Post a Poem

[Baixo Astral]

Post a poem you like - can be anything really. I expect this to descend into "hilarity", due to the heathen nature of 99% of the denizens of this cesspit, so I'm going to give you a brief glimmer of true class before the "Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit" Talent Hour gets going.


Impression Du Matin, by Oscar Wilde

The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold

The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses' walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul's
Loomed like a bubble o'er the town.

Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons: and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.

But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps' flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.

[thatguybayne]

Nice. I write poetry and look forward to the day when I can hopefully write something that can touch that.

[Square]

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who kept all his cash in a bucket.
But his daughter, named Nan,
Ran away with a man
And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

[Marvelously Mediocre]

There was a young man from Gosham,
Who took out his bollocks to wash 'em,
His wife said 'Jack
if you don't put them back,
I'll stand on the bastards and squash 'em'

[Bo Rida]

"With the deepest regrets and tears that are soaked,
I'm sorry to hear your dad finally croaked.
He lived a full life on his own terms;
soon he'll be buried and eaten by worms.
But if I could have a son as stupid as you, I'd have wished for cancer so I would die too!
So be brave and be strong; get your life on track
'cause the old bastard's dead and he ain't never coming back!"

- The Big Boss Man

[Jason Todd Grisham]

Drinking Wine
I live here in this busy village without
all that racket horses and carts stir up,
.

and you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
.

a distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
at my east fence, I see South Mountain
.

far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
going home. All this means something,
.

something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether.
-T'ao Ch'ien

[SHAKEMASTER TV9 is Don Knotts]

Roses are Blue
Violets are Red
I have to go to the bathroom

[i.Sarita.com]

Here is one I wrote last year, I stray from writing about anything that isn't love or war. Nobody wants to see my deepest emotions.

~Effervescent~

"Alone she sits, separated by an endless boundary
So much like others, yet still peerless in her beauty
Akin to many, but a beacon all her own
Drawn to her radiance, like moth to a flame
Her brilliance brings us from afar, enchanted by her fire

We are the same, yet are incomparable
At first glance, we all burn with passion
Some more than others, but none the altered
Striving to close the distance, needing to be near
To feel her luster, among this ceaseless cold

One stands out, at variance with others
It sees beyond the allure, deeper past the shimmer
It senses the inmost of her presence , the warmth of the heart
The truest flicker, as profound as she is exquisite
It brings to him something more, something others cannot feel

Vitality, purpose, vigor, sparkle and soul
Still so similar to the others, yet separated by warmth
Together they create essence, and opportunity
She brings him life, dependant on her glow
He brings her love, dependant only on her own"

[Deleted]

Here's a dramatic monologue I wrote based off of Mr. Toad from "The Wind in the Willows":

Mr. Toad

After six months of intensive rehabilitation-
word association tests, deep hypnosis, my skull measured and quantified
by a quaint fellow in white, I can gaze at motorcars again
and not think the old thoughts.
Ratty, Mole, Old Mr. Badger, all my splendid fellows are just swimming
with good humor at the progress I have made.
Staid Mr. Toad, they call me now. Sober Toad of the Temperate Hall,
Toad with his head on straight (head on crooked for much too long!),
A Toad who takes his morning constitution near the edge of
the Wild Wood.
Henceforth, A Sensible Toad with both Feet on
the Ground.
I do not make trouble for the Constables any longer.

At tea-time, I pick at the daintiest of pastries and contest that they
are much too much for an appetite such as mine; the tepid
Earl Grey tea that Mole brews is just ducky for my humble palate.
A dull sunshine glazes the dining room with gentle insistence and
I shade my eyes to prevent their straining.
Mustn't take chances with my eyes these days.
Talk scampers along like a lazy cat in a meadow: Mole has his eye on a new schooner, Otter wants to open his summer home for let
Ratty broaches, with a tentative start, the blessed new motorcar
his cousin Jervis has just purchased.
At that delicious word “motorcar”,
the lot looks at me and I offer a stupid smile and nod.
They move on, nothing wrong with old Toady anymore.
Just a phase that was.

Motorcars. Such a fuss they were. Motorcars. Pure Onion Sauce.
Yet, when my friends turn to more pedestrian subjects, I recall motorcars.
Oh yes.
The thrill of it all. The cackling wind billowing my riding scarf,
the world turned violet in my cruising goggles. My gorgeous motorcar
devouring the road ahead of me like a frightful shark!
Moving forward, faster and faster, defiant, Man, Animal, God
in hot pursuit of Mad Mr. Toad!
Honk Honk! Poop Poop1
Move out of my way, my horn commands!
Move out of the way of one faster, one craftier,
one better than you... Hang them all, that trot after the rogue Mr. Toad!

Motorcars.
And, in time,
hot air balloons wherein I can claim the stars.
The whole world before me, and a horizon that's always changing!
Dirigibles,
Aeroplanes,
Gyroscopes,Helicopters
Jetplanes- supersonic speeds that make the pulse scream bloody murder!
Space shuttles… more, more,
higher and higher,
I want to carve my name, carve 'Mr.Toad!'
in the stodgy black abyss that snakes around us. I
burn with the need to be a big green blur that school children see
as they stare up into the sky and scream,
“Papa what is that!”
I want to confound those brats.
Ruiner, speed demon, fearful rocket, I will never stop, never stop, never stop, never never never.

I take more tea, careful not to stare at the window for too long.
“Delightful scone, this,” I tell Old Mr. Badger, who gruffly wags his head. Economics. Parliamentary vote coming up. Potatoes look plump this year.
My wretched friends trod on familiar subjects.
“Toady, would you like to come see Water Rat later on this evening?
He’s been asking for you.”
“Yes, yes, of course Dear Mole.” The days trudge on.
I look out the window again.

Motorcars. Feel the word roll around on your tongue, Toady.
Such a juicy fly.
Yes, yes, in time. The road looks so fat these days, so sensual.
I need to devour it.

[Kevin Hamilton]

My two favorites:

Ozymandias: Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".



THE SECOND COMING William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

[Deleted]

i like my body when it is with your by: e.e. cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

The Mermaidens' Vesper-Hymn by George Darley

Troop home to silents grots and caves!
Troop home! And mimic as you go
The mournful winding of the waves
Which to their dark abysses flow!

At this sweet hour, all things beside
In amourous pairs to covert creep;
The swans that brush the evening tide
Homeward and snowy couples keep;

In his green den the murmuring seal
Close by his sleek companion lies;
While singly we to bedward steal,
And close in fruitless sleep our eyes.

In bowers of love men take their rest,
In loveless bowers we sigh alone!
With busom-friends are others blessed, -
But we have none! But we have none!

[strykerdarksilence]

My favourite poem by my favourite poet...

Impossible To Tell
By Robert Pinsky

to Robert Hass and in memory of Elliot Gilbert

Slow dulcimer, gavotte and bow, in autumn,
Bash› and his friends go out to view the moon;
In summer, gasoline rainbow in the gutter,

The secret courtesy that courses like ichor
Through the old form of the rude, full-scale joke,
Impossible to tell in writing. "Bash›"

He named himself, "Banana Tree": banana
After the plant some grateful students gave him,
Maybe in appreciation of his guidance

Threading a long night through the rules and channels
Of their collaborative linking-poem
Scored in their teacher's heart: live, rigid, fluid

Like passages etched in a microscopic cicuit.
Elliot had in his memory so many jokes
They seemed to breed like microbes in a culture

Inside his brain, one so much making another
It was impossible to tell them all:
In the court-culture of jokes, a top banana.

Imagine a court of one: the queen a young mother,
Unhappy, alone all day with her firstborn child
And her new baby in a squalid apartment

Of too few rooms, a different race from her neighbors.
She tells the child she's going to kill herself.
She broods, she rages. Hoping to distract her,

The child cuts capers, he sings, he does imitations
Of different people in the building, he jokes,
He feels if he keeps her alive until the father

Gets home from work, they'll be okay till morning.
It's laughter versus the bedroom and the pills.
What is he in his efforts but a courtier?

Impossible to tell his whole delusion.
In the first months when I had moved back East
From California and had to leave a message

On Bob's machine, I used to make a habit
Of telling the tape a joke; and part-way through,
I would pretend that I forgot the punchline,

Or make believe that I was interrupted—
As though he'd be so eager to hear the end
He'd have to call me back. The joke was Elliot's,

More often than not. The doctors made the blunder
That killed him some time later that same year.
One day when I got home I found a message

On my machine from Bob. He had a story
About two rabbis, one of them tall, one short,
One day while walking along the street together

They see the corpse of a Chinese man before them,
And Bob said, sorry, he forgot the rest.
Of course he thought that his joke was a dummy,

Impossible to tell—a dead-end challenge.
But here it is, as Elliot told it to me:
The dead man's widow came to the rabbis weeping,

Begging them, if they could, to resurrect him.
Shocked, the tall rabbi said absolutely not.
But the short rabbi told her to bring the body

Into the study house, and ordered the shutters
Closed so the room was night-dark. Then he prayed
Over the body, chanting a secret blessing

Out of Kabala. "Arise and breathe," he shouted;
But nothing happened. The body lay still. So then
The little rabbi called for hundreds of candles

And danced around the body, chanting and praying
In Hebrew, then Yiddish, then Aramaic. He prayed
In Turkish and Egyptian and Old Galician

For nearly three hours, leaping about the coffin
In the candlelight so that his tiny black shoes
Seemed not to touch the floor. With one last prayer

Sobbed in the Spanish of before the Inquisition
He stopped, exhausted, and looked in the dead man's face.
Panting, he raised both arms in a mystic gesture

And said, "Arise and breathe!" And still the body
Lay as before. Impossible to tell
In words how Elliot's eyebrows flailed and snorted

Like shaggy mammoths as—the Chinese widow
Granting permission—the little rabbi sang
The blessing for performing a circumcision

And removed the dead man's foreskin, chanting blessings
In Finnish and Swahili, and bathed the corpse
From head to foot, and with a final prayer

In Babylonian, gasping with exhaustion,
He seized the dead man's head and kissed the lips
And dropped it again and leaping back commanded,

"Arise and breathe!" The corpse lay still as ever.
At this, as when Bash›'s disciples wind
Along the curving spine that links the renga

Across the different voices, each one adding
A transformation according to the rules
Of stasis and repetition, all in order

And yet impossible to tell beforehand,
Elliot changes for the punchline: the wee
Rabbi, still panting, like a startled boxer,

Looks at the dead one, then up at all those watching,
A kind of Mel Brooks gesture: "Hoo boy!" he says,
"Now that's what I call really dead." O mortal

Powers and princes of earth, and you immortal
Lords of the underground and afterlife,
Jehovah, Raa, Bol-Morah, Hecate, Pluto,

What has a brilliant, living soul to do with
Your harps and fires and boats, your bric-a-brac
And troughs of smoking blood? Provincial stinkers,

Our languages don't touch you, you're like that mother
Whose small child entertained her to beg her life.
Possibly he grew up to be the tall rabbi,

The one who washed his hands of all those capers
Right at the outset. Or maybe he became
The author of these lines, a one-man renga

The one for whom it seems to be impossible
To tell a story straight. It was a routine
Procedure. When it was finished the physicians

Told Sandra and the kids it had succeeded,
But Elliot wouldn't wake up for maybe an hour,
They should go eat. The two of them loved to bicker

In a way that on his side went back to Yiddish,
On Sandra's to some Sicilian dialect.
He used to scold her endlessly for smoking.

When she got back from dinner with their children
The doctors had to tell them about the mistake.
Oh swirling petals, falling leaves! The movement

Of linking renga coursing from moment to moment
Is meaning, Bob says in his Haiku book.
Oh swirling petals, all living things are contingent,

Falling leaves, and transient, and they suffer.
But the Universal is the goal of jokes,
Especially certain ethnic jokes, which taper

Down through the swirling funnel of tongues and gestures
Toward their preposterous Ithaca. There's one
A journalist told me. He heard it while a hero

Of the South African freedom movement was speaking
To elderly Jews. The speaker's own right arm
Had been blown off by right-wing letter-bombers.

He told his listeners they had to cast their ballots
For the ANC—a group the old Jews feared
As "in with the Arabs." But they started weeping

As the old one-armed fighter told them their country
Needed them to vote for what was right, their vote
Could make a country their children could return to

From London and Chicago. The moved old people
Applauded wildly, and the speaker's friend
Whispered to the journalist, "It's the Belgian Army

Joke come to life." I wish I could tell it
To Elliot. In the Belgian Army, the feud
Between the Flemings and Walloons grew vicious,

So out of hand the army could barely function.
Finally one commander assembled his men
In one great room, to deal with things directly.

They stood before him at attention. "All Flemings,"
He ordered, "to the left wall." Half the men
Clustered to the left. "Now all Walloons," he ordered,

"Move to the right." An equal number crowded
Against the right wall. Only one man remained
At attention in the middle: "What are you, soldier?"

Saluting, the man said, "Sir, I am a Belgian."
"Why, that's astonishing, Corporal—what's your name?"
Saluting again, "Rabinowitz," he answered:

A joke that seems at first to be a story
About the Jews. But as the renga describes
Religious meaning by moving in drifting petals

And brittle leaves that touch and die and suffer
The changing winds that riffle the gutter swirl,
So in the joke, just under the raucous music

Of Fleming, Jew, Walloon, a courtly allegiance
Moves to the dulcimer, gavotte and bow,
Over the banana tree the moon in autumn—

Allegiance to a state impossible to tell.

[ani]

The Ballad of Reading Gaol part VI by Oscar Wilde:
*
o In Reading gaol by Reading town
o There is a pit of shame,
o And in it lies a wretched man
o Eaten by teeth of flame,
o In a burning winding-sheet he lies,
o And his grave has got no name.
*
o And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
o In silence let him lie:
o No need to waste the foolish tear,
o Or heave the windy sigh:
o The man had killed the thing he loved,
o And so he had to die.
*
o And all men kill the thing they love,
o By all let this be heard,
o Some do it with a bitter look,
o Some with a flattering word,
o The coward does it with a kiss,
o The brave man with a sword!

[Johnny Nitro]

"Home for the Holidays"
I was dreaming of a captive,
and the rumbling steel at his window,
of the night air so thick
with the breath of the city,
that air of the corner man
and that wind of the porch man
and that stink of the man
behind the closed door.
And the smells of that captive
his own sweet disgusting musk
something to him no less familiar,
yet all the more honest for being his own.
I was dreaming of a captive
who'd gone missing for a day,
who'd traveled to a place not far away
where all he desired was offered to him
and offered to him again,
but instead he went back to captivity,
because there was some sense to be found
in being told how to live,
being told how to stink
and how to listen to the rumbling of steel
and what to think of the thick night air
that comes and goes so easily,
without mind or care
and without any need
for any thing
at all.


;D

[Deleted]

The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldiers knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Their's not to make reply,
Their's not to reason why,
Their's but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke
Shatter'd and sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

[thatguybayne]

Can't not post this one.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

[Orange]

May 20, 2010 18:32:03 GMT -5 SHAKEMASTER TV9 is Don Knotts said:

Roses are Blue
Violets are Red
I have to go to the bathroom

Spongebob reference, we're done here

[Deleted]

Porphyria's Lover by Robert Browning

The rain set early in tonight,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavor,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me forever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could tonight's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last l knew
Porphyria worshiped me: surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While l debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string l wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
l am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
l warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And l untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
l propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And l, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said aword!