It's past midnight and I had a pretty busy day but yet I can't sleep... well, magic aside, I am a sucker for good poetry. Just thought I'd post one of my favourite poems by Pablo Neruda (the most romantic Chilean ever lived!) here in this segment... for the rest of the other poetry buffs (you know who you are...) if any, out there :-)

It just seems so magical, if you're reciting this poem at the beach at night when you hear the crashing waves... ah... ok, enough about my ramblings... sit back, kick off your shoes, and enjoy this wonderful master piece!

Presenting...


The Saddest Poem - by Pablo Neruda


I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

chim.

A man who holds the deck/card/IT/spoon/fork(wadever..blar blar) in his hands but not the girl he loves, have nothing :)

This forum has a lot of romantic people :lol:

hey there's always a ROMANTIC in aLL of us! ;-)

u guys have it lucky... wow a girl with poetry and magic tricks, she'd probably be yours! hahaha... now if only that was the case with guys *LAMENTS*

LOL :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

that is so true..... :D Unless the guy is a magician himself....
you poor thing :D

Hmmm... just felt like posting another one of my favorites from Neruda.
Life is short and precious. Go hug someone and tell them how much you appreciate/love/like/admire/are thankful for them today... :P

Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960)

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

wah... lurve lurve lurve all around... "i feel it in my fingers..." :P

Here's my first serious attempt! :ph43r:

Soggy Shoes

Lost in a life-long tumble
Ideals torn asunder
Lightning precedes a distant rumble
I walk, I wonder

Life's many disappointments
Seem so many more
Than the happier moments
From long before

Strolling along as the waters beckon
Calling out with haunting voices
Feeling my body slacken
Tired of making choices

The cold envelopes my body
Under the softly pounding rain
My shoes turn soggy
As the river washes away the pain.

©1996 Christopher Tan

Did this while on topo...

Progression of Dusk

Look,
Swathes of
Orange, Pink-
Daubed horizon
Contrasting against
Darkening blue canvas
A Divine oil masterpiece
Painted with fast fading pigments
Soon to become one with the darkness
A veil of void, with pinpricks and a tear.

© 1999 Christopher Tan

*pins medal on chris' shirt* well done chris!!! :lol: thanks for sharing your intimate poems with us! :wub:

Poetry? :wacko:
i seriously cannot make it man
wait

" chuang qian ming yue guang...." :D

er... :ph43r:

Well hey, if you're gonna do a Li Bai.. we'd have to give you some chinese rice wine to get you in the mood :lol: ...but then again, you're underaged :ph43r: :ph43r: :ph43r:

Ooooouch.......Ning, that's a LOW blow...... :ph43r: B)

Makan: you wrote an ethere while topoing??!! impressive..... :blink: :blink:

Here's my attempt:

Sense

Intrigue the heart with your inner resonance
Lavish the thoughts of your devine existence
Osculate the very source of ethreal expression
Venture far within the darkest obsession
Eden manifests towards a seeming reality
Yet another reason to indulge concupiscently
Ornate presentiments exuded are never contemptous
Unite my Desire with the significance of this verse.

- P.Kelvin

Ok. Here's the expose. Before I start, the person who wrote this poem (presumably me :D ) is male...so because this poem is supposedly mushy (in a slightly morbid sense) and I'm not gay, the other character involved is a "she." Should you differ from this sexual orientation, please make the necessary changes in the explanation of this poem. Here it goes:

The title "Sense" actually refers to "a meaning." This poem has a meaning behind it, which makes "sense" and you have to "sense" it upon reading it. I will touch on that later.

"Intrigue the heart with your inner resonance"
The protaganist in this poem is suffering from an inner conflict with his "senses," and the source of these feelings in which he is struggling from derives from the person who has the ability to intrigue his heart, and she is resounding ("resonance") the source of these feelings within her inner self.

"Lavish the thoughts of your devine existence"
Ok. We lament and lavish the very thought of a person who isn't physically by our side. Thereby, this person, for that moment, exists only as a memory, a subverse existence, a mortal form of divinity.

"Osculate the very source of ethereal expression"
The word "osculate" means to kiss. This "kiss" is a metaphor...in the form of a soulful worship towards the very "source" (the lady). "Ethereal expression" is used because the involving emotions of kisses and soul-worshipping are strong yet painfully fragile, thus seemingly ethereal in context.

"Venture far within the darkest obsession"
The very roots of this sentence comes from the previous sentence, which shows the growth of the "ethereal expression" rapidly transcends ("venture far") towards the threshold to the maginitude of apparent but protaganising non-existent insanity("darkest obsession"). Therefore...

"Eden manifests towards a seeming reality"
...this sentence is added to remind the reader that the protagonist is simply riding along the waves of his feelings, out of control but still rational, as if Eden has appeared ("manifests") which is impossible, of course, but this is how these feelings have made him feel ("seeming reality").

"Yet another reason to indulge concupiscently"
This amplifies passion. Passion has risen to levels so high so as to give "reason" to engage ("indulge") in lustful pleasures ("concupiscently").

"Ornate presentiments exuded are never contemptous"
Despite the "reason" stated in the last sentence, in this one the protagonist actually reminds the reader that the reason of "lustful" stems from elegant ("ornate") and acceptable rationale which are already preconsidered for potentially harmful consequences ("presentiments"). Such a display of feelings ("exuded") aren't offensive and without motive or doubt ("never contemptous")

"Unite my Desire with the significance of this verse."
This simply means that the very meaning ("sense") of this poem revolves around "Desire" (emphasis is placed on this word, that's the reason why a capital letter is used), and is validated ("significance") by the very words of this poem ("verse")

All righty, now back to the definition of the title as explained earlier. You see, the title itself holds a "reason" for the poem, and the poem itself "explains" the reason. The very letters used on this poem "shows" the reason, and "Reason is what makes Sense of the Desire in the Poem"

Letters??? How can letters show a reason? Here's your epiphanic finale: Spell the first letter of every sentence. It says, "I LOVE YOU." That, my friends, is the reason.

P.S. Use this poem on your lover...it's a sure killer. Just make sure he / or she appreciates literature and try to explain the meaning behind it. That creates more depth. This poem's mine but I haven't copyrighted it or anything, so feel free to use it at your own discretion. :D Have fun!!!

P.S.S. Ning, who says that guys aren't romantic? :lol:

I'm afraid it's true.....girls are SUCKERS for acrostics...... :lol: :lol: B)
I must have read like 200 acrostic "I love you"s by now and I swear every one got the girls going "awwwww........" :D :lol: So there, you all learnt something boys? B)

Very nice one moondust. Bravo :)

Not only girls...I would be swooning too if a girl were to write a piece like that for me. But damn it never happens.

Actually, I prefer Makanmonkey's writing style as opposed to mine. My style of writing seems more hypothetical, but Makanmonkey infuses his poems with cynicism, pain, dejection, futility and even the Progression of Dusk has a sad intonation to it. His poems invoke and stirs the emotions...very nice.

if u like sonnets, u can try reading shakespeare.

Yeah...Shakespeare's brilliant. Haven't read a piece in ages to come though... lost touch already.

My current literary material are from local writers. Singapore literature is like fusion food...a blend of both East and West. It can be quite intoxicating if the mixture's good.

Have been reading up a lot about sex, deceit, lies and lust recently... not because I'm a pervert, but because I was supposedly offered an opportunity to do freelance copywriting on a small scale for an overseas adult magazine.

sonnets, acrostics, quatrains and etheres....
you guys are DAMN hardcore..... :blink: :blink: :blink:

We have some die hard romantic people in here man.... B)

No dude...YOU'RE hardcore! i don't even freaking know what a quatrain or ethere is! :P :lol:

No no...It's not you. It's me. I really don't know the meaning of those terms and I wouldn't know if they're correct or not! :lol:

this got to be the chimest post in this forum i ever seen.

Yeah...poetry can be a little hard to swallow if not enough thought is put into its comprehension, that's why I spent half an hour typing an explanation in mine :D

Ning... wah actually they're not really intimate, not to me at least... actually i read an internet-pal's (in those days of dial-up, we used to frequent html chats which were... like really cutting edge man!) poem first and told myself i'll give it a go =) this is her composition:

Soulmate on a Street Corner
Strangers pass everyday on the street
Without a word
No more than a passing glance
Of disinterest

As I walk down the sidewalk
I watch, I see you
Your eyes hold mine just for a second
Until you turn away

I have to wonder
Whether I have just passed
A stranger
Or a soulmate.

by Jennifer Stebbins 1996

hey im sure u've had a go at it too... any ones u want to share? ;)

eh Moondust wah ur compotision knocked my sox off man... and the following discourse just took the cake... i think alot more emotion goes into composing ur poem than mine, coz im not trained to appreciate poetry, (in sec sch lit we only did ol' will and african/indian novels, nvr poems) so i can nvr appreciate a poem for it's technical merits :(

that said tho... i feel rhymes tend to evoke emotions more easily than erm, non-rhymes.

Morph... think u've already established urself as "shi wang" -- poem king already... i honestly thought that "etheres" was a spelling mistake till i saw Moondust's post... i didn't even noe wat a sonnet was... let alone quatrains or etheres! so for someone so experienced... im sure u must have a few volumes of personal compositions lying ard

post here can? B)

IMO, shakespeare is much better to read coz his sonnets are truly metrical... pablo neruda's like free verse... but then again, i prefer the older forms of poetry instead of the common free verse these days.

btw, that overseas adult mag... still got lobang? :P

JirQ can write poems for them...i can take the photos... for free...

nah i am not a poetry person.... just took one sem in it.... more of prose :D

OMG!!!!!!! I love you guys!!!! *SWOONS* :wub: :wub: :wub:

:lol: We have poets in the house!!!!!!!!

Hah....I looked it up....now i know you are lying... B)

Ethere:
Peotry with syllables play. 10 lines, each line with corresponding number of syllables, line 1 with 1 syllables, line 2 with 2 syllables.....line 10 with 10 syllables.

Nobody could have written that "by accident" <_<
quatrains (or is it quadtrains :P) is your regular rhyming 4 liners...

Anyways, I'm just a 2 bit fan who had someone taught me a LITTLE BIT about poetry. The real Shi Wang (or Shi Hou, Poem Queen) is Ning. She is like a walking encyclopedia of poetry, believe you me... :wub: :wub:

Morph.. eh seriously man... i didn't noe what a ethere is (till now of course... it's not even in dictionary.com i checked y/d) i was wondering how to capture the "progression" from light to darkness, so naturally "progression" would have to take some form on paper and in the reading of the verse, and the easiest way to do that would be with the progressive form of metre, and since it's my first attempt at this form, i tried it from 1-10 B)

As for the quatrains... well im quite a fan of Robert Frost, so to emulate his style in it's simplest form i used rhyming couplets... nvr knew they were called tt.

Man...I'm gonna need to catch up. I'm seriously out of your league! *feverishly researching in the Internet*

Haiz Chim ah... :huh:

Wah, then you are even more hardcore than I thought, you came up with a style on your own! :o

But enough of these "technical talks", techniques dun make art, jargons dun make artists..... ;)

I heard some rumours that Ning has a LARGE COLLECTION of her own compositions, let's pester her to share of those shall we? B)

Whyarewewaiting, whyarewewaiting, whyarewewaiting, whyarewewaiting..............

but techniques refine the art :P

Ning is conveniently ignoring this thread now....... B) :P

Haha... yah lor!

OK, the first post mentioned Neruda. I urge the interested readers of this thread to watch Il Postino, since he appears in the show. I think arts central shows it here and there, and Premiere 12 used to, too. Watched it, anyone?

Aha, there you can see the magic (magic!) Neruda can weave about the postman and the woman of his dreams. Poetry? Certainly. Misdirection? Fits the bill. We can all pick up some pointers!

Talk more poetry! Share more poetry! Thread's dying!

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