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.