August 30, 2007
-
ElectricPoetry: 10 Best from the 80s
On July 10th, I presented my "10 Best Poems" from the Seventies, and I am continuing this series with today's entry, encompassing the "10 Best Poems of the Eighties." My poetic output was sporadic in the Eighties.I characterize my output on the ElectricPoetry website: "01/12/04 The decade started with alcoholism, then I got religion, had another few short and intense relationships, and eventually grew to be involved in social circles, and the poetry sort of "dried up". Some of the poetry dating from 1983 and 1984 rank with some of my best work, and for a short while, before forsaking poems in two two year periods this decade, I did write some pertinent and prescient verse." In 1985, 86, 88, and 89 I didn't write any poetry at all. I believe I've posted every poem presented here before on this blog, but not all in one entry, of course. My poems, as with all my writing, are pretty long, and I don't expect there will be a large amount of comments on this entry. I crave comments and interaction as you must know by now (and 5 star ratings) but the average Xangan doesn't have the time to read 10 long poems in one sitting. I know a few of you will, however, even if you've read them before, so thanks in advance for the support of my diehard poetry fans. If it weren't for the interaction I get from my poems on these blog entries, I probably wouldn't even keep writing current poems, however sporadically they appear. I'm always amazed when I write a new poem, and someone will comment that it's my "best so far". Actually, I believe the poems presented here are "the best" and it doesn't matter to a writer when they were composed. They exist for all eternity now, and the sentiments and cynicisms are as important now as when I wrote them.
"The Same Poem With Different Words"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
March 7, 1980 7:15 p.m. pst
Volumes upon volumes chart rash important feelings
Simple thoughts reside in tired minds
Quick to chart each crooked course
with crafty cunning dealings
Leaving bright friend memory behindThe nymph (she who betrayed me)
cannot change my views
And friends I manufacture at my whim
Nights are spent with yearning
I shall never feel true love
And the candle grows ridiculously dimThe nymph can be forgotten
Unimportant careless eyes
And those I know I wish I really could
Cause love is in there somewhere
Care is resting close
And Jesus, will I find her if I shouldMusic piles on music suffers dancing pleasure joy
Everyone is me here in this place
No matter where reality
the world is not my toy
Does anybody really see my face?"Missed Midnight Kiss"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
August 21, 1980 12:25 a.m.
You won't believe it, but tonight ended
a year-long expectation
An ironclad creation - of my heart
The days would last forever
I'd wait till morrow's never
But I never really thought that
it would start.It can't be true, I cried, but
somehow true came truer
I've seen you once and who can ever tell
I'm floating down the freeway
Never wanting to find the way,
My feelings, that should ever,
ever quell.Because tonight your smile
outshone the moon -
And even tho' it wasn't
yours was fullTonight your laugh, it
filled the empty
And everything marked
later happened soonYou won't believe it, but tonight
mended many dreams
And even tho' it seems just like it all -
Ways do change for the better
And special times are met for
Life if we can really hear
it's call.You must remember this
My time felt spent with bliss
Through music, laughs, and talk,
Through sharing, and your smile
Makes all my time worthwhile -
Even in our
shared missed midnight kiss.You have to understand it's been
so pleasant
So wonderfully pleasant, I want you to know
whatever happens next
whatever you say or do -
Karen, I'll be carin'
for you...."The Apartment"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
Thursday, May 28, 1981 11:05 a.m. poetry for fools
The building stands, pipes leaking brown stained blood.
A dowdy mother in housecoat trudges to the washroom
Three-year-olders cavort on the stairs, in the
courtyard, out by the trashbins- satisfying needs
for friendship with pasty faced elves.
The same little games are played even as the
three-year-olders grow up and move away.
The building breathes. doors open and the fortunate
sons tread off to work-the others
toil in their predictability moving around
the courtyard visiting manufactured
neighbors-telling stories-how's the weather.
The afternoon advances-sun hangs bright
over pretty divorced women sunning themselves
while the elves get dirty behind the philodendrons.
2:30 As the World Turns All My Restless
Children into a monotonous hum on the 13"
black and white television sets standing on
top of 12 year old 25" consoles that will
never work again.
4&5&6o'clock the drones return from work
and the stereo wars begin. In the
summer its as if life is back from the
dead...in the winter the lives resume
from behind closed doors
Over the years the gunshots and yelling
and fights and policemen and questions
about whos sleeping with who subside
into a crazy quilt of boring samenesses.
People move from apartment to apartment
like litte backgammon markers trying to find
the home quadrant.
There's a school behind the building and a
market across the street. These people
never have to leave if they don't want to.
Some of us find we lost the inclination long ago.
Life goes on. New landlords come and go.
Old parties become legends. When you least
expect it an apartment becomes vacated
and then someone "moves in" who might
have bearings on your own existence.
The elves play on.
The televisions continue spouting their
advertisements and I sit here watching
the brown stained water seep from
under the toilet's broken gasket.
Exactly like blood."Leaves of Paper"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
March 5, 1982 2:00 p.m.
Falling, ever falling toward the purity, the past
Preserving present pain with such a flourish
How can on resolve oneself
With battered books on lonely shelves
And drink the water of the times we nourishTouching, ever touching hearts of peace in times of war
Giving us another life to cherish
I am special so are you
I've never tried to feel so blue
And cause of leaves of paper I shant perishI can love you
Oft I do
I can remember sweeter days
The pictures represent such art
Recounting somber waysI will consider
Listen now
I've said I'd quite forgotten how
But leaves of paper can't quite
fasten to the boughHurling, I am hurling all my life with such a force
Striving to touch you and I am hurting
All I ever tried to touch
I've felt such pain but it ain't much
With life through leaves of paper I am flirting"Don't Need the Hassle"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
December 27, 1982 5:15 p.m.
I know I cannot cope with you
You lied to me and laughed
I see a shattered demon in the dust.I steeled my gaze & knit my brow
And swore you don't exist
Because I lost the words for love & trust.If you would tell me
What I want
If I could sell you me
The pains you're feeling
I feel too
And we are singing
in a mismatched harmony.I've said I don't need anyone
Because you lied to me and laughed
Is this what we need to end the fightI looked away and shut my mind
No care to blight my world
And won't it be a pity if I'm right."Symphony for One"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
January 1, 1983 7:30 p.m.
Hey girl, come on along,
Jump on the wagon feed the dragon
sing the song.
The melody might be different
But the words sure sound the same
I may look different
Don't sound different
Call my name.If you can see through magic
If you can walk on air
My love for you's not static
There's a certain feeling there
A movement for piano
A string quartet for two
You can be my music
Let me play a song or two.Hey friends, come on along
Kick off your shoes you paid your dues
join in the song.
Arrangements may be haughty
But the words sure sound alike
We've shed all sorrow
Look towards tomorrow
and the like.Hey today, I'm ecstatic
Sing out the news express my views
may be erratic
You might just be the answer
Though I only see you through a veil
Do you in fact exist
A dancer in the mist
what a tale.If a future can frown at a lifetime
And a past close its back door to me
I will love you for now and the meantime
I will feel your genteel ecstasy
A poem for the moment
Well versed in love's harmony
Prove to me no illusion
Open your arms to me.Hey sweetheart, come on along
Jump on the wagon feed the dragon
hear my song
Your face might be just so different
But my dreams remain the same
I may be different
But I don't sound different
call my name."State of Mind"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
February 7, 1983 3:35 p.m.
I might feel happy, I might feel real sad
Think life is ripe, think all the vibes are bad
Might feel a surge, a rich romantic hold
Might feel as if my turgid soul is sold.
It's all as if I have my own detector
But the knob fell off of the channel selector
Don't send your love to the P.O. box this time
Because I no longer live in my own
State of Mind.I glimpse the children playing on the street
No misdirection clawing at their tiny feet
I claw my brain, a lump climbs up my throat
They look so happy but I just missed the boat
It's all as if I am my own detractor
I lost the device to measure this important factor
Don't look me up if you're afraid of what you find
Because I lost the address to my own
State of Mind.I might stay quiet, I might say a lot
I might think it's right but the meaning's not
Might lose the grasp to my own solutions
While wading through the mire of the others' pollutions
It's all as if I don't care what's correct or
Maybe lost the keys to my own private sector.
Don't call my number cause there's no one on the line
Because I'm tearing up the map to my own
State of Mind.
"Sober Sarcasm"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
March 30, 1983 7:00 a.m.
Yes, I kicked out the teeth of convention
And I scattered the leaves of oblivion
I drank gallons of wine
As I turned back the time
And my future paled o'er with obsidian
I stamped on the clockface of sanity
Grew disgusted with cookiecut reality
Put down schooners of beer
As I smiled with a leer
Wouldn't join at the front with the soldieryI'm a mad hatter, my friends and my foes
I'll stumble round life on my hands and my toes
Dailing love on the phone to a disconnect number
The years fall so quickly I fearWatch me laugh hard at the unlucky players
Paint myself to a corner with layers and layers
The booze might be gone I'm electric with ease
but these still are old clothes that I wear"Song from 'The Happenstance Hymnal'"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
January 4, 1984
I've been standing on the mountain of regret
Don't know how I got here
But it's much too late to fret
And it must have been a long road up I betI've been lying by the river of remorse
Don't know how I came
But no one pushed me here by force
And I've been crying that the devil got me hoarseI've been drinking from the waters of lost time
Know I don't feel thirsty
And I've yet to feel sublime,
But my presence in this hell can't be a crimeOh Lord deliver me
Guide me down the mountain
Steer me o'er the river
Find me purity
Answer all my needless questions
Without requiring a large fee
Oh tender Lord please look out for meI've been talking with the whores of Babylon
Don't know how they got here
But they've been down from dusk to dawn
And the police can't seem to throw
them off the lawn.I've been eating from the tree of sin & sloth
No one handed me a menu
But the tree was on the path
And I know better than to incur
God's powerful wrathI've been waiting for the end, my friend, you see
Banging heads to walls
Bemoaning useless tranquility
Since I haven't got the fare to pay the feeOh Truth show me thine hand
Deliver me from whores
Cut the hammock from the tree
Isn't life grand
Answer all my heedless questions
Without requiring a large fee
Oh tarnished truth remember me"T.A.S. teen age suicide"
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
May 21, 1984 5:48 p.m.
Underneath this yellowed pall
There lived a raging youth; a soul who dreamed it all
He wore his heart naked
Exposed to the hurt
Now it no longer beats it just lay in the dirtUnderneath this open gaze
The eyes were once burn bright, a knowing steely gaze
He saw too much
Exposed to the hurt
Now he belongs on his back in the dirtThis world wasn't made for our children
This time is too brutal and scary
They know they are smarter than we were
And they haven't the time to be waryUnderneath this chunk of skin
There lived a vital truth, but it did not fit in
It called out to us
But no one would listen
Now it no longer speaks, it's chords are bitten
The poet in 1986
BEHIND THE POETRY: Well, if you're reading this, you must still be with me. This is actually Edit #1. I wasn't going to write any more on this entry but wanted to mention some of the reasons behind some of the poems, esp. since they seem so bleak collected here at one time. "Missed Midnight Kiss" encouraged the gal for whom it was written (who had just turned 18. I was 27 in 1980) to not only kiss me. She spent the night and became one of my many ex girlfriends. "Symphony for One" was put to music by a young gal in my Yahoo ElectricPoetry Group back in 2003, but she never figured out how to digitize the performance so I could see her singing the poem as a song. "Happenstance Hymnal" is STILL one of my own favorite poems of all time. "T.A.S." was written after I met a gal at a party whose son had committed suicide. (She never read it, however) Edit. 09/01/07 10:15am pdt I was just rereading my own entry here and noticed what I thought was a typo in the line "his eyes were once burn bright" I changed it to "his eyes which once burned bright" just now on this blog entry and that didn't look right to me. I looked in the original volume with the handprinted poem and it indeed, was written "eyes were once burn bright." The tense is past,"were once" as is everything else in the poem, and the object is "burn bright" almost as one word. "burnbright" where the adjective is the noun at the same time. When writing it, I probably just "reduced' the words "burning brightly" for rhythm, although I wrote the thing over 20 years ago and really would be lying if I said "I remember clearly" MFN/ppf
Comments (17)
Thanks for your words of encouragement. I feel a lot better today.
Great poetry!
mike's poetry!!! whooo hooo!!! the images you paint are so vivid sometimes!:heartbeat:
I really enjoyed reading these. I envy your talent.
Nice.
I like The Apartment, and Don't Need the Hassle the best
I loved each and every one of these poems. Excellent work. :yes:
Beautiful pieces of poetry. The line I like the most:
"I steeled my gaze & knit my brow"
have a nice day. :wave:
Your encouragement and kindness are so appreciated:)
hello.
You are indeed a prolific poet.
Tomesara.
Great poems!!!!! RYC: Thank you, you write the most thoughtful comments!
Wonderful poems, but as you said, rather bleak. I wondered about the last one, and then I saw your note. Too bad the mom never got to read it. Suicide is such a sad thing, and so unexplainable, but you did seem to capture the essence of it.
Thanks for your wonderful word of encouragement and if I inspire a poem of course I want to read it.
I had no idea I was on featured, I will have to go look. I did see this post when I was starring the other day, and of course you got five stars.
I look forward to reading your poetry as you move through the decades.
Hugs, Tricia :wave:
Mike, there is so many ideas here that I do not really have anything to comment. My mind is to busy with all the ideas. Every poem has something that stands out in its own right.
Thanks for your interpretation.
The Same Poem With Different Words - I don't know where the title is derived from. There seems to be a hint of philosophy behind the words, which is nice, and the rhythm is quirky, but well-timed nonetheless.
Missed Midnight Kiss - I'm afraid I don't like this one as much. Some of the meter seems off to me and I just feel that some of the phrasing is a bit clumsy. I do appreciate the intent of the poem though, and I like the play on words in the last stanza with Karen's name. Just a heads up - I think you used "it's" incorrectly in the third last stanza. This is an instance of those "clumsy phrasings" I mentioned. It still seems a bit weird but it makes more sense with "its" than "it's".
The Apartment - Since we're on this already, one of your lines here is "summer its as if life is back from the". You missed the apostrophe in that "its". You missed another apostrophe with "whos" in the line "about whos sleeping with who subside". All that aside now, I really like this poem. I think it suffers a bit from being one large block, though I suspect that was an intentional device to convey the weary monotony and "life goes on" attitude in the poem. The narrator's tone is excellent for this and I enjoyed the prosaic metaphors and similes you employed - prosaic taken to mean "of prose" rather than "dull," because they were nothing of the sort.
Leaves of Paper - I'm not sure, but you may want to read through this. There are multiple places where there is a lack of punctuation. I thought this might have been a deliberate omission but it isn't consistent throughout the poem, as you used some punctuation in other places, especially in the last stanza. You also missed apostrophes in various places (shant, for example). You also missed the "e" in "one" in the third line of the poem. I like this piece (though not as much as The Apartment), but I didn't much care for the rhyme. Some of it (fluorish/nourish) I didn't even notice on the first read through, while others (you/blue) sound awkward and forced to me, as if you were rhyming only for the sake of rhyming. It didn't sound natural, and I think the poem, while already quite good, could have been better if you'd chosen words not for rhyme but for rhythm and euphony.
Don't Need the Hassle - The first two stanzas are spectacular, in my opinion. The rhythm is just a bit off in the latter half of the poem, but I enjoyed the poem.
Symphony for One - I don't find it remarkable as a poem, but I think it could be amazing if adapted to music.
State of Mind - I think this would make an excellent song as well, but even as a poem, it is very good. I like the recurring pun, especially.
Sober Sarcasm - The rhymes and near-rhymes were great. You misspelled "dialing" in the second stanza. The last stanza was my favourite.
Song from 'The Happenstance Hymnal' - Not one of my favourites. The rhymes seem awkward again and I didn't like the contrast between the colloquial patterns of speech and the more formal tones that come up every so often. It goes well with the title, being from a "happenstance hymnal," but I still don't think it worked very well. There are also some descriptions that seem contradictory and confusing. In one stanza, the narrator mentions "eating from the tree of sin & sloth," yet also claims to "know better than to incur / God's powerful wrath."
T.A.S. teen age suicide - When I first started reading it, I thought it was excellent, but once again I think the rhyming (with the last two lines in the stanza) threw a wrench in the works. When you repeated the same rhyme in the second stanza, I thought it would do ok with repetition, but then you didn't use it again. The second line in the second stanza is also very strange - "the eyes were once burn bright" - I'm not sure if there was a typo somewhere to throw off all that grammar. On its own, the third stanza is wonderful, but it seems out of place in this poem. Sometimes, while working on a poem, I come up with a stanza that doesn't match the others but I really like. Rather than keeping it in that poem, I take it out and use it to start another poem. I like the last stanza as well, though I again found the rhymes to be distracting. And another note - in the last line, it should be "its". "It's" with an apostrophe is the contraction for "it is".
After reading your edits:
Ohhh. Well, I misread the intent behind Missed Midnight Kiss. I thought it was more... chaste, if you will.
Haha, I said Symphony For One would be better as a song.
On the line with the bad grammar - perhaps there was a good explanation for that strange phrasing, but at this point I believe your "correction" (which once burned bright) would look fine...
I hope it didn't seem too rude to point out your little typos - it's just that if I made them (and I have, every so often), I appreciate them being pointed out to me, so I could fix them. I'm afraid that I didn't point out all the little mistakes though. In any case, let me know when the 90s are here.
Do you ever write anything on public restroom walls? I don't mean the kind of lame "I eat/lick/suck whatever" or "for a good time call.." crap. I mean the type of stuff that really makes you ponder during those times you'd otherwise have your eyes front or checking to make sure you're not beeing peeped at through some glory hole.
I think good sh*thouse poetry is a dying art.
Hey Mike -- two words -- song lyrics! Make some money, honey!
Thank you for the link to the article about the Pacer being the "ugliest car". It really cracked me up. People have said the exact same thing about my PT Cruiser. I just tell them it's beautiful on the inside.
these are great..I loved sober sarcasm.. resonates with me.. and love the picture too!
tas..wow...yeah I agree...song lyrics...wow...
I love your blog! Check out mine? Don't forget to comment! Come see all my thoughts, hopes, dreams, and opinions! And tell your friends on xanga, so they can comment too. Thanks!
--poetrhyme
Style Marquee only provide luxury marquees so you are certain to be more than satisfied with the wedding venue we will prepare for you.