The Campaign Builder's Guild

I had the roots of some of this in my head and I decided to write it down before I forgot.  These are all from real-life experience.  I got the courage to post from Sectarian Pineapple/Salacious Angel/whatever-the-hell-his-name-is-these-days.  And I feel like I can trust you guys, besides, there are no names mentioned, so no one's privacy is violated.  They really have nothing to do with gaming, but really, neither do his.  I wanted to put them somewhere where someone would read them.

Falling In Love

I saw your eyes:
You rounded the corner and I saw your eyes.
They were beautiful eyes.
I saw in them a likeness
to myself;
A pain, and yet a joy.
I saw a beauty
that was invisible.
I saw love.

You sat down next to me,
We spoke.
Your voice was as beautiful
As your eyes.
We sat there in the theater
Before rehearsal
Talking,
Just talking.
We arranged to meet tomorrow.

We met and talked and laughed
We ate together.
We shared the company
Of all the company,
And yet we were alone.
After rehearsal
I waited with you
For your punctuality-
Inconstant mother.

Next night I waited
again with you;
We embraced, I looked in your eyes
And I saw love.
Hesitant I moved forward,
Stopped, moved forward,
Waited, moved forward,
Stopped, waiting for resistanceâ,¬'
Then I kissed you.

We Are, We Arenâ,¬,,¢t

â,¬Å"It went too fastâ,¬Â you said
And I agreed.
Three days was much too quick
And after another week . . .  

So we agreed to be â,¬Å"just friends.â,¬Â
I was a little hurt
Because I wanted more,
But starved for any morsel I could get,
Agreed immediately.

We never were â,¬Å"just friends;â,¬Â
We fooled ourselves to think we were.
We wore the Platonic mask
While knowing we belonged to one another.

I got on the plane
Having pledged myself to you;
Not to look at another girl
Not that I wanted to.

I came back to us
But you were set to leave.
And so I took you for two days
Of still-masked love
Between us.

Or was it love?
You were never sure.
I was, and I told you so.
At night until four in the morning
On the phone.

You never were sure
If what you felt was love,
But we both cried that night
And pondered its absurdity;
Weâ,¬,,¢d spent a month apart,
Why was a week impossible?

When you came back
We were lovers
For the last two
Glorious weeks of summer.
But school came round the bend
That fell devil of institution
Sent to rip us apart.

We never recovered
From the evils of education.
We were forced to be apart
Too much for what little love
You had with certainty.
It now gave way to apathy.
You said weâ,¬,,¢d still be â,¬Å"friends.â,¬Â

Separationâ,¬,,¢s Revelations

I donâ,¬,,¢t know what happened
We said that weâ,¬,,¢d be friends
And I did my best as friend to you.

When our paths would cross
Iâ,¬,,¢d stop and wait for you
So we could talk of classes and life, too.

And then one day you glared at me
As I handed back your water,

â,¬Å"Get to classâ,¬Â you nearly yelled at me
When I had to leave your side.

From your circle of friends excluded me
You closed me off that morning

And when I asked if you were angry
You said you didnâ,¬,,¢t want to see me.

I donâ,¬,,¢t know what I did
I want to make it right
If I must leave your side
For good then from you
I will hide.

It pains me to not see you,
But your pain at seeing me
Compels me to obey you;
Your pain also pains me.

I sit here quiet,
Obedient.
Pained and confused,
But obedient.

I love you still.
It may do me no good.
But Iâ,¬,,¢ve come to see that love
Does not care about pain
If it is true.

Love has no conditions.
As soon as they are writ
Love becomes a warâ,¬'
A strategy.
Love should be congenial
All loversâ,¬,,¢ sins are venial
Forgiveness is not menial
But comes with the territory.

So I hold for you no malcontent;
Instead my love as recompense,
Undeserved, but present nonetheless.
Want it or not, itâ,¬,,¢s packaged and sent.

And in my new state of mind
I sent you a letter.
Typed on the phone
The feelings of a tortured
But forgiving soul.

I did not understand
How you had come to hate me.
But it didnâ,¬,,¢t matter;
I could not hate you back.

The next day you smiled and waved at me.

Very nice.

You're a good poet, you should write more.

Damn straight!  Reminds me of my own romantic woes, when I was your age.

Hold on...

I'm younger than you.

But oh, the perils of the ephebic brood!  Clasped twixt the succour of youthful fantasy and dream's aged dissolution... the best fucking years of my life.  I remember well my own first love, and that memory yet burns...

Ahem.  I digress.  This is some awesome stuff, Seraph.  It's achingly honest and unconceited, and it echoes a near universal human experience.  It's amazing how poignant the most simple of heart-driven works can be.

I'm glad my own writing motivated you to post, dude.  If you have more, do show.

Thanks.  Yeah, I used free verse to express myself without being tied to a meter or rhyme.  It felt more truthful that way.  

Nothing else at the moment.  If I am inspired, though, I will be sure to post.

Thankfully, your free verse actually sounds like poetry.  A lot of people attempting free verse end up making stunted, grammatically disfigured prose that just... sucks.

'Tis good.

I have to say that some of it rings sour with the closeted cynic in me, though. Not that that's a bad thing.

What exactly do you mean?  "It rings sour with the closeted cynic" in you.  What rings sour, and how so?  Of what are you cynical?

Aaaaaah!  Watch out, beejazz begrudges our youth and the pleasures of our naiveté!

Well, I'm as young as any here. I'm just one of those people who's born old and cantankerous, I guess.

Quote from: beejazzWell, I'm as young as any here. I'm just one of those people who's born old and cantankerous, I guess.

Ah, aren't we all?

Quote from: beejazzWell, I'm as young as any here. I'm just one of those people who's born old and cantankerous, I guess.

Oh, poor love-deprived beejazz.  One day you shall share our pining pain.  One day you will see those eyes.  Hear that voice.  One day you will know love and know divinity.  And you will know anguish.  Open your doors beejazz, and step out into a world that holds infinitely more than that cramped closet; closed completely to the fountains of effervescent experience exemplified by the eccentricities of love.

Sorry, went off on a tangent there.

Sokay.

Anyway... problem is I know these things. Like gollumn... I hates them but I wants them. They are... precious to me.

lol

eugh

Do you know them or merely know of them?
If you've been hurt before, you don't really want anything to do with it again.  Until you fall in love again.  Then it's like a drug; you can't get enough.

The thing that seems strange but wonderful to me is that, while she does not seem to want anything to do with me, and she has in one form or another broken my heart a total of three times, I love her still.  In a different way than I used to, but I love her nonetheless.  

This is weird, talking about this to people I only know through the internet.  

Don't I know that...

And you know what can be worse than having someone screw with your heart?  Screwing with someone else's heart...

My conscience still smarts from the emotional beating I gave myself over what I did to my ex.  Not nice stuff.  But at least now I know the darkness of my own heart.

(As though that were some consolation)

Just remember kids, in the heart of every man there lurks an asshole.

And in every asshole, a heart... What? (image of some poor fool with a still beating heart shoved up his ass and a doctor with a concerned and confused look on his face)

Anywho, I loved the poetry. It reminds me a lot of the V for Vendetta love poetry (from the comic) that Codename V sends during the third act.

Quote from: Seraphine_HarmoniumDo you know them or merely know of them?
If you've been hurt before, you don't really want anything to do with it again.  Until you fall in love again.  Then it's like a drug; you can't get enough.

The thing that seems strange but wonderful to me is that, while she does not seem to want anything to do with me, and she has in one form or another broken my heart a total of three times, I love her still.  In a different way than I used to, but I love her nonetheless.  

This is weird, talking about this to people I only know through the internet.  

Hah, I know what you mean...

But surprisingly, the CBG is a nice place for it.  A very receptive, compassionate, intuitive community.  It's a place where we're received not only as gamers, but as humans.  That's the main reason I'm over here rather than Wizards: where else can I talk about... oh, just about anything, and have an audience?

Yeah, it's a lot better here.  I don't think there's even anywhere on Wizards where you could discuss these sorts of things, much less anyone I'd want to discuss them with.

as to the assholeness, I know about that too.  I once made a total jerk out of myself to a girl after she broke up with me.  (This is a different girl, she inspired me to write too-but not poetry)  Then I found out that her friend was having suicidal thoughts and her parents were divorcing among numerous other conditions.  Yeah . . . I felt like a total ass.  

Another poem.  Not my best work, just something I made up playing with words and word endings

Gibberish

I pine
At thine
Sign
Which in truth â,¬Ëtis mine;
Resign!
Entwine
Design
Divine
To govern swine.
Dine
With them you malign
Brine
That hath no shine
Of your own.  Fine
Day to whine
For nine
Hours straight the vines
Donâ,¬,,¢t climb
The way that you incline.

Untruth!
Nay, forsooth
A tooth
Was lost by idiot most uncouth:
A youth
Bit open a bottle of vermouth.

Valorâ,¬,,¢s
Color
Fades with dolor,
Solar
Dignity; controller.
 
My happiness
May soon regress
To mend the mess
Of my excess.
It doth depress
The smooth caress
Of stiff compress
That my wounds dress;
So press,
Duress,
And stress,
Princess.
Please bless
Me with your loveliness
But I digress
And see now less,
Oh my curse to be reckless
My vision fades to nothingness.
My jealousness
And avarice
That I express;
My clumsy guess
Should not impress;
Death has finesse.

i think im gonna cry...
your form and structure is very unique, it doesn't necessarily rhyme, but it isnt hard on the tongue or chppy either, like a stream of consciousness almost. really excellent. i wish i had the courage to post stuff like that :(

god school ruins everything! i know where you're coming from dude....
you've inspired me
everyone says im a good writer maybe i should try my hand at fiction or poetry....;)

Har... "very unique." I still flinch on hearing that.

A thing is either one of a kind or it isn't... being more one of a kind, what are you then? Two of a kind? Eight of a kind? Come to think of it, they should have a word for that:OCTIQUE!

Win.

Yeah.

Uh...

What was I talking about?

I must admit I didn't really like that one. The second half is good, but not so much the first.  Your ability to string sequences of rhyming words is to be commended, however.

Quote from: beejazzUh...

What was I talking about?

i would ask the same question. fine, in your sense of the word, his prose is quite distinctive, a plaintitive cry to the hearts and minds of us, the young souls of this bereaved world, lost through the death of a thousand blooming and yet wilting relationships, antiquities of our mortal souls.


Erm...i don't know where that came from hehe

Quote from: DecoherenceI must admit I didn't really like that one. The second half is good, but not so much the first.  Your ability to string sequences of rhyming words is to be commended, however.

I don't care for it as much either.  It was more to excercise my creative mind than anything else.  It lacks meaning.  The only inspiration was a whim after going through a similar activity orally.  The middle is crap.  The beginning is ok.  The end is probably as good as it could be, lacking a purpose.

I would actually hesitate to call Gibberish poetry.  It's more just strings of clever verbage.

A Poem for Poetryâ,¬,,¢s Sake

Devoid of mind I try again to write
And struggle on to find the proper term
My task, illusionâ,¬'only to my sight
For no one else is looking, all are firm
In their removal from myself
And hold me with contempt upon a shelf.

I rage and fume and wonder why my poems
Should not deserve the same respect as theirs;
I write nigh twice as many in my tome
As those donâ,¬,,¢t read mine with any care.
And yet refusal to acknowledge gift
They have for me and thus create this rift.

It makes me mad!  I try again to write,
My struggle all the more unfeasible
Why do no words come to my vision bright,
To pierce the darkness impenetrable?
Words, come to me!  Approach and bow your head
To my unbounded will, thereâ,¬,,¢s something to me said.

What, you ask?  Such insolence, how dare you?
Though now I think, I know not what to say.
So sure was I in my unyielding view
To write, blind to lack of purpose; use,
What reason thus, to write?  To prove I can.
I poem for sake of poems, why, how bland!

No more!
No longer shall I write
To say I did,
Instead I write because I have a reason.
And is not reason better, fuller, stronger
Than mere entropy?
Better than for pride?

I think it is.  I think Iâ,¬,,¢ve come to know
Why others saw my poems with disregard.
For I now seem them with the same disgust
They have no meaning,
Have no heart,
No soul,
Empty.

But I shall fill them yet!
Perhaps these poems are rather beyond help.
I find they have no opening,
No place to fill them, what a shame.

But now I know in any case
The error of the my vanity
That hid the beauty from my sight
That so more than what I wrote deserved my poetry.

And yet a poemâ,¬,,¢s purpose is not beauty
Nor cleverness
Nor description,
But a deeper truth.
I have come to know a deeper truth.
What is it?
Thatâ,¬,,¢s a story for another day;
Another poem.

Never stop writing.  Embrace that deeper truth.

That is all I have to say.

Eternally Affected

In the end, none of it matters.
That you broke my heart,
That I cannot see you;
The effect of your affect long gone
Affects me nonetheless.

The sight of you enthralled me once,
Your slave I was from then on out.
I never have retreated since
Iâ,¬,,¢ve always loved you without doubt.

Iâ,¬,,¢ve never seen an imperfection
Though youâ,¬,,¢ve said youâ,¬,,¢re rife with them.
Any time with your attention
Is a heaven; I am blessed.

My thoughts revolve around you day and night
More than you can possibly know.
I know that you donâ,¬,,¢t see in me
What I canâ,¬,,¢t help but see in you,
But still I love you helplessly,
Lost in the intoxication
Of that first sight,
That first word
All was light
I am a bird.

I fly on wings unseen
Above the clouds that hide you from my sight.
Those clouds are of your making,
Make me plummet ever downward
Still exulted, now I see you
As the clouds I leave behind.

Falling is a kiss.
Itâ,¬,,¢s true; they say endorphins
Work the same with either one.
The thrill is just the same,
Just as my love is just the same.
So as I fall to meet my doom from love of you
I kiss you
And all is wonderment.

I see you there
From far away
And remember what we used to be
I watch you move so gracefully;
Your every step a dance,
And I think of when you used to dance with me.
And in the pain I fall,
I kiss,
I love eternally,
Falling,
Ever falling
Downward in a sky that never ends.
My paradise the very thought of you,
The endless kiss of my love
Enveloping me in a haze where all is pure.

Venus

Your beauty today
Beyond your perpetual
Inspired me thus to divulge
My admiring wonder.

Ah, exquisite Irony!
What perfect choice of term
That you should look like sunset
On the sunset of our love.

Oh, happy curse!
My thoughts are you.
Your thoughts are anything but me.
I am pain and joy.

Ah, exquisite Irony!
Such is my predicament
That I should love Love herself
And Love should not love back.

The Mask

Do you wear the mask that grins and lies?
Of course you do.  Deny it not.
Each day is lived out in disguise,
Deceitful at a steady trot.

Though we met some years ago
Iâ,¬,,¢ve never truly known you.
The absurdity of synthetic ego
That permeates our daily view

Itâ,¬,,¢s normal, yet unnatural
How did it become so?
It all comes down to folderol
To exist incognito.

For that is what we really are
When we together tread
Ourself is naught but an elaborate visor
Our honesty is dead.

And how sweet irony reveals
The art of masking most auspicious
To mask the mask unmasks the real
How virtuous to be capricious!

For those unyielding most concealing
Desperately show off consistent.
But those who truly are sufficient
Need no more than truthful feeling

The mask of truth destroys the mask of lies
And leaves no falsehoodâ,¬,,¢s façade to despise.

Infection

O, Justless and merciless
Merit-lacking, and ruthless
Driving men to madness
Cower, dour, and sour,
It vexes vexation
Destroys destruction
Deceives deception
So massive is its painful, pleasant power.

Senseless, capricious;
Cruelly facetious
Fury and frustration
Are its mere sustention
A will-oâ,¬,,¢-wisp;
Venomous asp
Arduous, torturous
Envious all the same
Pernicious, malicious
Playing itâ,¬,,¢s nigh sadistic game.

Wordless,
It evades description.
Sightless,
It evades recognition.
Why must we be plagued with this coy, dishonest dove
That strength and purpose fall away to brute, oppressive love?

Hmm... I can't say I'm much of a poetry critic, but since you were just pimpin' it in the Tavern, I'll post a few quick thoughts on those last few poems.

I enjoyed how the last poem more or less avoided rhymes right up until the last two lines, then broke out "love" and "dove" to end it. That added some nice emphasis to the final lines.

On the flip side, the second stanza of "Eternally Affected" had an apparently unintentional rhyme with "out" and "doubt." Have that second stanza rhyme when none of the others did was a bit off-putting. (On the plus side, I really enjoyed "The effect of your affect long gone/ Affects me nonetheless." There's some literary term for word use of that sort, and I like it, especially the way it was used here.)

EDIT: My long streak of stupid posts to start off a new page continues! What good is the top post of a page when it's referring to previous posts, none of which are on the new page?

QuoteHmm... I can't say I'm much of a poetry critic, but since you were just pimpin' it in the Tavern, I'll post a few quick thoughts on those last few poems.

I enjoyed how the last poem more or less avoided rhymes right up until the last two lines, then broke out "love" and "dove" to end it. That added some nice emphasis to the final lines.

Glad you like it.  But actually, there's more rhyme in it than that: "Merciless . . . ruthless", "sour . . . power," and based on how you pronounde capricious (-ish-us or -eesh-us), it can rhyme with facetious.  There are also several off-rhymes.

QuoteOn the flip side, the second stanza of "Eternally Affected" had an apparently unintentional rhyme with "out" and "doubt." Have that second stanza rhyme when none of the others did was a bit off-putting. (On the plus side, I really enjoyed "The effect of your affect long gone/ Affects me nonetheless." There's some literary term for word use of that sort, and I like it, especially the way it was used here.)

. . . diction?  Or are you referring to the affect and effect sounds?

I was referring to the use of "affect" and "effect," two different words that have the same pronounciation, so close together, actually.

Oh, I see.  I don't know what that's called. Besides just sound repetition.

I suppose that would be called assonance, although in most definitions of the word that only counts if both the vowel syllables are stressed.

EDIT: And possibly some kind of "vocalic alliteration".

The girl series was poignant and heart-rending. Universal truth is a powerful message.

I enjoyed the others as well, with the exception of Infection.

To a Girl Named Love

Run little girl,
Run as fast as you can;
Your troubles are right at your heels.

Run little girl,
Run away from the man;
Time ticks away, the bell peals.

Run little girl,
Run and hide in the past;
The future is for the bold.

Run little girl,
Run-you're alone at last;
Shun love as men should be cold.

Run little girl,
Run and cover your ears;
So you won't hear what they say.

Run little girl,
Run with frivolous fears;
Push those who love you away.

Ouch! How harsh of you. Well put, though.