Creative Writing [was: Poetry & Lyrics]

oh, wow! you've been to some places in the US i've never even been. hmm, i don't think i've ever been to Vermont, but it would be awesome to be close to NYC!

Yeah - NYC for the trash and Montreal for the culture!

Seriously, I could probobly afford to live mortgage free in Vermont if I sell up in England - my brother is probably moving to Chicago but I don't want a mortgage.

A lot of Americans tell me I've seen more of their country that they have - I liked Arizona too.

haha. i've technically been to a good portion of the US, albeit when i was very young, and not so much the Eastern parts.

glad you liked Arizona-- i've always hated it, but i can admit there are a few decent parts.

i'm confused, you said you could live mortgage free in Vermont, but then you said your brother is moving to Chicago but you don't want a mortgage?

Houses cost more in Chicago compared to Vermont - I could go to Chicago and would need a mortgage, but I could buy something with land for cash in VT.

Does that make sense?

Where are you in AZ - I stayed in Tuscon and on Thunderbird in Phoenix for a bit in the erly 90s.

ohh, i see. yeah, well, are you considering Vermont, then?

you mean Tucson hah. Tucson is the nearest major metropolitan area from the Phoenix area, about 1.5- 2 hours to the South. i'm in the general Phoenix area. if you were on Thunderbird you were probably more in Phoenix than i am, right now i'm living in Scottsdale, technically Paradise Valley. The Valley has changed a lot since the early 90s!

Yeah maybe - I hope the summer makes up for the winter tho! Would be nice to be near NYC but not paying a fortune to live there.

Good property prices too - compared to England you get a lot for your money it seems.

What's the weather like in AZ at the moment - have you always lived there?

Steering this back on topic again

I am currently writing for an EP with my band, english is not my native language but i try my best haha. Kind of satisfied with this as a breakup song:

Heaven remains for few

You wore your famous red hat on the night we first met
You were standing with your friends round that table in the same old bar
The lights were dim inside and so were my mind with no place to go
We talked about things that no one but us would really care about
You told me a thing or two that I know I’m the only one to care about
You gave me you your number, told me things are fine give me a shout

I stick my neck out for nobody he said in that old movie that we used to see
I don’t know about you but I know about me you see she said
I want to leave the past behind could you please agree with me this time
Time moves to fast but we stole some nights that spring
The end of the beginning is a good thing to sing you said to me so sweet
And I did my best for you, I never what else to do

I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep
Birds will sing and you will be someone else´s everything
Seasons will change and winter will come even for tramps like us
Friends will call and talk about everything we want to forget
But the air will be free for you and me that’s one sure bet
You finally understood that I were up to no good

I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few

Steve70s wrote:

What's the weather like in AZ at the moment - have you always lived there?

hottest day yet this year- about 83 today. does not bode well for the summer. i've pretty much lived here my entire life, with the exception of a couple years in CA/OR.

It's 44 here today - when I was in phoenix I seem to remember a storm dropping it from 110 to 85 in minutes - is that a figment of my imagination or does it happen?!

44 sounds great!

umm...that's not something that usually happens. i'm thinking that may have been in the summer, when we get monsoons, which is pretty much the only time of the year we get any storms. although, the last couple summers we've barely gotten any rainfall. i don't know if the monsoons usually drop the temperature that low, that quick, though.

I started a band with a friend of mine a few weeks ago. we've got 5 or 6 songs up. including the song "The Fall" that i posted on here and a cover of "We Did It When We Were Young" that we recorded last night. (I tried not to butcher the vocals

https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Blue-Sundays/232146410204252?sk=app_178091127385

Nice job! Really impressed with the layered vocals and that cool sounding keyboard part.
I shall like your band on facebook.
Also, here's another poem:

On the State Street Pier

Under the boardwalk
I shake the dust from my coat
And drift from visibility.
Something sprouts six legs beneath my shoes
And scuttles beneath the folds of the sea.
There's no one here
But there are things lingering behind the curtain
And figures forming within the mist.
The fins and backbone surface above the creases
And I can disappear.
I go out
Somehow I can feel the sound of a foghorn
Rattling between my ears.
Lanterns stretch across the bay.
I climb the iron framework of the wharf
And stow away onto the mast,
Sneak down the stairway,
And sleep in the shell of its rusty hull.
So now I'm here on the sand,
Navigating through a cloud of salty fog
When I see its smooth skin sink back under the waves,
So I go in after it
To separate my soul from yours.
And just when I slip under,
You pull me out again.

eremitapa wrote:

Steering this back on topic again

I am currently writing for an EP with my band, english is not my native language but i try my best haha. Kind of satisfied with this as a breakup song:

Heaven remains for few

You wore your famous red hat on the night we first met
You were standing with your friends round that table in the same old bar
The lights were dim inside and so were my mind with no place to go
We talked about things that no one but us would really care about
You told me a thing or two that I know I’m the only one to care about
You gave me you your number, told me things are fine give me a shout

I stick my neck out for nobody he said in that old movie that we used to see
I don’t know about you but I know about me you see she said
I want to leave the past behind could you please agree with me this time
Time moves to fast but we stole some nights that spring
The end of the beginning is a good thing to sing you said to me so sweet
And I did my best for you, I never what else to do

I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep
Birds will sing and you will be someone else´s everything
Seasons will change and winter will come even for tramps like us
Friends will call and talk about everything we want to forget
But the air will be free for you and me that’s one sure bet
You finally understood that I were up to no good

I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few

These lyrics are really good! I am constantly amazed at how well so many people speak and write English as a second (or third) language. You did a great job! I only noticed a couple of very minor grammar points:

Quote :

The lights were dim inside and so were my mind with no place to go

Were should be was.

Quote :

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep

Quote :

You finally understood that I were up to no good

Same thing, were should be was. The English language can be extremely confusing sometimes!

I stick my neck out for nobody he said in that old movie that we used to see
I don’t know about you but I know about me you see she said
I want to leave the past behind could you please agree with me this time
Time moves to fast but we stole some nights that spring
The end of the beginning is a good thing to sing you said to me so sweet
And I did my best for you, I never what else to do

This entire verse is fantastic! I can picture this guy and this girl having a conversation, and the way he ends it, saying that he did his best, that's very touching.

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep
Birds will sing and you will be someone else´s everything
Seasons will change and winter will come even for tramps like us
Friends will call and talk about everything we want to forget
But the air will be free for you and me that’s one sure bet
You finally understood that I were up to no good

This is my other favorite verse. I loved the tramps like us part (a nod to Bruce I'm guessing?), and the way you ended it with the guy saying he was up to no good. It's a classic story and you told it very, very well. Excellent job!

@eremitapa your lyrics are better than some artists who have spoken english their whole lives!

"I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few"

That's my favorite part. I'm really impressed by how the meaning and symbolism of the song can come through. You must have a pretty strong grasp on the language to pull that off

DeathoftheCool wrote:

On the State Street Pier

Under the boardwalk
I shake the dust from my coat
And drift from visibility.
Something sprouts six legs beneath my shoes
And scuttles beneath the folds of the sea.
There's no one here
But there are things lingering behind the curtain
And figures forming within the mist.
The fins and backbone surface above the creases
And I can disappear.
I go out
Somehow I can feel the sound of a foghorn
Rattling between my ears.
Lanterns stretch across the bay.
I climb the iron framework of the wharf
And stow away onto the mast,
Sneak down the stairway,
And sleep in the shell of its rusty hull.
So now I'm here on the sand,
Navigating through a cloud of salty fog
When I see its smooth skin sink back under the waves,
So I go in after it
To separate my soul from yours.
And just when I slip under,
You pull me out again.

I have chills! Wow, this is good. Really good! I love the dark atmosphere of this poem and I bet you have a pretty intense story to go along with it. Great poems usually do. The imagery you gave was fantastic, I honestly felt like I was back in CA, standing on the beach alone in the cold, foggy air, disappearing from the world.

I found everything about this poem to be very powerful, but those last five lines, they took my breath away. Especially "To separate my soul from yours". The emotion in those words is almost unbearably strong. I love this so much. Great job, Matt!

I do have a story about this! The story is, i had a dream about being a stowaway a long time ago, but it was one of the coolest dreams ever. and then i combined that from when i was walking on the beach in santa barbara on this most recent new years eve. it was super foggy and my grandma went to the hospital early that morning cuz she had stomach pain (she's fine now), but it was hella scary so i was just kinda getting over that. so this poem is about walking on the beach when it was MEGA foggy, seeing a dolphin really close to the shore, waiting to hear back from this girl i had been talking with at the time, and being pretty confused. that's why the poem's so serious. ah, santa barbara

It's so great that you could incorporate so many different events into one poem. Sometimes I have a hard time doing that. It's like I get tunnel vision and can only write about one story at a time. That last poem I posted, "Two Arcs", that one was about an entire school year, but usually it's a difficult thing for me to accomplish. You did it so masterfully!

I'm so glad that your grandma is okay now. It's scary when people close to you are sick like that. Sometimes serious situations can bring about some amazing works of art though, like in this case. Very impressive!

Ooh i never gave you any feedback on two arcs

"We were two arcs of a circle
Never meant to meet
Out of sight but not mind
Shadows of faded smiles color my memory"

That final stanza is my favorite. Kinda pulls away from the rest of the poem to give it a really descriptive ending. Like the rest of it was setting the scene for those lines ^
Were those ghosts in the willows the same ones Brian saw in Ladykiller?

Haha, Ladykiller was part of my inspiration for that line (duh! ), along with a conversation I had while taking a walk in the woods with a friend back in high school about ghosts and spirits and meaningful stuff like that. For some reason that conversation has stuck with me all these years.

I'm glad you thought the final stanza was set apart a little from the rest of the poem. That's what I had intended while I was writing it, because that's how the end of the school year that inspired that poem felt to me. A lot changed in the last few weeks and I kind of had an epiphany, realizing that a close friend of mine (I had had a major crush on him for months) was never going to be more than that, and I accepted it. Now when I look back, that whole year seems really sweet and innocent to me, full of good times, but there is a hint of remorse too, for what was never meant to be.

Edit: The "classic cars and drive in screens" in my poem may have been the same ones Brian dreamed about too. I love that line about classic cars and movie screens from OWL!

IrishNameAndAnInjury wrote:

eremitapa wrote:

Steering this back on topic again

I am currently writing for an EP with my band, english is not my native language but i try my best haha. Kind of satisfied with this as a breakup song:

Heaven remains for few

You wore your famous red hat on the night we first met
You were standing with your friends round that table in the same old bar
The lights were dim inside and so were my mind with no place to go
We talked about things that no one but us would really care about
You told me a thing or two that I know I’m the only one to care about
You gave me you your number, told me things are fine give me a shout

I stick my neck out for nobody he said in that old movie that we used to see
I don’t know about you but I know about me you see she said
I want to leave the past behind could you please agree with me this time
Time moves to fast but we stole some nights that spring
The end of the beginning is a good thing to sing you said to me so sweet
And I did my best for you, I never what else to do

I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep
Birds will sing and you will be someone else´s everything
Seasons will change and winter will come even for tramps like us
Friends will call and talk about everything we want to forget
But the air will be free for you and me that’s one sure bet
You finally understood that I were up to no good

I don’t want to break this to you
But heaven remains for few
Heaven still remains for few

These lyrics are really good! I am constantly amazed at how well so many people speak and write English as a second (or third) language. You did a great job! I only noticed a couple of very minor grammar points:

Quote :

The lights were dim inside and so were my mind with no place to go

Were should be was.

Quote :

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep

Quote :

You finally understood that I were up to no good

Same thing, were should be was. The English language can be extremely confusing sometimes!

I stick my neck out for nobody he said in that old movie that we used to see
I don’t know about you but I know about me you see she said
I want to leave the past behind could you please agree with me this time
Time moves to fast but we stole some nights that spring
The end of the beginning is a good thing to sing you said to me so sweet
And I did my best for you, I never what else to do

This entire verse is fantastic! I can picture this guy and this girl having a conversation, and the way he ends it, saying that he did his best, that's very touching.

We took no leap and i were never really yours to keep
Birds will sing and you will be someone else´s everything
Seasons will change and winter will come even for tramps like us
Friends will call and talk about everything we want to forget
But the air will be free for you and me that’s one sure bet
You finally understood that I were up to no good

This is my other favorite verse. I loved the tramps like us part (a nod to Bruce I'm guessing?), and the way you ended it with the guy saying he was up to no good. It's a classic story and you told it very, very well. Excellent job!

Thank you! Will post more, some day I wlll get the hang of all the strange things in the english language haha. And yes totally a Bruce-thing, but I like that word anyways

DeathoftheCool wrote:

Nice job! Really impressed with the layered vocals and that cool sounding keyboard part.
I shall like your band on facebook.
Also, here's another poem:

On the State Street Pier

Under the boardwalk
I shake the dust from my coat
And drift from visibility.
Something sprouts six legs beneath my shoes
And scuttles beneath the folds of the sea.
There's no one here
But there are things lingering behind the curtain
And figures forming within the mist.
The fins and backbone surface above the creases
And I can disappear.
I go out
Somehow I can feel the sound of a foghorn
Rattling between my ears.
Lanterns stretch across the bay.
I climb the iron framework of the wharf
And stow away onto the mast,
Sneak down the stairway,
And sleep in the shell of its rusty hull.
So now I'm here on the sand,
Navigating through a cloud of salty fog
When I see its smooth skin sink back under the waves,
So I go in after it
To separate my soul from yours.
And just when I slip under,
You pull me out again.

The ending is so good, really like the overall mood totally takes you away to places from your own memories.

Hey guys- cool thread. It's nice to know there's people who still care about poetry.

Just thought I'd give myself a little plug. Just recently I was chosen as DePaul University's "Poet Representative" for the Chicago Citywide Poetry festival. There's gonna be a free reading on April Fifth at Columbia College so if you're in the area come on down!

Wow, that's awesome, Jay! Congratulations! That's a huge honor. If you'd like to post some of your poetry here, I would love to read your work.

Jay wrote:

Hey guys- cool thread. It's nice to know there's people who still care about poetry.

Just thought I'd give myself a little plug. Just recently I was chosen as DePaul University's "Poet Representative" for the Chicago Citywide Poetry festival. There's gonna be a free reading on April Fifth at Columbia College so if you're in the area come on down!

Wow that's great, congratulations! Would love to read some to.