*Poem of the day thread

[Donna Ferentes]

At Lord's

It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though my own red roses there may blow;
It is little I repair to the matches of the Southron folk,
Though the red roses crest the caps I know.
For the field is full of shades as I near the shadowy coast,
And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost,
And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host
And the run-stealers flicker to and fro,
To and fro:-
Oh my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!

- Francis Thompson

 

[Donna Ferentes]

An old favourite this one - he's still performing it as far as I know.


Contributory Negligence

(Intro:A poem I wrote seventeen years ago, when I was living in Harlow in Essex, but which is, sadly, just as relevant today. A High Court Judge called Judge Richards said that a woman who was hitch-hiking late at night and was picked up and raped was 'asking for it' and guilty of contributory negligence...)

Hitching up the M11
coming back from an Upstarts gig
got picked up 'bout half eleven
by this bloke in a funny wig...
Flash Mercedes, new and gleaming
deep pile suits and deep seat piles
I got in and sat there scheming
while the dickhead flashed me smiles

Told me he was back from sessions
with a load of brain-dead hacks
Told me he'd made no concessions
to the bootboys and the blacks
Said he thought that it was stupid
fuss 'bout rapists on the news
Bloke was only playing Cupid
Girls like that they don't refuse

Asked me if I thought him enemy
Asked me if I bore a grudge
Told me that he came from Henley
Said he was a High Court judge
I asked him to stop a second
'Need a slash' that's what I said
When he did the anger beckoned
and I smacked him in the head

Took his keys and took his money
Crashed the car into a ditch
Though he moaned 'they'll get you, sonny!'
got away without a hitch
I don't think they'll ever find me
'cos I'm many miles away
but if one day they're right behind me
I know what I'm gonna say -

HE ASKED FOR IT! He's rich and snobbish
right wing, racist, sexist too
Brain-dead, ugly, sick and slobbish
Should be locked in London Zoo!
He wanted me to beat him up -
it was an open invitation!
Late at night he picked me up -
an act of open provocation!

High Court Judges are a blight -
they should stay home in nice warm beds
and if they must drive late at night
should never pick up Harlow Reds!
A five pence fine is right and proper
and to sum up my defence
It was his fault he came a cropper -
CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE!

- Attila the Stockbroker

 

[Dr. Christmas]

Florins by Harry Smart

Let's keep a place in the digital
Decimal world for an honest word like florin.
So much more solid and satisfying
Than ten pee piece, so much more
Suggestive of that thickly silver disc,
Hard, yet rubbed to congeniality
With flesh, smooth in the hand.
Florins, a handful of florins,
A man could be happy with a handful of florins.

Tonight I walked home through the town
With three florins tucked comfortably
Between my knuckles, just in case.

 

[Dr. Christmas]

The Weapon by Hugh MacDiarmid

Scots steel tempered wi' Irish fire
Is the weapon that I desire.

 

[chrissie]

The Keyboard and the Mouse

I am myself and in my house
But if I had my way
I’d be the keyboard and the mouse
Under your hands all day.

I’d be the C prompt on the screen.
We could have had some fun
This morning, if I’d only been
Word Perfect 5.1.

I’d be your hard and floppy discs,
I’d be your laser jet,
Your ampersands and asterisks –
I’d be in Somerset

Rotating on your swivel chair.
The journey takes a while
But press return and I’ll be there.
Do not delete this file.

Sophie Hannah

 

[Donna Ferentes]

A bit early, but I'm not waiting for midnight! Let's have some more Johnny Clarke....

Twat

Like a Night Club in the morning, you're the bitter end.
Like a recently disinfected shithouse, you're clean round the bend.
You give me the horrors
too bad to be true
All of my tomorrows
are lousy 'cause of you.
You put the Shat in Shatter
Put the Pain in Spain
Your germs are splattered about
Your face is just a stain

You're certainly no raver, commonly known as a drag.
Do us all a favour, here - wear this polythene bag.

You're like a dose of scabies,
I've got you under my skin.
You make life a fairy tale... Grimm!

People mention murder, the moment you arrive.
I'd consider killing you if I thought you were alive.
You’ve got this slippery quality,
it makes me think of phlegm,
and a dual personality -
I hate both of them.

Your bad breath, vamps disease, destruction, and decay.
Please, please, please, please, take yourself away.
Like a death at a birthday party,
you ruin all the fun.
Like a sucked and spat out smartie,
you're no use to anyone.
Like the shadow of the guillotine
on a dead consumptive’s face.
Speaking as an outsider,
what do you think of the human race?

You went to a progressive psychiatrist -
he recommended suicide
before scratching your bad name off his list,
and pointing the way outside.

You hear laughter breaking through, it makes you want to fart.
You're heading for a breakdown,
better pull yourself apart.

Your dirty name gets passed about when something goes amiss.
Your attitudes are platitudes,
just make me wanna piss.

What kind of creature bore you
Was it some kind of bat?
They can’t find a good word for you,
but I can...
TWAT!

- John Cooper Clarke

 

[Cautious Fred]

Second Glance at a Jaguar (Ted Hughes)

Skinful of bowl, he bowls them,
The hip going in and out of joint, dropping the spine
With the urgency of his hurry
Like a cat going along under thrown stones, under cover,
Glancing sideways, running
Under his spine. A terrible, stump-legged waddle
Like a thick Aztec disemboweller,
Club-swinging, trying to grind some square
Socket between his hind legs round,
Carrying his head like a brazier of spilling embers,
And the black bit of his mouth, he takes it
Between his back teeth, he has to wear his skin out,
He swipes a lap at the water-trough as he turns,
Swivelling the ball of his heel on the polished spot,
Showing his belly like a butterfly
At every stride he has to turn a corner
In himself and correct it. His head
Is like the worn down stump of another whole jaguar,
His body is just the engine shoving it forward,
Lifting the air up and shoving on under,
The weight of his fangs hanging the mouth open,
Bottom jaw combing the ground. A gorged look,
Gangster, club-tail lumped along behind gracelessly,
He's wearing himself to heavy ovals,
Muttering some mantrah, some drum-song of murder
To keep his rage brightening, making his skin
Intolerable, spurred by the rosettes, the cain-brands,
Wearing the spots from the inside,
Rounding some revenge. Going like a prayer-wheel,
The head dragging forward, the body keeping up,
The hind legs lagging. He coils, he flourishes
The blackjack tail as if looking for a target,
Hurrying through the underworld, soundless.

 

[PearlySpencer]

Jack Daw


Jack Daw clawed his way from the grave
the man who took his land
no preacher could save
13 miles on a gravel road
he crawled on his belly
he crawled on his nose


"Oh Lord forgive me and rest my soul
I'm a dead man cursed with what I know
I died in my sleep but the man who killed me
keeps hurtin' others and still goes free"


That man was the agent
from the big bank in town
foreclosing farms for miles around
killing poor farmers stealing their dreams
Crimes of the banker heartless and mean


Jack Daw clawed his way from the grave
his heart wasn't beating but he was enraged
His eyes glowing white a ghastly sight
this dead man crawling
in the pale moon light


He reached the bank for opening time
Folks shrieked and fled he was first in line
A dead man crawling no banker'd ever seen
burst into his office cursing and mean


"I've come a long way to claim what's my mine
I'm back from the dead I hope you don't mind
You killed me so you could balance your books
Now I'm here to balance mine
Take a good look!"


With a crooked bony hand
Jack yanked him to the floor
then dragged the screaming banker out the door
He didn't stuggle long they say he died of fright
And old Jack Daw dragged him out of sight


Later they shut that cursed bank down
'cause every new bank worker
vanished from town
not a trace was left nothing could be found
But everyone knew
Yes everyone knew
Old Jack Daw had been around


Norman Nawrocki

 

[Dr. Christmas]

If You Can Call it Living

In Wales there are
no crocodiles, but the tears
continue to flow from
their slimed sources. Women
with white hair and strawberry
faces peer at you from behind
curtains;wobbling sopranos
split the chapels; the clerks undress
the secretaries with their lean eyes.
Who will employ
the loafers at the street
corners, choking over
the joke's phlegm?
Anything to
sell? cries the tourist
to the native rummaging among
the remnants of his self-respect.

R.S. Thomas

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Casualty


I

He would drink by himself
And raise a weathered thumb
Towards the high shelf,
Calling another rum
And blackcurrant, without
Having to raise his voice,
Or order a quick stout
By a lifting of the eyes
And a discreet dumb-show
Of pulling off the top;
At closing time would go
In waders and peaked cap
Into the showery dark,
A dole-kept breadwinner
But a natural for work.
I loved his whole manner,
Sure-footed but too sly,
His deadpan sidling tact,
His fisherman's quick eye
And turned observant back.
Incomprehensible
To him, my other life.
Sometimes on the high stool,
Too busy with his knife
At a tobacco plug
And not meeting my eye,
In the pause after a slug
He mentioned poetry.
We would be on our own
And, always politic
And shy of condescension,
I would manage by some trick
To switch the talk to eels
Or lore of the horse and cart
Or the Provisionals.
But my tentative art
His turned back watches too:
He was blown to bits
Out drinking in a curfew
Others obeyed, three nights
After they shot dead
The thirteen men in Derry.
PARAS THIRTEEN, the walls said,
BOGSIDE NIL. That Wednesday
Everyone held
His breath and trembled.



II

It was a day of cold
Raw silence, wind-blown
Surplice and soutane:
Rained-on, flower-laden
Coffin after coffin
Seemed to float from the door
Of the packed cathedral
Like blossoms on slow water.
The common funeral
Unrolled its swaddling band,
Lapping, tightening
Till we were braced and bound
Like brothers in a ring.


But he would not be held
At home by his own crowd
Whatever threats were phoned,
Whatever black flags waved.
I see him as he turned
In that bombed offending place,
Remorse fused with terror
In his still knowable face,
His cornered outfaced stare
Blinding in the flash.


He had gone miles away
For he drank like a fish
Nightly, naturally
Swimming towards the lure
Of warm lit-up places,
The blurred mesh and murmur
Drifting among glasses
In the gregarious smoke.
How culpable was he
That last night when he broke
Our tribe's complicity?
'Now, you're supposed to be
An educated man,'
I hear him say. 'Puzzle me
The right answer to that one.'



III

I missed his funeral,
Those quiet walkers
And sideways talkers
Shoaling out of his lane
To the respectable
Purring of the hearse...
They move in equal pace
With the habitual
Slow consolation
Of a dawdling engine,
The line lifted, hand
Over fist, cold sunshine
On the water, the land
Banked under fog: that morning
I was taken in his boat,
The screw purling, turning
Indolent fathoms white,
I tasted freedom with him.
To get out early, haul
Steadily off the bottom,
Dispraise the catch, and smile
As you find a rhythm
Working you, slow mile by mile,
Into your proper haunt
Somewhere, well out, beyond...


Dawn-sniffing revenant,
Plodder through midnight rain,
Question me again.

- Seamus Heaney

 

[Hollis]

On Hampstead Heath

I ask you what sort of tree
we are sat underneath
and you tell me that it is a big one.
You ask me how I came by a scar on my knee
and I tell you that I hurt myself once.
A passer-by, possibly Austrian
and possibly a Christian,
points to a flourescent cycle clip in the grass
and wonders if I might have lost it.
I stand up and indicate that I am wearing shorts.

- John Hegley

 

[Yossarian]

Zeroing in
Denise Levertov

I am a landscape," he said,
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
and plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small circumference
and malevolent depths."
"I know," she said. "When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud."
"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he'd jump up yelping
and bite you. He bit a young child,
they had to take him to the vet's and destroy him."
"No one knows where it is," she said,
"and even by accident no one touches it:
It's inside my landscape, and only I, making my way
preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills,
sleeping on green moss of my own woods,
I myself without warning touch it,
and leap up at myself--"
"--or flinch back
just in time."
"Yes, we learn that
It's not terror, it's pain we're talking about:
those places in us, like your dog's bruised head,
that are bruised forever, that time
never assuages, never."

 

[PearlySpencer]

NORETORP-NORETSYH


Rainy, smoky Fall, clouds tower
In the brilliant Pacific sky.
In Golden Gate Park, the peacocks
Scream, wandering through falling leaves.
In clotting nights in smoking dark,
The Kronstadt sailors are marching
Through the streets of Budapest. The stones
Of the barricades rise up and shiver
Into form. They take the shapes
Of the peasant armies of Makhno.
The streets are lit with torches.
The gasoline drenched bodies
Of the Solovetsky anarchists
Burn at every street corner.
Kropotkin’s starved corpse is borne
In state past the offices
Of the cowering bureaucrats.
In all the Politisolators
Of Siberia the partisan dead are enlisting.
Berneri, Andreas Nin,
Are coming from Spain with a legion.
Carlo Tresca is crossing
The Atlantic with the Berkman Brigade.
Bukharin has joined the Emergency
Economic Council. Twenty million
Dead Ukrainian peasants are sending wheat.
Julia Poyntz is organizing American nurses.
Gorky has written a manifesto
“To the Intellectuals of the World!”
Mayakofsky and Essenin
Have collaborated on an ode,
“Let Them Commit Suicide.”
In the Hungarian night
All the dead are speaking with one voice,
As we bicycle through the green
And sunspotted California
November. I can hear that voice
Clearer than the cry of the peacocks,
In the falling afternoon.
Like painted wings, the color
Of all the leaves of Autumn,
The circular tie-dyed skirt
I made for you flares out in the wind,
Over your incomparable thighs.
Oh splendid butterfly of my imagination,
Flying into reality more real
Than all imagination, the evil
Of the world covets your living flesh.


Kenneth Rexroth

 

[PearlySpencer]

Know it's only supposed to be one poem a day but these two are both short ones. A double-header from Brian Patten.


Something That Was Not There Before


Something that was not there before
has come through the mirror
into my room.


It is not such a simple creature
as at first I thought-
from somewhere it has brought a mischief


that troubles both silence and objects,
and now left alone here
I weave intricate reasons for its arrival.


They disintegrate. Today in January, with
the light frozen on my window, I hear outside
a million panicking birds, and know even out there


comfort is done with; it has shattered
even the stars, this creature
at last come home to me.



A Talk with a Wood


Moving through you one evening
when you offered shelter to
quiet things soaked in rain


I saw through your thinning branches
the beginnings of suburbs, and
frightened by the rain,


grey hares running upright in
distant fields; and quite alone there
I thought of nothing but my footprints


being filled, and love, distilled
of people, drifted free, then
the woods spoke with me.

 

[onemonkey]

Ode to Autumn

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,--
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
And mid-May's eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?

- John Keats

 

[PearlySpencer]

imho performance poetry at its best, another one from Norman Nawrocki


Squat the City


SQUAT the city! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!


When that knock comes on the door
The monthly ransom's due once more
Do you pay? Do you squawk?


SQUAT the city! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!


Who built the place you call your home?
Hammered the nails and laid the stone?
Who makes big bucks off others' work?
Collects the rent and stuffs his shirt?


Rent the roaches - what a deal!
He won't charge extra - he's no heel!
Crunch them in your cornflakes bowl
Stuff them in that gaping hole
why don't we


SQUAT the city! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!


Twist his arm you need some heat
Twist his leg your stairs eat feet
On knee no cap a smile a wink
Beg my lord please fix the sink


Pennies fall it's a welfare check
They roll into your landlord's pocket
Will you eat? The cupboards bare
Watch him buy another gold locket
why don't we


SQUAT the City! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!


Eviction notice time to move
Same old story now you're screwed
Pack your bags and move your ass
Add your name to the homeless mass


Tramp those streets a merry-go-around
Search for a place none are sound
Find one move in repair the floor
Ouch! A rent hike! You know the score


SQUAT the City! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!


Speculators mortgage takers
Bank those bucks we pay for housing
Bank of Commerce, American Savings
Montrea-a-a-a-a-a-a-


All they do is mark up property
Steal your rent they're making money!
Holy fakers leeches robbers undertakers
Let's get smart


SQUAT the City! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!


People in chains were masters' folk
But slaves those chains they finally broke
Now we're slaves to the working day
Slaving on 'cause there's rent to pay


Half our income down the drain
Pay for shelter? It's a pain
Tenants are feudal, landlords too
Time to rebel time for us to


SQUAT the City! FUCK the rent!
PAY no landlord! PAY no rent!

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Cremation Ecologue

Pig pyres are crackling in the snow-flecked fields,
dawn bonfires next to cleaned out byres and folds.
I know my taxi driver. FMD,
the tragic traincrash (ten dead) yesterday
are what we talk about: Heddon-on-the-Wall
may be infected from untreated swill,
the micro virus and the cattle plague
that could cross borders between bloc and bloc
when the world was so divided, let alone
unpatrolled farm fences, ditch and lane.
The taxi's heater's fierce, we discuss
the icicles hanging from the underpass,
this zero morning as we track the Tyne
and follow the Station signposts towards town.

I was in what was then Leningrad

I say (as we rattle over a cattle grid
and then squelch across a disinfectant mat
not the first this morning that we've met)

a falling icicle caused the death
of a man who was walking underneath
pole-axed as he sauntered with his wife
right through his fur hat of sleek grey wolf,
the sharp tip with its glossy shine
sticking through his badly shaven chin.
In Leningrad you couldn't buy a blade
you'd get a decent shave from and not bleed.

An ice-bolt from malicious gods
could chill the skull and slice the vocal chords
of this Geordie smoker here, under threat,
getting quick drags of smoke into his throat,
banished the bank so many times a day
increasing the odds that maybe he will die,
this ostracised, cold, street-drag Damocles
under the half-thawed bank roof icicles.
The frozen, furtive smoker in shirt sleeves
under icicle-hung gutterings and eves
puffs fast on his cupped fag and quickly stubs
half out among the scattered kerbside tabs.

I enter Dobson's elegant colonnade,
its Railway Age proportions just renewed,
aware of risk and how a roof-slate slid
only two days ago, a heavy slate,
off my front roof and cut the garden seat
where normally on warm days I'd've sat
and almost did that first bright day of March
when the sun woke up a solitary midge.
If the temperature had been two more degrees
I might have sat there and not cut my grass
so that the tile that weeks of gale winds loosed
missed me by metres and my skull's unsliced.

Yesterday ten passengers on this route died
which makes today's predictably subdued
like me, who's thinking did fate choose to spare
me from slate, and collision, as a kind of spur,
to go on doing what I do, that's look and write
as I've done since the Sixties on this route.

I remember all the great books that I've read
I'd never've started if I'd gone by road,
the poems, like this one, that I've written
some passable, and published, most though rotten.
I used to know the landmarks on this route
the industries of Britain left and right.
Once I'd know exactly where we were
from the shapes of spoil heaps and from winding gear
spinning their spokes and winching down a shift
miles deep into this sealed and filled-in shaft
and which bits of field you'd see a score
of rabbits in the passing train would scare,
which Yorkshire coal-dust-laquered black lagoon
had crested grebes on once but now long gone,
but once my own slack-blackened Hippocrene,
though the Pegasus would be more like that crane,
raising a replica of this coach, ripped and crushed
when yesterday's Newcastle-King's Cross crashed,
I see from a jerkily slow, jinxed British train
through snow, cremation smoke-clouds, quarantine.

If you still could get them open then I'd throw
these pages I've been scribbling, 1-2-3,
out of the window. All I've done so far
of 'Cremation Eclogue' floats towards the fire,
where choking piles of stiff-legged Friesians blaze,
their piebald blending, poem into place.

- Tony Harrison

 

[Yossarian]

(I'm going to post this one up now because there were none for a few days and next mondays a whole week away....)

MONDAYS
James Farrell


Legless on Mondays

never stopping

waiting to catch a cancer

or a broken back.

Who's that girl with the black hair?

Who's everybody looking?

There's always something wrong

it's never the beginning of a new week

it's the end.

Fall from my fostered state

always dropping

until Friday.

How much longer can we go on like this?

Until we die

or death lies to us.

There's ' If ' in the middle of life

but there's ' Lie ' all over it.

To be honest I think I'll calm down

get married, have kids, buy a dog and watch it die.

Recede

through the cracks of a million closed doors

into your hands

and you'll never ever stop

chasing my ashes

into the wind

pissed out of your mind

and you ask yourself why

you suffer on Mondays

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Spain

Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention
Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley.
The chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles.

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines,
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greece,
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. But to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines,
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
On the crag by the leaning tower:
'Oh my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor.'

And the investigator peers through his instruments
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
Or enormous Jupiter finished:
'But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.'

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: 'Our day is our loss, O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser, Time the refreshing river.'

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror;
'Did you not found the city state of the sponge,

'Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?
Intervene. O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.'

And the life, if it answers at all , replies from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city:
'O no, I am not the mover;
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the

'Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily -duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

'What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.'

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fisherman's islands
Or in the corrupt heart of the city,
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch
Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. They came to present their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad. And the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain -store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people's army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue
And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty's masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hours of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scarping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

- WH Auden

 

[PearlySpencer]

UNFINISHED BUSINESS


Night falls on the Burnley Mills
and a dead thick fog comes down
all the rich asleep at Bramham
all the foxes gone to ground


quietly through the Calder Valley
whispers in the wind
hear them where the Calder turns
and where the Spen begins


Luddites up from village graves
regrouping on the moors
Luddites down from York assizes
come to settle scores


And finally in the dead of night
they cross the River Aire
Luddites sworn to finishing
unfinished business there


they take their oaths and then
to Captain Ludd promise a toast
as with pikes they trash the presses
of the Yorkshire Evening Post


rushing through to City Square
to smash the statues down
torches lit to burn the Bond Street
Centre to the ground


up to Armley Prison
where they batter down the gates
saying "Justice comes to those who take it,
not to those who wait."


BOFFO

 

[PearlySpencer]

You Say Our Earth Is Out Of Bounds


You say our earth is out of bounds
our lives and futures are out of our hands,
This earth is not yours to put boundaries around
we'll grow and get stronger and our voices resound.


Dennis Gould

 

[Mrs Magpie]

The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered
by Clive James (1939- )

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy's much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life's vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one's enemy's book --
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seemingly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.

The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinkers, clinkers, dogs, and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.

Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler's War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyard with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee's Promenades and Pierrots --
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor's Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
"My boobs will give everyone hours of fun".

Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error --
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.

 

[RubyToogood]

Lol, I do like that!

 

[Mrs Magpie]

Rainforest

The forest drips and glows with green.
The tree-frog croaks his far-off song.
His voice is stillness, moss and rain
drunk from the forest ages long.

We cannot understand that call
unless we move into his dream,
where all is one and one is all
and frog and python are the same.

We with our quick dividing eyes
measure, distinguish and are gone.
The forest burns, the tree-frog dies,
Yet one is all and all are one.

Judith Wright (b. 1915)*


*I think Judith Wright died recently.......last year perhaps.......a favourite poet, along with Elizabeth Bishop.

 

[little edge]

A wine-spotted waist
for the tavern-god
treading the wreckage of glasses, disheveling
dawn's glowing divisions
a moistening rose in the prostitute's wimper,
where the wind spends the fevers of morning
in a windowpane's void,
and the gunman, still booted for vengeance,
in a sour exhalation of pistols,
and a blue-eyed disaster, sleeps sound.

Sleeping Assassin
Pablo Neruda

 

[Wyn]

This is for all those on the Contaception thread

IF THE CAP FITS

To the tune of Jingle Bells....

CHORUS
Jingle pills
dangle coils,
condoms three a day,
oh what fun
it is to risk
your life for
him this way.

Dashing from the clinic
with a bagful of supplies,
orthogel, nonoxyl nine
and a new cap tried for size.
Basking in the glow
of responsibility,
oh what fun it is to know
you control your destiny.

CHORUS Oh Jingle pills ...etc.

The "Dalkon Shield" is out,
there's a compensation boom,
it caused infection and its
barbs got embedded in your womb.
Sponges made such a mess,
they never did catch on
but there's a condom now for girls
so all his worry's gone.

CHORUS Oh Jingle pills ...etc.

"Just a question, dear!"
the nurse shouts from the loo,
"Have you had your smear?"
The whole queue stares at you.
"A yes I have it here,
your notes say you're okay,
just inflammation, don't fret dear.
Will the next one come this way."

CHORUS Oh Jingle pills ...etc.

Dashing to the clinic
to be the first in STD,
don't panic if it's gone too far
hysterectomies are free.
Legs up in the air,
do the gyne dance,
these are the steps of hetrosex,
skipped over in romance.

CHORUS Oh Jingle pills ...etc.

No one mentioned AIDS,
VD or NSU,
trichonomas was, you thought,
something magicians do.
Cancer can be screened
and really you're not ill
with "side effects" like heart disease
from ten years on the pill.

CHORUS Oh Jingle pills ...etc.

Annie Blue

 

[bcrocks]

The Witnesses

Is Ocean's wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Like skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands,

Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships with all their crews,
No more to sing nor rise.

There the back Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fetter, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.

These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
"We are the Witnesses!"

Within Earth's wide domains
Are markets for men's lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.

Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare schoolboys from their play:

All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life's groaning tide:

These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry, from unkown graves,
"We are the Witnesses!"

- Henry W Longfellow

 

[butchersapron]

In honour of the 101st anniversary of the death of famous Scottish poet William Topaz McGonagall:

The Famous Tay Whale

'Twas in the month of December, and in the year 1883,
That a monster whale came to Dundee,
Resolved for a few days to sport and play,
And devour the small fishes in the silvery Tay.

So the monster whale did sport and play
Among the innocent little fishes in the beautiful Tay,
Until he was seen by some men one day,
And they resolved to catch him without delay.

When it came to be known a whale was seen in the Tay,
Some men began to talk and to say,
We must try and catch this monster of a whale,
So come on, brave boys, and never say fail.

Then the people together in crowds did run,
Resolved to capture the whale and to have some fun!
So small boats were launched on the silvery Tay,
While the monster of the deep did sport and play.

Oh! it was a most fearful and beautiful sight,
To see it lashing the water with its tail all its might,
And making the water ascend like a shower of hail,
With one lash of its ugly and mighty tail.

Then the water did descend on the men in the boats,
Which wet their trousers and also their coats;
But it only made them the more determined to catch the whale,
But the whale shook at them his tail.

Then the whale began to puff and to blow,
While the men and the boats after him did go,
Armed well with harpoons for the fray,
Which they fired at him without dismay.

And they laughed and grinned just like wild baboons,
While they fired at him their sharp harpoons:
But when struck with,the harpoons he dived below,
Which filled his pursuers' hearts with woe.

Because they guessed they had lost a prize,
Which caused the tears to well up in their eyes;
And in that their anticipations were only right,
Because he sped on to Stonehaven with all his might:

And was first seen by the crew of a Gourdon fishing boat
Which they thought was a big coble upturned afloat;
But when they drew near they saw it was a whale,
So they resolved to tow it ashore without fail.

So they got a rope from each boat tied round his tail,
And landed their burden at Stonehaven without fail;
And when the people saw it their voices they did raise,
Declaring that the brave fishermen deserved great praise.

And my opinion is that God sent the whale in time of need,
No matter what other people may think or what is their creed;
I know fishermen in general are often very poor,
And God in His goodness sent it drive poverty from their door.

So Mr John Wood has bought it for two hundred and twenty-six pound,
And has brought it to Dundee all safe and all sound;
Which measures 40 feet in length from the snout to the tail,
So I advise the people far and near to see it without fail.

Then hurrah! for the mighty monster whale,
Which has got 17 feet 4 inches from tip to tip of a tail!
Which can be seen for a sixpence or a shilling,
That is to say, if the people all are willing.

 

[mango5]

The Egg-Shell

The wind took off with the sunset—
The fog came up with the tide,
When the Witch of the North took an Egg-shell
With a little Blue Devil inside.
“Sink,” she said, “or swim,” she said,
“It’s all you will get from me.
And that is the finish of him!” she said,
And the Egg-shell went to sea.
The wind fell dead with the midnight—
The fog shut down like a sheet,
When the Witch of the North heard the Egg-shell
Feeling by hand for a fleet.
“Get!” she said, “or you’re gone,” she said,
But the little Blue Devil said “No!”
“The sights are just coming on,” he said,
And he let the Whitehead go.

The wind got up with the morning—
The fog blew off with the rain,
When the Witch of the North saw the Egg-shell
And the little Blue Devil again.
“Did you swim?” she said. “Did you sink?” she said,
And the little Blue Devil replied:
“For myself I swam, but I think,” he said,
“There’s somebody sinking outside.”

- Rudyard Kipling

 

[Mrs Magpie]

I've posted this before, but on a long deleted thread....I love Wendell Berry. He's an organic farmer, and also a great poet. He's very old now too.


Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.