Pressure took over after dark

I spent my time on things that were completely unnecessary and devilishly simple,

till I began to puzzle over my problem set at midnight, as the deadline day began.

My eyes rolled once or twice while scanning a page of tabulated values, retreating as if I was about to lie down and sleep. And yes, I was about to, till the question at hand dropped, and I stiffened, straining my eyes open. The work progressed at an iterative crawl. I turned my head upside down and shook, till the jammed information dispenser in my cortex spat out the right puzzle piece. And then, inch-high, giggling imps began emerging on my desk. Their retort to my overdrawn frown was a cacophony of shrieks. They slumped on my paper and sprawled out, breathless from their spasmodic laughter. My eyes flickered, and I began gawking at their neon robes. That one was azure, the other gold and pink. My eyelids slid over my view, and I rocked forward, and slumped on the desk.

The Lonely Castle

The crest of a spiral staircase

Open to the surrounding glen:

I call it my haven,

An observatory

But I come alone to this place.

Blankets of moss, in perfection,

Patch up where tread has worn

And weeping dew adorns

The whole fertile stone floor

With new nameless, constellations;

Unlike the city's aurora:

Glowing with corporate artifice

And neo-alchemists

Forging a shining life.

Though not one golden foot trod a

Fortress that was bloody rife

With the lives of men and mothers,

Gone from the castle

And their little soldiers and daughters.

These days, nature contrives.

I owe much of the credit for the writing of this poem to Andrew MacAnallen. He wrote the poem on which this one was based. However, I not only took inspiration from his poem, but some parts are roughly the same as the original- so I am going to call this a derivative work, not an original. You can read the original at the bottom of the poetry section of his blog: www.snappyrockets.webs.com

Compassion/Empathy

Edward Thomas was almost certainly bothered by the ongoing World War in his short time as a poet.  He was the writer of “The Owl”: the poem which shows his concern most clearly.  It is posted on the website below -

http://www.cordula.ws/poems/owl.html

  Empathy implies feeling another person’s emotion with them.  For example, creating empathy is part of storytelling, because our empathy towards the characters turns what could have been just a collection of drawn out descriptions into an emotional road trip.  Doesn’t compassion on the other hand imply feeling the need to take action for the sake of someone else?

Arts like music, movies, comics… all of it, are linked to empathy, but what part of us is about compassion?

Been There

We were all at the theatre

And queued up in the street;

Now showing “a romantic tragedy”.

But I walked by and back home

and so missed all the shows.

I knew already the hero was me.

Pushing Out Poetry

Attention! I want my worst poem penned
to at least keep in step with the reading tongue
and I hope that epiphanic momentum runs,

as fast as the shot from the starting gun,

to the end.

Few bellow out songs about our hardship,
Perfection is too great a goal for us!
Should we do that or better? Touch the hearts
of people, for only that is art.