Poetry

[Faustus]

Anybody into it? Anybody got any favourite particular poems or poets? More to the point- does anybody want to admit they've written some in the past or still do?

 

I'll get the ball rolling with a favourite of mine:

 

This Be The Verse

Philip Larkin

 

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

 

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

 

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.

[WaltonRed]

to Valentina Serova

 

 

Wait for me, and I'll come back!

Wait with all you've got!

Wait, when dreary yellow rains

Tell you, you should not.

Wait when snow is falling fast,

Wait when summer's hot,

Wait when yesterdays are past,

Others are forgot.

Wait, when from that far-off place,

Letters don't arrive.

Wait, when those with whom you wait

Doubt if I'm alive.

 

Wait for me, and I'll come back!

Wait in patience yet

When they tell you off by heart

That you should forget.

Even when my dearest ones

Say that I am lost,

Even when my friends give up,

Sit and count the cost,

Drink a glass of bitter wine

To the fallen friend -

Wait! And do not drink with them!

Wait until the end!

 

Wait for me and I'll come back,

Dodging every fate!

"What a bit of luck!" they'll say,

Those that would not wait.

They will never understand

How amidst the strife,

By your waiting for me, dear,

You had saved my life.

Only you and I will know

How you got me through.

Simply - you knew how to wait -

No one else but you.

 

1941

[Cosmos]

Anybody into it? Anybody got any favourite particular poems or poets? More to the point- does anybody want to admit they've written some in the past or still do?

 

Yes, yes, yes and yes, although not so much.

[Faustus]

Big fan of Seamus Heaney as well:

 

Punishment

 

I can feel the tug

of the halter at the nape

of her neck, the wind

on her naked front.

 

It blows her nipples

to amber beads,

it shakes the frail rigging

of her ribs.

 

I can see her drowned

body in the bog,

the weighing stone,

the floating rods and boughs.

 

Under which at first

she was a barked sapling

that is dug up

oak-bone, brain-firkin:

 

her shaved head

like a stubble of black corn,

her blindfold a soiled bandage,

her noose a ring

 

to store

the memories of love.

Little adultress,

before they punished you

 

you were flaxen-haired,

undernourished, and your

tar-black face was beautiful.

My poor scapegoat,

 

I almost love you

but would have cast, I know,

the stones of silence.

I am the artful voyeur

 

of your brain's exposed

and darkened combs,

your muscles' webbing

and all your numbered bones:

 

I who have stood dumb

when your betraying sisters,

cauled in tar,

wept by the railings,

 

who would connive

in civilized outrage

yet understand the exact

and tribal, intimate revenge.

[Hermes]

I prefer the one line poems with a double entendre, starting with - she was only the ?????'s daughter.

 

Example - She was only the jockey's daughter, but all the horse manure.

[Hermes]

Speaking of double entendres.

 

A woman walked into a bar. The barman asked "What can I get you miss?".

 

She replied "I'll have a double entendre please".

 

So he gave her one.

[Paulie Dangerously]

I did a degree in creative writing and wrong some trully cringeworthy efforts

[3 Colours Red]

Not heard the Philip Larkin one before - good idea for a thread

 

Roger McGough

Let Me Die a Youngman's Death

 

Let me die a youngman's death

not a clean and inbetween

the sheets holywater death

not a famous-last-words

peaceful out of breath death

 

When I'm 73

and in constant good tumour

may I be mown down at dawn

by a bright red sports car

on my way home

from an allnight party

 

Or when I'm 91

with silver hair

and sitting in a barber's chair

may rival gangsters

with hamfisted tommyguns burst in

and give me a short back and insides

 

Or when I'm 104

and banned from the Cavern

may my mistress

catching me in bed with her daughter

and fearing for her son

cut me up into little pieces

and throw away every piece but one

 

Let me die a youngman's death

not a free from sin tiptoe in

candle wax and waning death

not a curtains drawn by angels borne

'what a nice way to go' death

[Hermes]

I did a degree in creative writing and wrong some trully cringeworthy efforts

 

Nothing to do with your spelling? :whistle:

[Cosmos]

In a Notebook

 

There was a river overhung with trees

With wooden houses built along its shallows

From which the morning sun drew up a haze

And the gyrations of the early swallows

Paid no attention to the gentle breeze

Which spoke discreetly from the weepong willows.

There was a jetty by the forest clearing

Where a small boat was tugging at its mooring.

 

And night still lingered underneath the eaves.

In the dark houseboats families were stirring

And Chinese soup was cooked on charcoal stoves.

Then one by one there came into the clearing

Mothers and daughters bowed beneath their sheaves.

The silent children gathered round me staring

And the shy soldiers setting out for battle

Asked for a cigarette and laughed a little.

 

From low canoes old men laid out their nets

While on the bank young boys were fishing.

The wicker traps were drawn up by their floats.

The girls stood waist-deep in the river washing

Or tossed the day's rice on enamel plates

And I sat drinking bitter coffee wishing

The tide would turn to bring me to my senses

After the pleasant war and the evasive answers.

There was a river overhung with trees.

The girls stood waist deep in the river washing,

And night still lingered underneath the eaves

While on the bank young boys with lines were fishing.

Mothers and daughters bowed beneath the sheaves

While I sat drinking bitter coffee wishing -

And the tide turned and brought me to my senses.

The pleasant war brought the unpleasant answers:

 

The villages are burnt, the cities void;

The morning light has left the river view;

The distant followers have been dismayed;

And i'm afraid, reading this passage now,

That everything I knew has been destroyed

By those whom I admired but never knew;

The laughing soldiers fought to their defeat

And i'm afraid most of my friends are dead.

 

James Fenton

[Cosmos]

Hand Washing Technique - Government Guidelines

 

i.m. Dr David Kelly

 

1. Palm to palm.

2. Right palm over left dorsum and left palm over right dorsum.

3. Palm to palm fingers interlaced.

4. Backs of fingers to opposing palms with fingers interlocked.

5. Rotational rubbing of right thumb clasped in left palm and vice versa.

6. Rotational rubbing, backwards and forwards with clasped fingers of right hand left palm and vice versa.

 

- Simon Armitage

[Cosmos]

Carol Ann Duffy - Words, Wide Night

 

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night

and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.

The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

 

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say

it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing

an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

 

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to cross

to reach you. For I am in love with you

 

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

[Cosmos]

Course, if you know the story of Ted and Sylvia, and everything he said and did, and didn't say and do, then you'll know that Birthday Letters is probably the finest, most dramatic anthology of poetry produced in the last thirty years.

[Guest Ulysses Everett McGill]

"COUGH"

 

Virgins

 

"COUGH"

[Cosmos]

"COUGH"

 

Virgins

 

"COUGH"

 

I fucking wish.

[Faustus]

"COUGH"

 

Virgins

 

"COUGH"

 

Why not make that into a haiku?

 

Cough cough cough cough cough

 

You are all fucking virgins

 

Cough cough cough cough cough

[Paulie Dangerously]

Nothing to do with your spelling? :whistle:

 

was for effect...:whistle:

[She Knows It]

The More Loving One

 

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

 

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

 

Admirer as I think I am

Of stars that do not give a damn,

I cannot, now I see them, say

I missed one terribly all day.

 

Were all stars to disappear or die,

I should learn to look at an empty sky

And feel its total darkness sublime,

Though this might take me a little time.

 

W.H. Auden

[Salou]

William Blake : The Fly

 

Little fly,

Thy summer’s play

My thoughtless hand

Has brushed away.

 

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

 

For I dance

And drink and sing,

Till some blind hand

Shall brush my wing.

 

If thought is life

And strength and breath,

And the want

Of thought is death,

 

Then am I

A happy fly,

If I live,

Or if I die.

 

[bri]

muhammed ali was asked to give a speach at harvard. during one of them asked him for a poem. He recited "me oui"

 

which went down as the shortest poem in history

[Cosmos]

And then he pissed himself.

[Stouffer]

From this poetry thread.

 

Snipers

 

When I was kneehigh to a tabletop,

Uncle Tom came home from Burma.

He was the youngest of seven brothers

So the street borrowed extra bunting

And whitewashed him a welcome.

 

All the relations made the pilgrimage,

including us, laughed, sang, made a fuss.

He was brown as a chairleg,

Drank tea out of a white mug the size of my head,

and said next to nowt.

 

But every few minutes he would scan

The ceiling nervously, hands begin to shake,

‘For snipers,’ everyone later agreed,

‘A difficult habit to break.’

 

Sometimes when the two of us were alone,

He’d have a snooze after dinner

and I’d keep an eye open for Japs.

Of course, he didn’t know this

and the tenner he’d give me before I went

was for keeping quiet,

but I liked to think it was money well spent.

 

Being Uncle Tom’s secret bodyguard

had it’s advantages, the pay was good

and the hours were short, but even so

the novelty soon wore off, and instead,

I started school and became an infant.

 

Later, I learned that he was in a mental home.

“Needn’t tell anybody…Nothing serious

…Delayed shock…Usual sort of thing

…Completely cured now the doctors say”

The snipers came down from the ceiling

but they didn’t go away.

 

Over the next five years they picked off

three of his brothers; one of whom was my father.

No glory, no citations,

Bang! straight through the heart.

 

Uncle Tom’s married now, with a family.

He doesn’t say much, but each night after tea,

He still dozes fitfully in his favourite armchair.

He keeps out of the sun, and listens now and then

for the tramp tramp of the Colonel Bogeymen.

He knows damn well he’s still at war,

Just that the sniper’s aren’t Japs anymore.

[AngryOfTuebrook]

S.I.W.

I The Prologue

 

Patting goodbye, doubtless they told the lad

He'd always show the Hun a brave man's face;

Father would sooner him dead than in disgrace, -

Was proud to see him going, aye, and glad.

Perhaps his mother whimpered how she'd fret

Until he got a nice safe wound to nurse.

Sisters would wish girls too could shoot, charge, curse...

Brothers - would send his favourite cigarette.

Each week, month after month, they wrote the same,

Thinking him sheltered in some Y. M. Hut,

Because he said so, writing on his butt

Where once an hour a bullet missed its aim.

And misses teased the hunger of his brain.

His eyes grew old with wincing, and his hand

Reckless with ague. Courage leaked, as sand

From the best sandbags after years of rain.

But never leave, wound, fever, trench-foot, shock,

Untrapped the wretch. And death seemed still withheld

For torture of lying machinally shelled,

At the pleasure of this world's Powers who'd run amok.

 

He'd seen men shoot their hands, on night patrol.

Their people never knew. Yet they were vile.

'Death sooner than dishonour, that's the style!'

So Father said.

 

II The Action

 

One dawn, our wire patrol

Carried him. This time, Death had not missed.

We could do nothing but wipe his bleeding cough.

Could it be accident? - Rifles go off...

Not sniped? No. (Later they found the English ball.)

 

III The Poem

 

It was the reasoned crisis of his soul

Against more days of inescapable thrall,

Against infrangibly wired and blind trench wall

Curtained with fire, roofed in with creeping fire,

Slow grazing fire, that would not burn him whole

But kept him for death's promises and scoff,

And life's half-promising, and both their riling.

 

IV The Epilogue

 

With him they buried the muzzle his teeth had kissed,

And truthfully wrote the mother, 'Tim died smiling.'

 

Wilfred Owen

[torahboy]

Christmas In Love.

 

Beyond the holly and the ivy,

past the spirits and the beer,

after the carols and the choir

and the presents neath the tree,

I wrapped myself around

a woman who came near

to being someone I could love

half as much as I love me.

[JRD7]

From The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

 

The bird of life is singing on the bough

His two eternal notes of "I and Thou"—

O! hearken well, for soon the song sings through,

And, would we hear it, we must hear it now.

 

The bird of life is singing in the sun,

Short is his song, nor only just begun,—

A call, a trill, a rapture, then—so soon!—

A silence, and the song is done—is done.

 

Yea! What is man that deems himself divine?

Man is a flagon, and his soul the wine;

Man is a reed, his soul the sound therein;

Man is a lantern, and his soul the shine.

 

Would you be happy! hearken, then, the way:

Heed not To-morrow, heed not Yesterday;

The magic words of life are Here and Now—

O fools, that after some to-morrow stray!

 

Were I a Sultan, say what greater bliss

Were mine to summon to my side than this,—

Dear gleaming face, far brighter than the moon!

O Love! and this immortalizing kiss.

 

To all of us the thought of heaven is dear—

Why not be sure of it and make it here?

No doubt there is a heaven yonder too,

But 'tis so far away—and you are near.

 

Men talk of heaven,—there is no heaven but here;

Men talk of hell,—there is no hell but here;

Men of hereafters talk, and future lives,—

O love, there is no other life—but here.

 

Look not above, there is no answer there;

Pray not, for no one listens to your prayer;

Near is as near to God as any Far,

And Here is just the same deceit as There.

 

But here are wine and beautiful young girls,

Be wise and hide your sorrows in their curls,

Dive as you will in life's mysterious sea,

You shall not bring us any better pearls.

 

Allah, perchance, the secret word might spell;

If Allah be, He keeps His secret well;

What He hath hidden, who shall hope to find?

Shall God His secret to a maggot tell?

 

So since with all my passion and my skill,

The world's mysterious meaning mocks me still,

Shall I not piously believe that I

Am kept in darkness by the heavenly will?

 

The Koran! well, come put me to the test—

Lovely old book in hideous error dressed—

Believe me, I can quote the Koran too,

The unbeliever knows his Koran best.

 

And do you think that unto such as you,

A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew,

God gave the Secret, and denied it me?—

Well, well, what matters it! believe that too.

 

Old Khayyám, say you, is a debauchee;

If only you were half so good as he!

He sins no sins but gentle drunkenness,

Great-hearted mirth, and kind adultery.

 

But yours the cold heart, and the murderous tongue,

The wintry soul that hates to hear a song,

The close-shut fist, the mean and measuring eye,

And all the little poisoned ways of wrong.

 

So I be written in the Book of Love,

I have no care about that book above;

Erase my name, or write it, as you please—

So I be written in the Book of Love.