Original Poetic Just Us

This is the first actual poem I've written in, well, a long time. And it's really more in a rap!

Spoiler: Technical stuff about meter for the English majors out there

The first four stanzas are in dactylic hexameter (X x x X x x, X x x X x x) (this is an energetic meter that really started with old Greek epics and fits well in rap, though I think I broke it on "unleashed" in the third stanza)). The next two are in trochaic tetrameter (X x X x X x X x) (tetrameter because that's easy to fit in most music, trochaic for the melancholy turn), while the next two are iambic tetrameter (x X x X x X x X) (iambic this time for the heartbeat and optimism of that meter), and if I ever perform this then the beat behind it will adapt to the change of time signature as well with these meter changes. The last two stanzas are again dactylic hexameter, this time mostly ending in an free beat anceps.

Can I get a 6/8 beat? *ahem*


(dactylic x6)
Rising from nothing and striving for growing cause,
fighting my weakness and smashing all that I was.

Waging war on my self: empty shell, withered husk.
Training long, growing strong, every day, dawn to dusk.

Shackles are dropped now unleashing me I'm set free,
all in the game never minding the pain in me.

Choosing my training my body is ready for
anything given I vow to always take more.

(dramatic pause in the music as the beat changes to a slow 4/4)

(trochaic x4)
Self-reduction, my destruction.
Ages past I barely functioned.

Torch passed to me by my hero:
it's from in me, I am Zero!

(iambic x4)
And I will find the will to rise.
My self I edit and revise!

I climb and grow, reach my ascent,
I'll fight me at hundred percent!

(beat changes back to a fast 6/8)

(dactylic x6)
Banish my meekness and replace my weaknesses.
All my improvement, completeness, and geniuses!

Exit the shadow and into the penumbra!
Hear these words, nemesis! Go Beyond: Plus Ultra!

 

I love this poem, too! Even though I resist the urge, I couldn't help but chant it out loud. It's just so catchy! Also, yes, I found the anime reference because it just felt kind of strange that you'd choose those last words.

 

Some further notes about my work above: I think I didn't make it clear that part of the story about it is that my nemesis is me of the past. I used to be a villain (specifically I used to be Chaotic Evil while under the impression that I was Lawful Good, which is a terrible person to be (btw I don't know what I am now and I make no assumptions of myself, but I'm trying to be a true hero)), and I used to be weak in many, many ways (which somehow makes me a powerful villain against myself). So my nemesis as mentioned in the last line is me. I was deliberately mimicking All Might's line near the end of My Hero Academia S1, speaking to his equal-and-opposite foe: "Hey villain, have you ever heard these words? Go Beyond, Plus Ultra!" as he gives more than his all for the people who need it (in my case, I'm the one who needs it: I am my hero, my villain, and my distressed damsel). There's also my mention of receiving a sacred torch as All Might says to his protege (except in my case, I'm giving myself the torch), and his declaration to his foe that "If you can withstand me at 100% then I'll force you to surrender from beyond that!". The same way that All Might is fighting his own injury and weakness and self-doubt at times, I'm fighting against every bad thing in me. I am so inspired by All Might, I am even smiling more and I personally credit him with pushing me to be less of a waste of carbon than I used to be.

Also there was a quick "my body is ready" hiding in there.

I may re-write, edit, add, and even perform this poem as a rap at some point. I'm familiar with my voice though, and I won't make a good rapper: I sound too nice.

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@VicTheJolteon I like your second poem even more the first, and I think you're pretty close to getting it in meter. Most of what you wrote there is in iambic step (mostly, and what isn't is easily tweaked because you already have word choice that has nearly-alternating bounce), but you have inconsistent line length. If you want some 1-on-1 of how to make your meter and step count more of a consistent, prominent part of your poetry, throw me a PM. I used to hate it back in English Class, but once I started to associate it with fun things like rap battles and being a warrior poet, I was that much more motivated to pay attention to my meter (I even do it casually in conversation sometimes).

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@ChocoChicken The chanting was exactly what I wanted, especially since you didn't hear the rhythm and meter I put into it, but you felt it yourself! Hopefully, like I explained in the spoiler, the parts I labeled dactylic you chanted as (without literally shouting, just putting in more verbal stress) "SHOUT say say SHOUT say say", while trochaic was "SHOUT-say, SHOUT-say" and iambic was "say-SHOUT, say-SHOUT." If that's what you did, then I feel very accomplished for conveying my intended meters well. And even if not, I'm glad it made you feel something in the words!

Dactylic x6: RIS-ing from NOTH-ing and STRIV-ing for GROW-ing cause
Trochaic x4: SELF re-DUCT-ion MY de-STRUCT-ion
Iambic x4: i'll FIGHT me AT hun-DRED per-CENT

That's what I was going for, and hopefully what you found.

 

Spoiler: About this format

There's a short poem that really ignited my appreciation for prosody and meter while I was looking for something aside from Haikus to do. Check out this page, the Wikipedia article for Cinquain and its sample poem "November Night". That poem (be it slightly imperfect) holds a special place in my heart. So I wanted to eventually do something similar.

Long article short: A cinquain has five lines of specific syllable counts: two, four, six, eight, back to two. Bonus points (like in the Wikipedia example) if each line has half its total syllables being stressed or un-stressed. Bonus-bonus points if the stress pattern is consistent. I did this more reliably here than was done in that poem: I was consistently trochaic (up-down) throughout, while the example poem was inconsistent (up-down, down-up-up-down, etc).

This poem is inspired by a conversation I had with @flareon71 yesterday about me having a manufactured but philosophical existential crisis. For all you know: I'm a bot. Worse than that, can you prove that me posting and seeming to interact with you is more than a jumble of static that happened to form the bytes that resemble human word choices in a .txt format? Speaking of human speech patterns, here's a short sample of me reading this poem to further illustrate what I mean by stressed and un-stressed syllables. Or is it just another random assemblance of bytes that happens to be MP3-readable? Also a pretty clear illustration of why I'm not ready to rap my previous poem.

Static.
Random pulses.
Seeming human patterns,
shared hallucination I am:
not real.​