*Poem of the day thread

[Hollis]

Slough - John Betjeman

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!

Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

 

[RubyToogood]

A Postcard From The Volcano

Wallace Stevens

Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;

And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;

And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt

At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion-house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky

Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became

A part of what it is . . . Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,

Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,

A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.

 

[Clintons Cat]

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allen Poe

 

[Jackdaw]

Excerpt from A Shropshire Lad.

By A.E.Housman.


INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

 

[Jackdaw]

Excerpt from Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats.

By Percy Bysshe Shelley.


Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
'Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit's knife
Invulnerable nothings. We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

 

[Roadkill]

Blame the Vicar

When things go wrong it’s rather tame
To find we are ourselves to blame,
It gets the trouble over quicker
To go and blame things on the Vicar.
The Vicar, after all, is paid
To keep us bright and undismayed.
The Vicar is more virtuous too
Than lay folks such as me and you.
He never swears, he never drinks,
He never should say what he thinks.
His collar is the wrong way round,
And that is why he‘s simply bound
To be the sort of person who
Has nothing very much to do
But take the blame for what goes wrong
And sing in tune at Evensong.
For what‘s a Vicar really for
Except to cheer us up? What’s more,
He shouldn’t ever, ever tell
If there is such a place as Hell,
For if there is it's certain he
Will go to it as well as we.
The Vicar should be all pretence
And never, never give offence.
To preach on Sunday is his task
And lend his mower when we ask
And organize our village fetes
And sing at Christmas with the waits
And in his car to give us lifts
And when we quarrel, heal the rifts.
To keep his family alive
He should industriously strive
In that enormous house he gets,
And he should always pay his debts,
For he has quite six pounds a week,
And when we‘re rude he should be meek
And always turn the other cheek.
He should be neat and nicely dressed
With polished shoes and trousers pressed,
For we look up to him as higher
Than anyone, except the Squire.
Dear People, who have read so far,
I know how really kind you are,
I hope that you are always seeing,
Your Vicar as a human being,
Making allowances when he
Does things with which you don’t agree.
But there are lots of people who
Are not so kind to him as you.
So in conclusion you shall hear
About a parish somewhat near,
Perhaps your own or maybe not,
And of the Vicars that it got
One parson came and people said,
‘Alas! Our former Vicar’s dead!
And this new man is far more ”Low”
Than dear old Reverend So-and-so,
And far too earnest in his preaching,
We do not really like his teaching,
He seems to think we‘re simply fools
Who’ve never been to Sunday Schools’
That Vicar left, and by and by
A new one came, ‘He's much too ”High”,’
The people said, ‘too like a saint,
His incense makes our Mavis faint.’
So now he‘s left and they‘re alone
Without a Vicar of their own.
The living’s been amalgamated
With one next door they‘ve always hated.
Dear readers, from this rhyme take warning,
And if you heard the bell this morning
Your Vicar went to pray for you,
A task the Prayer Book bids him do.
‘Highness’ or ‘Lowness’ do not matter,
You are the Church and must not scatter
Cling to the Sacraments and pray
And God be with you every day.

John Betjeman

(My Dad's been known to quote this poem at awkward parishioners )

 

[Wyn]

From: A Satirical Romance

I can't hold you and I can't leave you,
and sorting the reasons to leave you or hold you,
I find an intangible one to love you,
and many tangible ones to forgo you.

As you won't change, nor let me forgo you,
I shall give my heart a defense against you,
so that half shall always be armed to abhor you,
though the other half be ready to adore you.

~Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

 

[onemonkey]

the 1st poem from Knots - R.D.Laing


They are playing a game.

They are playing at not playing a game.

If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.

I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.

 

[Ace]

The Circus Animals' Desertion
I

I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.

II

What can I but enumerate old themes,
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the bosom of his faery bride.

And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intervened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.

And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

III

Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

 

[onemonkey]

The Circus Animals' Desertion - William Butler Yeats

 

[Wyn]

Somewhere between Heaven and Woolworth's

She keeps kingfishers in their cages
And goldfish in their bowls,
She is lovely and is afraid
Of such things as growing cold.

She's had enough men to please her
Though they were more cruel than kind
And their love an act in isolation,
A form of pantomime.

She says she has forgotten
The feelings that she shared
At various all night parties
Among the couples on the stairs,

For among the songs and dancing
She was once open wide,
A girl dressed in denim
With boys dressed in lies.

She's eating roses on toast with tulip butter,
Praying for her mirror to stay young;
On its no longer gilted surface
This message she has scrawled:

'O somewhere between Heaven and Woolworth's
I live I love I scold,
I keep kingfishers in their cages
And goldfish in their bowls.'

Brian Patten

 

[Janine]

For Janine

How the Sound of Freedom Dies

''I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight do not hate,
Those that I guard do not love.......''
''An Irish Airman Foresees His Death''
William Butler Yeats

Oh, Billy - boy, it's a long way
from Pine Mountain, Kentucky
to Mount Ranier and the tall fir
of Puget Sound. An arduous journey
from those eroded ancient teeth
to these young crags, flashing
a sharp white bite at the sky.

Christina Pacosz



It's only the first bit, the whole piece is about a US pilot killed during the US invasion of Vietnam.

I have no clue why PS would dedicate this to me.

 

[Concrete Meadow]

5 APRIL - Remembering Cobain - 10 Years After He Departed ...

COME AS YOU ARE

Come, as you are. As you were.
As I want you to be. As a friend.
As a friend. As an old enemy. Take your time.
Hurry up. The choice is yours. Don't be late.
Take a rest. As a friend. As a old memory, memory, memory, memory.

Come. Dowsed in mud. Soaked in bleach.
As I want you to be. As a trend. As a friend.
As an old memory, memory, memory, memory.

And I swear that I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun.

Memory, memory, memory, memory (don't have a gun).

And I swear that I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun.
No I don't have a gun. No I don't have a gun. Memory, memory...

- Kurt Cobain

 

[Wyn]

Love Song

If I could write words
Like leaves on an Autumn forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make

If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
'I love you'.

Spike Milligan

 

[white rabbit]

Sailing to Byzantium

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

William Butler Yeats

 

[RubyToogood]

COME AS YOU ARE

...
- Kurt Cobain

I'm afraid there's a no song lyrics rule on this thread.

 

[Concrete Meadow]

I'm afraid there's a no song lyrics rule on this thread.

Sorry about that, Ruby. I was hoping for an exception to mark the 10th anniversary of a contemporary poet's untimely death.

Perhaps the following will do, as a reminder that Cobain lives in our hearts and minds -

)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is


)when what hugs stopping earth than silent is
more silent than more than much more is or
total sun oceaning than any this
tear jumping from each most least eye of star

and without was if minus and shall be
immeasurable happenless unnow
shuts more than open could that every tree
or than all life more death begins to grow

end's ending then these dolls of joy and grief
these recent memories of future dream
these perhaps who have lost their shadows if
which did not do the losing spectres mime

until out of merely not nothing comes
only one snowflake(and we speak our names


- ee cummings

 

[Ace]

The owl and the pussycat went to sea
In a beautiful peagreen boat
They took some honey and plenty of money
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The owl looked up to the stars above
And sang to a small guitar,
"O, lovely pussy, o pussy my love,
What a beautiful pussy you are, you are
What a beautiful pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the owl, "You elegant fowl,
How charmingly sweet you sing.
O, let us be married, too long we have tarried,
But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away for a year and a day
To the land where the Bongtree grows.
And there in a wood a Piggywig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose, his nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away and were married next day
By the turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand on the edge of the sand
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon, the moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

 

[dlx1]

we had this for my Nan when she died.....


You can shed tears that she is gone
or you can smile because she has lived.

You can close your eyes and pray that she'll come back
or you can open your eyes and see all she has left.

Your heart can be empty because you can't see her
or be full of the love you shared.

You can turn your back on tomorrow and live yesterday
or you can be happy for tomorrow because of yesterday.

You can remember her and only that she's gone
or you can cherish her memory and let it live on.

You can cry and close your mind, be empty and turn your back
or you can do what she'd want:

Smile, open your eyes, love and go on.

============

was this about a Poem writen your self !

 

[Yossarian]

I Am Your Spy
Mordechai Vanunu

I am the clerk, the technician, the mechanic, the driver, whom they told, do this or do that.

Don't look to the right, to the left, don't eye the page. Don't look at the whole machine.

You are responsible for one bolt only. You are responsible for just one rubber-stamp. Concern yourself with one matter only. Don't bother with things that are above you. Don't think for us. Drive. Keep driving. On. On.

The great, the wise, those who understand our future, thought: There's nothing to worry about. No fear. Everything works, clicks.

Our little clerk is a diligent worker. He's a simple technician.

He's the little guy. Like all the low-ranking clerks, ears have they, but they hear not.

Eyes have they but they see not. We have a head; not the little guys.

Answer them, he thought to himself--just between him and himself-- the little citizen.But the man with the head is not little.

Who is the boss here, who knows where the train is headed? Where is our head? I too have a head. Why do I see the abyss? Does this train have an engineer?

The clerk-driver-technician-mechanic raised his head. Retreated a bit, saw a monster Unbelieving, returned, rubbed his eyes and indeed-- they're fine. I'm just fine. I really do see a monster.

I am part of the system I signed this form. And only now am I reading the text. This bolt is part of a bomb. This bolt is me. How did I not see and how do others go on bolt-tightening. Who else knows? Who saw, who heard? The emperor is indeed naked.

I see him. Why me. This is not for me. It's to big for me. Rise up and cry out. Rise up and proclaim to this nation. You can. I the bolt, the mechanic, the technician. Yes you. You are the secret agent of this nation. You are the eyes of the state. Spy-agent, reveal what you've seen. Reveal to us what those who understand, the wise, hide from us.

If you are not with us, the void awaits us. A holocaust awaits us. You and only you sit at the wheel and see the void. I have no choice. I am a little guy, an ordinary citizen, one of the common folk, but I will fulfill my commitment. I have heard the voice of my conscience. And there's nowhere to run.

The world is small. Small compared to big brother. Here I am, on your mission. Here I am fulfilling my role. Take this from me. Come and judge. Lighten my load. Carry it along with me. Carry on my messenger-mission.

Stop the train. Get off the train. The next stop is nuclear holocaust. The next book, the next machine, no. There is no such thing.

 

[Ace]

I'm sorry.

I know it's probably rude to comment on other people's choices and Mr Vanunu is a good bloke an all that, but that is not poetry.

 

[Wyn]

come back safely

Even to say good-bye
even if it's the last time
even reluctantly
even to hurt me again
even with the harsh acid
of sarcasm that stings

even with a new kind of pain
even fresh from the embrace
of another. Come back, just come.

Sylva Gaboudikan

 

[RubberBuccaneer]

Ouch,
memories of love lost , that thankfully I've not experienced for a long time and hopefully never again.

 

[Wanderer]

A bit cheeky posting me own poem, I know...

 

[Jessiedog]

A bit cheeky posting me own poem, I know...

Bloody good tho'!!



woof

 

[onemonkey]

From A German War Primer
Bertolt Brecht

AMONGST THE HIGHLY PLACED
It is considered low to talk about food.
The fact is: they have
Already eaten.

The lowly must leave this earth
Without having tasted
Any good meat.

For wondering where they come from and
Where they are going
The fine evenings find them
Too exhausted.

They have not yet seen
The mountains and the great sea
When their time is already up.

If the lowly do not
Think about what's low
They will never rise.

THE BREAD OF THE HUNGRY HAS
ALL BEEN EATEN
Meat has become unknown. Useless
The pouring out of the people's sweat.
The laurel groves have been
Lopped down.
From the chimneys of the arms factories
Rises smoke.

THE HOUSE-PAINTER SPEAKS OF
GREAT TIMES TO COME
The forests still grow.
The fields still bear
The cities still stand.
The people still breathe.

ON THE CALENDAR THE DAY IS NOT
YET SHOWN
Every month, every day
Lies open still. One of those days
Is going to be marked with a cross.

THE WORKERS CRY OUT FOR BREAD
The merchants cry out for markets.
The unemployed were hungry. The employed
Are hungry now.
The hands that lay folded are busy again.
They are making shells.

THOSE WHO TAKE THE MEAT FROM THE TABLE
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the contribution is destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.

WHEN THE LEADERS SPEAK OF PEACE
The common folk know
That war is coming.
When the leaders curse war
The mobilization order is already written out.

THOSE AT THE TOP SAY: PEACE
AND WAR
Are of different substance.
But their peace and their war
Are like wind and storm.

War grows from their peace
Like son from his mother
He bears
Her frightful features.

Their war kills
Whatever their peace
Has left over.

ON THE WALL WAS CHALKED:
They want war.
The man who wrote it
Has already fallen.

THOSE AT THE TOP SAY:
This way to glory.
Those down below say:
This way to the grave.

THE WAR WHICH IS COMING
Is not the first one. There were
Other wars before it.
When the last one came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.

THOSE AT THE TOP SAY COMRADESHIP
Reigns in the army.
The truth of this is seen
In the cookhouse.
In their hearts should be
The selfsame courage. But
On their plates
Are two kinds of rations.

WHEN IT COMES TO MARCHING MANY DO NOT
KNOW
That their enemy is marching at their head.
The voice which gives them their orders
Is their enemy's voice and
The man who speaks of the enemy
Is the enemy himself.

IT IS NIGHT
The married couples
Lie in their beds. The young women
Will bear orphans.

GENERAL, YOUR TANK IS A POWERFUL VEHICLE
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.

General, your bomber is powerful.
It flies faster than a storm and carries more than an elephant.
But it has one defect:
It needs a mechanic.

General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.

 

[Wyn]

'A blade of grass'

You ask for a poem.
I offer you a blade of grass.
You say it is not good enough.
You ask for a poem.

I say this blade of grass will do.
It has dressed itself in frost,
It is more immediate
Than any image of my making.

You say it is not a poem,
It is a blade of grass and grass
Is not quite good enough.
I offer you a blade of grass.

You are indignant.
You say it is too easy to offer grass.
It is absurd.
Anyone can offer a blade of grass.

You ask for a poem.
And so I write you a tragedy about
How a blade of grass
Becomes more and more difficult to offer,

And about how as you grow older
A blade of grass
Becomes more difficult to accept.

-- Brian Patten

 

[Yossarian]

Drive Through Hell
Charles Bukowski

the people are weary, unhappy, frustrated, the people are
bitter and vengeful, the people are deluded and fearful, the
people are angry and uninventive
and I drive among them on the freeway and they project
what is left of themselves in their manner of driving-
some more hateful, more thwarted than others-
some don't like to be passed, some attempt to keep others
from passing
-some attempt to block lane changes
-some hate cars of a newer, more expensive model
-others in these cars hate the older cars.

the freeway is a circus of cheap and pretty emotions, it's
humanity on the move, most of them coming from someplace
they
hated and going to another they hate just as much or
more.
the freeways are a lesson in what we have become and
most of the crashes and deaths are the collision
of incomplete beings, of pitiful and demented
lives.
when I drive the freeways I see the soul of humanity of
my city and it's ugly, ugly, ugly: the living have choked the
heart
away.

 

[Biscuit Tin]

I like that Yoss.

 

[RubyToogood]

Birthday

Spring flowers and autumn leaves,

will they never end?

How many things have happened?

In this little tower, last night,

the east wind blew once more.

Can I bear to look back at the old country

in the bright moon?



The carved hand-rails and marble steps

must still be there,

But not my youthful cheeks.

How much sadness can I bear?

As much as an eastward-flowing river filled with

spring water.


Li Yu