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*Poem of the day thread

Two good ones there, thanks to h2o and Gilchrist - Ronald Fraser compiled a great oral history of the Spanish Revolution/civil war called 'Blood of Spain' that i believe was named after that particular line in the Neruda poem.
 
I suppose you really need to hear this one read out loud by its author, but the text will have to do for now.

Beasley Street

Far from crazy pavements
...the taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
...on a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr. Freud
...are rendered obsolete
the legal term is null and void
in the case of... Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don't need
...a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
on the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn't
that's where it is
State your position
vacancies exist
In an x-certificate exercise
ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
in a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding houses and the bedsits full of
...accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men's overcoats
you can't see their feet
A riff joint shuts - opens up
right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash
disaster movie stuff
for a man with the fu manchu moustache
revenge is not enough
There's a dead canary on a swivel seat
There's a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
...an inspector calls
where the perishing stink of squalor
...impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on ...Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink crevat
Nothing la-di-dah
OAP
Mother-to-be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shitstopper drains
and crocodile skis
are seen on ...Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
...a one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
...the doorbells do not ring
A light bulb burst like a blister
the only form of heat
Where a fellow sells his sister
...down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
their common problem is
...that they're not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can't keep it neat
It's a fully furnished dustbin
...sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage
betrays no kind of life
...but the smell of yesterday's cabbage
and the ghost of last year's wife
Through a constant haze
of deodorant sprays
he says ...retreat
Alsatians dog the dirty days
down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison
quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
every time they kiss
It's a sociologist's paradise
Each day repeats
Uneasy, cheasy, greasy, queasy
...beastly, Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
around the back of Beasley Street

- John Cooper Clarke
 
Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
-Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.


What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen
 
This is actually the lyrics to a song by Tindersticks, but I first read it in a poetry anthology so I figure it counts as poetry.

My Sister


Do you remember my sister? How many mistakes did she make with those never blinking eyes? I couldn't work it out. I swear she could read your mind, your life, the depths of your soul at one glance. Maybe she was stripping herself away, saying

Here I am, this is me
I am yours and everything about me, everything you see...
If only you look hard enough
I never could.

Our life was a pillow-fight. We'd stand there on the quilt, our hands clenched ready. Her with her milky teeth, so late for her age, and a Stanley knife in her hand. She sliced the tyres on my bike and I couldn't forgive her.

She went blind at the age of five. We'd stand at the bedroom window and she'd get me to tell her what I saw. I'd describe the houses opposite, the little patch of grass next to the path, the gate with its rotten hinges forever wedged open that Dad was always going to fix. She'd stand there quiet for a moment. I
thought she was trying to develop the images in her own head. Then she'd say:


I can see little twinkly stars, like Christmas tree lights in faraway windows. Rings of brightly coloured rocks floating around orange and mustard planets. I can see huge tiger striped fishes chasing tiny blue and yellow dashes, all tails and fins and bubbles.
I'd look at the grey house opposite, and close the curtains.

She burned down the house when she was ten. I was away camping with the scouts. The fireman said she'd been smoking in bed - the old story, I thought. The cat and our mum died in the flames, so Dad took us to stay with our Aunt in the
country. He went back to London to find us a new house. We never saw him again.

On her thirteenth birthday she fell down the well in our Aunt's garden and broke her head. She'd been drinking heavily. On her recovery her sight returned, a fluke of nature everyone said. That's when she said she'd never blink again. I would tell her when she started at me, with her eyes wide and watery, that they reminded me of the well she fell into. She liked this, it
made her laugh.

She moved in with a gym teacher when she was fifteen, all muscles he was. He lost his job when it all came out, and couldn't get another one. Not in that kind of small town. Everybody knew everyone else's business. My sister would hold her head high, though. She said she was in love. They were together for
five years until one day he lost his temper. He hit over the back of the neck with his bullworker. She lost the use of the right side of her body. He got three years and was out in fifteen months. We saw him a while later, he was coaching a non-league football team in a Cornwall seaside town. I don't think he recognized her.

My sister had put on a lot of weight from being in a chair
all the time. She'd get me to stick pins and stub out cigarettes in her right hand. She'd laugh like mad because it didn't hurt. Her left hand was pretty good though. We'd have arm wrestling matches, I'd have to use both arms and she'd still beat me.

We buried her when she was 32. Me and my Aunt, the vicar, and the man who dug the hole. She said she didn't want to be cremated and wanted a cheap coffin so the worms could get to her quickly. She said she liked the idea of it, though I thought it was because of what happened to the cat, and our mum.


(by David Boulter)
 
Blackberrying by Sylvia Plath

Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.

Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks ---
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.

The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.
 
To Various Persons Talked To All At Once
Kenneth Koch

You have helped hold me together.
I'd like you to be still.
Stop talking or doing anything else for a minute.
No. Please. For three minutes, maybe five minutes.
Tell me which walk to take over the hill.
Is there a bridge there? Will I want company?
Tell me about the old people who built the bridge.
What is "the Japanese economy"?
Where did you hide the doctor's bills?
How much I admire you!
Can you help me to take this off?
May I help you to take that off?
Are you finished with this item?
Who is the car salesman?
The canopy we had made for the dog.
I need some endless embracing.
The ocean's not really very far.
Did you come west in this weather?
I've been sitting at home with my shoes off.
You're wearing a cross!
That bench, look! Under it are some puppies!
Could I have just one little shot of Scotch?
I suppose I wanted to impress you.
It's snowing.
The Revlon Man has come from across the sea.
This racket is annoying.
We didn't want the baby to come here because of the hawk.
What are you reading?
In what style would you like the humidity to explain?
I care, but not much. You can smoke a cigar.
Genuineness isn't a word I'd ever use.
Say, what a short skirt! Do you have a camera?
The moon is a shellfish.
I can't talk to most people. They eat me alive.
Who are you, anyway?
I want to look at you all day long, because you are mine.
Might you crave a little visit to the Pizza Hut?
Thank you for telling me your sign.
I'm filled with joy by this sun!
The turtle is advancing but the lobster stays behind. Silence has won the game!
Well, just damn you and the thermometer!
I don't want to ask the doctor.
I didn't know what you meant when you said that to me.
It's getting cold, but I am feeling awfully lazy.
If you want to we can go over there
Where there's a little more light.
 
The Earth Falls Down
Anne Sexton


If I could blame it all on the weather,
the snow like the cadaver's table,
the trees turned into knitting needles,
the ground as hard as a frozen haddock,
the pond wearing its mustache of frost.
If I could blame conditions on that,
if I could blame the hearts of strangers
striding muffled down the street,
or blame the dogs, every color,
sniffing each other
and pissing on the doorstep...
If I could blame the bosses
and the presidents for
their unpardonable songs...
If I could blame it on all
the mothers and fathers of the world,
they of the lessons, the pellets of power,
they of the love surrounding you like batter...
Blame it on God perhaps?
He of the first opening
that pushed us all into our first mistakes?
No, I'll blame it on Man
For Man is God
and man is eating the earth up
like a candy bar
and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean
for it is known he will gulp it all down.
The stars (possibly) are safe.
At least for the moment.
The stars are pears
that no one can reach,
even for a wedding.

Perhaps for a death.
 
the trees turned into knitting needles,
the ground as hard as a frozen haddock

i have always liked this poem and these two lines in particular.

Yoss you choose some interesting stuff. Its refreshing.
 
cheers wiskey! :)

This Is A Photograph Of Me
Margaret Atwood

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)
 
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR AS A YOUNG ANARCHIST


1917-18-19,
While things were going on in Europe,
Our most used term of scorn or abuse
Was “bushwa.” We employed it correctly,
But we thought it was French for “bullshit.”
I lived in Toledo, Ohio,
On Delaware Avenue, the line
Between the rich and poor neighborhoods.
We played in the jungles by Ten Mile Creek,
And along the golf course in Ottawa Park.
There were two classes of kids, and they
Had nothing in common: the rich kids
Who worked as caddies, and the poor kids
Who snitched golf balls. I belonged to the
Saving group of exceptionalists
Who, after dark, and on rainy days,
Stole out and shat in the golf holes.

Kenneth Rexroth

[1956]
 
first one of 2003

Warning

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other peoples' gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Jenny Joseph (1932 - )
 
Anyone for Eliot?


The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.


Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

* * * *

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

* * * *

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet-- and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the
floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

* * * *

No I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

- TS Eliot
 
My first of the year - i wanted to do a James Clarence Mangan one, but couldn't find one optimistic enough - bloody junkies! Some might question whether the below is optimistic - i think it is.

BLACK RAGE

Umar Bin Hassan/Abiodun Oyewole

There are bombs standing
on the corners of the cities
waiting to explode
at the slightest touch
baggy shadow street boys
stand cocked ready to fire
their eyes are grenades
and the pin is about to be pulled
BOOM!
the Brother went off
pressure pulled the trigger
and the brother became a nigger
and no one could figure out
how it happened
what went wrong?
He had a chance
somebody even loved him
even told him that he was better
than most
but he went off
chains rattled inside his brain
and his sky was filled with clouds
that didn't even bring rain
but just the illusion
that something was coming
So he became a Gun
that he could hide in a jacket
and make believe he had an erection
all the time
he could penetrate anything
his tongue was a curse
his attitude was a bullet
and he'd shoot you down
without a second thought
He became G.I. Joe
killing his family
not the enemy
a human Gun made and manufactured
in the united snakes of amerika
There are bombs standing
on the corners of the cities
waiting to explode
at the slightest touch
baggy shadow street boys
stand cocked ready to fire
their eyes are grenades
They are warriors looking for
a Rite of Passage
They are young lions
enchanted by the sound of their roar
They are diamonds
treated like worthless stones
They are Rivers
with nowhere to run
They are dreams unfulfilled
desires buried in the remains
of an abandoned soul
they are the beauty of spring
blinded by the snow storms of winter
Soon they will see their Beauty
their Strength, their Love
and like Rivers flow into sea
they will unite as One
then our voice will be
more powerful than a Gun
and as we Speak
We'll get things Done.
 
Restaurant
Harold Pinter

No, you're wrong.

Everyone is as beautiful
as they can possibly be

Particularly at lunch
in a laughing restaurant

Everyone is as beautiful
as they can possibly be

And they are moved
by their own beauty

And they shed tears for it
in the back of the taxi home
 
Excalibur
David Brent/Ricky Gervais

I froze your tears and made a dagger
And stabbed it in my cock
forever
It stays there like Excalibur
Are you my Arthur?
Say you are
Take this cool dark steeled blade
Steal it, sheath it
In your lake
I drown with you to be together
Must you breathe?
Cos I need Heaven.
 
Some more Yeats?

The Fisherman


Although I can see him still,
The freckled man who goes
To a grey place on a hill
In grey Connemara clothes
At dawn to cast his flies,
It's long since I began to call up to the eyes
This wise and simple man.
All day I'd looked in the face
What I had hoped 'twould be
To write for my own race
And the reality;
The living men that I hate,
The dead man that I loved,
The craven man in his seat
The insolent unreproved,
And no knave brought to book
Who has won a drunken cheer,
The witty man and his joke
Aimed at the commonest ear,
The clever man who cries
the catch-cries of the clown,
The beating down of the wise,
And great Art beaten down.

Maybe a twelvemonth since
Suddenly I began,
In scorn of this audience,
Imagining a man,
And his sun-freckled face,
And grey Connemara cloth,
Climbing up to a place
Where stone is dark under froth,
And the down-turn of his wrist
When flies drop in the stream;
A man who does not exist,
A man who is but a dream;
And cried, "Before I am old
I shall have written him one
Poem maybe as cold
And passionate as the dawn."

Thanks for "The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock". I Hadn't read it since school. It was always gave me an image of what Soho would be like before I ever saw it. The reality wasn't quite what I imagined but some corners were.
 
Be of good cheer, London-dwellers:

London

I wandered through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow,
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:

How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.

But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse.

- William Blake
 
Slough

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.

John Betjeman
 
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas.
 
This is a lovely poem for a snowy evening by the fire:

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost
 
MOURN NOT THE DEAD

Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie--
Dust unto dust--
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;

Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell--
Too strong to strive--
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;

But rather mourn the apathetic throng--
The cowed and the meek--
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!

From Bars and Shadows by Ralph Chaplin


Edit to add the link
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Bars and Shadows, by Ralph Chaplin

The poem are all written from prison.
 
Nice one Chrissie - those famous lines used to be inscribed on the IWW Class War Prisoners banner back 80 or 90 years ago - along with a famous picture of a feller behind bars and the caption "They're in here for you - support Class War prisoners" - something which i wish more people did nowadays...
 
I didn't know that, butchersapron. It adds a dimension to the poem knowing it was used in that way.

I hope no-one minds me stealing the thread for a second day but continuing the prison theme I was struck with this one. Powerful, (but I will make it my last one on this theme).

NIGHT IN THE CELL HOUSE

Tier over tier they rise to dizzy height--
The cells of men who know the world no more.
Silence intense from ceiling to the floor;
While through the window gleams a lone blue light
Which stabs the dark immensity of night.
Felt shod and ghostly like a shade of yore,
The guard comes shuffling down the corridor;
His key-ring jingles . . . and he glides from sight.

Oh, to forget the prison and its scars,
And face the breeze where ocean meets the land;
To watch the foam-crests dance with silver stars,
While long green waves come tumbling on the sand . . .
My brow is hot against the icy bars;
There is the smell of iron on my hand.

Ralph Chaplin
 
I like those Ralph Chaplin poems a lot Chrissie, I don't think I've ever read anything by him before.


Hooray Say The Roses
Charles Bukowski

hooray say the roses, today is blamesday
and we are red as blood.

hooray say the roses, today is Wednesday
and we bloom where soldiers fell
and lovers too,
and the snake at the word.

hooray say the roses, darkness comes
all at once, like lights gone out,
the sun leaves dark continents
and rows of stone.

hooray say the roses, cannons and spires,
birds, bees, bombers, today is Friday
the hand holding a medal out the window,
a moth going by, half a mile an hour,
hooray hooray
hooray say the roses
we have empires on our stems,
the sun moves the mouth:
hooray hooray hooray
and that is why you like us.
 
Chaplin also wrote the words to 'Solidarity Forever' - and a biography called 'Wobbly: The Rough and Tumble Story of an American radical' which i've found almost impossible to find.
 
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