PYF Poem

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3D Megadoodoo: Nov 25, 2010

Martialis is always nice since he reminds me of the fact that people were exactly the same back then as now:

Mentula cum doleat puero, tivi, Naevole, culus,
non sum divinus, sed scio quid facias.

(The boy's cock is sore, Naevolus, as is your behind.
I'm no diviner but I know what you do.)

Quod pectus, quod crura tibi, quod bracchia vellis,
quod cincta est brevibus mentula tonsa pilis,
hoc praestas, Labiene, tuae - quis nescit? - amicae.
cui praestas, culum quod, Labiene, pilas?

(You pluck smooth your chest, legs, and arms,
and your cock is surrounded by hairs clipped short.
This you do, Labienus, for your female friend, as we all know.
For whom, then, Labienus, do you pluck the hair from your arse?)

# ? Dec 14, 2013 01:15

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# ? Apr 25, 2024 07:21

Segue: May 23, 2007

If I Could Write Words - Spike Milligan

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.�

# ? Dec 14, 2013 05:21

The Comna: May 22, 2012; schtzn
schtzn
t-t-t-t
t-t-t-t

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixgbtOcEgXg

Ernst Jandl posted:

Schtzngrmm
schtzngrmm
t-t-t-t
t-t-t-t
grrmmmmm
t-t-t-t
s----c------h
tzngrmm
tzngrmm
tzngrmm
grrrmmmmm
schtzn
schtzn
t-t-t-t
t-t-t-t
schtzngrmm
schtzngrmm
tssssssssssssss
grrt
grrrrrt
scht
scht
t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t
scht
tzngrmm
tzngrmm
t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t
scht
scht
scht
scht
scht
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
t-tt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMCHfGA508M

Konstantin Simonov posted:

Жди меня, и я вернусь.
Только очень жди,
Жди, когда наводят грусть
Желтые дожди,
Жди, когда снега метут,
Жди, когда жара,
Жди, когда других не ждут,
Позабыв вчера.
Жди, когда из дальних мест
Писем не придет,
Жди, когда уж надоест
Всем, кто вместе ждет.

Жди меня, и я вернусь,
Не желай добра
Всем, кто знает наизусть,
Что забыть пора.
Пусть поверят сын и мать
В то, что нет меня,
Пусть друзья устанут ждать,
Сядут у огня,
Выпьют горькое вино
На помин души...
Жди. И с ними заодно
Выпить не спеши.

Жди меня, и я вернусь,
Всем смертям назло.
Кто не ждал меня, тот пусть
Скажет: - Повезло.
Не понять, не ждавшим им,
Как среди огня
Ожиданием своим
Ты спасла меня.
Как я выжил, будем знать
Только мы с тобой,-
Просто ты умела ждать,
Как никто другой.

translation posted:

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.

# ? Dec 14, 2013 06:31

Feste: Apr 7, 2009

Meditations in an Emergency

Frank O'Hara posted:

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there�ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don�t you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don�t I? I�m just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes�I can�t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there�s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they�re missing? Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only I had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It�s not that I am curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it�s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

Now there is only one man I love to kiss when he is unshaven. Heterosexuality! you are inexorably approaching. (How discourage her?)

St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am I to become a legend, my dear? I�ve tried love, but that hides you in the bosom of another and I am always springing forth from it like the lotus�the ecstasy of always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted by it!) or like a hyacinth, �to keep the filth of life away,� yes, there, even in the heart, where the filth is pumped in and courses and slanders and pollutes and determines. I will my will, though I may become famous for a mysterious vacancy in that department, that greenhouse.

Destroy yourself, if you don�t know!

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so. I admire you, beloved, for the trap you�ve set. It's like a final chapter no one reads because the plot is over.

�Fanny Brown is run away�scampered off with a Cornet of Horse; I do love that little Minx, & hope She may be happy, tho� She has vexed me by this Exploit a little too. �Poor silly Cecchina! or F:B: as we used to call her. �I wish She had a good Whipping and 10,000 pounds.� �Mrs. Thrale.

I�ve got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I�ll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don�t want me to go where you go, so I go where you don�t want me to. It�s only afternoon, there�s a lot ahead. There won�t be any mail downstairs. Turning, I spit in the lock and the knob turns.

Alternatively, the whole of By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept by Elizabeth Smart (not that Elizabeth Smart) is marvelous and a favorite of mine.

# ? Dec 14, 2013 07:29

Roydrowsy: May 6, 2007

I'm not huge on poetry, but there are a few I really like. Perhaps my favorite,

A Radio With Guts
Charles Bukowski

it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street
I used to get drunk
and throw the radio through the window
while it was playing, and, of course,
it would break the glass in the window
and the radio would sit there on the roof
still playing
and I'd tell my woman,
"Ah, what a marvelous radio!"
the next morning I'd take the window
off the hinges
and carry it down the street
to the glass man
who would put in another pane.
I kept throwing that radio through the window
each time I got drunk
and it would sit there on the roof
still playing-
a magic radio
a radio with guts,
and each morning I'd take the window
back to the glass man.
I don't remember how it ended exactly
though I do remember
we finally moved out.
there was a woman downstairs who worked in
the garden in her bathing suit,
she really dug with that trowel
and she put her behind up in the air
and I used to sit in the window
and watch the sun shine all over that thing
while the music played.

# ? Dec 14, 2013 15:39

gschmidl: Sep 3, 2011; watch with knife hands

Everything else I wanted to mention has been taken, so

Only in silence the word,
Only in dark the light,
Only in dying life:
Bright the hawk's flight
On the empty sky.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

# ? Dec 14, 2013 15:49

Dogan: Aug 2, 2006

quote:

Once there was a man
without a conscience,

who feared
the dark and
jumped at
midday shadows

and maybe he did
good, and maybe not

he certainly did wrong,

but cast away old memories
whether they go
willingly or no

and hoped for the return
of a childhood
that may never
have existed
at all

because innocence
is bliss

and now I understand

quote:

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh; I have been called a hundred names and will be called a thousand more before the world goes dim and cold. I am a hero.

She has been nameless since our birth; a constant adversary, caring for nothing but my ruin, a sword drenched in my blood; forever my greatest and only love. She is the dark one; the enemy and lover without whom my existence is pathetic and vulgar. Her eyes steam and boil in the night (she is fantastically beautiful yet I cannot stand the sight of her). Our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal.

We met once in the garden, at the beginning of the world and unaware of our twin destinies (not the garden of Genesis but another; forgotten, untended and now choked with weeds, unvisited except for ourselves). We matched stares across a dry fountain and I recall her smiling at me before she devoured the lawn and trees with a transparent blue flame and tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the sky, screaming my sins.

Our reunions are epic battles fought without quarter, often in the dark as the moon is seldom visible and the sun never; I powder a granite monument in a soundless flash, showering the grass with molten drops of its gold inlay, sending smoking chips of stone skipping into the fog. She splinters an ancient oak with a force that takes my breath away and hurls me to the ground. She leaves it and I lie in the slow rain of burning slivers of wood, staring at the low, dark clouds, craving our next meeting.

# ? Dec 16, 2013 19:56

Tochiazuma: Feb 16, 2007

Not my favourite but a good one that hasn't been quoted (I think...)

"Funeral Blues" W.H. Auden

quote:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

# ? Dec 18, 2013 00:39

the heebie-gbs: Apr 23, 2007; _{♫ twerrrmmmmm ♫}
/

Spanish Manlove posted:

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834)
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

A fun thing to do is to read this whole thing to the tune of Gilligan's Island

# ? Dec 19, 2013 22:28

Fozaldo: Apr 18, 2004; Serenity Now. Serenity Now.

If you cast your bread on water
It returns a thousand fold
Or so it says in the Bible
That's what I've been told
So I cast my bread on water
It was spotted by a froggy
And all the bits he didn't eat
Just floated back all soggy

Fozaldo has a new favorite as of 09:11 on Dec 20, 2013

# ? Dec 19, 2013 22:53

Trustfund.: Feb 14, 2007; by Nyc_Tattoo

You have so many relationships in this life

Only one or two will last

You go through all this pain and strife

Then you turn your back and they're gone so fast

So hold on to the ones who really care

In the end they'll be the only ones there

When you get old and start losing your hair

Can you tell me who will still care?

Plant a seed, plant a flower, plant a rose

You can plant any one of those

Keep planting to find out which one grows

It's a secret no one knows

Can you tell me? You say you can but you don't know.

Can you tell me which flower's going to grow?

Can you tell me if it's going to be a daisy or a rose?

Can you tell me which flower's going to grow?

Can you tell me? You say you can but you don't know.

Trustfund. has a new favorite as of 23:30 on Dec 19, 2013

# ? Dec 19, 2013 23:28

Tendai: Mar 16, 2007; "When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber."; Grimey Drawer

Vladimir Mayakovsky posted:

To His Beloved Self, the Author Dedicates these Lines

Some words.
Heavy as a blow.
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's- to God what is God's."
And one
such as I,
where shall I squeeze in?
Where is my den?

If only I were
small
as the great Pacific -
I'd stand up on the waves' tiptoes
and caress the moon with my tides.
Where am I to find a beloved
equal to myself?
Such a woman has no place in the tiny heavens!

If only I were poor!
As a billionaire!
What's money to the soul?
There's an insatiable thief in mine.
All the gold in California couldn't feed
the unbridled horde of my desires.

If I could only be as tongue-tied
as Dante
or Petrarch!
Turn my soul's fire on one woman!
Make it smolder out in verse!
My words
and my love-
are a triumphal arch:
the beloveds of all ages
would pass through it gloriously,
without a trace.

If only I were
quiet
as thunder-
I would whimper
and, trembling, embrace earth's decrepit cloister.
If I outroar in an enormous voice
with all the power of thunder-
comets will wring their burning hands,
and fling themselves down in despair.

I would crack open nights with my eye's ray,
if only I were
dim as the sun!
I so need
to slake with my shining
the sunken bosom of the earth!

I will pass by,
dragging my giant-love.
In what
delirious
feverish night,
by what Goliaths was I conceived-
so big
and so useless?

# ? Dec 19, 2013 23:38

Xander77: Apr 6, 2009; Fuck it then. For another pit sandwich and some 'tater salad, I'll post a few more.

The Comna posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMCHfGA508M

A) Wait for Me - Read by Laurence Olivier

B) I prefer this Simonov poem (more or less from the same time and place, but with a very different emphasis):

Константин Симонов - Убей его!

quote:

Если дорог тебе твой дом,
Где ты русским выкормлен был,
Под бревенчатым потолком,
Где ты в люльке, качаясь, плыл...

Если дороги в доме том
Тебе стены, печь и углы,
Дедом, прадедом и отцом
В нем исхоженные полы...

Если мил тебе бедный сад,
С майским цветом,
С жужжанием пчел,
И под липой сто лет назад
Дедом вкопанный в землю стол...

Если мать тебе дорога,
Тебя выкормившая грудь,
Где давно уже нет молока,
Только можно щекой прильнуть.

Если ты не хочешь отдать
Ту, с которой вдвоем ходил,
Ту, что поцеловать ты не смел �
Так ее любил,
Чтобы немцы ее втроем
Взяли силой, зажав в углу,
И распяли ее живьем
Обнаженную на полу,
Чтоб досталось трем этим псам
В муках, в ненависти, в крови
Все, что свято берег ты сам
Всею силой мужской любви...

Так убей же немца, чтоб он,
А не ты на земле лежал,
Не в твоем дому чтобы стон,
А в его по мертвом стоял.
Так хотел он � его вина.
Пусть исплачется не твоя,
А его родившая мать,
Не твоя, а его жена
Понапрасну пусть будет ждать.

Если немца убил твой брат,
Если немца убил сосед, �
Это брат и сосед твой мстят,
А тебе оправданья нет.
За чужой спиной не сидят,
Из чужой винтовки не мстят.
Так убей же немца ты сам,
Так убей же его скорей.
Сколько раз увидишь его,
Столько раз его и убей!

quote:

Konstantin Simonov - KILL HIM

If your house means a thing to you
Where you first dreamed your Russian dreams
In your swinging cradle, afloat
Beneath the log ceiling beams.
If your house means a thing to you
With its stove, corners, walls and floors
Worn smooth by the footsteps of three
Generations of ancestors.

If your small garden means a thing:
With its May blooms and bees humming low,
With its table your grandfather built
Neath the linden - a century ago.
If you don't want a German to tread
The floor in your house and chance
To sit in your ancestors' place
And destroy your yard's trees and plants

If your mother is dear to you
And the breast that gave you suck
Which hasn't had milk for years
But is now where you put your cheek;
If you cannot stand the thought
Of a German's doing her harm.
Beating her furrowed face
With her braids wound round his arm.
And those hands which carried you
To your cradle washing instead
A German's dirty clothes
Or making him his bed .

[If you haven't forgotten your father
Who tossed you and teased your toes,
Who was a good soldier, who vanished
In the high Carpathian snows,
Who died for your motherland's fate,
For each Don and each Volga wave,
If you don't want him in his sleeping
To turn over in his grave,
When a German tears his soldier picture
With crosses from its place
And before your own mother's eyes
Stamps hobnailed boots on his face.]

If you don't want to give away
Her you walked with and didn't touch,
Her you didn't dare even to kiss
For a long time - you loved her so much,
And the Germans cornering her
And taking her alive by force,
Crucifying her - three of them
Naked, on the floor; with coarse
Moans, hate, and blood, -
Those dogs taking advantage of
All you sacredly preserved
With your strong, male love.

If you don't want to give away
To a German with his black gun
Your house, your mother, your wife
All that's yours as a native son
No: No one will save your land
If you don't save it from the worst.
No: No one will kill this foe,
If you don't kill him first.

And until you have killed him, don't
Talk about your love - and
Call the house where you lived your home
Or the land where you grew up your land.

If your brother killed a German,
If your neighbor killed one too,
It's your brother's and neighbor's vengeance,
And it's no revenge for you.
You can't sit behind another
Letting him fire your shot.
If your brother kills a German,
Hes a soldier; you are not.

So kill that German so he
Will lie on the ground's backbone,
So the funeral wailing will be
In his house, not in your own.
He wanted it so It's his guilt
Let his house burn up, and his life.
Let his woman become a widow;
Don't let it be your wife.
Don't let your mother tire from tears;
Let the one who bore him bear the pain.
Don't let it be yours, but his
Family who will wait in vain.

So kill at least one of them
And as soon as you can. Still
Each one you chance to see!
Kill him! Kill him! Kill!

# ? Dec 20, 2013 00:21

Rockii: Mar 6, 2013; It's Mr. Steal Yo Power

Leonard Cohen "A thousand kisses deep"
1. You came to me this morning
And you handled me like meat.
You�d have to live alone to know
How good that feels, how sweet.
My mirror twin, my next of kin,
I�d know you in my sleep.
And who but you would take me in
A thousand kisses deep?

2. I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat.
I�m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique -
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep.

3. All soaked in sex, and pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
We made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet -
And then consented to be wrecked
A thousand kisses deep.

4. I know you had to lie to me,
I know you had to cheat.
But the Means no longer guarantee
The Virtue in Deceit.
That truth is bent, that beauty spent,
That style is obsolete -
Ever since the Holy Spirit went
A thousand kisses deep.

5. (So what about this Inner Light
That�s boundless and unique?
I�m slouching through another night
A thousand kisses deep.)

6. I�m turning tricks; I�m getting fixed,
I�m back on Boogie Street.
I tried to quit the business -
Hey, I�m lazy and I�m weak.
But sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep.

7. (And fragrant is the thought of you,
The file on you complete -
Except what we forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep.)

8. The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it�s done -
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it�s real
A thousand kisses deep.

9. (I jammed with Diz and Dante -
I did not have their sweep -
But once or twice, they let me play
A thousand kisses deep.)

10. And I�m still working with the wine,
Still dancing cheek to cheek.
The band is playing "Auld Lang Syne" -
The heart will not retreat.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep -
You ditch it all to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep.

11. And now you are the Angel Death
And now the Paraclete;
And now you are the Savior's Breath
And now the Belsen heap.
No turning from the threat of love,
No transcendental leap -
As witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep.

# ? Dec 22, 2013 06:33

alpha_destroy: Mar 23, 2010; Billy Butler: Fat Guy by Day, Doubles Machine by Night

Aww, you guys have taken so many of the good ones! Someone posted some William Carlos Williams on the first page, but didn't post "This is Just to Say" and I should have known it would get taken before I could post.

Since that was claimed, here is Robert Frost's "Mending Wall."

Robert Frost posted:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Edit: Actually, I might as well post my second favorite Williams Carlos Williams poem. This is "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus"

William Carlos Williams posted:

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings' wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

alpha_destroy has a new favorite as of 08:59 on Dec 22, 2013

# ? Dec 22, 2013 08:48

Gene Hackman Fan: Dec 27, 2002; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

A. E. Housman

OH, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.

And now the fancy passes by,
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they �ll say that I
Am quite myself again.

# ? Dec 22, 2013 11:31

LogicNinja: Jan 21, 2011; ...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...

Women's Rights? posted:

Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

I wanted to link this, which is Sylvia Plath reading it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBLxyTFDxE
She's super intense, and it's awesome.

Here's another Russian one, since some folks here seem to be into that and I don't really have anyone to talk about Russian poetry to IRL. занавес, The Curtain, by Marina Tsvetaeva.

Водопадами занавеса, как пеной --
Хвоей - пламенем - прошумя.
Нету тайны у занавеса от сцены:
(Сцена - ты, занавес - я).

Сновиденными зарослями (в высоком
Зале - оторопь разлилась)
Я скрываю героя в борьбе с Роком,
Место действия - и - час.

Водопадными радугами, обвалом
Лавра (вверился же! знал!)
Я тебя загораживаю от зала,
(Завораживаю - зал!)

Тайна занавеса! Сновиденным лесом
Сонных снадобий, трав, зeрн...
(За уже содрогающейся завесой
Ход трагедии - как - шторм!)

Ложи, в слезы! В набат, ярус!
Срок, исполнься! Герой, будь!
Ходит занавес - как - парус,
Ходит занавес - как - грудь.

Из последнего сердца тебя, о недра,
Загораживаю. - Взрыв!
Над ужа - ленною - Федрой
Взвился занавес - как - гриф.

Нате! Рвите! Глядите! Течет, не так ли?
Заготавливайте - чан!
Я державную рану отдам до капли!
(Зритель бел, занавес рдян).

И тогда, сострадательным покрывалом
Долу, знаменем прошумя.
Нету тайны у занавеса - от зала.
(Зала - жизнь, занавес - я)

I'm not even close to good enough to try to translate it.

e: Housman's great, I like his conversational style. When I was One and Twenty is great.

# ? Dec 30, 2013 02:45

Marco de Pollo: Jul 4, 2011; The barely cleaned, unwashed, last foot-long segment of lightly charred poop-chute.

Red Green posted:

We hitch the horse up to the sleigh, like grandfather used to do.
Over hills and through the dales, we glide for an hour or two.
And soon my ears are brittle, my mouth is frozen shut,
my eyes are locked wide open and all I see is the horse's butt.

# ? Dec 31, 2013 18:02

Lunchbox Paradox: May 25, 2009; "Get back to work! Your boss isn't paying you to MSPaint all day!"
\

Pablo Neruda Tonight I Can Write the Saddest Lines

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voide. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my sould is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

# ? Jan 1, 2014 22:33

LogicNinja: Jan 21, 2011; ...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...

Robert Louis Stevenson, Heather Ale

From the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground.

There rose a king in Scotland,
A fell man to his foes,
He smote the Picts in battle,
He hunted them like roes.
Over miles of the red mountain
He hunted as they fled,
And strewed the dwarfish bodies
Of the dying and the dead.

Summer came in the country,
Red was the heather bell;
But the manner of the brewing
Was none alive to tell.
In graves that were like children�s
On many a mountain head,
The Brewsters of the Heather
Lay numbered with the dead.

The king in the red moorland
Rode on a summer�s day;
And the bees hummed, and the curlews
Cried beside the way.
The king rode, and was angry,
Black was his brow and pale,
To rule in a land of heather
And lack the Heather Ale.

It fortuned that his vassals,
Riding free on the heath,
Came on a stone that was fallen
And vermin hid beneath.
Rudely plucked from their hiding,
Never a word they spoke:
A son and his aged father�
Last of the dwarfish folk.

The king sat high on his charger,
He looked on the little men;
And the dwarfish and swarthy couple
Looked at the king again.
Down by the shore he had them;
And there on the giddy brink�
�I will give you life, ye vermin,
For the secret of the drink.�

There stood the son and father
And they looked high and low;
The heather was red around them,
The sea rumbled below.
And up and spoke the father,
Shrill was his voice to hear:
�I have a word in private,
A word for the royal ear.

�Life is dear to the aged,
And honour a little thing;
I would gladly sell the secret,�
Quoth the Pict to the King.
His voice was small as a sparrow�s,
And shrill and wonderful clear:
�I would gladly sell my secret,
Only my son I fear.

�For life is a little matter,
And death is nought to the young;
And I dare not sell my honour
Under the eye of my son.
Take him, O king, and bind him,
And cast him far in the deep;
And it�s I will tell the secret
That I have sworn to keep.�

They took the son and bound him,
Neck and heels in a thong,
And a lad took him and swung him,
And flung him far and strong,
And the sea swallowed his body,
Like that of a child of ten;�
And there on the cliff stood the father,
Last of the dwarfish men.

�True was the word I told you:
Only my son I feared;
For I doubt the sapling courage
That goes without the beard.
But now in vain is the torture,
Fire shall never avail:
Here dies in my bosom
The secret of Heather Ale.

---

The Russian translation (by Marshak) is really really good.

Из вереска напиток
Забыт давным-давно,
А был он слаще меда,
Пьянее, чем вино.

В котлах его варили
И пили всей семьей
Малютки-медовары
В пещерах под землей.

Пришел король шотландский
Безжалостный к врагам.
Погнал он бедных пиктов
К скалистым берегам.

На вересковом поле
На поле боевом
Лежал живой на мертвом
И мертвый на живом.

Лето в стране настало,
Вереск опять цветет,
Но некому готовить
Вересковый мед.

В своих могилах тесных
В горах родной земли
Малютки-медовары
Приют себе нашли.

Король по склону едет
Над морем на коне,
А рядом реют чайки
С дорогой на равне.

Король глядит угрюмо
И думает: "Кругом
Цветет медовый вереск,
А меда мы не пьем."

Но вот его вассалы
Заметили двоих -
Последних медоваров,
Оставшихся в живых.

Вышли они из-под камня,
Щурясь на белый свет, -
Старый горбатый карлик
И мальчик пятнадцати лет.

К берегу моря крутому
Их привели на допрос,
Но никто из пленных
Слова не произнес.

Сидел король шотландский
Не шевелясь в седле,
А маленькие люди
Стояли на земле.

Гневно король промолвил:
- Плетка обоих ждет,
Если не скажете, черти,
Как вы готовите мед!

Сын и отец смолчали,
Стоя у края скалы.
Вереск шумел над ними,
В море катились валы.

И вдруг голосок раздался:
- Слушай, шотландский король,
Поговорить с тобою
С глазу на глаз позволь.

Старость боится смерти,
Жизнь я изменой куплю,
Выдам заветную тайну,-
Карлик сказал королю.

Голос его воробьиный
Резко и четко звучал.
- Тайну давно бы я выдал,
Если бы сын не мешал.

Мальчику жизни не жалко,
Гибель ему нипочем.
Мне продавать свою совесть
Совестно будет при нем.

Пусть его крепко свяжут
И бросят в пучину вод
И я научу шотландцев
Готовить старинный мед.

Сильный шотландский воин
Мальчика крепко связал
И бросил в открытое море
С прибрежных отвесных скал.

Волны над ним сомкнулись,
Замер последний крик.
И эхом ему ответил
С обрыва отец-старик:

- Правду сказал я, шотландцы,
От сына я ждал беды,
Не верил я в стойкость юных,
Не бреющих бороды.

А мне костер не страшен,
Пусть со мною умрет
Моя святая тайна,
Мой вересковый мед.

# ? Jan 3, 2014 01:23

KazigluBey: Oct 30, 2011; boner

A D&D Poem:

General Patton - "Through a Glass, Darkly" posted:

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
I have fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I've called His name in blessing
When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite's leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy's field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor's Star.

Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it's quivering gloom.

So but now with Tanks a'clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell's ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o'er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

# ? Jan 5, 2014 03:12

naptalan: Feb 18, 2009

I see that some Frank O'Hara poems have already been posted, but here's one of my favourites as read by O'Hara himself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLwivcpFe8

quote:

Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Ir�n, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I�m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o�clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it�s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven�t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn�t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

Another favourite of mine: Robert Graves - Counting the Beats

quote:

You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.

Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?

Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

And one more for good measure! John Darnielle - sacred worlds

quote:

the choruses on the new blind guardian album
are stacked several dozen voices high
not crazy sevenths & thirteenths brian wilson style

but minor chords and towering fifths
like enormous crystal sculptures
in far-flung fields

where the wind blows
and the rain turns to ice
and the traveler squints

but continues on
the solos meanwhile on the new blind guardian album
are cleaner than ferraris

yes
the singer still sounds like he's afraid of a monster
and yes

his subject matter still comes
from science fiction and fantasy books
and there's a dragon on the album cover

and then what's more get this
this dragon, flanked by two dudes with axes,
is emerging from a loving pyramid

you've seen that bumper sticker,
"real men worship jesus"
go ahead

keep telling
yourself
that

# ? Jan 6, 2014 04:49

Clochette: Aug 12, 2013

�And Although the Little Mermaid Sacrificed Everything to Win the Love of the Prince, the Prince (Alas) Decided to Wed Another

Judith Viorst

I left the castle of my mer-king father,
Where seaweed gardens sway in pearly sand.
I left behind sweet sisters and kind waters
To seek a prince�s love upon the land.

My tongue was payment for the witch�s potion
(And never would I sing sea songs again).
My tail became two human legs to dance on,
But I would always dance with blood and pain.

I risked more than my life to make him love me.
The prince preferred another for his bride.
I always hate the ending to this story:
They lived together happily; I died.

But I have some advice for modern mermaids
Who wish to save great sorrow and travail:
Don�t give up who you are for love of princes.
He might have liked me better with my tail.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 05:18

DirtyRobot: Dec 15, 2003; it was a normally happy sunny day... but Dirty Robot was dirty

Johne Donne's "The Canonization"

John Donne posted:

THE CANONIZATION.
by John Donne

FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love ;
Or chide my palsy, or my gout ;
My five gray hairs, or ruin'd fortune flout ;
With wealth your state, your mind with arts improve ;
Take you a course, get you a place,
Observe his Honour, or his Grace ;
Or the king's real, or his stamp'd face
Contemplate ; what you will, approve,
So you will let me love.

Alas ! alas ! who's injured by my love?
What merchant's ships have my sighs drown'd?
Who says my tears have overflow'd his ground?
When did my colds a forward spring remove?
When did the heats which my veins fill
Add one more to the plaguy bill?
Soldiers find wars, and lawyers find out still
Litigious men, which quarrels move,
Though she and I do love.

Call's what you will, we are made such by love ;
Call her one, me another fly,
We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,
And we in us find th' eagle and the dove.
The phoenix riddle hath more wit
By us ; we two being one, are it ;
So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit.
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse ;
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,
We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms ;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns, all shall approve
Us canonized for love ;

And thus invoke us, "You, whom reverend love
Made one another's hermitage ;
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage ;
Who did the whole world's soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses of your eyes ;
So made such mirrors, and such spies,
That they did all to you epitomize�
Countries, towns, courts beg from above
A pattern of your love."

"The poem is an instance of the doctrine which it asserts; it is both the assertion and the realization of the assertion. the poet has actually before our eyes built within the song the 'pretty room' with which he says the lovers can be content. The poem itself is the well-wrought urn which can hold the lovers' ashes and which will no suffer in comparison with the prince's 'half-acre tomb.'" - Cleanth Brooks

Splodygirl posted:

"Spring fall: to a young child"

Gerard Manley Hopkins posted:

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dr�w fl�me;

AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dr�w fl�me;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell�s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 5
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves�goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Wh�t I do is me: for that I came.

� say m�re: the just man justices;
K�eps gr�ce: th�t keeps all his goings graces; 10
Acts in God�s eye what in God�s eye he is�
Chr�st�for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men�s faces.

# ? Feb 12, 2014 16:07

LogicNinja: Jan 21, 2011; ...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...

I love poetry as much for how it sounds as for the imagery, and Hopkins has some good stuff. The Leaden Echo is really fun to read out loud.

The Leaden Echo

HOW to k�ep�is there �ny any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, l�ce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, � from vanishing away?
� is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rank�d wrinkles deep,
D�wn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there �s none, there �s none, O no there's none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age's evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death�s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there's none; no no no there's none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

---

We've had some Yeats and The Second Coming is great and all, but by far my favorite Yeats poem is The Fiddler of Dooney. It's just really... life-affirming, I guess?

The Fiddler of Dooney

WHEN I play on my fiddle in Dooney,
Folk dance like a wave of the sea;
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Moharabuiee.

I passed my brother and cousin:
They read in their books of prayer;
I read in my book of songs
I bought at the Sligo fair.

When we come at the end of time,
To Peter sitting in state,
He will smile on the three old spirits,
But call me first through the gate;

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry - love the fiddle;
And the merry - love to dance:

And when the folk there spy me,
They will all come up to me,
With �Here is the fiddler of Dooney!�
And dance like a wave of the sea.

LogicNinja has a new favorite as of 21:29 on Feb 12, 2014

# ? Feb 12, 2014 21:26

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

My dad's infatuated by Alaskan wilderness and frozen tundra. Jack London was a favorite of his throughout my childhood. However, there was one poem he told me quite often, and I still have the first two lines memorized after all these years. It's still sets an amazing mood and you can feel the cold. And it's rather spooky.

The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service

quote:

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the curs�d cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead�it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows� O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared�such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm�
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

# ? Mar 24, 2014 14:31

ulvir: Jan 2, 2005

Onionbro, by aspiring writer
In search for purpose, he walks this land
Obstacles cover his path.
Be it gate of iron, or castle heavily manned.

Clad in armour, iconic and round
He greets you with a laugh.
Even if lost in thought, he's happy you're around.

With help from a hero, he soldiers on
Though thankless he is not.
Always giving a small reward, just before he's gone.

That is, untill, when last you meet
Again, him lost in thought.
With many hungry chaos eaters, just below his feet.

His purpose was, as you might have guessed
To be a hero of his own.
But you do all the dirtywork, when he is put to test.

Yet you decide, ironically, the route his life will go
When down the cliff he's thrown.
Might that be why, we all with glee, love our onionbro?

# ? Mar 27, 2014 19:03

Adib: Jan 23, 2012; These are strange times, my dear...

Never have I that toxic wine imbibed
Nor its beguiling bind my mind proscribed
Its pungent potency never mine to taste
Its romantic oblivion never mine to face
For the unmistakable beacon I seek is clarity
My senses' apprehensions must ring with verity
But in wine's wake, cognizance has no place
In heart and mind and soul remain no trace
Of anything at all that can be called reality
'tis a mere escape from one's own mortality

Never have those noxious fumes my lungs besieged
Nor their delusive plumes my yet unlived life seized
In truth, though they're meant to calm the nerve
A less noble purpose does their wafting serve
No intent have I to barter away the moments of strife
For the grip wherewith the smoke chokes my life
The remainder of your days will their haze arrest
As their sinister wisps encompass your breast
The brief relief afforded's not worth the price
For before you know it, you'll be dead in a trice

# ? Mar 28, 2014 01:52

God Of Paradise: Jan 23, 2012; You know, I'd be less worried about my 16 year old daughter dating a successful 40 year old cartoonist than dating a 16 year old loser.

I mean, Jesus, kid, at least date a motherfucker with abortion money and house to have sex at where your mother and I don't have to hear it. Also, if he treats her poorly, boom, that asshole's gonna catch a statch charge.

Please, John K. Date my daughter... Save her from dating smelly dropouts who wanna-be Soundcloud rappers.

There's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.

I hosed it. Oh!

- Bluebird by Andrew Dice Bukowski.

# ? Mar 29, 2014 00:54

Inspector Zenigata: Jul 19, 2010

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested
with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags of green weed hung down.
While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen
--the frightening gills,
fresh and crisp with blood,
that can cut so badly--
I thought of the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,
the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks
of his shiny entrails,
and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony.
I looked into his eyes
which were far larger than mine
but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed
with tarnished tinfoil
seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.
They shifted a little, but not
to return my stare.
--It was more like the tipping
of an object toward the light.
I admired his sullen face,
the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw
that from his lower lip
--if you could call it a lip
grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line,
or four and a wire leader
with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks
grown firmly in his mouth.
A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap
when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels-until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

I also like Frame by Adrienne Rich

Winter twilight. She comes out of the lab-
oratory, last class of the day
a pile of notebooks slung in her knapsack, coat
zipped high against the already swirling
evening sleet. The wind is wicked and the
busses slower than usual. On her mind
is organic chemistry and the issue
of next month�s rent and will it be possible to
bypass the professor with the coldest eyes
to get a reference for graduate school,
and whether any of them, even those who smile
can see, looking at her, a biochemist
or marine biologist, which of the faces
can she trust to see her at all, either today
or in any future. The busses are worm-slow in the
quickly gathering dark. I don�t know her. I am
standing though somewhere just outside the frame
of all of this, trying to see. At her back
the newly finished building suddenly looks
like shelter, it has glass doors, lighted halls
presumably heat. The wind is wicked. She throws a
glance down the street, sees no bus coming and runs
up the newly constructed steps into the newly
constructed hallway. I am standing all this time
just beyond the frame, trying to see. She runs
her hand through the crystals of sleet about to melt
on her hair. She shifts the weight of the books
on her back. It isn�t warm here exactly but it�s
out of that wind. Through the glass
door panels she can watch for the bus through the thickening
weather. Watching so, she is not
watching the white man who watches the building
who has been watching her. This is Boston 1979.
I am standing somewhere at the edge of the frame
watching the man, we are both white, who watches the building
telling her to move on, get out of the hallway.
I can hear nothing because I am not supposed to be
present but I can see her gesturing
out toward the street at the wind-raked curb
I see her drawing her small body up
against the implied charges. The man
goes away. Her body is different now.
It is holding together with more than a hint of fury
and more than a hint of fear. She is smaller, thinner
more fragile-looking than I am. But I am not supposed to be
there. I am just outside the frame
of this action when the anonymous white man
returns with a white police officer. Then she starts
to leave into the windraked night but already
the policeman is going to work, the handcuffs are on her
wrists he is throwing her down his knee has gone into
her breast he is dragging her down the stairs I am unable
to hear a sound of all of this all that I know is what
I can see from this position there is no soundtrack
to go with this and I understand at once
it is meant to be in silence that this happens
in silence that he pushes her into the car
banging her head in silence that she cries out
in silence that she tries to explain she was only
waiting for a bus
in silence that he twists the flesh of her thigh
with his nails in silence that her tears begin to flow
that she pleads with the other policeman as if
he could be trusted to see her at all
in silence that in the precinct she refuses to give her name
in silence that they throw her into the cell
in silence that she stares him
straight in the face in silence that he sprays her
in her eyes with Mace in silence that she sinks her teeth
into his hand in silence that she is charged
with trespass assault and battery in
silence that at the sleet-swept corner her bus
passes without stopping and goes on
in silence. What I am telling you
is told by a white woman who they will say
was never there. I say I am there.

Frame is one of the saddest poems I've ever read. It's too bad the formatting didn't copy, I don't want to go through and italicize all the parts that are supposed to be italicized but rest assured some parts are supposed to be italicized.

# ? Mar 29, 2014 01:02

sesame_samuel_: Dec 24, 2012; Pork Pro

Trying to Name What Doesn't Change by Naomi Shihab Nye

quote:

Roselva says the only thing that doesn�t change
is train tracks. She�s sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I�ve watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn�t curve, doesn�t break, doesn�t grow.

Peter isn�t sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn�t shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.

Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn�t change.

Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.

The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.

# ? Mar 29, 2014 05:15

SkyeTheBard: Jun 5, 2011; Furry Little Thief...

Real men like Tabasco Sauce
They use it everyday
To be a man, $3.99
Is a miniscule price to pay.

Real men like Tabasco Sauce
It goes real good on fries
The manliest of men
Like to squirt it in their eyes.

Real men like Tabasco Sauce
Only the weak fall for its pains.
The coolest men that ever lived
Have bled it from their veins.

Real men like Tabasco Sauce
They like it nice and thick.
I guess I'll never be a real man,
As to it I'm allergic.

# ? Mar 30, 2014 07:01

Vykuza: Jul 19, 2005; ... like a lizard drinking.

Here's a bush ballad from Australian poet and author A.B. "Banjo" Patterson that every Australian educated child will be intimately familiar with:

The Man from Snowy River

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stockhorse snuffs the battle with delight.

There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,
The old man with his hair as white as snow
But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up -
He would go wherever horse and man could go.
And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,
No better horseman ever held the reins;
For never horse could throw him while the saddle girths would stand,
He learnt to ride while droving on the plains.

And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast,
He was something like a racehorse undersized,
With a touch of Timor pony - three parts thoroughbred at least -
And such as are by mountain horsemen prized.
He was hard and tough and wiry - just the sort that won't say die -
There was courage in his quick impatient tread;
And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,
And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.

But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay,
And the old man said, "That horse will never do
For a long a tiring gallop - lad, you'd better stop away,
Those hills are far too rough for such as you."
So he waited sad and wistful - only Clancy stood his friend -
"I think we ought to let him come," he said;
"I warrant he'll be with us when he's wanted at the end,
For both his horse and he are mountain bred.

"He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,
Where a horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen."

So he went - they found the horses by the big mimosa clump -
They raced away towards the mountain's brow,
And the old man gave his orders, "Boys, go at them from the jump,
No use to try for fancy riding now.
And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right.
Ride boldly, lad, and never fear the spills,
For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight,
If once they gain the shelter of those hills."

So Clancy rode to wheel them - he was racing on the wing
Where the best and boldest riders take their place,
And he raced his stockhorse past them, and he made the ranges ring
With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face.
Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash,
But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view,
And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash,
And off into the mountain scrub they flew.

Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black
Resounded to the thunder of their tread,
And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back
From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.
And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way,
Where mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide;
And the old man muttered fiercely, "We may bid the mob good day,
No man can hold them down the other side."

When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull,
It well might make the boldest hold their breath,
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.

He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat -
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringybarks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,
At the bottom of that terrible descent.

He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill,
And the watchers on the mountain standing mute,
Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still,
As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.
Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met
In the ranges, but a final glimpse reveals
On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet,
With the man from Snowy River at their heels.

And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam.
He followed like a bloodhound on their track,
Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home,
And alone and unassisted brought them back.
But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,
He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;
But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,
For never yet was mountain horse a cur.

And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise
Their torn and rugged battlements on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around The Overflow the reed beds sweep and sway
To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,
The man from Snowy River is a household word today,
And the stockmen tell the story of his ride...

# ? Apr 2, 2014 07:59

Marathanes: Jun 13, 2009

My favorite poem is probably Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came by Robert Browning. I'll not post it in its enterity here for the sake of brevity, but it's a good read, if thick.

I'm also a fan of the Song of the Mad Minstrel by Robert E. Howard (Yes, the creator of Conan the Barbarian), which is less expansive. Though I really cherished it in my teen years, when I thought I hated everything, it still holds up as quite well written:

Robert E Howard posted:

I am the thorn in the foot, I am the blur in the sight;
I am the worm at the root, I am the thief in the night.
I am the rat in the wall, the leper that leers at the gate;
I am the ghost in the hall, herald of horror and hate.

I am the rust on the corn, I am the smut on the wheat,
Laughing man's labor to scorn, weaving a web for his feet.
I am canker and mildew and blight, danger and death and decay;
The rot of the rain by night, the blast of the sun by day.

I warp and wither with drouth, I work in the swamp's foul yeast;
I bring the black plague from the south and the leprosy in from the east.
I rend from the hemlock boughs wine steeped in the petals of dooms;
Where the fat black serpents drowse I gather the Upas blooms.

I have plumbed the northern ice for a spell like frozen lead;
In lost gray fields of rice, I have learned from Mongol dead.
Where a bleak black mountain stands I have looted grisly caves;
I have digged in the desert sands to plunder terrible graves.

Never the sun goes forth, never the moon glows red,
But out of the south or the north, I come with the slavering dead.
I come with hideous spells, black charms and ghastly tunes;
I have looted the hidden hells and plundered the lost black moons.

There was never a king or priest to cheer me by word or look,
There was never a man or beast in the blood-black ways I took.
There were crimson gulfs unplumbed, there were black wings over a sea;
There were pits where mad things drummed, and foaming blasphemy.

There were vast ungodly tombs where slimy monsters dreamed,
There were clouds like blood-drenched plumes where unborn demons screamed.
There were ages dead to Time, and lands lost out of Space;
There were adders in the slime, and a dim unholy Face.

Oh, the heart in my breast turned stone, and the brain froze in my skull --
But I won through, I alone, and I poured my chalice full
Of horrors and dooms and spells, black buds and bitter roots --
From the hells beneath the hells, I bring you my deathly fruits.

# ? Apr 4, 2014 17:34

LogicNinja: Jan 21, 2011; ...the blur blurs blurringly across the blurred blur in a blur of blurring blurriness that blurred...

Inspector Zenigata posted:

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich is really good.

I like What Kind of Times Are These

There�s a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I�ve walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don�t be fooled
this isn�t a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won�t tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light�
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won�t tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it�s necessary
to talk about trees.

# ? Apr 11, 2014 20:22

SylvainMustach: Dec 12, 2007; Superior Trash Talk!

Madrugada (or Before the Dawn) by Federico Garc�a Lorca

quote:

But like love
the archers
are blind

Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm lily.

The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.

Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!

Song of the Rider (1860, also by Lorca)

quote:

In the black moon
of the highwaymen,
the spurs sing.

Little black horse.
Where are you taking your dead rider?

�The hard spurs
of the motionless bandit
who lost his reins.
Little cold horse.
What a scent of the flower of a knife!

In the black moon
bled the mountainside
of Sierra Morena.

Little black horse.
Where are you taking your dead rider?

The night spurs
its black flanks
piercing with stars.

Little cold horse.
What a scent of the flower of a knife!

In the black moon,
a shriek! and the long
horn of the bonfire.

Little black horse.
Where are you taking your dead rider?

# ? Apr 12, 2014 00:19

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxc0VNOVes

# ? Apr 12, 2014 00:54

Segue: May 23, 2007

Us Together
George Johnston

I do not like anything the way I
like you in your underwear I like you
and in your party clothes o my in your
party clothes and with nothing on at all
you do not need to wear a thing at all
for me to like you and you may talk or
not talk I like you either way nothing
makes me feel so nearly at home on Earth
as just to be with you and say nothing.

# ? Apr 12, 2014 14:19

Good soup!: Nov 2, 2010

quote:

1914 V: The Soldier

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

-Rupert Brooke

# ? Apr 15, 2014 04:18

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? Apr 25, 2024 07:21

Teatime Prize: Nov 1, 2008; A violent death is the last thing that'll happen to you.

Some great poems in this thread :3

Paul Durcan � The Death by Heroin of Sid Vicious posted:

There � but for the clutch of luck � go I.

At daybreak � in the arctic fog of a February daybreak �
Shoulder-length helmets in the watchtowers of the concentration camp
Caught me out in the intersecting arcs of the swirling searchlights.

There were at least a zillion of us caught out there �
Like ladybirds under a boulder �
But under the microscope each of us was unique,

Unique and we broke for cover, crazily breasting
The barbed wire and some of us made it
To the forest edge, but many of us did not

Make it, although their unborn children did �
Such as you whom the camp commandant branded
Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. Jesus, break his fall:

There � but for the clutch of luck � go we all.

In fact, poetry is generally brilliant.

Tomas Transtromer � Tracks posted:

2 a.m.: moonlight. The train has stopped
out in the middle of the plain. Far away, points of light in a town,
flickering coldly at the horizon.

As when a man has gone into a dream so deep
he�ll never remember having been there
when he comes back to his room.

As when someone has gone into an illness so deep
everything his days were becomes a few flickering points, a swarm,
cold and tiny at the horizon.

The train is standing quite still.
2 a.m.: bright moonlight, few stars.

So hard to choose just a few.

Stephen Dunn � Mother, Father, Robert Henley who hanged himself in the ninth grade, et al posted:

I�ve sensed ghosts more than once,
their presence
a kind of plucking from the memorious air.

Always they reveal themselves as lost,
surviving
on what�s loose in me, some last words

I never said, some I did. I�ve heard
they can�t live
if fully embraced, if taken fully in,

yet I do nothing but listen to their
wingless hovering,
the everything they never say.

If only I could give them what they need,
no, if only
I could convince myself these things

must die as naturally as apples
on the apple tree�
but that�s in Nature, which is never

wrong, just thoughtless and without shame.

Okay, another.

Fleur Adcock posted:

There are worse things than having behaved foolishly in public.
There are worse things than these miniature betrayals,
committed or endured or suspected; there are worse things
than not being able to sleep for thinking about them.
It is 5 a.m. All the worse things come stalking in
and stand icily about the bed looking worse and worse and worse.

Maybe just one more, my favourite poet...

Simon Armitage � Gooseberry Season posted:

Which reminds me. He appeared
at noon, asking for water. He�d walked from town
after losing his job, leaving a note for his wife and his brother
and locking his dog in the coal bunker.
We made him a bed

and he slept till Monday.
A week went by and he hung up his coat.
Then a month, and not a stroke of work, a word of thanks,
a farthing of rent or a sign of him leaving.
One evening he mentioned a recipe

for smooth, seedless gooseberry sorbet
but by then I was tired of him: taking pocket money
from my boy at cards, sucking up to my wife and on his last night
sizing up my daughter. He was smoking my pipe
as we stirred his supper.

Where does the hand become the wrist?
Where does the neck become the shoulder? The watershed
and then the weight, whatever turns up and tips us over that razor�s edge
between something and nothing, between
one and the other.

I could have told him this
but didn�t bother. We ran him a bath
and held him under, dried him off and dressed him
and loaded him into the back of the pick-up.
Then we drove without headlights

to the county boundary,
dropped the tailgate, and after my boy
had been through his pockets we dragged him like a mattress
across the meadow and on the count of four
threw him over the border.

This is not general knowledge, except
in gooseberry season, which reminds me, and at the table
I have been known to raise an eyebrow, or scoop the sorbet
into five equal portions, for the hell of it.
I mention this for a good reason.

# ? Apr 16, 2014 20:31

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