Waking (A Poem)

I feel the pain of all those poor souls who had brilliant, amazing, intriguing vampire stories just before Twilight came out, and who now could care less about them thanks to over-saturation.  That's me for dreams and Inception.  Seriously, I came up with a few story ideas involving dreams, and then Inception came out, and now all I can think of when I write about dreams is "we have to go deeper."  But I wrote this poem anyways.  The original idea of it actually stems from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series: at one point, the character Delirium tells her brother, Dream, that she thinks everyone already knows everything about everything, but we make ourselves forget because that's the only way to deal with it.  I came up with this poem specifically while I was vacationing in Virginia recently.  I can't remember the dream that made me think of it, but I suddenly found it odd that so many dreams never end.  Obviously that's mostly a matter of timing: you're in the middle of a dream, your alarm clock rings, you wake up.  But I've had countless nightmares in my time, with their fair share of horrifying creatures coming for me, about to be revealed as they come through the door or the shadows - and then I wake up.  So of course I couldn't help but wonder what the terror just beyond the end of my dreams was.  Maybe it's a monster of some sort, or maybe it's just some form of knowledge that terrifies me. 

It's not my best poem, but it was interesting to write - it's mostly an idea I had that I just wanted to express in some form, and a poem seemed the easiest way.  Leave me comments if you like/hate it!  Criticism really is always appreciated.  I guess my next post will be from New York, so we'll see what the city inspires me to write.  Au revoir!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Waking
by Matthew Stalbaum

we wake before our dreams
end, before the shadows
are revealed, our secrets
waiting behind the black

--from there it dissolves,
  memory too, into smoke
  but I wonder

over that last moment, lingering
another second past our eyelids
fluttering open:

perhaps nothing, the edge
of imagination, that which
goes beyond what your mind
can dream, or

perhaps everything there is
to know, we have known all
along, held behind the shadows
beyond dreams, waiting


for us to be ready (or not);
to see it all, and finally
have no need to wake again--

perhaps that is my greatest
nightmare.

I'm Gonna Be a New Man, Girl (A Blues Song)

Behold, internet, my first blues song, or song in general for that matter!  You have no idea how insanely happy I am that I could write this, and that it came out as well as it did.  I've been playing a lot of guitar this summer, recording some songs with some friends of mine (just on his Macbook with Garage Band, no recording studios yet), and have had this weird obsession with the blues for a while now.  I don't know why, it's just the kind of music my soul's been craving lately.  I've been listening to a lot of blues-rock though - The Black Keys, The White Stripes, Jimi Hendrix, some Janis Joplin.  I've wanted to take my hand at writing a song for a few months now, and it seemed like a blues would be easiest to write, since the chords kinda write themselves, and I can just make up a riff over top of them.  Well, voi la - my blues song!

I definitely had The White Stripes in mind while writing this, specifically the song Ball and Biscuit, hence why it has a sort of dirty southern feel to it.  The idea for the song itself came from my feelings over a girl I like, a girl who I can't be with (what blues song isn't inspired by some heartbreak?).  I had the thought of really focusing on my writing and my reading, and becoming a successful writer sooner rather than later, only so I could maybe have a shot of being with her before she finds someone else.  The original thought for the song is actually the start of the last stanza: "I ain't the man you love yet/but I'm gonna be."  I'm not the man who can love her yet, so I wanna become that man, make myself into something worth loving.  The darker bend to the lyrics came from my thoughts on identity - what would it really take to change who you are, in order for someone to love you? 

The funny thing is, I definitely thought this song was gonna have more repeated lines than it does - I had no original intention for the rhymes, those were just accidental in the 1st verse, and I decided to keep them up for the rest of the song.  I'm surprised the rhymes work so well too, I haven't written anything with a rhyme scheme since high school, and those are poems I wanna put far behind me.  The chords for each line of the verses goes E7/E7/A7/E7/B7/A7-E7.  The 3rd verse/stanza is actually the bridge, which also wasn't intended, and I somehow was thinking of the bridge to The Seeker by The Who when writing it, so the chords for that go something like A7/A7/E7/B7/B7/C7.  The musical part of this is still a work in progress, I'm mostly just happy I was able to come up with lyrics!

So yeah, let me know your thoughts on anything - are the lyrics good, do those chords make sense, have any suggestions for chord progressions or riffs?  It's my first song, but feel free to butcher it if you think it's necessary, it'll just let me know to start from scratch.  Thanks for putting up with my rambling too, I figured I'd splurge on words as a little bit in celebration of my 1st song.  Hope you enjoyed reading these lyrics, I don't have any immediate way of recording this song but maybe I'll put up a recording of it someday, who knows!  Until next time, my faithful bloggers.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm Gonna Be a New Man, Girl
by Matthew Stalbaum

I ain't the kind of man you'd love
But I'm gonna be
I know you ain't lovin me now
But you're gonna be
I'm gonna be a new man, girl
And you'll see, you'll be lovin me.

Bought myself new clothes
You won't even remember who I was before
I done changed my talk
You won't recognize that old voice no more
I'm gonna be a new man, girl, you'll see,
I'll be the one you're comin back for.

I painted the walls of my mind
To all the colors you like
Drowned my old self in used paint cans.
I sold out my hands and my feet
To make the things that you like
I sold my soul just to be your kind of man.

I ain't the man you love yet,
But I'm gonna be
The man you walked past yesterday
You ain't never gonna see
I'm gonna be a new man, just you wait,
Then you'll be lovin me.

her pillow (A Poem)

In Elementary School, on field trips that required long bus rides, kids would always sleep on my shoulder as we returned to school.  For some reason, it would always be a kid whose parent was chaperoning for the trip that day, and they'd always thank me for letting their child rest on my shoulder.  I never thought of it as something for commending - they fell asleep, I was there to catch them.  What was I gonna do, push them onto the floor?  They were tired.  Those instances always resonated with me though, into Middle School and High School.  I guess as I got to grow more jaded with the world, I realized I really could have just pushed their heads off of me, woken them up and made fun of them.  But that was never in me, and that's what this poem's about.

It was actually inspired by a guy friend of mine sleeping on my shoulder this past week, as we were returning from a day at Six Flags, but the gender doesn't matter.  I think a good deal of love is involved in something so simple as letting someone sleep on your shoulder.  In case you faithful readers of mine (all the thousands and millions of you!) haven't noticed, I enjoy simplicity, and the beauty that comes with those things we don't bother noticing because of it.  Letting someone rest their head on your shoulder says so much without saying anything at all - what it says, I'll leave to your discretion, but at least I think it's beautiful.  As for this poem, yeah, it's not perfect, and I'll probably mess with the form more sometime soon, but it gets the idea across. 

I've been pretty lazy with writing lately, so those short stories I promised probably won't be coming any time soon.  It doesn't help that summer's coming to a close, and I'm swamped with plans for hanging out with all my friends and doing all the things we didn't do earlier in the summer.  But short stories are still being worked on, so hopefully some time soon I can post another one.  God, how many times have I said that now.  I at least hope you liked this poem, and there'll probably be another one that only takes 15 seconds to read next week, so I'll see you again then!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
her pillow
by Matthew Stalbaum

Her head on my shoulder:
I've done all I need to
In life, all I'll ever do (vast
Dreams created, and the truth
Written into pretty sonnets & scenes)

will pale
compared to letting
her head rest
letting time go
its way as she
breathes easy I
smile having done
what I can
to let her
sleep.

I Would Love You, But Not Now (A Poem)

 This poem is far from being perfect, but it's what came out now, which is significant only in that I've been trying to write this poem since yesterday early afternoon.  I also wanted to post it because it matches my Nobody's Rambler post for this week, which is about some past relationships of mine and what I've learned from them.  A week or two ago I was talking about Christina Hendrix (who is undeniably the most beautiful woman alive), and I jokingly said I wouldn't want to date her because she's such an amazing woman, I'm not good enough for her.  That's the idea behind that prose post and this poem.  I'm also a little in love with someone right now, someone who probably doesn't love me back (I talk about it in Nobody's Rambler), but my love is such that I wouldn't want to blindly rush into a relationship.  All love takes a certain wisdom from each partner for it to thrive and grow, and this person is so special to me that I'd only want to be with them if I could be with them the right way, in a way where I can be open with her and she could be open with me (I should mention I started this summer off by reading Love in the Time of Cholera).  That's not to say things would be perfect and would go on forever, but whatever lasted would be more satisfying and memorable then if I didn't understand even the basics of love, those tiny nuances that people might take for granted sometimes.

So anyways, that was all my inspiration for this.  Unfortunately my inspiration wasn't exactly the most...well, poetic, so I'll need to edit and revise this pretty heavily sometime.  Plus I've been in a down mood all day, and while writing this poem actually cheered me up, I'll admit the blues I've been feeling distracted me a little.  But hopefully you enjoy reading it anyways!  I'm gonna be pretty busy this next week, so who knows how good of a poem I'll have the next time I'm here, but it'll be something at least.  Well, until next time blog-readers!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I Would Love You, But Not Now
by Matthew Stalbaum

I would love you, but not now,
not as we are, so young, so sure
to mistake the desire for a kiss as true
love, a moment's glance as eternity,
the friction of touch as electricity,
and love means only pretty words,
cliches and roses,
and you means all I want you to be.

I would love you in some time yet,
as you are, beyond utterance or comprehension,
when there is no mistake of what we want (how
I want you, how you want me) and what we can't
have (all those tiny pieces smaller than sight,
yet guide our motions like stars): all of you,
all of me, shadows and the secret of a gleam,
time enough for the past and future - none of this
but we are not lost, and beyond
immortality and perfection

there is the beauty of a smile, treasuring a laugh,
the simplest declarations that can't come out right,
but how they are said, that they are said
accounts for lost words, and as I open myself
as far as I can, as you do to, we find all we can't see,
marveling in the wonders of darkness and secrets,
following the little light we have, of a smile
and the smallest I Love You, said so often,
somehow says it all.

The Persistence of Memory (A Poem)

Woah, almost forgot to post this week!  Power outage didn't help at all, the day I would've spent completely writing was spent trying to survive heat and darkness, so my full-writing-day won't come for a while.  But I have a poem to post anyways!  I did some last minute revisions to it; as usual, it's not perfect, but it's alright at the least.  I've probably given other poems the same title this has, but oh well.  There's not much to say about this, which I actually think is kind of one of the problems about it - its stuff I've written about before.  The first two stanzas are my favorites, because those are more in line with the image I had in mind of living a moment, and then, instead of writing it down in a poem immediately, letting it sit for a while (fermenting maybe?), and coming back to it later, not trying to preserve it but just getting everything you can out of it.  Actually, that description might be a pretty good target for my revisions!

I'm working on a couple of short stories right now, so maybe hopefully one of those will be here in the coming weeks.  I'm really working on style and tone these days, and I'm being a real perfectionist about it, but hopefully that won't deter my writing too much.  I also might start posting novel chapters from the novel I wanna start writing very soon.  But all in all things are normal, so as per usual, please criticize my writing!  Hope you enjoyed it, I'll be back with another next week.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Persistence of Memory
by Matthew Stalbaum

Poems written at ease, though
In a strange tongue
Under light of ink & memory
--The rush of immaculate preservation gone
No glass cases or magnifying lenses

Only a slight dusting off, a quick breath,
And rotating a memory in hand, peering
Into all sides for the edge
Missed before, finding it
As the angle seen before is reversed,
And dust continually clouds the surface.

For all that comes out
In fog and shadow, there's comfort
Knowing it was at least lived
Under light of the sun & moon,
Taken as slowly and plentifully
As time allows.

And for all that grows clouded
In the glass, perhaps there's something
To be read in the shadows, filled in
By imagination, truer than the truth.

Another Glass Please (A Poem)

Well, I failed in my dream to have a short story ready for my last day of this week-long posting marathon, but oh well.  I was having some major problems restarting the story I was working on before my laptop crashed, but now I think I've got it, thanks to reading some Ray Bradbury for inspiration.  So hopefully within the next 2 weeks I'll have that story posted here.

As for this poem, I don't know, I have mixed feelings about it now.  I like aspects about it - I just added the division between the 2 parts, and I like the disparity of the images between them, but like some of the other poems I posted this week, the ending feels a little off to me.  Even when I was writing it the ending ended up being a little rushed.  I was writing 2-3 other poems at the time too, along with getting down some notes for some stories I wanna write soon, so I just kinda rushed this one to an ending.  My problem is that the ending is too clean - it gets the general idea I want at the end of this poem, but the tone is all wrong I think.  Like everything I write, it just needs a little work. 

Anyways, this is the last post for the week!  I wanted to have something completely new today, like a poem about race, since I talked about race on Nobody's Rambler today, but I couldn't think of anything.  I'm gonna admit, my brain's going to mush a little bit these days, and keeping up with my work is getting kinda hard.  But I'm gonna stay back on track here from now on, so count on another poem next week!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another Glass Please
by Matthew Stalbaum

I.
I'll be fine, I'll be fine, for some
It's a danger, a numbing of spirits,
Dousing the fire, and the world
Becomes a dream in haze, blurring
By the light of smoke & shadows--

Edges round out, lose their cut,
And skin becomes as loose as cloth, distant,
To be shed by shutting the eyes
Walking in darkness in nothingness,
Becoming it & dissolving--

II.
I fall, but only to feel

To touch and know what touch is,
To feel my breath as it builds, then waits,
the exhale
a low moan to feel it
Vibrate in my chest like electricity.

It burns, it boils, deeply,
And my heart grows hot from the coals,
Too hot - I cringe
I writhe, I shake my hands, my head
Grasping blindly for the words
That aren't God, aren't the glass, but perhaps,
For once, maybe only now
Are me. 

Earthly Bodies (A Poem)

Is it obvious I've been reading Pablo Neruda?  There was about a week when I was just reading his poetry, mostly just his love poetry.  The man definitely has a way with words that I don't have, but I've gotten to the point of my jadedness where his love poetry seems to be missing something - it's all so perfect and beautiful!  I've also been reading The Color of Love, an anthology of love poetry a friend gave me.  Some of the poems in that are really amazing, but I will admit that they all center around this perfect woman, who has all of these beautiful features, who might as well be clothed in light and elegance.  These days I want a different kind of love poem than that, one that's more honest, closer to the reality of our bodies.  This poem is one of my 1st attempts at that, although it's definitely only a 1st step, just looking over it makes me see numerous places for improvement, though I don't have the energy or the inspiration to make those now.  I think part of the reason why there's so much bad love poetry is because we idealize each other in our poems - no one writes about the imperfections of his lover, but about how perfect she is.  So I wanted the figure of a woman who's just come from the fields, still drenched in sweat and covered in dirt, and still beautiful because of it all.

So, let me know how I'm doing with this whole love poetry thing!  The name of the blog isn't badlovepoet for nothing, and I am lacking the inspiration of an actual lover, but hopefully you enjoyed taking less than a minute of your life reading it.  Leave any criticisms or comments you have here before you go off to explore the rest of the internet, and I'll be back tomorrow with yet another poem! 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Earthly Bodies
by Matthew Stalbaum

Dirt-stained, your skin bitter
& clammy, rough, caked with the fields
you worked & the sun's heat
baking you a ruddy brown - I'd have you
no other way.

I'd taste you before the shower, even better
if you washed in the hard rains, clouds steeped
in your bones, your breath free,
your heart strong.

When you smile beneath the layers
of Earth on you, sunken into your skin
until you smell of it, taste of it, look of it,
are you ever more yourself than now?

The idea for this started somewhat playfully - who would think to write a poem about a manicurist? - but after rereading it, I think it gets a little dark in those first few stanzas!  I'm definitely gonna edit this a little more (I'm mainly posting it now to see if anyone will respond with their thoughts on things before I make any changes).  I think this is the first poem I experimented using dialogue in, which came from reading some Langston Hughes, and this one poem by William Carlos Williams that I can't remember the name of, but it involves a sick baby and the inflection of the dialogue makes the last line almost unbearably tragic.  I like the dialogue in the last stanza, but I'm a little iffy about the other instances it's used in.  The main thing I wanna do in editing is cut down the disparity between the last stanza and the rest of the poem - I realized just now that only in the last stanza does the Manicurist get a personality and become a character, whereas before he's just this shadowy, almost menacing figure.  By the last stanza I realized I wanted to get the communal aspect of getting a manicure, but I didn't go back and add that tone to the rest of the poem, so it jumps from a really creepy exploration of time and decay to this wise manicurist.  As the directors say, I'll fix it in post.

As usual, please leave criticisms!  When they come (on those rare days) they really are helpful.  Help a young poet become the next Walt Whitman by letting him know your thoughts on his poetry.  Feel free to tear it apart, massacre it, beat it with a shovel - it'll only get stronger, trust me.  See you again tomorrow with another poem!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Manicurist
by Matthew Stalbaum

he will continue cutting, he will continue
whittling down their nails, polishing
& coloring to hide the smoker's
yellow crusting at the edges, smoothing out
the wrinkles of tired joints with the pad
of a thumb, to hide their work & toiling
--mmm, those look real pretty now!

they will continue coming back, their nails
& their wrinkles & the yellow stain now covering
the polish again--I tried quitting
but it doesn't hurt anyone--weekly, monthly
they will continue coming back

and he will continue cutting, continue

talking, about what their dreams really mean
(not the truth of all things, but a truth
for sure), about the flame in their eyes
they never bothered to see, the lightning of touch,
and he will talk on about certain eternal things
as they wish to god their nails wouldn't stain
so easily--the staining might as well
never come off!

Lively Hands (A Poem)

My post on Nobody's Rambler tonight was about handwriting vs. typing, so here I decided to post a poem I wrote recently that's about the hands that make art.  Unfortunately I've been feeling a little out of sorts all night, so I couldn't really give this the look-over it deserves.  The format needs some serious thought, as does the ending.  But all in all I like the idea of the poem, so I'll keep working with it.  Actually, this is really similar to my poem from last night, with its insistence on reality as something to be treasured.  It's probably pretty obvious by now that I've written quite a few poems with this theme at their heart, along with poems that involve manipulating the physical form of art - painting, writing, etc. - into the scenes they would describe.  I seem to have an obsession with hands in that way.  Maybe sometime I'll try to write something that deals with hands in a completely different way, if only for the challenge.

So anyways, I hope you at least enjoy reading it.  I just realized I didn't make my usual plea last time for comments and criticisms - please let me know if you don't like anything about this poem!  Comments really are appreciated, more so than you know, and criticisms even more so.  If something doesn't sound right to you, or an image just sounds plain dumb, like me know!  Otherwise it'll just keep being dumb, and then I'll keep being dumb, and that just doesn't seem right.  Either way, I hope reading it wasn't a waste of time!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lively Hands
by Matthew Stalbaum

Ink can only move from a hand that moves
from a hand that's moved limbs & time
moved across sea-breezes & over sweaty brows
over a chest to feel a reassuring pounding
a troublesome, wearisome pounding;
Hands that have moved precisely
recklessly randomly joyously
that have regretted where they've gone
& found secrets still in shadowy pockets;
Hands that moved quickly conscious
of time too conscious perhaps--
Hands that have lingered over a page
a flower a shoulder that got lost
in the silence of touch in the thoughts that follow
an absense of thought - hands that have
fallen to feel weightless, rise to feel gravity.

From these hands ink dances, music leaps,
paintings breath lustily (smelling the beach,
hearing the seagulls soar by, feeling the sand
slowly pull at sinking feet),
these hands stretch a note, a bridge,
the crossing of a T
until it curls at the ends, bounces
at the ends, waiting to be sprung
or unwound--

Hands don't decide these things,
they set motion, & worlds spin from them. 

Ode to a Rose/Return from an Unexpected Hiatus

So, as all of you millions of faithful readers may have noticed, I was gone for quite a while!  At first it was a bit of, well, not so much writer's block as poet's block - I did a good deal of work with fiction writing at the beginning of my summer break, but just didn't have the heart for poetry.  I couldn't get a feel for the tone and style I wanted, and even though I had some ideas written down in my moleskine, I couldn't find the right words for them.  Then my laptop crashed, so for a few weeks I really couldn't post anything.

But the break was good for me - I read some things from my poetry collections, started getting a feel for stanzas and lines again, and before I knew it I was writing poetry in my moleskine, which is something I hardly ever do.  Normally I'll write a line or two and save the rest for when I'm at my computer next, most poetry teachers will tell you to never compose a poem on your computer, but it was working for me for the longest time.  Now I'm just in a moleskine phase I guess.  I would write a line, then want to keep going, and suddenly I'd have 2-3 pages filled with a poem!  Most of them I'm not sure how I feel about, but I think I need to accept the fact that I'll never be happy with my own poetry - the perfectionistic eye of the writer always finds something wrong, something lacking, something not quite right.  Oh well. 

To make up for my extended absence, I've decided to post something here everyday this week.  Now now my dear, devoted fan-base, don't get too riled up, I'll mostly be posting the poems I wrote these past few weeks, and a lot of them are still rough in my opinion.  But I'm going to keep working on writing a short story or two, so maybe I'll have some fiction to post by the end of the week or by next week. 

As for tonight, we have "Ode to a Rose," a poem that I can't remember the specific inspiration of at all.  It probably came from me reading Pablo Neruda, along with wanting to write love poetry lately.  After all, the name of this blog is badlovepoet, but so few of my poems talk about love!  From where I found this in my moleskine, I'm going to guess I came up with the idea while reading Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin, which was a beautiful book, and really made my break from writing hard.  What I can remember, this poem kind of came about accidentally - I wrote down another idea I had, then had this idea, which I didn't intend on finishing at the moment, but the inspiration for it just caught me.  I need to work on some parts still, and give the format a bit more thought probably, but overall it's not a bad little poem.  Actually, technically I don't think it quite counts as an Ode, but the title really does catch the tone of things I think, so maybe it's just good enough.  Anyways, I'll quite rambling and leave you to the poem now, see you tomorrow with some more verses!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ode to a Rose
by Matthew Stalbaum

A rose, such things that stand
pretty, or prick,
but never at the same time;
Whose petals are want to hold close,
lean out, fall in a faint like handkerchiefs
-dainty for the sake of being dainty;
The source of many roselia:
Rose poems&Rose paintings&Rose perfumes,
fake roses (without enough sense
to die), bouquets smothered in green
leaflets for those Reds & Pinks to stand
like Princes, crowning over the rest;
There are those carnations that pose
for a while, passing poetry off
for only half the time.

I envy the last, lost, untouched rose
lying in some nameless wood, never to know
the plucking of hands, &eyes, &lips, never
to become a thing of wonder, only to be
a rose, a red flower unfurling its petals
to feel a bit more sun - in its time,
wilting, like a contented sigh,
soon to brown, crease, shrivel, die,
petals failing and falling, but to know
the Earth still, to rise again, another rose,
to know the Earth still.