You Came... my first erotic Poetry

[SweetFreak]

Hey everyone this is a poem hat i wrote over a year ago while thinking about my ex. tell me what you guys think

You Came
by SweetFreak ©
Soft, soft kisses that I barely felt that
But never the less brought those old feelings back.
Feelings that I haven’t felt in a thousand days and in many ways
Made me want to run but I have to nowhere to go except back to those sensations.
You came to me in the night and I couldn’t even put up a fight.
Those sensuous lips softly kissing my round chocolate chips.
Lightly kissing the surrounding flesh made me feel so refresh as you looked at me with your eyes.
Those eyes, hold so many emotions, one of them including devotion.
Devotion to making me screamin’, had this girl feignin’. Legs crossed, hair tossed, sheet grabbin’ as your lips kissed my lips and not the ones on my face. Had your head in an embrace, by the soft cushion of my thighs as you brought to my high.
Sweet, sweet rhythmic penetration and ahh there go those sensations, flowing through my body soft and slowly and increasing in pressure with each thrust.
Hard and steady. Long and deep, making my girl weep.
Weep those sweet juice of joy, as your boy continued to plow.
Sweet lovin’ followed by hard fuckin’. Pelvis grindin’, hair grabbin’, back scratchin’, body archin’. Our bodies fusing as those wild sensations, ended with a hard stopping ejaculation.
Ecstasy, ecstasy that brought my eyes to a close as I felt you move to go.
Stay, I said, but you hush me with a kiss, and fade into the night, as softly and slowly as you came.

 

[WickedEve]

Hi
Welcome to the board.
So, you wrote a poem. Hmm. I'm pondering your words.
You know, the best person to comment on new poems is Angeline. She's just wonderful with that sort of thing.
Angeline?

 

[WickedEve]

Okay, it's not fair to expect Ange to do all the work.
It seems as though this poem was spontaneous and simply flowed from you. That's fine, but it needs more work. It's a garden that needs weeding.
I'm going to copy it and spend a little time with it, and see if I can offer some suggestions for revision.

 

[WickedEve]

You Came
by SweetFreak ©
Soft, soft kisses that I barely felt that
But never the less brought those old feelings back.
Feelings that I haven’t felt in a thousand days and in many ways
Made me want to run but I have to nowhere to go except back to those sensations.

Okay, I played with the first part only. Here is one of many ways to revise, if you ever decide to.

Barely there lips,
breath of memory in your kiss,
to feel after a thousand days,
with no languid air to lull me,
I breathe you in,
sighs of sensation.

Well, this wouldn't be a very good final revision but it's enough to give you an idea. I think it would be an improvement for your poem if you could get the same ideas and emotions across with less words.

 

[Rybka]

Through the Eye of a Fish

SweetFreak, I see some of our other regular poets have already given you their advice. But since you asked for feedback and editing help, here is my initial attempt at editing/rewriting your first strophe.

What I want to say to you is that you use too many words. As a poem your writing will be stronger as you reduce the words used to convey the same feeling/message. A good thing to do is to put a newly written poem aside until you can read it objectively as if it was written by someone else. This may take as long as several months, but when you learn to chop words out of your own work, as I did to this one, you will grow as a poet. (Please note that this is just one reader's view/interpretation of your poem, and that advice is only worth as much as you pay for it.)

You Came
by SweetFreak ©
Soft, soft kisses that I barely felt that
But never the less brought those old feelings back.
Feelings that I haven’t felt in a thousand days and in many ways
Made me want to run but I have to nowhere to go except back to those sensations.

You Came
(An alternate as by Rybka)

Soft, soft kisses
brought those old feelings back
I haven’t felt them in a thousand days
but now in so many many ways
they make me want to run away
but I have nowhere else to go
these old sensations make me stay

 

[annaswirls]

Hi and welcome. It isn't easy putting your work out for people to critique and I applaud your courage.

I agree with Eve and Rybka, there is a lot of passion in your writing but there is too much. I have gotten the same advice from Eve.

Also, when writing, especially for the computer screen,
be kind to your reader by allowing the eyes a break with white space--

leave some space between lines every now and then.
don't make your lines too long.

It is really hard to cut poems because they are a part of us.


I have taken 2 page poems and turned them into 5 lines and they are better for the trim.

Stand back and ask yourself
What do I really want to say?
What is the one thing is essential to this poem?
Take everything else out.


Good luck and hope to see you back-

Anna

 

[SweetFreak]

Thanks everyone I really appreciate all the feedback.

 

[thenry]

I may have to disagree.

Stylistically, this poem reminds a lot of early James Dickey or an erotic later C.K. Williams. The presence of a lot of internal rhyme and sound repetition within each line speaks for their wholeness and individuality. One or two words are often repeated at the beginning of a new line from the previous which tie the two together. Also the overall average length of the lines makes the word "ejaculation" really stand out at the end.

I am of the opinion that there is more than one way to skin an experience, and if the purpose of the evocation is complexity or narrative then the longer line is functional. However, it is sometimes at the price of readability.

 

[Angeline]

Hi
Welcome to the board.
So, you wrote a poem. Hmm. I'm pondering your words.
You know, the best person to comment on new poems is Angeline. She's just wonderful with that sort of thing.
Angeline?

I was busy. And it was your turn.

And Sweet, I like your poem and I like the repetitions. It has a strong voice and a musical, chanting quality that especially communicates when the piece is read aloud. I think I'd break lines more frequently to "shape" the poem more. That should help readability. In terms of "wordiness" though, it's no different from some poems written by a group as diverse as Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and Amiri Bakara

Peace,
Ange

 

[WickedEve]

I was busy. And it was your turn.

And Sweet, I like your poem and I like the repetitions. It has a strong voice and a musical, chanting quality that especially communicates when the piece is read aloud. I think I'd break lines more frequently to "shape" the poem more. That should help readability. In terms of "wordiness" though, it's no different from some poems written by a group as diverse as Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and Amiri Bakara

Peace,
Ange

This is why I initially wanted Angeline to give you advice. I read your poem again and saw it differently. I suppose when I first read certain parts that reminded me of much of the poetry at lit, I simply went into a "fix-it" mode. Also, I have a thing for minimalist poetry. lol Anyway, keep writing your own way.

 

[Linbido]

Hey there, Sweet. I must say that I'm intrigued by the way you write. It's talkative, with a cool slurry, punch-drunk accent that is really liberating to read.

Devotion to making me screamin’, had this girl feignin’. Legs crossed, hair tossed, sheet grabbin’ as your lips kissed my lips and not the ones on my face. Had your head in an embrace, by the soft cushion of my thighs as you brought to my high.

The only thing I might have to say is that it's a bit hard to read. Other poets here have tiee to condense your writing for you, but I think that would be to do it an ill favor. I'll just try to reformat it instead. There are some neat twists and turns of imagery in there that I think is not getting the attention it deserves in those long lines.

Devotion
to making me screamin’,
had this girl feignin’.
Legs crossed, hair tossed,
sheet grabbin’

as your lips
kissed
my
lips

and not the ones on my face.

Had your head in an embrace,
by the soft cushion of my thighs
as you brought to my high.

Well, that's just another way of cutting the same words into different lines. I think it brings emphasis to the interresting parts (that's of course the parts that I found most interresting, you might want to focus on other passes)

good luck, and keep on writing
-Lin

 

[Angeline]

This is why I initially wanted Angeline to give you advice. I read your poem again and saw it differently. I suppose when I first read certain parts that reminded me of much of the poetry at lit, I simply went into a "fix-it" mode. Also, I have a thing for minimalist poetry. lol Anyway, keep writing your own way.

Well most would not agree with me on this one I bet. Also it's arguable, I guess, where what is unique to a writer's voice ends and repetitive, unnecessary begins. This is a tough call, imo. Sweet, you know best how to answer that and where to cut, if necessary.

 

[thenry]

As a different idea:

There is more than one way to write any poem, if you believe a poem is more than the words on a page. Why not let the ways diverge, sometimes, to see what may become of a first draft's progeny? You don't have to pick only on path.

 

[Rybka]

To Step in a River . . .

There is more than one way to write any poem, if you believe a poem is more than the words on a page. Why not let the ways diverge, sometimes, to see what may become of a first draft's progeny? You don't have to pick only on path.

Is there more than one way to write any poem? Is it the same poem if you write it differently. Are all of the STC entries the same poem? Isn't this harkening back to Heraclitus of Ephesus c.500BC and his argument of how many times can you step in the same river?

 

[thenry]

There is more than one way to write a poem, if you believe a poem is more than the words on a page. Regarding STC, I don't think that different poets can write versions of the same poems.

But, yes, it all goes back to stepping in a river. I believe you can, a river being more than an instantaneous state. The philosophy of poetry I've been reading lately, as would any amount, is too much.

Anyway, opinions vary along the continuum of a single changed word creating a new poem to every poem existing in some shared extra thought dimension. Orrrrrr whatever, I often say to myself.

Granted this comes from academic poets who spend more time admitteedly thinking and writing about writing poetry than actually doing it. Most current opinion is aligned around the idea that the "poem" exists in it's own extra space and the written words merely trace a path through it. It is up to the poet to define the best path, and the change of words alters the poet not at all, merely the path the author leads through it.

On practical terms, I like this interpretation because it means a revision isn't a change in the poem, rather a paring down of the path and vision, which is what my gut tells me.

But more importantly, what do you think?

 

[Liar]

Fellas, you're tripping into semantics-land here.

Yes, there is only one way to write a specific poem, because the poem is the finite stucture, a precise constuction of language, the product of your writing. Change but one word, and it's not the same poem anymore. This is what makes translating poetry a real pain in the buttocks, it's hard to tell wether it's the translator or the poet you are really reading.

And yes, there are several, maybe infinite ways of writing a poem, because the poem is an abstract idea already finished and done before it is put into words.

It all depends on the poet, and the poem.

#Liar

 

[Rybka]

Fellas, you're tripping into semantics-land here.

Yes, there is only one way to write a specific poem, because the poem is the finite stucture, a precise constuction of language, the product of your writing. Change but one word, and it's not the same poem anymore. This is what makes translating poetry a real pain in the buttocks, it's hard to tell wether it's the translator or the poet you are really reading.

And yes, there are several, maybe infinite ways of writing a poem, because the poem is an abstract idea already finished and done before it is put into words.

It all depends on the poet, and the poem.

#Liar

so does a poem exist without a poet. . . or a reader? Are we now getting into a tree falling into the river with no one around? And can it do it more than once? Or even once? (See Whitehead)

 

[thenry]

Are we now getting into a tree falling into the river with no one around? And can it do it more than once? Or even once?

My response to Whitehead and existentialism in general has always been that the tree will cry as long as I can imagine it.

And while traipses into semantics land are admittedly obtuse (and a waste of time as the situation does all depend on the poet and poem), I argue they are not merely semantic and can have interesting implications in practice. For example, if a poem is an idea and not an arrangement of words, what does that say about the work of E.E. Cummings and his impact on a great many beginning poets? While there is certainly "room" for both ends of the spectrum, can they be read with the same rules?

 

[Icingsugar]

so does a poem exist without a poet. . . or a reader? Are we now getting into a tree falling into the river with no one around? And can it do it more than once? Or even once? (See Whitehead)

Does the poet craft the poem or does the poet discover the poem? Is the poet a researcher, an inventor, or merely a mechanic?

What I want to know is what the business the tree had standing so close to the river in the first place. Didn't momma tree tell him it was a dangerous place? You can fall in, gosh darn it.

/Ice

 

[Angeline]

I love writing and analyzing poems (though not at once!) because I am endlessly fascinated by these symbols called words that we use to establish connections with one another. It is part of our humanity and uniquely beautiful. So who cares if two poems have the same title or not or seem similar or don't? I don't read a poem to confirm what I believe to be "correct" about how to write or anything else. I don't want to experience a poem as an academic exercise, though I realize it can be known as such. I want a poem to transport me, make me feel, get in touch with my own experiences.

I could read the following and focus on the fact that maybe the translator didn't break the lines in the right place all the time or I can just let what Neruda is saying envelop me. I prefer the latter.


POETRY
Pablo Neruda (translator WS Merwin)

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesmal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

 

[thenry]

So who cares if two poems have the same title or not or seem similar or don't? I don't read a poem to confirm what I believe to be "correct" about how to write or anything else.

I don't think anyone actually cares, at least no one I have actually known. As it has always been: if it works, it works. But still there is a tantalizing order to poetry, a spirit in the machinery. "Why?" is the question that taunts me.

Most importantly in my own writing. I remember sitting down to write my first poem, having a wonderful idea, and later realized I could have better used the paper to clean up stains of my own vomit. Yet I got better. There are skills to be learned and writers emulated, and very little involves the avoidance of cliché and usage of shorter lines. Somewhere in the process of becoming a poet I must of learned the essence of poetry, but beyond that I have only analysis as a pastime.

 

[Angeline]

I don't think anyone actually cares, at least no one I have actually known. As it has always been: if it works, it works. But still there is a tantalizing order to poetry, a spirit in the machinery. "Why?" is the question that taunts me.

Most importantly in my own writing. I remember sitting down to write my first poem, having a wonderful idea, and later realized I could have better used the paper to clean up stains of my own vomit. Yet I got better. There are skills to be learned and writers emulated, and very little involves the avoidance of cliché and usage of shorter lines. Somewhere in the process of becoming a poet I must of learned the essence of poetry, but beyond that I have only analysis as a pastime.

Well said. One must learn, I agree, and attain proficiency in the basics of poetic content and form(s). Without a foundation even a naturally gifted writer can only go so far. And I think learning about writing poetry (like anything else) is a lifelong endeavor.

I also enjoy literary criticism as a pastime. I get wary though because I think sometimes we--myself included--can get so bound up in knowing a piece of literature cognitively that we forget about affect, and that the true joy of literature is in feeling it. That is how I interpret the notion of a piece of literature "engaging" a reader, and it's what I want to feel when I read for pleasure.

 

[Liar]

I love writing and analyzing poems (though not at once!) because I am endlessly fascinated by these symbols called words that we use to establish connections with one another. It is part of our humanity and uniquely beautiful. So who cares if two poems have the same title or not or seem similar or don't? I don't read a poem to confirm what I believe to be "correct" about how to write or anything else. I don't want to experience a poem as an academic exercise, though I realize it can be known as such. I want a poem to transport me, make me feel, get in touch with my own experiences.

I could read the following and focus on the fact that maybe the translator didn't break the lines in the right place all the time or I can just let what Neruda is saying envelop me. I prefer the latter.

Oh I do agree with you. I don't read poetry for any other reason than to feel my head spin, in the same spirit that I listen to music or read a novel. I want my mind to to bulge, I want to get high, dammit. How I get there, through rock 'n roll, a villanelle, comic strips or a campfire story, doesn't matter.

However, I'd like to stick to what I just said, It depends on the poet and the poem. I couldn't read a translated version of this, since it's it's only a little bit about what good old ee.c is saying, but also the surgical presicion of how he says it:

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water


I'd hate to be the one translating that.

#Liar

 

[thenry]

That is how I interpret the notion of a piece of literature "engaging" a reader, and it's what I want to feel when I read for pleasure.

It's funny you mention it that way. I find that I only read trash for pleasure, to lose a rainy afternoon. There are criteria involved, like writing skills, but the book usually doesn't *say* anything. I save the good books and authors for when I have the time because I am challenged to do more than passively read. I do have to analyze and search and think about what is being said by the author instead of what is being said by the characters, as well as the statement of the book as a product of its time and place in culture. And. And.

It could be that this process is what you mean by engaging, and if so I wanted only to clarify.

 

[Angeline]

Oh I do agree with you. I don't read poetry for any other reason than to feel my head spin, in the same spirit that I listen to music or read a novel. I want my mind to to bulge, I want to get high, dammit. How I get there, through rock 'n roll, a villanelle, comic strips or a campfire story, doesn't matter.

However, I'd like to stick to what I just said, It depends on the poet and the poem. I'd hate to be the one translating this, since it's it's only a little bit about what good old ee.c is saying, but also the surgical presicion of how he says it:

"next to of course god america i
love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh
say can you see by the dawn's early my
country 'tis of centuries come and go
and are no more what of it we should worry
in every language even deafanddumb
thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry
by jingo by gee by gosh by gum
why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead
then shall the voice of liberty be mute?"

He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water


I'd hate to be the one translating that.

#Liar

Lol. Yeah, I know. On the other hand I have lyric sheets of Beatles songs translated (I presume) from English to Japanese and back to English that are, in their own inadvertant way, pretty poetic.

This came up here some months ago, btw, and there's a great thread with poems by some of us that were run through a few online translators. Some of course became almost unrecognizable. I'll try to find it and post it here. It's very funny.