Poems (2 Viewers)

[Bellatrix]

Paul Éluard:

L'amoureuse

Elle est debour sur mes paupières
Et ses cheveux sont dans les miens,
Elle a la forme de mes mains,
Elle a la couleur de mes yeux,
Elle s'engloutit dan mon ombre
Comme une pierre sur le ciel.

Elle a toujours les yeux ouverts
Et ne me laisse pas dormir.
Ses rêves en pleine lumière
Font s'évaporer les soleils,
Me font rire, pleurer et rire,
Parler sans avoir rien à dire

(transl. by Samuel Beckett)

She is standing on my lids
And her hair is in my hair
She has the colour of my eye
She has the body of my hand
In my shade she is engulfed
As a stone against the sky
She will never close her eyes
And she does not let me sleep
And her dreams in the bright day
Make the suns evaporate
And me laugh cry and laugh
Speak when I have nothing to say

That's a shite translation, innit Brine?

 

[BC]

That's a shite translation, innit Brine?

i dont think it's too bad... though of course it is better appreciated in the original french.

 

[Bellatrix]

i dont think it's too bad... though of course it is better appreciated in the original french.

It's not a language snobbery thing.

I just think he kinda Beckified it.

 

[BC]

It's not a language snobbery thing.

I just think he kinda Beckified it.

no no, i did not wish to suggest so. i do agree that he beckified it, but its not that suprising.

 

[Bellatrix]

I didn't think you did.

I just think there's something very "myeeehhhhhsss" about giving out about translations.

 

[jane]

Is it okay to post some of our own work? I wrote some haiku about Jackie Healy Rae a while back:

I eat my dinner
in the middle of the day --
no Dubs in my house.

Pink man-sweat, stout stink
of tweed and long-sitted stools --
women: know your place.


The dual mandate
Big veins burst in fatter necks
Double Healy-Rae

I am a townland
Double-barrelled dynasty
Crown my son in tweed.


Jackie Healy Rae
Independent Fianna Fail
I am the Kingdom.

 

[therealjohnny]

 

[jane]

Thanks, dude. Jackie's proud, too.http://www.jackiehealyrae.com/

 

[Buzzo]

Spaceman,
I always wanted you to go
into
spaceman
Intergalactic cry.

 

[deedee]

These are my current faves and are usually accompanied by my toddler's hectic gesticulation.


Incy wincy spider climbed up the water spout,
Down came the rain and washed poor Incy out,
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain,
And Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout again.


Five little monkeys bouncing on the bed,
One fell off and hurt his head,
Mammy called the doctor and the doctor said:
"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Four little monkeys....and so on

 

[Raudi Raus Schinkel]

http://www.ivorcutler.org/audio/breasts.wav

 

[billygannon]

Another from Simon Armitage...

Poem

Frank O'Hara was open on the desk
but I went straight for the directory.
Nick was out, Joey was engaged, Jim was
just making coffee and why didn't I

come over. I had Astrud Gilberto
singing 'Bim Bom' on my Sony Walkman
and the sun was drying the damp slates on
the rooftops. I walked in without ringing

and he still wasn't dressed or shaved when we
topped up the coffee with his old man's Scotch
(it was only half ten but what the hell)
and took the newspapers into the porch.

Talking Heads were on the radio. I
was just about to mention the football
when he said 'Look, will you help me clear her
wardrobe out?' I said 'Sure Jim, anything.'

He's great.

 

[billygannon]

Carol Ann Duffy's Ann Hathaway (about Shakespeare's wife).

[SIZE=-1]'Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed ...'
(from Shakespeare's will)[/SIZE]
[SIZE=-1]
[/SIZE]
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover's words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his touch
a verb dancing in the centre of a noun.
Some nights, I dreamed he'd written me, the bed
a page beneath his writer's hands. Romance
and drama played by touch, by scent, by taste.
In the other bed, the best, our guests dozed on,
dribbling their prose. My living laughing love -
I hold him in the casket of my widow's head
as he held me upon that next best bed.

 

[billygannon]

Another from Carol Ann Duffy (the same collection - The World's Wife)

Mrs Icarus

I'm not the first or the last
to stand on a hillock,
watching the man she married
prove to the world
he's a total, utter, absolute, Grade A pillock.

 

[Charlie Bucket]

Late Fragment

And did you get whatyou wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

Raymond Carver

 

[Lord Damian]

would it be too student-y to post a Ginsberg poem here? what about Buk?


having the flu and
with nothing else to do
I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal
this seems to happen all too often.
what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being a young conservative to becoming an
old wild-ass radical
however:
young conservatives always seem to become old
conservatives.
it's a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock.
but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped from a mental
institution.
such is our politics and you can have it
all.
keep it. sail it up your
ass.

 

[Charlie Bucket]

Haiku

To Convey One's Mood
In Seventeen Syllables
Is Very Diffic

John Cooper Clarke

 

[MDR]

KPMG corporate anthem

KPMG - We're as strong as can be
ChorusKPMG -

We're as strong as can be,
A team of power and energy,
We go for the gold,
together we hold
Onto our vision of global strategy!

Repeat Chorus

We create, we innovate,
We pass the ones that are late
A global dream... this is our dream of success that we create.

We'll be number one, with effort and fun
Together each of us can run
For gold - that shines like the sun in our eyes.
Chorus x 2

The time is now to lead the way,
We share the same the idea
That may win by the end of the day.

Our strength is here to stay.
Identity, one energy,
One strategy, with sympathy.
These are the words that will lead us into a new world.

Chorus x 3

Kay-Pee-Emm-Geee - we got the power...Ooooh-oohh...

 

[Jim Daniels]

Triple J radio in Australia used this in a jingle..

My city of Sydney, I miss the warmth of you.
Miss the heart of your people,
That little church steeple ....in Woolloomooloo.


I used to love this from Soundings in the Leaving Cert..

The Tyrant
Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.
-W. H. Auden

 

[avernus]

would it be too student-y to post a Ginsberg poem here? what about Buk?


having the flu and
with nothing else to do
I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal
this seems to happen all too often.
what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being a young conservative to becoming an
old wild-ass radical
however:
young conservatives always seem to become old
conservatives.
it's a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock.
but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped from a mental
institution.
such is our politics and you can have it
all.
keep it. sail it up your
ass.

I love Ginsberg. or his poetry. not him. he was creepy.


Blandly mother
takes him strolling
by railroad and by river
--he's the son of the absconded
hot rod angel--
and he imagines cars
and rides them in his dreams,