In a bath, darkly

When submerged you hear only your heart in your ears as if it has moved there, you don't feel any point of contact, the beauty of disconnected floating, an achievable flight, the nose poised above the water, your chest can't swell as the pressure of the water constricts like a belt, you must breathe in shallowly to avoid floating up too far. Then carefully, turning the plug's valve with your foot the water drains away slowly. You feel like a skin of water is pulling you down like clingfilm, your face breaks the surface as if it were your original crowning moment seeing the world for the very first time and a wave of pleasure of tenderness of sensitivity crashes through your body like waking at once from a dream you try not to laugh out in joy in ecstasy, you are so delicate at this moment in this moment, a single exhalation will ruin the feeling of asphyxiation, the sweet asphyxiation, your eyes which had only been able to sense the candle-light when submerged are now given the opportunity to open but you concentrate all your sensory action on touch on feel on pleasure through this masochism. Shallow breaths are necessary to prolong your drowning as you are weighed down paradoxically by the lack of water that seems to go on forever, you are pinned to the bottom of the bath, you cannot move, do not want to for the weight of the universe is not only pressing down on your chest but pulling you as well, as satan fell to pandemonium you are being pulled by some insatiable force and again you are floating, in stasis, but not drifting this time you are stuck, lost in transit. The water below you leaves and your breath cannot keep you off the surface of the bath now and you thud back into the world, your eyes can again open to these familiar surroundings and you are free to breathe again, the water around your shoulders slowly trickles past you until you undam it and let it flow freely to the plug.

untitled poem ii

I promised myself that i wouldn't post this until i understood it all but it was pointed out to me that some of the beauty was in the fact that not even the author understood it all. It seems i wrote it in an existential crisis. As always i would love to hear comments on how you might change it so i can improve my writing.

What if this all is a cover-up, what if none of this is real?
There are rules and regulations
Unnecessary to feel
The body doesn’t exist all people are actors, no-one dies or is hurt.
The laws are to limit our thinking
Words have been banned
How difficult would it be to lie about history
If it had been planned
Any sense of truth is easily obliterated
Everything is mitigated by the inexplicity, my nonexperience
Cogito ergo I know nothing except that sum
People could lie, all too easily
Real pleasure is out there
Untapped to my brain unfeasibly
But I’ve never heard of it
I have no grasp of its nectar
Of the things outside this bubble in which my life is cast
Some things get through
Smuggled in from the real world
They have to let it be
Or the mystery is unfurled.
The rules can be broken, without punishment
Those who you hear about are just tempting you
They are corporation sent.
Is life an audition for some greater purpose
If I succumb to their ways do I win or I lose
If I think for myself do I shine or do I bruise.
The things that I know are things that I’ve learnt
But who chose those things,
We learn of non-democracies
Are told how we have it good
Is that just their way of decreasing our livinghood?

untitled poem

I feel it might be a little Kubla Kahn to write up a dream but i feel it's strangely haunting like the opening passages of Notes from the Underground (and yes, i flatter myself by that comparison with Dostoevsky) and it expresses a feeling i am attached to quite well. Of course i would love to hear some comments on how people would alter it.

He traipses along the platform,

the day receives the sun,
with a briefcase in his hand
he trudges on.

Few notice that the case is cuffed to his left wrist,
fewer that it carries only water.

The water changes state
depending where he is.
Sometimes it's steam and barely hinders
but as ice it's cold and heavy
and it encumbers every moment.

But this case, it has a faulty clasp
so people can sometimes open it,
sometimes it just knocks something he walks by
then everything
                    pours
                           out.

In the shallows of the day
and the shadows of a train
he does not want people to see the contents of his case
so he scrambles picking up shards of ice that have shattered in this place.

But his left hand is hindered by the empty box
so he scrambles and he dwindles with his right.

It is his burden to bear
but even if he were unshackled
he would again bind himself.

Although he hates the contents
he knows his die is cast
so he picks it up again as the controller ambles past.

Though it is hard and hinders him
as he must take it everywhere,
the alternative is living without it
and that he could not bear.

For the guilt would eat him just as surely as Lady Macbeth saw a spot,
and the pain itself is comfort that he can pay his lot.
For forgetting is worse than hindrance;
freedom worse than pain,
for if you forget
or lay the memory down
the moment that it comes back
is worse than the combined hell of the perpetual case sodden by the rain.

"awesome like ten million hotdogs, Sir"

So when i wrote this i hadn't written any poetry properly for a long time. i would say i was rusty so i had an excuse but i don't want one. Art should be collaborative i think. Art is collaborative even if only one person writes it. i fear and relish your comments but i like the immediacy of this form and the pressure it puts on the poem - if i can call it that, it's more of an imagination dump.

Carriages lined with people
With stories of their own.
The world expands in my head
As they make their way home, to work, to family, to friends
To the ends of the line
And time passes time
In this underground line
Where my eyes open to the awesome size of the world,
"Awesome like ten million hotdogs, Sir."

My score of years
Is nothing here
My own insignificance pales against theirs
Their love affairs, their joking dares, their unawares.
We are follicles of hairs on the head of the city
Alone nothing but together pretty.
Or ugly. Or something
Less much less than i could fathom.
I am insignificant at best.

first post

Well hello there. I guess you like poetry if you're here. I'll be doing a mixture here of my own stuff (which will include some prose too) and a poem a day so if you're into that or want to post any of your poems in comments that's great too. The world needs more poetry so it would be wonderful if you want to get involved, just comment on this post with your poem or your recommendations for poem a day and i'll have a look and if i like it i will post it in its own post.
This isn't a serious poetry domain all i ask is you enjoy poetry, express your opinions and have fun with it.