how to write a poem that isn't edgy as fire trucks or not about nature?

[Phoenix Wright]

all in the title

[Junkhead]

Could you show me examples as to what you exactly mean? Also, what's wrong about a poem about nature? It's just nature running it's course!

[Sifer]

Write anything you want and claim it is in free verse. That is what I did in my high school poetry unit :) .

Edited October 22, 2013 by sifer

[Pull My Devil Trigger]

1.Get pen and paper

2.Write words that are not edgy as fuck or about nature

3.????

4.Profit

[Nightmare]

Go learn Arabic already and read poems by Arab poets.

[Ansem]

i took a

shit

smells so bad used

febreeze

still smells so

bad

easy

[Sifer]

write haikus, easy out

haikus are easy to form

and I am finished

so write a poem

needs not to be "edgy as fuck"

or about nature

sugar is the best

screw health and diabetes

live for candys now

are some examples, go with haiku's!

Edited October 22, 2013 by sifer

[Green Poet]

Not entirely sure what would be considered "edgy," but a comedic or socially critiquing piece might be within your tastes.

[Parrhesia]

uh

don't legit haikus have to be about nature

or dysentry

[dondon151]

dirty limericks

you could write about something that is natural but not about nature per se

[Knight]

Writing a positive, non-edgy poem is easier when you have positive thoughts. The important thing is you want to be in the right mood for the kind of poem you want to write. Also, when writing a poem, every word you write must be important, the way you hold rhythm is one of the most important things. Choose words that fit with the mood, and make sure you have a firm grasp on what you want to express or the message you want the audience to observe.

[Esme]

Here's an example of a non-edgy poem:

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I'll not be knowing;
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
No matter where it's going.

Edna is one of my favorite poets. :>

[Klokinator]

what a fucking nerd esme

[blyegg]

don't legit haikus

have to be about nature

or dysentry

Isn't that a haiku?

[Esme]

what a fucking nerd esme

OIL FUK U UP M8

[Karasz]

A friend of mine wrote a poem today. If it can serve as inspiration for you, I'll post it here.

Oh, the years I have spent longing for this day.

Or perhaps only moments, who is there to say?

In this land without time or sight or space,

I mourned even myself, a tiny disgrace.

That I should go first, ha, who knew?

Though of course not wishing such things upon you,

Perish that thought, that I’d wish you to linger instead.

But now it’s all perfect, now that you too are dead.

Selfish, I know, that’s what you’ll shout.

I should have endured this, with you or without.

To be virtuous, serene, I did try my best.

But now it is over, and together we can rest.

And no body shall ever disturb us, not a one.

And there’s no one to miss you, now that you’re gone

from that place, but there’s me, as there shall always be.

You’ll be ever so pleased, I’ve been good, can’t you see?

What keeps you there still? Has your soul not yet flown?

Death without you is a torture I’ve too long known.

Hurry up, hurry up! What’s keeping you, Dear?

I’d call after you, but I know you won’t hear.

Call it impatience? Fine, yes, yes, it’s true,

But there’s no life worth living in death without you.

You are not here yet, my love, but full to bursting I wait,

With all of my joy and none of my hate.

She admitted to me that she hadn't written anything poetic since 2009...but I still think this was damn good.

[shadowofchaos]

write haikus, easy out

haikus are easy to form

and I am finished

so write a poem

needs not to be "edgy as fuck"

or about nature

sugar is the best

screw health and diabetes

live for candys now

are some examples, go with haiku's!

我はレイ。

ワイフ王から、

負けないぞ。

write haikus, easy out

write(1) hai (2) kus (3), ea(4) sy(5) out(6)

Well now.

Edited October 22, 2013 by shadowofchaos

[Sifer]

Well now you know shadowofchaos, I was writing in free verse

write haikus, easy out

haikus are easy to form

and I am finished

*are some examples, go with haiku's!

See? I was talking about haikus in free verse in the first poem, no where does it state that I was writing in haiku

"are some examples, go with haiku's!"

*I meant examples of poetry in general.

Edited October 22, 2013 by sifer

[General Banzai]

fuck whatever yall motherfuckers been blabbing about

heres a fucking poem

turning and turning in the widening gyre

the falcon cannot hear the falconer

things fall apart; the center cannot hold

mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, and everywhere

the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, drowning

the ceremony of innocence. the best lack all conviction

while the worst are full of passionate intensity

surely some revelation is at hand

surely some second coming is at hand

the second coming! hardly are the words out

when a vast image out of spiritus mundi

troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand

a shape with a lion body and the head of a man

its gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun

is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

wind shadows of the indignant desert birds

the darkness drops again but now i know

twenty centuries of stony sleep were vexed to nightmare by the rocking cradle

and what rough beast, its hour come round at last

slouches toward bethlehem to be born?

[Thor Odinson]

Shakespeare wrote a bunch about how hot this guy was

Maybe you should do that

[Rewjeo]

Unless you have some like super conservative definition of edgy this is super easy. Here's a prose poem I wrote forever ago.

Help me, Muse. Make me a master weaver; give me yarn to wind into a royal web of tales. Give me words that drip like the icicles hanging from Christmas lights in February. Words that burn the paper they’re on once read. Words that endure like old boulders, like scattered, defective, misshapen misfits lying in the foundations of lost buildings.

Give me a voice that can tremble and burst, Muse. A voice that creaks like the door you have to sneak through. A voice that suffocates under its own whirling, whipping dreams. A voice that flies through the teeming mountains. A voice that dries souls.

Give me notes that can darken the sky and will the snow down from it. Notes that pop like wet fireworks in the cul-de-sac. Notes that laugh like cats in the bathtub.

Muse, let the words in my bed imprint themselves on my brain for everyone else to see. Let the morning light engulf the tapping keys after a night wasted well. Let the sunbaked waves climb the frigid mountains.

Muse, remind me of how to sleep in less time. Remind me of those streets where my soul was born. Remind me of the wild fibers of detached comfort. Remind me of the unraveling bodies. Remind me of the beautiful melodies, the unfaltering truth behind those words, Muse. Remind me.

Poetry is so much better read out loud than read in quiet.

[Rehab]

^So prose is just writing with an informal rhythm? Huh, all this time I had the idea that it was also without figurative language.

what definition of edgy are we working with exactly? I can't think of a whole lot of things less edgy than fire trucks

[General Banzai]

Unless you have some like super conservative definition of edgy this is super easy. Here's a prose poem I wrote forever ago.

Help me, Muse.

stopped here

ugh ugh ugh people need to shut the fuck up about muses already

[Da Bear]

^So prose is just writing with an informal rhythm? Huh, all this time I had the idea that it was also without figurative language.

what definition of edgy are we working with exactly? I can't think of a whole lot of things less edgy than fire trucks

Title originally said "fuck" but that's against the rules.

[Percivalé]

Think of a thing and then describe it as vaguely as possible while still creating an image in the mind. Describing the moon as "toothy," for example.

Alternatively, think of a thing and then write an image it reminds you of. So if firetrucks make you think of edginess (as an example), write about how you personally define edginess. You can make it as vague as you want as long as the image fits for you. Maybe practice with extended metaphors?

Try a sestina? Those can be about pretty much anything.

Or you could write about one of your friends while still keeping it ambiguous. The cool thing about poetry is that you can write it about inside things in your life as long as it is accessible to other people. Here's one of my favorite examples (warning: long)

the corgis of queen elizabeth
Diane Wald

on wednesday september 10th 2003 i was visiting my friend larry
who is chronically ill
larry knows everything about the corgis
and queen elizabeth
who now has five or six corgis
who mill about her feet and the feet of her dressmakers
and all the kings and queens before elizabeth
and he knows what the corgis have for breakfast
and he knows that they get fresh vegetables not raw
and they get turkey
in little silver bowls
cut up in little cubes not slices
and queen elizabeth serves them their meals herself
she had a favorite corgi named daisy
whom she buried somewhere on the palace grounds
with a little corgi funeral
and i do not mean to make fun of that
because i am happy she loved her corgi
but let’s be clear it does not always mean
that a person who loves a different kind of creature
is totally good
as i understand hitler loved canaries
and not to compare her to hitler
but queen elizabeth also indulges in hunting
and we all know about those presidential dogs

while larry is talking i’m thinking this is very fascinating
but i’m also watching the digital clock
over his shoulder
which displays hours minutes weather wind velocity
and alerts you whenever the airport closes in boston
if there are disasters of any kind
this is a very special clock
that he bought with part of the money that he received
from his suit against the massachusetts bay transit authority
occasioned by a trolley driver closing the door of the trolley
on his already painful foot
as part of his affliction is a dreadful neuropathy
to which he rarely refers
although that trolley incident really pissed him off
because the driver could have easily seen his crutches

he tells me the corgis have their own bedroom
next to the bedroom of queen elizabeth and prince philip
yes the queen does sleep with the prince even now
except on the nights when he’s out very late
and comes home after she has retired
when politely he goes and sleeps on a special princely bed
right in his dressing room
the corgis however always sleep in their own room
just next to the queen’s own queenly bedroom
and recently when a man
was somehow able to break into the palace
and walk boldly into the queen’s suite of rooms
finding the queen cloaked and crowned in terrycloth
as she had just taken her queenly evening bath
and was carrying her gin tray and a big yellow towel
the queen was most relieved that the corgis were not able
to get out of their bedroom
because she feared that they would have used
their little diamond-sharp teeth
to shred the silly man like turkey
so loyal and so fierce (but so sweet) are those corgis

and while larry is telling me about the queen and the corgis
and throwing in a lot of extra information about prince charles
and camilla and how camilla and her father
actually have suites of rooms in one of the royal buildings
where diana’s sons now live
i cannot understand how this can be true
but larry swears it is
in any case all this amazing information pours out of larry
in a way that i never would have believed possible
since he is normally a rather circumspect fellow
and while i’m watching the airport clock
over his right shoulder
i’m watching over his left shoulder
his tiny television
which for some unknown reason he has set to show captions
for the hard of hearing
they are showing newly released tapes from al qaeda
showing pictures of osama bin laden
or someone made up to look like osama bin laden
walking up and down the hillsides
somewhere
looking a lot like a shepherd
from the old testament
and underneath the captions are reading
“is it osama?
is it not osama?”
there is an investigation to try to find out
whether the tape is real or a hoax
and whether the soundtrack (or what shows on larry’s tv
as italicized captions) was added to the tape after the video
was shot and i’m thinking
what difference does that make
it doesn’t mean that it isn’t really osama
or even that it isn’t really
a shepherd from the old testament

and perhaps it’s all happening in cleveland or barcelona or honolulu
and not in afghanistan or iraq or hollywood
or any of the places we’re always being conditioned to think
are the only places anything of significance ever happens
when really everything is happening right here
right here with the corgis and queen elizabeth and larry
and the trolley driver and the lawyer who handled larry’s case
and the democratic presidential candidates
and the people who are sitting out on their stoops
just the way people did fifty years ago
on washington street in jamaica plain
but it’s right here and not twenty years ago or five years from now and

everything’s happening right here
right here where you hear or read this and make up your mind
about it
right here and right now and not anywhere else forever

here's one I wrote

I. Strawberries

The average strawberry has 200 tiny
seeds, meaning a strawberry is pregnant
200 times at once and I’m thinking,
how horrible must it be to be a strawberry
with 200 tiny babies all on your skin
and I imagine all of the lesions
on my own skin as I pick out all
of the strawberries in my limeade at the Village Inn
and proceed to pick out their seeds
and start to cry, and Amy stares at me
from across the table, her face bewildered
while the waitress fetches us our bill.

I actually have a whole list of prompts if you want any of them.

Edited October 22, 2013 by The Best SK