Favourite Pomes

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Xamonas Chegwé
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Xamonas Chegwé » Mon Mar 22, 2010 9:53 pm

Animavore wrote:
Blip wrote:
Animavore wrote:I'm a boorish, prosaic fuck
There's poetry in that phrase :td:
I didn't notice this before. How is it poetic?

Anyway I came here to post this. Sonnet 138. The Bard.
WHEN my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unskilful in the world's false forgeries.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although I know my years be past the best,
I smiling credit her false-speaking tongue,
Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore I'll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be.”
:clap: :clap: :clap:

He knew how to say stuff, old shaky Bill.

My favourite is 61. Try an intense, long-distance romance sometime and you'll know how I feel about it.


Is it thy will, thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?
Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee
So far from home into my deeds to pry,
To find out shames and idle hours in me,
The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?
O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great:
It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:
Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,
To play the watchman ever for thy sake:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all too near.
A book is a version of the world. If you do not like it, ignore it; or offer your own version in return.
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You talk to God, you're religious. God talks to you, you're psychotic.
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Who needs a meaning anyway, I'd settle anyday for a very fine view.
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This is the wrong forum for bluffing :nono:
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Beelzebub2
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Beelzebub2 » Mon Mar 22, 2010 10:01 pm

Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
ryokan wrote:
Xamonas Chegwé wrote:
Pappa wrote:Ikkyu Sojun (15th C. Buddhist monk)

Exhausted with gay pleasures

Exhausted with gay pleasures, I embrace my wife.
The narrow path of asceticism is not for me:
My mind runs in the opposite direction.
It is easy to be glib about Zen -- I’ll just keep my mouth shut
And rely on love play all the day long.
Takes on a somewhat different flavour these days, does it not? :eddy:
Yeah, these days they exhaust themselves by deleting accounts. :coffee:
:hilarious: :hilarious: Good one. :tup:
:biggrin:

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by JenTirydail » Wed Mar 24, 2010 10:36 am

I've probably posted this elsewhere but it's one of my favourite poems.

If I Had My Life to Live Over by Erma Bombeck

I would have talked less and listened more.
I would have invited friends over to dinner even if the carpet was stained and the sofa faded.
I would have eaten the popcorn in the "good" living room and worried much less about the dirt when someone wanted to light a fire in the fireplace.
I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would never have insisted the car windows be rolled up on a summer day because my hair had just been teased and sprayed. I would have burned the pink candle sculpted like a rose before it melted in storage.
I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains.
I would have cried and laughed less while watching TV - and more while watching life.
I would have shared more of the responsibility carried by my husband.
I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day.
I would never have bought anything just because it was practical, wouldn't show soil or was guaranteed to last a lifetime.
Instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished every moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was my only chance in life to assist in a miracle.
When my kids kissed me impetuously, I would never have said, "Later. Now go get washed up for dinner."
There would have been more "I love yous"...more "I'm sorrys"...
But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute... look at it and really see it...live it...and never give it back.

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by kiki5711 » Wed Mar 24, 2010 12:23 pm

Jadestone wrote:It seems that no one has mention Algernon Charles Swinburne yet. I think he'd be appreciated here...

This is my favourite poem, I have it memorized for recitation at will:

The Garden of Proserpine
Algernon Charles Swinburne

Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbor,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her,
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.

We are not sure of sorrow;
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.

This is also one of my favorite poems. In Denvers Asylum wall was found a verse or two, can't remember, from this poem and I searched it out to read the whole thing. No I was not in that asylum but was reading about it and the horrors the patients went through there. The poem is really sad and I could relate to it many times in my life.

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Blip
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Blip » Wed Mar 24, 2010 3:11 pm

Animavore wrote:
Blip wrote:
Animavore wrote:I'm a boorish, prosaic fuck
There's poetry in that phrase :td:
I didn't notice this before. How is it poetic?
That was my clumsy attempt at irony, Animavore :ddpan: . I thought, after we'd exchanged posts about Guinness and the Liffey, I'd risk pulling your leg.
'Only connect...' E M Forster

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Epictetus » Sat Apr 03, 2010 7:11 am

From Robert Frost:
“I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth—
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth—
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?—
If design govern in a thing so small.”
From EAP:
“From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.”
Blah, blah, blah

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Shaker » Sun Apr 25, 2010 9:53 pm

Philip Larkin:

The Mower

The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.

I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:

Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful

Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.


According to Andrew Motion's biography this was based on a real incident. Larkin had a hedgehog in his garden that he fed regularly, and he really did accidentally run over it with the lawnmower one day, which - as a man not conspicuously fond of people but a great animal lover - sent him indoors "howling." Those last lines get me :cry: every time.
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." - Charles Bukowski

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Shaker » Mon May 03, 2010 1:09 pm

Genius:

how to be a good writer
by Charles Bukowski


you've got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.

and don't worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.

just drink more beer
more and more beer

and attend the racetrack at least once a

week

and win
if possible

learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.

and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.

don't overexercise.

sleep until noon.

avoid paying credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.

remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world over $50
(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -

an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.

stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient -
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery

all that dross.

stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.

get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window

hit that thing
hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

If you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now

without women
without food
without hope

then you're not ready.

drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right too.
"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead." - Charles Bukowski

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Jadestone
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Jadestone » Mon May 03, 2010 9:51 pm

kiki5711 wrote:
Jadestone wrote:It seems that no one has mention Algernon Charles Swinburne yet. I think he'd be appreciated here...

This is my favourite poem, I have it memorized for recitation at will:

[The Garden of Proserpine aka long poem earlier on this page]

This is also one of my favorite poems. In Denvers Asylum wall was found a verse or two, can't remember, from this poem and I searched it out to read the whole thing. No I was not in that asylum but was reading about it and the horrors the patients went through there. The poem is really sad and I could relate to it many times in my life.
The same for me--I found a verse, and went searching for more.
I want to go write it on a nearby underground wall in a cow pass under a highway, but I keep having either no time or no sharpies. Yay poetic graffiti!


All the recent "poetry" I've been enjoying has been in the form of song lyrics lately. I alternate liking to hear songs and read them...
All around me darkness gathers, fading is the sun that shone; We must speak of other matters: You can be me when I'm gone...

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by maiforpeace » Tue Jun 15, 2010 4:30 pm

A Terroir-ist's Manifesto for Eating in Place
~Gary Nabhan~

Know where your food has come from
through knowing those who produced it for you,
from farmer to forager, rancher or fisher
to earthworms building a deeper, richer soil,
to the heirloom vegetable, the nitrogen-fixing legume,
the pollinator, the heritage breed of livestock,
& the sourdough culture rising in your flour.

Know where your food has come from
by the very way it tastes:
its freshness telling you
how far it may have traveled,
the hint of mint in the cheese
suggesting what the goat has eaten,
the terroir of the wine
reminding you of the lime
in the stone you stand upon,
so that you can stand up for the land
that has offered it to you.

Know where your food has come from
by ascertaining the health & wealth
of those who picked & processed it,
by the fertility of the soil that is left
in the patch where it once grew,
by the traces of pesticides
found in the birds & the bees there.
Know whether the bays & shoals
where your shrimp & fish once swam
were left richer or poorer than before
you & your kin ate from them.

Know where your food comes from
by the richness of stories told around the table
recalling all that was harvested nearby
during the years that came before you,
when your predecessors & ancestors,
roamed the same woods & neighborhoods
where you & yours now roam.
Know them by the songs sung to praise them,
by the handmade tools kept to harvest them,
by the rites & feasts held to celebrate them,
by the laughter let loose to show them our affection.

Know where your foods come from
by the patience displayed while putting them up,
while peeling, skinning, coring or gutting them,
while pit-roasting, poaching or fermenting them,
while canning, salting or smoking them,
while arranging them on a plate for our eyes to behold.
Know where your food comes from
by the slow savoring of each and every morsel,
by letting their fragrances lodge in your memory
reminding you of just exactly where you were the very day
that you became blessed by each of their distinctive flavors.

When you know where your food comes from
you can give something back to those lands & waters,
that rural culture, that migrant harvester,
curer, smoker, poacher, roaster or vinyer.
You can give something back to that soil,
something fecund & fleeting like compost
or something lasting & legal like protection.
We, as humans, have not been given
roots as obvious as those of plants.
The surest way we have to lodge ourselves
within this blessed earth is by knowing
where our food comes from.
Atheists have always argued that this world is all that we have, and that our duty is to one another to make the very most and best of it. ~Christopher Hitchens~
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Beelzebub2 » Tue Jun 15, 2010 10:28 pm

We Are Made One with What We Touch & See
by Oscar Wilde

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each spring-impassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerve-less germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill. . . .

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some fresh-blossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good. . . .

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedal-fashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!

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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by The Dawktor » Fri Aug 06, 2010 11:24 am

I'm so happy- I just found my Spike Milligan poetry book "Open Heart University"- I love the simplicity and the emotion. Strangely enough - they all strike such a chord with me... :fp:

'A' Levels 1978:

Those energy wrought children
their limbs loaded into school desks.
In the shadows they are fed
Algebra- Science-Syntax.

Outside, the ignorant
are laughing and playing
in the Sun.

My love is Like a .....

If I gave her red roses
would she?
If I gave her white roses
in a bottle of wine
would she?
If I gave her green carnations
made from dollar bills
- and she did.


Untitled 1973-

I walked along some forgotten shore.
Coming the other way a smiling boy.
It was me.
'Who are you old man?' he said
I dare not tell him, all I could say was
'Go back!'

A Present for the Future

Green earrings I brought her- from Maori Shores.
When I returned, she had gone
and taken her ears with her.
Earrings made from Pacific Jade-
you could see through them
Why didn't I see through her?


Welcome Home 1977

Unaware of my crime
they stood me in the dock.
I was sentenced to life....
without her.
Strange trial.
No Judge.
No Jury.
I wonder who my visitors will be.
Bella Fortuna wrote::dance: You know you love it you dirty bitch!
devogue wrote:Actually, I am a very, very, stupid man.
Pappa wrote: I even ran upstairs and climbed into bed once, the second I pulled the duvet over me I suddenly felt very silly and sheepish, so I went back downstairs.

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Deep Sea Isopod
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Deep Sea Isopod » Sun Aug 08, 2010 6:08 pm

Now, this is said to be by Pam Ayres.
It's a parody of her old "I wish I looked after me teeth."
Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Tits
By Pam Ayres


Oh, I wish I'd looked after me dear old knockers,
Not flashed them to boys behind the school lockers,
Or let them get fondled by randy old dockers,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me tits.

'Cos now I'm much older and gravity's winning.
It's Nature's revenge for all that sinning,
And those dirty memories are rapidly dimming,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me tits.

'Cos tits can be such troublesome things
When they no longer bounce, but dangle and swing.
And although they go well with my Bingo wings,
I wish I'd looked after me tits.

When they're both long enough to tie up in a bow,
When it's not the sweet chariot that swings low,
When they're less of a friend and more of a foe,
Then I wish I'd looked after me tits.

When I was young I got whistles and hoots,
From the men on the site to the men in the suits,
Now me nipples get stuck in the zips on me boots,
Oh, I wish I'd looked after me tits.

When picking them up requires some leverage,
When it's not so much lift as industrial heavage,
When there's more of a parting and less of a cleavage,
I wish I'd looked after me tits.

When I was younger I rode bikes and scooters,
Cruising around with my favourite suitors.
Now the wheels get entangled with my dangling hooters,
I wish I'd looked after me tits.

When they follow behind and get trapped in the door,
When they're less in the air and more near the floor,
When people see less of them rather than more,
Oh,
I wish I'd looked after me tits.
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Rollo.Cohen » Fri Aug 13, 2010 12:22 am

Every gesture, every eyelids
Softest movement, every turning
Of the head or hand and every
Accent that is born is dying
As it empties its fulfilment
In the instant of its making
On the air surcharged with moments.

Every gesture, every eyelids
Dimmest movement dies and crumbles
In that black unfathomed region
Of lost gestures, of lost voices.

Mervyn Peake


Deffo one of my favourites.

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Eriku
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Re: Favourite Pomes

Post by Eriku » Fri Aug 13, 2010 12:26 am

The Genius Of The Crowd
by Charles Bukowski


there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

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