

flow out  and your   tongue

has not   moved    and your

eyes  capture  the  essence

of your message.      And I

can  hear it  burning holes

into my mind but it doesn't

hurt like the sun's flames.

And  the ground seems to be

moving but I am not   and I

feel      your     presence

although you are  long gone

your    shape    whispering

for  the  sun        but  I

can  still  feel  the sun's

rays  that  burn as my eyes

were  burning   into   your

mouth   but   you're   gone

and I am not. And while you

disappear  into  the clouds

I  am  here  listening   to

this   song  without  words

that  burns  into  my  mind

as the   sun  burns   holes

    into    my    eyes.

A Few Witches Burning

The night you were
Burned-- I knew
The moment the flames
Licked your thoughts-- I felt it
Your body
In view of
Every enemy, every follower,
Every One.
My body is numb to the flames
My mind feels the power of the fire
Thoughts of what could have been
Overwhelm me
What did we do wrong?
To live lives full of evil
To bear children exposed
I followed you
You led me
Where have you gone?
The flames won't penetrate my soul
Why do I fear?
Faith waivers.
Where have you gone?
Your presence merely evaporated.
I am empty.
They can destroy my cage
but my thoughts will live on.
An empty death
Paving the way for the next
Where have you gone?
You told me to trust.
Your empty promises are engulfing me
along with the flames.
For my death I will be remembered.
My life now means nothing.

A Message to Those Who Invade the Privacy of Others

I know you are wondering about my sanity, and if it left me during one of those
post-Civil War nightmares you've heard so much about. I know
you do not understand me
or the gilded confessions from the past that I have left behind for you to mock.
I know you are reading this to avoid reading that much you call science fiction.
I know you are browsing through my musty dresses, the decrepis shawl that was as
unfashionable then as it is now, my forgotten journals smeared from age and want of
blotting paper, all the symbols of pointless life
while you wait with impatience
as well as with insensitivity for someone to ask what you are doing. I
know this is just another day in your pathetic life which you spend pathetically
turning the confidential pages of another's life. I know you are laughing at me but
HA HA I am laughing at myself, so in actuality you are laughing with me. I know
in your mind you are in another place, perhaps at an expensive restaurant in Paris,
perhaps on a stage with the lights shining in your eyes, somewhere, anywhere,
other than here. I know you feel the need to ridicule me but can find nothing
to ridicule with the exception of our own thoughtlessness. I can see you
entering my lugubrious cave, ignoring the
bright yellow No Trespassing sign, knowing that prosecution will not occur.
I know you are trying in vain to dislike me as everyone else seems to be doing,
like the radiant conformist both you and I know you are. I feel your eyes groping
for a cavity to bore into my deteriorated skull which no longer retains the eyes
that would in turn bore into your own vacant skull.
I know you are wondering about my sanity, or lack thereof.
I know all this, yet I am left here to casually observe this violation of privacy
that I am expected to take in without a trace of bitterness.
I am helpless, and I no longer have a reason to care.

Friction

I close my eyes
Hoping that the sudden darkness will make the world look
brighter when I open them
I live in a preoccupied world
in which time rules everything
and sleep is caught somewhere in between.
Rest will be at hand when it is over,
but meanwhile I'm stuck trying to juggle around the pieces of my life
trying to figure out which pieces to drop and then
trip over while I keep my eyes on the pieces still spinning through the air
I can't keep this up much longer
Soon I'll drop everything and have to start over--
I can see my future but I cannot control it.
Although I try my best it will never be good enough.
As I stumble over what has fallen
Gravity rules and I fall as well.
The laws of physics never cease to amaze me
but these are not my laws.
I resent being governed not by choice,
not trained, but merely maneuvered to where I am supposed to be.
My limbs are being bent unnaturally.
I cry out in pain but my mouth will not open
Helpless in my misery, cooperation is the only way.
But resentment takes over again
As I am left frozen, stuck between my useless free will
and a life that is waiting to be lived
not by choice.

An Identity Crisis

I may have scars
but they're in places you'd never think to look.
I might have bad habits
but I'll never let you see them.
You may think you know me.
Nobody knows who I am not even me,
and at this identity crisis I have to laugh,
because I know me well enought to know who I am not.
I know me well enough to know who I will never be.
As I look into the mirror I wonder what will become of me when
I am free to do my own bidding.
I will become someone different--
for better or for worse.
And I will gaze back into this moment once upon a time
Because right now I am thinking of my pitiful childhood moments
that shaped me into this clay figure.
The child seems so far away
I regret not getting to know her better
too late, it would have been pointless anyway
because she is gone.
I have replaced her, as I will soon be replaced.