Poetry

[briefs]

First, a bit of Milligan ...

 

There are holes in the sky where the rain gets in.

The holes are very small that's why rain is thin.

 

 

Mrs. Dighty in her nighty, walking in the dark;

Trod upon a puppy's tail and made the creature bark.

Mrs. Dighty in her nighty, let the creature go;

By lifting up her instep and raising her big toe.

 

 

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky;

I left my shoes and socks there - I wonder if they're dry?

 

and then, the only poem I can still recite in full from my childhood:

 

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;

And charging along like troops in a battle,

All through the meadows the horses and cattle:

All of the sights of the hill and the plain

Fly as thick as driving rain;

And ever again, in the wink of an eye,

Painted stations whistle by.

 

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,

All by himself and gathering brambles;

Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;

And there is the green for stringing the daisies!

Here is a cart run away in the road

Lumping along with man and load;

And here is a mill and there is a river:

Each a glimpse and gone for ever!

 

'From a Railway Carriage'

R. L. Stevenson

[briefs]

and one more Milligan ...

 

So Fair is She

 

So fair is she

So fair her face

So fair her pulsing figure

 

Not so fair

The maniacal stare

Of a husband who's much bigger.

[Ron Yeats Rules]

An interesting idea for a thread.

 

Here's one of my favourites and to be read at my funeral

 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree - William Butler Yeats

 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

[Cosmos]

WB Yeats - When You Are Old and Grey

 

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

 

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

 

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

[diamondjoe]

Mid Term Break by Semus Heaney.

 

Mid-term Break

 

 

I sat all morning in the college sick bay

Counting bells knelling classes to a close,

At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

 

In the porch I met my father crying--

He had always taken funerals in his stride--

And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

 

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram

When I came in, and I was embarrassed

By old men standing up to shake my hand

 

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"

Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

Away at school, as my mother held my hand

 

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived

With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

 

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops

And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him

For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

 

Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,

He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.

No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

 

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

 

Seamus Heaney

 

Stunning.

[Cosmos]

Pike

 

Pike, three inches long, perfect

Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.

Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.

They dance on the surface among the flies.

 

Or move, stunned by their own grandeur,

Over a bed of emerald, silhouette

Of submarine delicacy and horror.

A hundred feet long in their world.

 

In ponds, under the heat-struck lily pads-

Gloom of their stillness:

Logged on last year's black leaves, watching upwards.

Or hung in an amber cavern of weeds

 

The jaws' hooked clamp and fangs

Not to be changed at this date:

A life subdued to its instrument;

The gills kneading quietly, and the pectorals.

 

Three we kept behind glass,

Jungled in weed: three inches, four,

And four and a half: red fry to them-

Suddenly there were two. Finally one

 

With a sag belly and the grin it was born with.

And indeed they spare nobody.

Two, six pounds each, over two feet long

High and dry and dead in the willow-herb-

 

One jammed past its gills down the other's gullet:

The outside eye stared: as a vice locks-

The same iron in this eye

Though its film shrank in death.

 

A pond I fished, fifty yards across,

Whose lilies and muscular tench

Had outlasted every visible stone

Of the monastery that planted them-

 

Stilled legendary depth:

It was as deep as England. It held

Pike too immense to stir, so immense and old

That past nightfall I dared not cast

 

But silently cast and fished

With the hair frozen on my head

For what might move, for what eye might move.

The still splashes on the dark pond,

 

Owls hushing the floating woods

Frail on my ear against the dream

Darkness beneath night's darkness had freed,

That rose slowly toward me, watching.

 

Ted Hughes

[neko]

i like pottery, sorry, poetry...

 

The poet Ewan McTeagle...

(from Monty Python's Flying Circus, episode 16)

 

Voice Over: From these glens and scars, the sound of the coot and the moorhen is seldom absent. Natures sits in stern mastery over these rocks and crags. The rush of the mountain stream, the bleat of the sheep, and the broad, clear Highland skies, reflected in tarn and loch form a breathtaking backdrop against which Ewan McTeagle writes such poems as 'Lend us a quid till the end of the week'. But it was with more simple, homespun verses that McTeagle's unique style first flowered.

 

If you could see your way to lending me sixpence.

I could at least buy a newspaper.

That's not much to ask anyone.

 

Voice Over: One woman who remembers McTeagle as a young friend - Lassie O'Shea.

Lassie: Mr McTeagle wrote me two poems, between the months of January and April, 1969...

Voice Over: Could you read us one?

Lassie: Och, I dinna like to... they were kinda personal... but I will.

 

To Ma Own beloved Lassie.

A poem on her 17th Birthday.

Lend us a couple of bob till Thursday.

I'm absolutely skint.

But I'm expecting a postal order

and I can pay you back as soon as it comes.

Love Ewan

Voice Over: "Beautiful."

St John Limbo - Poetry Expert: Since then, McTeagle has developed and widened his literary scope. Three years ago he concerned himself with quite small sums - quick bits of ready cash:" sixpences, shillings, but more recently he has turned his extraordinary literary perception to much larger sums - fifteen shillings, four pounds twelve and six... even nine guineas... But there is still nothing to match the huge swoop... the majestic power of what is surely his greatest work: 'Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?'...

Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?

I'm right on my uppers.

I can pay you back

When this postal order comes from Australia.

Honestly.

Hope the bladder trouble's geting better.

Love, Ewan

 

Voice Over: There seems to be no end to McTeagle's poetic invention. 'My new cheque book hasn't arrived' was followed up by the brilliantly allegorical 'What's twenty quid to the bloody Midland Bank?' and more recently his prizewinning poem to the Arts Council: 'Can you lend me one thousand quid?'

 

David Mercer: I think what McTeagle's pottery... er... poetry is doing is rejecting all the traditional cliches of modern pottery. No longer do we have to be content with Keats's 'Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness', Wordsworth's "I wandered lonely as a cloud', and Milton's 'Can you lend us two bob till Tuesday'...

 

Oh gie me a shillin' for some fags

and I'll pay yer back on Thursday,

but if you wait till Saturday

I'm expecting a divvy from the Harpenden Building Society

[Cosmos]

Daddy

by: Sylvia Plath

 

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

 

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time--

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal

 

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.

 

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend

 

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

 

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene

 

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

 

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

 

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

 

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who

 

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

 

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

 

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I'm finally through.

The black telephone's off at the root,

The voices just can't worm through.

 

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

 

There's a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

[neko]

seriously though, i wrote a poem for remembrance day when i was about 10, that was read by the governor general of canada at a service.

 

it was just an in-class assignment, and i remember spending most of the time drawing battle scenes around the actual poem.

 

btw, does anyone want a cat ? we have another stray outside. beautiful cat...you'll have to come to canada for it though.

[Cosmos]

The Cow

by Ogden Nash

 

The cow is of the bovine ilk;

One end is moo, the other, milk.

[hamstrung]

Party Piece

Brian Patten

 

He said:

 

'Let's stay here

Now this place has emptied

And make gentle pornography with one another,

While the partygoers go out

And the dawn creeps in,

Like a stranger.

 

Let us not hesitate

Over what we know

Or over how cold this place has become,

But let's unclip our minds

And let tumble free

The mad, mangled crocodile of love.'

 

So they did,

There among the woodbines and guinness stains,

And later he caught a bus and she a train

And all there was between them then

was rain.

[Cosmos]

Deceptions

 

"Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain

consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to

discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable,

and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt."

--Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

 

 

Even so distant, I can taste the grief,

Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.

The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief

Worry of wheels along the street outside

Where bridal London bows the other way,

And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,

Forbids the scar to heal, and drives

Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,

Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

 

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare

Console you if I could. What can be said,

Except that suffering is exact, but where

Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?

For you would hardly care

That you were less deceived, out on that bed,

Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair

To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

 

Philip Larkin

[Soleilrouge]

I. Why?

Me. Wheee.

[Faustus]

1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

By T.S Eliot

 

 

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 etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats 5

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 … 10

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, 15

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, 20

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; 25

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; 30

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 35

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— 40

[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 45

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, 50

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— 55

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? 60

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!]

It is perfume from a dress 65

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 70

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! 75

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? 80

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, 85

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, 90

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”— 95

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, 100

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: 105

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.”

. . . . . 110

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, 115

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 … 120

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. 125

 

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 130

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

[melons]

Courage is the strength to stand up

 

When it's easier to fall down and lose hold.

It is the conviction to explore new horizons

When it's easier to believe what we've been told.

 

 

Courage is the desire to maintain our integrity

When it's easier to look the other way.

It is feeling happy and alive, and moving forward

When it's easier to feel sorry for ourselves and stay.

 

 

Courage is the will to shape our world

When it's easier to let someone else do it for us.

It is the recognition that none of us are perfect

When it's easier to criticize others and fuss.

 

 

Courage is the power to step forward and lead

When it's easier to follow the crowd; their pleas resound.

It is the spirit that places you on top of the mountain

When it's easier to never leave the ground.

 

 

The foundation of courage is solid,

The rock that doesn't roll.

Courage is the freedom

Of our mind, body, and soul!

 

Author unknown.

[neko]

[Mel Wood]

'TWAT' by John Cooper Clarke

 

Like a Night Club in the morning, you’re the bitter end.

Like a recently disinfected shit-house, you’re clean round the bend.

You give me the horrors

too bad to be true

All of my tomorrow’s

are lousy coz 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 our 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.

[Fink]

I write poetry now. Im not very good and its more like free writing but I actually enjoy it. All my stuff has the same bloody tempo though.

 

I like eliot too though...hes a goodun.

 

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

 

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

 

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

 

II

 

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

 

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer—

 

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

 

III

 

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

 

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

 

IV

 

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

 

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

 

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

 

V

 

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

 

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

 

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

 

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

 

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

 

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

[Hazel Motes]

To The Whore Who Took My Poems

 

some say we should keep personal remorse from the

poem,

stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,

but jezus;

twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have

my

paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:

are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?

why didn't you take my money? they usually do

from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.

next time take my left arm or a fifty

but not my poems:

I'm not Shakespeare

but sometime simply

there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;

there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards

down to the last bomb,

but as God said,

crossing his legs,

I see where I have made plenty of poets

but not so very much

poetry.

Charles Bukowski

[Hazel Motes]

Carmen De Boheme

 

Sinuously winding through the room

On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, --

Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume

The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets.

 

Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall,

Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through

With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe's hall.

Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue.

 

The andante quivers with crescendo's start,

And dies on fire's birth in each man's heart.

The tapestry betrays a finger through

The slit, soft-pulling; -- -- -- and music follows cue.

 

There is a sweep, -- a shattering, -- a choir

Disquieting of barbarous fantasy.

The pulse is in the ears, the heart is higher,

And stretches up through mortal eyes to see.

 

Carmen! Akimbo arms and smouldering eyes; --

Carmen! Bestirring hope and lipping eyes; --

Carmen whirls, and music swirls and dips.

"Carmen!," comes awed from wine-hot lips.

 

Finale leaves in silence to replume

Bent wings, and Carmen with her flaunts through the gloom

Of whispering tapestry, brown with old fringe: --

The winers leave too, and the small lamps twinge.

 

Morning: and through the foggy city gate

A gypsy wagon wiggles, striving straight.

And some dream still of Carmen's mystic face, --

Yellow, pallid, like ancient lace.

 

Hart Crane

[Hand Shandy]

Why haven't you reviewed my Secret Santa CD?

 

Why?

 

Red Thorpey

[Hazel Motes]

Our March

 

Beat the squares with the tramp of rebels!

Higher, rangers of haughty heads!

We'll wash the world with a second deluge,

Now’s the hour whose coming it dreads.

Too slow, the wagon of years,

The oxen of days — too glum.

Our god is the god of speed,

Our heart — our battle drum.

Is there a gold diviner than ours/

What wasp of a bullet us can sting?

Songs are our weapons, our power of powers,

Our gold — our voices — just hear us sing!

Meadow, lie green on the earth!

With silk our days for us line!

Rainbow, give color and girth

To the fleet-foot steeds of time.

The heavens grudge us their starry glamour.

Bah! Without it our songs can thrive.

Hey there, Ursus Major, clamour

For us to be taken to heaven alive!

Sing, of delight drink deep,

Drain spring by cups, not by thimbles.

Heart step up your beat!

Our breasts be the brass of cymbals.

 

Vladimir Mayakovsky

[Hazel Motes]

Cantos IV

 

Sarrie is a Whore

Who Sucks on her Mums paw-paw

Nobody Likes Her

 

A. Dossena

[Hazel Motes]

Why haven't you reviewed my Secret Santa CD?

 

Why?

 

Red Thorpey

Sorry

 

I’m sorry,

I’m sorry for all the times I’ve cried

I’m sorry for every single lie

I’m sorry I was never enough

It will all be revealed...

 

H. Motes

[Mick R]

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.

 

Wasn't Thatcher a fishmonger's daughter? Or something like that...

 

Which leads on to Larkin - always used to be my favourite poet, and then I discovered he loved Margaret Thatcher.

 

He looked like Eric Morecambe, anyway.