Poems (1 Viewer)

[Anarcho Munk]

Endings


Things do not explode,
they fail, they fade,

as sunlight fades from the flesh,
as the foam drains quick in the sand,

even love's lightning flash
has no thunderous end.

it dies with the sound
of flowers fading like the flesh

from sweating pumice stone,
everything shapes this

till we are left
with the silence that surrounds Beethoven's head.


- Derek Walcott

 

[Scientician 0.8]

THE WAKE
1953
We snicked the latch where one was dead,
constrained by ancient courtesy;
the open coffin on the bed
shewed us the man we'd come to see.
We gave our greetings to the gloom;
I found a seat against the wall;
my wife was hustled to 'the room'
where women were foregathered all.
Since turf and wick gave feeble light,
the crouching shapes seemed much the same;
with anxious ear and questing sight
I sought to join each shape and name.
Of stock and weather was the talk,
of harvests fabulously great -
the distances men used to walk -
the dangers of our pampered state.
The one would rise and say good night,
and one who stood would take his chair;
the smoking turf would flicker bright
with each fresh gust of chilly air.
The suddenly the only sound
would be of crickets at the grate;
and James would reach and hand around
tobacco on a dinner plate.

 

[David Kronenbourg]

i'm a bit of a robert burns groove at the moment

Ae Fond Kiss

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu’ twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.

I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy:
Naething could resist my Nancy!
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met - or never parted --
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.


My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose

O, my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

 

[Scientician 0.8]

Eddi Reader does nice versions of both of those.

 

[Milker]

Dockery and Son

'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
You keep in touch with-' Or remember how
Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight
We used to stand before that desk, to give
'Our version' of 'these incidents last night'?
I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.
A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.
Canal and clouds and colleges subside
Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,
Anyone up today must have been born
In '43, when I was twenty-one.
If he was younger, did he get this son
At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms
With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows
How much . . . How little . . . Yawning, I suppose
I fell asleep, waking at the fumes
And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed,
And ate an awful pie, and walked along
The platform to its end to see the ranged
Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,
No house or land still seemed quite natural.
Only a numbness registered the shock
Of finding out how much had gone of life,
How widely from the others. Dockery, now:
Only nineteen, he must have taken stock
Of what he wanted, and been capable
Of . . . No, that's not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!
Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They're more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all we've got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a son's harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.

Philip Larkin

 

[snakybus]

really weird - I've recently been reading that poem over and over. It's absolutely amzing.

Whitsun Weddings is also pretty good

 

[Skrankio-X]

A Childish Prank

Man’s and woman’s bodies lay without souls,
Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert
On the flowers of Eden.
God pondered.
The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.
Crow laughed.
He bit the worm, God's only son,
Into two writhing halves.
He stuffed into man the tail half
With the wounded end hanging out.
He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman
And it crept in deeper and up
To peer out through her eyes
Calling its tail-half to join up quickly, quickly
Because O it was painful.
Man awoke being dragged across the grass.
Woman awoke to see him coming.
Neither knew what had happened.
God went on sleeping.
Crow went on laughing.



Ted Hughes

 

[snakybus]

Are we middle-aged now dude?

Perhaps also cos poets produce their best work when they've lived a bit.

Even if that were true I doubt it would be the reason. I think it's most likely because these poets are the established poets, and curriculum designers are unadventurous. Why teach poetry at all? Surely you want people to enjoy it, identify with it. Why not teach, I dunno, Morrissey lyrics (or whoever) - like something similar that's a little more relevant to their own experiences?* But about your first point - I think a person in his mid thirties is more likely to understand the poetry of a person in his 40s or 50s than a teenager is, definitely.

* Side note: A friend of mine who's an English teacher showed me a US-based text book once which was trying to do something like this by including pop song lyrics. In an effort to be racially inclusive, the two it chose were "Girls of the World" by Wil Smith/DJ Jazzy Jeff and "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen. Oh well.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity

John Cleese
(I think "plump as a manatee" is worthy of a Nobel prize)

 

[Moods For Mallards]

i'm a bit of a robert burns groove at the moment

Ae Fond Kiss

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, and then forever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.

Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,
While the star of hope she leaves him?
Me, nae cheerfu’ twinkle lights me;
Dark despair around benights me.

I’ll ne’er blame my partial fancy:
Naething could resist my Nancy!
But to see her was to love her,
Love but her, and love for ever.

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met - or never parted --
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.

Fare-thee-weel, thou first and fairest!
Fare-thee-weel, thou best and dearest!
Thine be ilka joy and treasure,
Peace, Enjoyment, Love and Pleasure!

Ae fond kiss, and then we sever!
Ae farewell, alas, for ever!
Deep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,
Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.


My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose

O, my luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' it were ten thousand mile!

A lovely bit of Ulster Scots there.

 

[Mormon Nailer]

On the non funny side, this too, I like.

I Knew a Woman



I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek.)

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin:
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing did we make.)

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved.)

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I'm martyr to a motion not my own;
What's freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways.)

T Roethke.

 

[Milker]

really weird - I've recently been reading that poem over and over. It's absolutely amzing.

Whitsun Weddings is also pretty good

tis

also



The Explosion

On the day of the explosion
Shadows pointed towards the pithead:
In thesun the slagheap slept.

Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke
Shouldering off the freshened silence.

One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.

So they passed in beards and moleskins
Fathers brothers nicknames laughter
Through the tall gates standing open.

At noon there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun
Scarfed as in a heat-haze dimmed.

The dead go on before us they
Are sitting in God's house in comfort
We shall see them face to face--

Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion

Larger than in life they managed--
Gold as on a coin or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them

One showing the eggs unbroken.

Philip Larkin

 

[Froog]

dingleberry

ah the humble dingleberry,
dangling like a bumbling cherry,
to see it dance it is so merry,
ah the humble dingleberry.

- Froog

 

[Froog]

skidmark

oh cheeky skidmark,
lurking like a kid shark,
waiting to smear,
the next persons rear.
i know i produced you,
and now i'll reduce you,
by flushing you down the bog,
to join your brother log.

- froog.

 

[Milker]

To Froog Or Not To Froog

You may have tried to raise the bar
Of forum quip qnd quibble
But Froog, that taunting avatar
Reduced it to a dribble
And damn if skidmarks do not alone
Leave a graze to ponder
Oh versing on his shitty throne
Of Froog I'm that bit fonder

 

[David Kronenbourg]

saw this on the tube t'other day. thought it was quite cool.

An orange upon the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Freshness of the night
Warmth of my life.

 

[Corey]

Good evening Ladies & Gentlemen.

I call this Poem "Reccession, Progression:"



cough.


ahem-hem...









"BRING BACK.

YELLOW-PACK."







Ai thank euw.

 

[Froog]

what's that smell?

what's that smell?
is it an egg?
what's that smell?
it's coming from my leg
what's that smell?
aha, i see ya
what's that smell?
tis only diarrhoea.


froog.

 

[Deadmanposting]

Nothing's written for any of us. The past is done and belongs to death. We own every minute after this.


Bertolt Brecht: "Everything Changes"

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.

 

[Deadmanposting]

Mary Oliver

Who else?