Poets' Corner - Post your poems/song lyrics here [Archive]

hanshan

03-10-17, 14:12

The real Han-shan was a poet living over a thousand years ago in China (“han shan” in Chinese means “cold mountain”) . I first read around two dozen of his existing three hundred poems in translation by Gary Snyder around forty-five years ago, and it’s Snyder’s translations that have stuck with me as the English voice of Han-shan all these years later. Some of Snyder’s translations follow:

“Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?”

“When men see Han-shan
They all say he's crazy
And not much to look at -
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don't get what I say
And I don't talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
"Try and make it to Cold Mountain.”

“In the mountains it's cold.
Always been cold, not just this year.
Jagged scarps forever snowed in
Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.
Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,
Leaves begin to fall in early August.
And here I am, high on mountains,
Peering and peering, but I can't even see the sky.”

“I wanted a good place to settle:
Cold Mountain would be safe.
Light wind in a hidden pine -
Listen close - the sound gets better.
Under it a gray haired man
Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao.
For ten years I havn't gone back home
I've even forgotten the way by which I came.”

“I have lived at Cold Mountain
These thirty long years.
Yesterday I called on friends and family:
More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.
Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;
Forever flowing, like a passing river.
Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:
Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.”

Noivous

03-10-17, 14:26

For our moms. From a former Poet Laureate of the US.

The Lanyard
by*Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word*lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips*
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing*
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy*
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,*
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,*
and I , in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took*
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,*
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove*
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

hanshan

03-10-17, 15:42

I discovered Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry as a teenager - again, his poems have stuck with me. This is one of the bleaker ones, yet it described anxiety/depression to me in a way nothing else did at the time. It is good to compare it with some of Hopkins' more uplifting poems.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief
Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."'

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

KK77

04-10-17, 18:37

Enjoyed reading all your poems - keep them coming...

A poem which evokes much melancholy feeling in me is by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, written in early 1835, an elegy to his late friend and fellow poet Arthur Henry Hallam.

Break, Break, Break

Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead,
Will never come back to me.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Noivous

04-10-17, 18:49

Casey at the Bat

The outlook wasn't brilliant for the Mudville Nine that day;*
The score stood four to two, with but one inning more to play,*
And then when Cooney died at first, and Barrows did the same,*
A pall-like silence fell upon the patrons of the game.*

A straggling few got up to go in deep despair. The rest*
Clung to that hope which springs eternal in the human breast;*
They thought, 'If only Casey could but get a whack at that-*
We'd put up even money now, with Casey at the bat.'*

But Flynn preceded Casey, as did also Jimmy Blake,*
And the former was a lulu, while the latter was a cake;*
So upon that stricken multitude grim melancholy sat,*
For there seemed but little chance of Casey getting to the bat.*

But Flynn let drive a single, to the wonderment of all,*
And Blake, the much despisèd, tore the cover off the ball;*
And when the dust had lifted, and men saw what had occurred,*
There was Jimmy safe at second and Flynn a-hugging third.*

Then from five thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;*
It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell;*
It pounded on the mountain and recoiled upon the flat,*
For Casey, mighty Casey, was advancing to the bat.*

There was ease in Casey's manner as he stepped into his place;*
There was pride in Casey's bearing and a smile lit Casey's face.*
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,*
No stranger in the crowd could doubt 'twas Casey at the bat.*

Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;*
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt;*
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,*
Defiance flashed in Casey's eye, a sneer curled Casey's lip.*

And now the leather-covered sphere came hurtling through the air,*
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there.*
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped-*
'That ain't my style,' said Casey. 'Strike one! ' the umpire said.*

From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled roar,*
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore;*
'Kill him! Kill the umpire! ' shouted some one on the stand;*
And it's likely they'd have killed him had not Casey raised his hand.*

With a smile of Christian charity great Casey's visage shone;*
He stilled the rising tumult; he bade the game go on;*
He signaled to the pitcher, and once more the dun sphere flew;*
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, 'Strike two! '*

'Fraud! ' cried the maddened thousands, and echo answered 'Fraud! '*
But one scornful look from Casey and the audience was awed.*
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles strain,*
And they knew that Casey wouldn't let that ball go by again.*

The sneer has fled from Casey's lip, his teeth are clenched in hate;*
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate.*
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go.*
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow.*

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright;*
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,*
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;*
But there is no joy in Mudville- mighty Casey has struck out.

by Ernest Lawrence Thayer

Hollow

04-10-17, 21:02

Very deep poems everyone, thanks for sharing. Here's another poem from a book I was reading about Mindfulness.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

hanshan

05-10-17, 10:02

A favourite of mine by Charles Baudelaire (with English translation following!). I don't necessarily see it as about drinking - more the need to have a passion in life.

Enivrez-vous. Get drunk!

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867).

Il faut être toujours ivre. Tout est là: c’est l’unique question.

Pour ne pas sentir l’horrible fardeau du Temps qui brise vos épaules et vous penche vers la terre, il faut vous enivrer sans trêve.

Mais de quoi? De vin, de poésie, ou de vertu, à votre guise. Mais enivrez-vous.

Et si quelquefois, sur les marches d’un palais, sur l’herbe verte d’un fossé, dans la solitude morne de votre chambre, vous vous réveillez, l’ivresse déjà diminuée ou disparue,

demandez au vent, à la vague, à l’étoile, à l’oiseau, à l’horloge, à tout ce qui fuit, à tout ce qui gémit, à tout ce qui roule, à tout ce qui chante, à tout ce qui parle, demandez quelle heure il est;

et le vent, la vague, l’étoile, l’oiseau, l’horloge, vous répondront: “Il est l’heure de s’enivrer!

Pour n’être pas les esclaves martyrisés du Temps, enivrez-vous; enivrez-vous sans cesse! De vin, de poésie ou de vertu, à votre guise.

* * * * *

Get drunk!

You must always be drunk. Therein lies everything: it’s all that matters.

So as not to feel the dread burden of Time which breaks your shoulders and drags you toward the earth, you must never stop being drunk.

But on what? Whether on wine, poetry or virtue, it's up to you. But get drunk.

And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, in the green grass of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your room, you wake up, the drunkenness already faded or gone,

ask the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, the clocks; ask everything that flees, everything that moans, everything that moves, everything that sings, everything that speaks: ask them what time it is;

and the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, and the clocks will all reply: “It is the drinking hour!”.

To escape being a tormented slave of Time, get drunk. Get drunk, without cease. On wine, poetry, or virtue, it's up to you.

Noivous

05-10-17, 13:46

A canner exceedingly canny
Once remarked to his granny
A canner can can
Anything that he can
But a canner can't can a can
Can he

---------- Post added at 12:41 ---------- Previous post was at 12:40 ----------

The author escapes me...sorry.

---------- Post added at 12:45 ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 ----------

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

The pair of them went to Manhasset,
(Nan and the man with the asset.)
Pa followed them there, But they left in a tear,
And as for the asset, Manhasset.

Pa followed the pair to Pawtucket,
(Nan and the man with the bucket.)
Pa said to the man, "You're welcome to Nan."
But as for the bucket, Pawtucket.

Author unknown

---------- Post added at 12:46 ---------- Previous post was at 12:45 ----------

Btw there is a much more adult version of that one:)

Noivous

05-10-17, 18:25

The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe

First Published in 1845 (http://eapoe.org/works/info/pp073.htm)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
" 'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books (http://www.houseofusher.net/library.html) surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,.
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore, (http://www.houseofusher.net/lenore.html)
Nameless here forevermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me---filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
" 'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door,
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door.
This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
"Sir," said I, "or madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you." Here I opened wide the door;---
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
Lenore? (http://www.houseofusher.net/lenore.html), This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
"Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before,
"Surely," said I, "surely, that is something at my window lattice.
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore.
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore.
" 'Tis the wind, and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven, of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door.
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
"Though thy crest be shorn and shaven thou," I said, "art sure no craven,
Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly shore.
Tell me what the lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore."
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as "Nevermore."

But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he fluttered;
Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before;
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before."
Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore,---
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never---nevermore."

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore --
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking "Nevermore."
Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o'er
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
"Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee -- by these angels he hath
Sent thee respite---respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, O quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore!"

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!--prophet still, if bird or devil!
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted--
On this home by horror haunted--tell me truly, I implore:
Is there--is there balm in Gilead?--tell me--tell me I implore!"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil--prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore--
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore---
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore?
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting--
"Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! -- quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door! (http://www.houseofusher.net/mydoor.html)"
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming.
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted---nevermore!

---------- Post added at 17:25 ---------- Previous post was at 17:24 ----------

Poe...arguably the greatest poet America has ever produced

KK77

05-10-17, 19:01

US has many fine poets, Agent N, and Poe is one of my favourites along with Sylvia Plath...

Lady Lazarus
BY SYLVIA PLATH

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

hanshan

06-10-17, 01:21

KK77

06-10-17, 02:53

I agree that the US has produced many fine poets who can speak to us across time and distance. Some more are Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg. Each has their own voice. There is no need to judge which is greatest.

Very true, Hanshan. This isn't about Nationality. Every country has its great literary figures...

The Return

Ezra Pound, 1885-1972

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
Movements, and the slow feet,
The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
Wavering!

See, they return, one, and by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
and half turn back;
These were the “Wing’d-with-Awe,"
inviolable.

Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
sniffing the trace of air!

Haie! Haie!
These were the swift to harry;
These the keen-scented;
These were the souls of blood.

Slow on the leash,
pallid the leash-men!

Noivous

06-10-17, 03:11

I agree that the US has produced many fine poets who can speak to us across time and distance. Some more are Walt Whitman, T.S. Eliot, Robert Lowell and Allen Ginsberg. Each has their own voice. There is no need to judge which is greatest.

Don't forget Whittier or McCann either...and many more. But Poe was probably the greatest of them all.

hanshan

06-10-17, 04:45

And now a poem by an Australian poet, Kenneth Slessor. This poem was written in 1939. It is a meditation on the death of a friend of Slessor’s, Joe Lynch, who died, presumed drowned, in Sydney Harbour in 1927. The story is that one evening Lynch heard of a party on the north side of the harbour. He loaded up his coat with beer bottles and boarded the harbour ferry to make the journey. Some say he was knocked overboard by a wave, others that he jumped overboard saying he could swim the rest of the distance faster. His body was never found.

The term “five bells” refers to the bell notes that are rung to mark off time on board a ship.

Five Bells - Poem by Kenneth Slessor

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels
Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.
Between the double and the single bell
Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells
From the dark warship riding there below,
I have lived many lives, and this one life
Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

Deep and dissolving verticals of light
Ferry the falls of moonshine down. Five bells
Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water
Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats
In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.

Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve
These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought
Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth,
Gone even from the meaning of a name;
Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips
And hits and cries against the ports of space,
Beating their sides to make its fury heard.

Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face
In agonies of speech on speechless panes?
Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!

But I hear nothing, nothing...only bells,
Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.
Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life,
There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait -
Nothing except the memory of some bones
Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud;
And unimportant things you might have done,
Or once I thought you did; but you forgot,
And all have now forgotten - looks and words
And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off,
Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales
Of Irish kings and English perfidy,
And dirtier perfidy of publicans
Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.
Five bells.

Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder
Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain
The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,
So dark you bore no body, had no face,
But a sheer voice that rattled out of air
(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass),
A voice that spoke beside me in the bush,
Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind,
Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man,
And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls
Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls
Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found.
But all I heard was words that didn't join
So Milton became melons, melons girls,
And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night,
And in each tree an Ear was bending down,
Or something that had just run, gone behind the grass,
When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought,
The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky,
Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.
There's not so many with so poor a purse
Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that,
Five miles in darkness on a country track,
But when you do, that's what you think.
Five bells.

In Melbourne, your appetite had gone,
Your angers too; they had been leeched away
By the soft archery of summer rains
And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp
That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind,
And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage,
The sodden ectasies of rectitude.
I thought of what you'd written in faint ink,
Your journal with the sawn-off lock, that stayed behind
With other things you left, all without use,
All without meaning now, except a sign
That someone had been living who now was dead:
"At Labassa. Room 6 x 8
On top of the tower; because of this, very dark
And cold in winter. Everything has been stowed
Into this room - 500 books all shapes
And colours, dealt across the floor
And over sills and on the laps of chairs;
Guns, photoes of many differant things
And differant curioes that I obtained..."

In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare
Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,
We argued about blowing up the world,
But you were living backward, so each night
You crept a moment closer to the breast,
And they were living, all of them, those frames
And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth,
And most your father, the old man gone blind,
With fingers always round a fiddle's neck,
That graveyard mason whose fair monuments
And tablets cut with dreams of piety
Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men
Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment
At cargoes they had never thought to bear,
These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.

Where have you gone? The tide is over you,
The turn of midnight water's over you,
As Time is over you, and mystery,
And memory, the flood that does not flow.
You have no suburb, like those easier dead
In private berths of dissolution laid -
The tide goes over, the waves ride over you
And let their shadows down like shining hair,
But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend
Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed;
And you are only part of an Idea.
I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,
The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,
And the short agony, the longer dream,
The Nothing that was neither long nor short;
But I was bound, and could not go that way,
But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.
If I could find an answer, could only find
Your meaning, or could say why you were here
Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath
Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?

I looked out my window in the dark
At waves with diamond quills and combs of light
That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand
In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,
And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys
Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,
And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard
Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal
Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,
Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.
Five bells.

Kenneth Slessor

Magic

06-10-17, 14:12

All things pass

All things pass
A sunrise does not last all morning
All things pass
A cloudburst does not last all day
All things pass
Nor a sunset all night
All things pass
What always changes?
Earth---sky---thunder---mountain---water---wind---fire---lake
These change
And if these do not last
Do man's visions last?
Do man's illusions?
Take theses as they come
All things pass.

KK77

06-10-17, 16:38

KK77

08-10-17, 17:41

Ozymandias

BY 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.”

Source: Shelley’s Poetry and Prose (1977)

KK77

09-10-17, 23:18

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas, 1914 - 1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Noivous

09-10-17, 23:52

Once to ev'ry man and nation*
Comes the moment to decide,*
In the strife of truth and falsehood,*
For the good or evil side;*
Some great cause, some great decision,*
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,*
And the choice goes by forever*
'Twixt that darkness and that light.*

Then to side with truth is noble,*
When we share her wretched crust,*
Ere her cause bring fame and profit,*
And 'tis prosperous to be just;*
Then it is the brave man chooses*
While the coward stands aside.*
Till the multitude make virtue*
Of the faith they had denied.*

By the light of burning martyrs,*
Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,*
Toiling up new Calv'ries ever*
With the cross that turns not back;*
New occasions teach new duties,*
Ancient values test our youth;*
They must upward still and onward,*
Who would keep abreast of truth.*

Tho' the cause of evil prosper,*
Yet the truth alone is strong;*
Tho' her portion be the scaffold,*
And upon the throne be wrong;*
Yet that scaffold sways the future,*
And, behind the dim unknown,*
Standeth God within the shadow,*
Keeping watch above His own

Once to Every Man and Nation

By James Russell Lowell

KK77

10-10-17, 17:31

The Labyrinth

by W.H. Auden

Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperament for getting on.

The hundredth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.

“Where am I? Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.

If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I’m sure,
The Universe in miniature.

Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?

All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.

Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the Heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?

Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.

His absolute pre-supposition
Is–Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.

The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my Unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.

My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I’m only lost until I see
I’m lost because I want to be.

If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.

All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man.”

Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were the bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.

Hollow

10-10-17, 20:25

“Where am I? Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.

If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I’m sure,
The Universe in miniature.
[/I]

Very powerful poem, thanks for sharing KK.

We haven't even began to scratch the surface when it comes to the secrets of the universe and nothing can be ruled out.

---------- Post added at 20:25 ---------- Previous post was at 19:37 ----------

Tho' the cause of evil prosper,*
Yet the truth alone is strong;*
Tho' her portion be the scaffold,*
And upon the throne be wrong;*
Yet that scaffold sways the future,*
And, behind the dim unknown,*
Standeth God within the shadow,*
Keeping watch above His own

Once to Every Man and Nation

By James Russell Lowell

No doubt, the forces of evil have the upper hand right now and the truth is being hidden away behind a web of lies and deception. However it's still early days in this grand battle between good and evil.

Thanks for sharing, Noivous.

hanshan

11-10-17, 07:14

Another Australian poet:

Woman To Man by Judith Wright

The eyeless labourer in the night,
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day---
silent and swift and deep from sight
foresees the unimagined light.

This is no child with a child's face;
this has no name to name it by;
yet you and I have known it well.
This is our hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.

This is the strength that your arm knows,
the arc of flesh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood's wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.

This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light along the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.

Magic

11-10-17, 18:44

Excellent poetry !!!! Love it.

hanshan

13-10-17, 10:48

This is an Australian "bush ballad" by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson, published in 1889. A drover rides a horse, moving herds of cattle from one pasture to the next. Australia's dry conditions mean cattle need to move continually to feed.

Clancy Of The Overflow by Banjo Paterson

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just `on spec', addressed as follows, `Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
`Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal --
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of `The Overflow'.

KK77

13-10-17, 12:21

Filthy and monotonous city life vs wild beauty of nature. Thanks for sharing, Hanshan.

KK77

22-10-17, 19:51

If I Could Tell You

By Wystan Hugh Auden

(Dedicated to real friendship, love and compassion)

Time will say nothing but I told you so,
Time only knows the price we have to pay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,
If we should stumble when musicians play,
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,
Because I love you more than I can say,
If I could tell you I would let you know.

The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,
There must be reasons why the leaves decay;
Time will say nothing but I told you so.

Perhaps the roses really want to grow,
The vision seriously intends to stay;
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Suppose all the lions get up and go,
And all the brooks and soldiers run away;
Will Time say nothing but I told you so?
If I could tell you I would let you know.

Noivous

28-10-17, 18:38

Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Raked the meadows sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But, when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast--
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse's chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid,
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
"Thanks!" said the Judge, "a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed."
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
And listened, while a pleasant surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away,
Maud Muller looked and sighed: "Ah, me!
That I the Judge's bride might be!
"He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
"My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.
"I'd dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
"And I'd feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door."
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
"A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne'er hath it been my lot to meet.
"And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
"Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:
"No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
"But low of cattle, and song of birds,
And health, and quiet, and loving words."
But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth's bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go:
And sweet Maud Muller's hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
"Ah, that I were free again!
"Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay."
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o'er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, "It might have been."
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!

Maud Muller
John Greenleaf Whittier

---------- Post added at 17:38 ---------- Previous post was at 17:35 ----------

Finally! Had trouble posting that one gang...sorry.

KK77

29-10-17, 19:39

Really enjoyed reading that poem, Agent Noi. Touching story in beautiful verse...

Macavity: The Mystery Cat

By TS Eliot

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw--
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime--Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air--
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square--
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's.
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair--
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office finds a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair--
But it's useless to investigate--Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
"It must have been Macavity!"--but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs,
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macacity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, or one or two to spare:
And whatever time the deed took place--MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

TS Eliot

Born: 26 September 1888, St. Louis, Missouri, United States
Died: 4 January 1965, Kensington, London

KK77

05-11-17, 12:40

The Chosen

BY THOMAS HARDY

“A woman for whom great gods might strive!”
I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
And of how charms outwear.

I thought of the first with her eating eyes,
And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,
And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,
And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.

And I thought of the fifth, whom I'd called a jade.
And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;
And that each had shown her a passable maid,
Yet not of the favour sought.

So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,
Just at the falling of the mast:
“After scanning five; yes, each and each,
I've found the woman desired – at last!”

“–I feel a strange benumbing spell,
As one ill-wished!” said she.
And soon it seemed that something fell
Was starving her love for me.

“I feel some curse. O, five were there?”
And wanly she swerved, and went away.
I followed sick: night numbed the air,
And dark the mournful moorland lay.

I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”
But never her face I viewed;
“O turn, O turn!” again I said,
And miserably pursued.

At length I came to a Christ-cross stone
Which she had passed without discern;
And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,
And prayed aloud that she might turn.

I rose, and looked; and turn she did;
I cried, “My heart revives!”
“Look more,” she said. I looked as bid;
Her face was all the five's.

All the five women, clear come back,
I saw in her – with her made one,
The while she drooped upon the track,
And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.

She'd half forgot me in her change;
“Who are you? Won't you say
Who you may be, you man so strange,
Following since yesterday?”

I took the composite form she was,
And carried her to an arbour small,
Not passion-moved, but even because
In one I could atone to all.

And there she lies, and there I tend,
Till my life's threads unwind,
A various womanhood in blend –
Not one, but all combined.

Noivous

05-11-17, 18:46

Peace Frog

There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles
She came
Blood in the streets, it's up to my knee
She came
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
She came
Blood on the rise, it's following me
Think about the break of day

She came and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair

She came
Blood in the streets runs a river of sadness
She came
Blood in the streets it's up to my thigh
She came
Yeah the river runs red down the legs of a city
She came
The women are crying red rivers of weepin'

She came into town and then she drove away
Sunlight in her hair

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding
Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind

Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.

Blood screams her brain as they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union

There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles
Blood in the streets, it's up to my knee
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
Blood on the rise, it's following me

Jim Morrison
Robbie Krieger

EmmerLooeez

07-11-17, 13:13

Maroon 5. Maps.
I keep listening to the rock cover by 'our last night', when I find myself relapsing into weakness and self pity.

I miss the taste of a sweeter life
I miss the conversation
I'm searching for a song tonight
I'm changing all of the stations
I like to think that we had it all
We drew a map to a better place
But on that road I took a fall
Oh baby why did you run away?

I was there for you
In your darkest times
I was there for you
In your darkest night

But I wonder, where were you?
When I was at my worst
Down on my knees
And you said you had my back
So I wonder, where were you?
All the roads you took came back to me
So I'm following the map that leads to you

Noivous

07-11-17, 16:36

Very nice prose...thanks for joining in!

hanshan

09-11-17, 12:32

The moon has set,
And the Pleiades.
It's the middle of the night, and yet
I sleep alone.

(Attributed to) Sappho
Translated from the Classical Greek (Sapphic dialect)

hanshan

11-11-17, 11:01

The poet Martial entrusts the spirit of a dead slave child (who died just before her sixth birthday) to the care of his deceased parents, Fronto and Flacilla.

On the Death of Erotion, a Slave Child

I commend this girl, this sweet one, my delight,
Fronto and Flaccilla, my parents, into your care,
so that with you little Erotion might not take fright
at Cerberus's triple roar or the phantoms there.
Had she lived six more days of winter cold,
she'd have prided herself on being six years old.-
With such familiar protectors, let her trick and play
and still lisp my name, as she used to do.
May mellow sod veil her brittle bones --- and weigh
Lightly on her, kind earth; she was light on you.

Martial (lived c. AD 40-100) 5:34

Translated from the Latin by James Owens – There have been many translations into English of this poem by Martial. Explore the net for them, if you like. It has often been conjectured that Erotion was Martial’s own child by a slave.

KK77

19-11-17, 17:36

Thanks for all your contributions. Keep them coming...

Fog

BY CARL SANDBURG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Magic

19-11-17, 19:29

Patagonia By Kate Clancy

I said perhaps Patagonia and pictured
a peninsular, wide enough
for a couple of ladder back chairs
to wobble on high tide. I thought

of us in breathless cold, facing
a horizon round as a coin looped
in a cat's cradle strung by gulls
from sea to sun. I planned to wait

Till the waves had bored themselves
to sleep, till the last clinging barnacles
growing worried in the hush, had
paddled of in tiny coracles, till

Those restless birds, your actor's hand's
had dropped slack in your lap
until you'd turned, at last, to me.
When I spoke of Patagonia. I meant

Skies of empty blue, I meant
years. I meant all of them with you.

This poem was read at my daughters wedding 2002

KK77

19-11-17, 21:10

This poem was read at my daughters wedding 2002

Thank you for sharing...

Thinking of you, Magic :sad:

EmmerLooeez

20-11-17, 15:47

Another rock cover, but I adore it. "Heavy" by Our Last Night. The original is Linkin Park.

I don't like my mind right now
Stacking up problems that are so unnecessary
Wish that I could slow things down
I wanna let go but there's comfort in the panic
And I drive myself crazy
Thinking everything's about me
Yeah, I drive myself crazy
'Cause I can’t escape the gravity

I'm holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what's bringing me down
If I just let go, I'd be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?

You say that I'm paranoid
But I'm pretty sure the world is out to get me
It's not like I make the choice
To let my mind stay so ****ing messy
I know I'm not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning 'round me just the same
I know I'm not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning 'round me just the same

I'm holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what's bringing me down
If I just let go, I'd be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?

I know I'm not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning 'round me just the same
I know I'm not the center of the universe
But you keep spinning 'round me just the same
And I drive myself crazy
Thinking everything’s about me

Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Holding on
So much more than I can carry
I keep dragging around what's bringing me down
If I just let go, I'd be set free
Holding on
Why is everything so heavy?
Why is everything so heavy?
Why is everything so heavy?

---------- Post added at 15:47 ---------- Previous post was at 15:31 ----------

Little embarrassing, but this is something that I wrote around 6 years ago, I think. I have improved as a writer since, so cringe at some parts, but this is one of my favourites as it was the first thing I wrote that would later become 'my style'.

"Where are you going Daddy?"
"Out"

"When are you coming back?"
"I'm not"

You left with a fresh start in your red leather suitcase and I was left living with accelerated years.
I was left living a life where I am nothing but a painted-on smile, feigning a prism of extended warmth for those that I meet.
I live with constant radio static snapping through my synapses.
There are days when I don't even notice I am bleeding, from within, or out, neither make a difference when pain is just pain and I've spent a life-time cultivating an immune response for it.

So many years have passed and it is only as I'm headed in your direction that I can stop the ache in my transient feet. Every muscle fibre in my body has been straining to take me to you, but laws weaved into my own fingerprints made me forget, until my strengths were making me irrevocably weak.

You left with me so much anger. Anger that I had tamed under lock and key is now escaping from me; a malfunctioning power supply sparking fires under every dry roof I resided. A pain metamorphosis that was hunting down everyone I loved has found an alternative route to see me suffer.

I was once told I thrived on misery, I can now see that I nurtured the isolation, but I need to be loved as much as my blood needs oxygen to maintain. Sometimes that endless black tunnel becomes tempting when all around me is thick with undercurrents, beckoning me into a flux that will ultimately leave me undefined.

I can't grow old in a place where every turn is aligned with squares and coloured with black and white symmetry - not when I was born by curiosity.
You should know, I grow blind in the constant headlights and I suffocate in the relentless vocabulary torrents.
I am not afraid of the crickets that harmonise the nights or the rustlings that are heard but never seen, not when Lavender isn't just a scent, it is a lilac haze outside my kitchen window and its living.
perhaps I wasn't blessed
and maybe I'm far from lucky
but for now at least,

I'm alive.

Magic

20-11-17, 22:29

Thank you for sharing...

Thinking of you, Magic :sad:

Thank you for this thread KK. Love poetry.
I have your first poem in one of my books.
All the best :hugs:

KK77

21-11-17, 14:42

Magic

22-11-17, 15:52

I can't keep away from here.
Well done Emma!:hugs:

Noivous

27-11-17, 19:16

Not really a poem but quite beautiful.

Hamlet's Soliloquy:

HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia! -- Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.

The Bard

KK77

29-11-17, 21:12

You do know that Shakespeare was British, old chap? :shades:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (Sonnet 18)

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Hollow

29-11-17, 21:48

The Neoconservative Song

by E. Michael Jones

Oh my name is Irving Kristol
and my son his name is Bill
in my youth I followed Trotsky
and in truth I follow him still

But to call yourself a Bolshevik
will fill the world with dread
so please don’t call me a commie
call me a neocon instead

yes we are the neoconservatives
we rule the world says I
and that dumb goy
we call Georgie boy
doesn’t understand how or why

oh we’re marching into Syria
the fun has just begun
oh how Trotsky would be proud
to be known as a neocon

to keep the goyim pacified
while watching their TV
we let them watch dumb irishmen
like Sean O’Hannity

Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews
can lick our boots and sigh
but to run the new world order
no dumb irish need apply

David Frum can excommunicate
real conservatives from National Review
For to be a neoconservative
Is to be one of a chosen few

Oh, we’re marching into Syria
The fun has just begun
Comrade Trotsky would be proud to be
Known as a neocon

Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson
support us on TV
while waiting to be raptured
into pre-eternity

oh we’re marching into Syria
the fun as just begun
oh how Trotsky would be proud
to be called a neocon

Hamurabi’s tablets got busted
during the looting in Iraq
But we’re marching into Syria
behind George Bush’s back

they got weapons of mass destructions
and they got ’em from Saddam Hussein
they got weapons of mass destruction
oh repeat once more the refrain

they got weapons of mass destruction
oh believe me, oh believe
if you want to know just where they are
they’re hidden in Tel Aviv

Oh we’re marching into Syria
the fun has just begun
comrade Trosky would be proud
to be known as a neocon

Noivous

30-11-17, 02:10

You are very welcome, Magic.

Really poignant and powerful poem by you Emma. Thanks for sharing...

I Grant You Ample Leave

BY GEORGE ELIOT

"I grant you ample leave
To use the hoary formula 'I am'
Naming the emptiness where thought is not;
But fill the void with definition, 'I'
Will be no more a datum than the words
You link false inference with, the 'Since' & 'so'
That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl.
Resolve your 'Ego', it is all one web
With vibrant ether clotted into worlds:
Your subject, self, or self-assertive 'I'
Turns nought but object, melts to molecules,
Is stripped from naked Being with the rest
Of those rag-garments named the Universe.
Or if, in strife to keep your 'Ego' strong
You make it weaver of the etherial light,
Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time —
Why, still 'tis Being looking from the dark,
The core, the centre of your consciousness,
That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain,
What are they but a shifting otherness,
Phantasmal flux of moments? —"

Yes, I am aware of that Mon Capitain...but that's ok by me.

---------- Post added at 02:10 ---------- Previous post was at 02:05 ----------

The Neoconservative Song

by E. Michael Jones

Oh my name is Irving Kristol
and my son his name is Bill
in my youth I followed Trotsky
and in truth I follow him still

But to call yourself a Bolshevik
will fill the world with dread
so please don’t call me a commie
call me a neocon instead

yes we are the neoconservatives
we rule the world says I
and that dumb goy
we call Georgie boy
doesn’t understand how or why

oh we’re marching into Syria
the fun has just begun
oh how Trotsky would be proud
to be known as a neocon

to keep the goyim pacified
while watching their TV
we let them watch dumb irishmen
like Sean O’Hannity

Bill O’Reilly and Chris Matthews
can lick our boots and sigh
but to run the new world order
no dumb irish need apply

David Frum can excommunicate
real conservatives from National Review
For to be a neoconservative
Is to be one of a chosen few

Oh, we’re marching into Syria
The fun has just begun
Comrade Trotsky would be proud to be
Known as a neocon

Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson
support us on TV
while waiting to be raptured
into pre-eternity

oh we’re marching into Syria
the fun as just begun
oh how Trotsky would be proud
to be called a neocon

Hamurabi’s tablets got busted
during the looting in Iraq
But we’re marching into Syria
behind George Bush’s back

they got weapons of mass destructions
and they got ’em from Saddam Hussein
they got weapons of mass destruction
oh repeat once more the refrain

they got weapons of mass destruction
oh believe me, oh believe
if you want to know just where they are
they’re hidden in Tel Aviv

Oh we’re marching into Syria
the fun has just begun
comrade Trosky would be proud
to be known as a neocon

Ah yes...a commie by any othe name would smell as rotten...

KK77

30-11-17, 22:27

Money

BY PHILIP LARKIN

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:
‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex.
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.
By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life.

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:
You can’t put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down
From long French windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

Magic

01-12-17, 15:40

Warning . Jenny Joseph 1932

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that does not go, and doesn't suit me
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings.
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in the other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children
We must have friends to dinner and reads the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not to shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

fishman65

01-12-17, 16:03

Just one of mine...

Dread

The dead beat of leaden feet,
tread the dread way.

The aisles where strangers meet,
lead the path,
to the checkout's trap
and my dismay.

Rising bile chokes panic's first bite,
to utter the speech expected,
that ceremony agonising,
when I can only think of flight.

October 2016

KK77

02-12-17, 20:08

Very eloquent poem, Fishman. Thanks for sharing...

Ariel

BY SYLVIA PLATH

Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue
Pour of tor and distances.

God’s lioness,
How one we grow,
Pivot of heels and knees!—The furrow

Splits and passes, sister to
The brown arc
Of the neck I cannot catch,

Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks—

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.
Something else

Hauls me through air—
Thighs, hair;
Flakes from my heels.

White
Godiva, I unpeel—
Dead hands, dead stringencies.

And now I
Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.
The child’s cry

Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,

The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red

Eye, the cauldron of morning.

KK77

04-12-17, 21:15

MACBETH

William Shakespeare

ACT 4. SCENE I. A cavern. In the middle, a boiling cauldron.

Thunder. Enter the three Witches

First Witch

Thrice the brinded cat hath mew'd.

Second Witch

Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.

Third Witch

Harpier cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

First Witch

Round about the cauldron go;
In the poison'd entrails throw.
Toad, that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter'd venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first i' the charmed pot.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Third Witch

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,
Witches' mummy, maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock digg'd i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming Jew,
Gall of goat, and slips of yew
Silver'd in the moon's eclipse,
Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips,
Finger of birth-strangled babe
Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,
Make the gruel thick and slab:
Add thereto a tiger's chaudron,
For the ingredients of our cauldron.

ALL

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Second Witch

Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.

Enter HECATE to the other three Witches

HECATE

O well done! I commend your pains;
And every one shall share i' the gains;
And now about the cauldron sing,
Live elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in.

Music and a song: 'Black spirits,' & c

HECATE retires

Second Witch

By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!

Enter MACBETH

MACBETH

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags!
What is't you do?

ALL

A deed without a name.

MACBETH

I conjure you, by that which you profess,
Howe'er you come to know it, answer me:
Though you untie the winds and let them fight
Against the churches; though the yesty waves
Confound and swallow navigation up;
Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down;
Though castles topple on their warders' heads;
Though palaces and pyramids do slope
Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure
Of nature's germens tumble all together,
Even till destruction sicken; answer me
To what I ask you.

First Witch

Speak.

Second Witch

Demand.

Third Witch

We'll answer.

First Witch

Say, if thou'dst rather hear it from our mouths,
Or from our masters?

MACBETH

Call 'em; let me see 'em.

First Witch

Pour in sow's blood, that hath eaten
Her nine farrow; grease that's sweaten
From the murderer's gibbet throw
Into the flame.

ALL

Come, high or low;
Thyself and office deftly show!

Thunder. First Apparition: an armed Head

MACBETH

Tell me, thou unknown power,--

First Witch

He knows thy thought:
Hear his speech, but say thou nought.

First Apparition

Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! beware Macduff;
Beware the thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough.

Descends

MACBETH

Whate'er thou art, for thy good caution, thanks;
Thou hast harp'd my fear aright: but one
word more,--

First Witch

He will not be commanded: here's another,
More potent than the first.

Thunder. Second Apparition: A bloody Child

Second Apparition

Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth!

MACBETH

Had I three ears, I'ld hear thee.

Second Apparition

Be bloody, bold, and resolute; laugh to scorn
The power of man, for none of woman born
Shall harm Macbeth.

Descends

MACBETH

Then live, Macduff: what need I fear of thee?
But yet I'll make assurance double sure,
And take a bond of fate: thou shalt not live;
That I may tell pale-hearted fear it lies,
And sleep in spite of thunder.

Thunder. Third Apparition: a Child crowned, with a tree in his hand

What is this
That rises like the issue of a king,
And wears upon his baby-brow the round
And top of sovereignty?

ALL

Listen, but speak not to't.

Third Apparition

Be lion-mettled, proud; and take no care
Who chafes, who frets, or where conspirers are:
Macbeth shall never vanquish'd be until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.

Descends

MACBETH

That will never be
Who can impress the forest, bid the tree
Unfix his earth-bound root? Sweet bodements! good!
Rebellion's head, rise never till the wood
Of Birnam rise, and our high-placed Macbeth
Shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath
To time and mortal custom. Yet my heart
Throbs to know one thing: tell me, if your art
Can tell so much: shall Banquo's issue ever
Reign in this kingdom?

ALL

Seek to know no more.

MACBETH

I will be satisfied: deny me this,
And an eternal curse fall on you! Let me know.
Why sinks that cauldron? and what noise is this?

Hautboys

First Witch

Show!

Second Witch

Show!

Third Witch

Show!

ALL

Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;
Come like shadows, so depart!
A show of Eight Kings, the last with a glass in his hand;

GHOST OF BANQUO following

MACBETH

Thou art too like the spirit of Banquo: down!
Thy crown does sear mine eye-balls. And thy hair,
Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first.
A third is like the former. Filthy hags!
Why do you show me this? A fourth! Start, eyes!
What, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?
Another yet! A seventh! I'll see no more:
And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass
Which shows me many more; and some I see
That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry:
Horrible sight! Now, I see, 'tis true;
For the blood-bolter'd Banquo smiles upon me,
And points at them for his.

Apparitions vanish

What, is this so?

First Witch

Ay, sir, all this is so: but why
Stands Macbeth thus amazedly?
Come, sisters, cheer we up his sprites,
And show the best of our delights:
I'll charm the air to give a sound,
While you perform your antic round:
That this great king may kindly say,
Our duties did his welcome pay.

Music. The witches dance and then vanish, with HECATE

MACBETH

Where are they? Gone? Let this pernicious hour
Stand aye accursed in the calendar!
Come in, without there!

Enter LENNOX

LENNOX

What's your grace's will?

MACBETH

Saw you the weird sisters?

LENNOX

No, my lord.

MACBETH

Came they not by you?

LENNOX

No, indeed, my lord.

MACBETH

Infected be the air whereon they ride;
And damn'd all those that trust them! I did hear
The galloping of horse: who was't came by?

LENNOX

'Tis two or three, my lord, that bring you word
Macduff is fled to England.

MACBETH

Fled to England!

LENNOX

Ay, my good lord.

MACBETH

Time, thou anticipatest my dread exploits:
The flighty purpose never is o'ertook
Unless the deed go with it; from this moment
The very firstlings of my heart shall be
The firstlings of my hand. And even now,
To crown my thoughts with acts, be it thought and done:
The castle of Macduff I will surprise;
Seize upon Fife; give to the edge o' the sword
His wife, his babes, and all unfortunate souls
That trace him in his line. No boasting like a fool;
This deed I'll do before this purpose cool.
But no more sights!--Where are these gentlemen?
Come, bring me where they are.

Exeunt

KK77

08-12-17, 23:58

Toads

Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losers, lollypop-men, louts -
They don't end as paupers.

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines.
They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout, Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.

Noivous

14-12-17, 13:52

Do not go gentle into that good night

Dylan Thomas,*1914*-*1953

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

KK77

14-12-17, 15:02

I wandered lonely as a cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

William Wordsworth

hanshan

15-12-17, 02:16

Another Australian poet:

Barn Owl by Gwen Harwood

Daybreak: the household slept.
I rose, blessed by the sun.
A horny fiend, I crept
out with my father's gun.
Let him dream of a child
obedient, angel-mind-

old no-sayer, robbed of power
by sleep. I knew my prize
who swooped home at this hour
with day-light riddled eyes
to his place on a high beam
in our old stables, to dream

light's useless time away.
I stood, holding my breath,
in urine-scented hay,
master of life and death,
a wisp-haired judge whose law
would punish beak and claw.

My first shot struck. He swayed,
ruined, beating his only
wing, as I watched, afraid
by the fallen gun, a lonely
child who believed death clean
and final, not this obscene

bundle of stuff that dropped,
and dribbled through the loose straw
tangling in bowels, and hopped
blindly closer. I saw
those eyes that did not see
mirror my cruelty

while the wrecked thing that could
not bear the light nor hide
hobbled in its own blood.
My father reached my side,
gave me the fallen gun.
'End what you have begun.'

I fired. The blank eyes shone
once into mine, and slept.
I leaned my head upon
my father's arm, and wept,
owl blind in early sun
for what I had begun

Gwen Harwood

mezzaninedoor

15-12-17, 14:48

Loving this thread, need to post some of my own at some point

hanshan

16-12-17, 12:09

‘Liberty’ by Paul Eluard, translated from the French by A.S. Kline
Written in 1941, when France was occupied by Nazi Germany

On my notebooks from school
On my desk and the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name

On every page read
On all the white sheets
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name

On the golden images
On the soldier’s weapons
On the crowns of kings
I write your name

On the jungle the desert
The nests and the bushes
On the echo of childhood
I write your name

On the wonder of nights
On the white bread of days
On the seasons engaged
I write your name

On all my blue rags
On the pond mildewed sun
On the lake living moon
I write your name

On the fields the horizon
The wings of the birds
On the windmill of shadows
I write your name

On each breath of the dawn
On the ships on the sea
On the mountain demented
I write your name

On the foam of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On dark insipid rain
I write your name

On the glittering forms
On the bells of colour
On physical truth
I write your name

On the wakened paths
On the opened ways
On the scattered places
I write your name

On the lamp that gives light
On the lamp that is drowned
On my house reunited
I write your name

On the bisected fruit
Of my mirror and room
On my bed’s empty shell
I write your name

On my dog greedy tender
On his listening ears
On his awkward paws
I write your name

On the sill of my door
On familiar things
On the fire’s sacred stream
I write your name

On all flesh that’s in tune
On the brows of my friends
On each hand that extends
I write your name

On the glass of surprises
On lips that attend
High over the silence
I write your name

On my ravaged refuges
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name

On passionless absence
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

On health that’s regained
On danger that’s past
On hope without memories
I write your name

By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you
Liberty.

Paul Eluard

KK77

18-12-17, 00:29

Day Is Dying

by George Eliot

If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.

But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay --
If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face--
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost --
Then count that day as worse than lost.

hanshan

18-12-17, 14:19

This is a favourite of mine. There is a subtly incestuous hint - in Nerval's day, marrying cousins was normal practice. But more, I like the sensual nature, the colours, the contrast between hot and cold (and is he more excited about the turkey than the girl?). The translation is my own - it's not meant to be poetic.

La cousine by Gérard de Nerval

L'hiver a ses plaisirs; et souvent, le dimanche,
Quand un peu de soleil jaunit la terre blanche,
Avec une cousine on sort se promener...
- Et ne vous faites pas attendre pour dîner,

Dit la mère. Et quand on a bien, aux Tuileries,
Vu sous les arbres noirs les toilettes fleuries,
La jeune fille a froid... et vous fait observer
Que le brouillard du soir commence à se lever.

Et l'on revient, parlant du beau jour qu'on regrette,
Qui s'est passé si vite... et de flamme discrète:
Et l'on sent en rentrant, avec grand appétit,
Du bas de l'escalier, - le dindon qui rôtit.

Gérard de Nerval

The cousin

Winter has its pleasures; and often, of a Sunday
When a little sun yellows the white earth,
With one of my girl cousins I go for a walk ...
"And don't you keep us waiting for dinner",

Says my mother. And when we have, in the Tuileries,
Seen under the black trees quite enough of the flowery displays,
The young girl feels cold ... and points out to me
That the evening fog is starting to rise.

So we return, speaking of the fine day that we are sorry
Has passed so quickly ... and gently of the flame between us:
And then, coming in, I catch the scent, from the bottom of the stairs,
Enormously hungry, of the turkey, roasting in the oven.

KK77

18-12-17, 14:32

Takes skill to translate poetry - thank you, Hanshan ;)

KK77

18-12-17, 20:56

We Too Had Known Golden Hours

WH Auden

We, too, had known golden hours
When body and soul were in tune,
Had danced with our true loves
By the light of a full moon,
And sat with the wise and good
As tongues grew witty and gay
Over some noble dish
Out of Escoffier;
Had felt the intrusive glory
Which tears reserve apart,
And would in the old grand manner
Have sung from a resonant heart.
But, pawed-at and gossiped-over
By the promiscuous crowd,
Concocted by editors
Into spells to befuddle the crowd,
All words like Peace and Love,
All sane affirmative speech,
Had been soiled, profaned, debased
To a horrid mechanical screech.
No civil style survived
That pandaemonioum
But the wry, the sotto-voce,
Ironic and monochrome:
And where should we find shelter
For joy or mere content
When little was left standing
But the suburb of dissent?

hanshan

20-12-17, 04:29

Another Australian poet (written about 1958 - the opening is a take on part of 1 Corinthians 13):

First Corinthians at the Crossroads by Bruce Dawe

When I was a blonde I
walked as a blonde I
talked as a blonde;
but now that I have become
a brunette I have put away my
blonding lotion, farewell Kim Novak
and the statuesque Nordic
me: a touching scene truly…
We lingered like old lovers
who cannot quite believe
the evidence of their eyes.
‘It is all over, honey-bun, alas,’ said disconsolate
eyebrows being terribly
brave.

‘Toujours, toujours,’ sang lips that had
tasted their last Tango, while
onward onward into an everlasting
brunette dusk we moved to confront,
with the new dawn’s rising
over a wasteland of depilatory and
Beauty-Mask, O
brave new world…

Noivous

20-12-17, 13:00

Kim Novak...poetry in motion indeed.:)

KK77

28-12-17, 22:26

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

Noivous

29-12-17, 01:30

Great one Mon Capitaine...haven't read that one in a very long time...very good...take a bow.:yesyes:

hanshan

29-12-17, 12:44

Another view on taking roads ...

I've got nothing on my mind: Nothing to remember,
Nothing to forget. And I've got nothing to regret,
But I'm all tied up on the inside,
No one knows quite what I've got;
And I know that on the outside
What I used to be, I'm not anymore.

You know I've heard about people like me,
But I never made the connection.
They walk one road to set them free
And find they've gone the wrong direction.

But there's no need for turning back
'Cause all roads lead to where I stand.
And I believe I'll walk them all
No matter what I may have planned.

Can you remember who I was? Can you still feel it?
Can you find my pain? Can you heal it?
Then lay your hands upon me now
And cast this darkness from my soul.
You alone can light my way.
You alone can make me whole once again.

We've walked both sides of every street
Through all kinds of windy weather.
But that was never our defeat
As long as we could walk together.

So there's no need for turning back
'Cause all roads lead to where we stand.
And I believe we'll walk them all
No matter what we may have planned.

Don McLean

Hollow

05-01-18, 21:11

Gazing at the Light

The lamps are different,

But the Light is the same.

So many garish lamps in the dying brain’s lamp-show,

Forget about them.

Concentrate on the essence, concentrate on the Light.

In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,

The Light streams towards you from all things,

All people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought, passion.

The lamps are different, but the Light is the same.

One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind,

Endlessly emanating all things.

One turning and burning diamond,

One, one, one.

Ground yourself, strip yourself down,

To blind loving silence.

Stay there, until you see

You are gazing at the Light

With its own ageless eyes.

Jalal-ud-Din Rumi (Translated by Andrew Harvey from A Year of Rumi)

KK77

08-01-18, 19:15

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air,
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

Magic

06-02-18, 15:14

Stopping by a church in the car on the brickwork were these names. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. On seeing this my husband said --- " Mathew, Mark, Luke and John Bless this bed that I lie on. I looked at him astonished. Not in his nature to say such a thing. "Well go on!!!" I said.
"Don't know any more, I can remember saying it when I was little, but don't know anymore"! He is seventy seven.

Mathew, Mark, Luke and John
Bless this bed that I lye on
Four corners to my bed
Four Angels round my head
One to watch and one to pray
And one to bear my soul away.

Another version:-

Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John
Bless this bed that I lie on
And blessed Guardian Angel keep
Me safe from danger whilst I sleep,

I hope this has not bored any of you. I was inquisitive, and found
it from the internet x

KK77

11-03-18, 14:35

Mother o' Mine

by Rudyard Kipling

If I were hanged on the highest hill,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose love would follow me still,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!
I know whose tears would come down to me,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

If I were damned of body and soul,
I know whose prayers would make me whole,
Mother o' mine, O mother o' mine!

KK77

07-04-18, 12:13

The Dead Man Walking

BY THOMAS HARDY

They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death ....

— A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;

And when my Love's heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.

And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day,

Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.

hanshan

23-04-18, 02:58

I'm afraid the version that kids told each other when I was a boy was:

"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Went to bed with their trousers on ..." :)

I've edited this because I realise that I've confused it with another childhood night-time prayer which went as follows (and apparently dates back to the 18th Century):

"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
If I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take."

And another example of schoolboy humour:

"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,
If God don't get you, the Devil must." :)

unsure_about_this

23-04-18, 22:44

I have dugged out some poems books I had for nearly 27 years, by Paul Cookson he came into the school I went to, and have tweeted him pretty recently and he replied. pretty shocked I can remember some of his early works.

Noivous

24-04-18, 00:33

In CONGRESS, July 4th 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Thomas Jefferson

KK77

24-06-18, 00:19

Demons Of Darkness
© Olivia B

Published: September 2015

She stood on the bridge
In silence and fear
For the demons of darkness
Had driven her here

They cut her heart
Right out of her chest
Making her believe
That the demons knew best

They were always there
Sometimes just out of sight
Waiting in the background
Till the time was right

These demons were destructive
Knocking down the life she knew
Hating everything about her
She hated herself too

These demons can't be seen
But they're far from fairy tales
They live inside your mind
Their evilness prevails

So on the bridge she stood
About to end the fight
Then she stopped and thought
I'll fight them one more night

Catherine S

24-06-18, 00:38

Liverpool on the Irish Sea
Tuebrook, Toxteth and Wavertree
Home of the Beatles and the Mersey Beat
And a saucepan of Labscouse is no mean feat
Liverpool nestles softly in the pocket of my heart
And Angels whisper to me, never to depart
Take me back to Exley Steet, playing at my mother's feet.

KK77

28-08-18, 20:20

The Trees

by Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

mezzaninedoor

20-09-18, 16:45

I love the Trees, its a great great poem

John Cooper Clarke is my poetry hero though:-

****
====

Like a nightclub in the morning, you're the bitter end
Like a recently disinfected shithouse, you're clean round the bend
You give me the horrors
Too bad to be true
All of my tomorrows
Are lousy 'cause of you
You put the Shat in Shatter
Put the Pain in Spain
Your germs are splattered about
Your face is just a stain
You're certainly no raver, commonly known as a drag
Do us all a favor, here, wear this polythene bag
You're like a dose of scabies
I've got you under my skin
You make life a fairytale
Grimm!
People mention murder, the moment you arrive
I'd consider killing you if I thought you were alive
You've got this slippery quality
It makes me think of phlegm
And a dual personality
I hate both of them
You're bad breath, vamps disease, destruction, and decay
Please, please, please, please, take yourself away
Like a death a birthday party
You ruin all the fun
Like a sucked and spat-our Smartie
You're no use to anyone
Like the shadow of the guillotine
On a dead consumptive's face
Speaking as an outsider
What do you think of the human race?
You went to a progressive psychiatrist
He recommended suicide
Before scratching your bad name off his list
And pointing the way outside
You hear laughter breaking through, it makes you want to fart
You're heading for a breakdown
Better pull yourself apart
Your dirty name gets passed about when something goes amiss
Your attitudes are platitudes
Just make me wanna piss
What kind of creature bore you
Was it some kind of bat?
They can't find a good word for you
But I can
****!

~fin~

mezzaninedoor

30-10-18, 16:01

Kung Fu International
by John Cooper Clarke

KUNG-FU INTERNATIONAL
Outside the take-away, Saturday night
A bald adolescent, asks me out for a fight
He was no bigger than a two-penny fart
He was a deft exponent of the martial art
He gave me three warnings:
Trod on me toes, stuck his fingers in my eyes
And kicked me in the nose
A rabbit punch made me eyes explode
My head went dead, I fell in the road

I pleaded for mercy
I wriggled on the ground
He kicked me in the balls
And said something profound
Gave my face the millimetre tread
Stole me chop suey and left me for dead

Through rivers of blood and splintered bones
I crawled half a mile to the public telephone
Pulled the corpse out the call box, held back the bile
And with a broken index finger, I proceeded to dial

I couldn’t get an ambulance
The phone was screwed
The receiver fell in half
It had been kung fu’d

A black belt karate cop opened up the door
Demanding information about the stiff on the floor
He looked like an extra from Yang Shang Po
He said “What’s all this then
Ah so, ah so, ah so.”
He wore a bamboo mask
He was gen’ned on zen
He finished his devotions and he beat me up again

Thanks to that embryonic Bruce Lee
I’m a shadow of the person that I used to be
I can’t go back to Salford
The cops have got me marked
Enter the Dragon
Exit Johnny Clarke

http://johncooperclarke.com/poems/kung-fu-international

jojo2316

18-01-19, 17:34

By Ee Cummings

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty, how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

Hollow

20-05-19, 20:24

Mother Shipton's Prophecies

https://www.crystalinks.com/mothershipton.jpg

And now a word, in uncouth rhyme
Of what shall be in future time

Then upside down the world shall be
And gold found at the root of tree
All England's sons that plough the land
Shall oft be seen with Book in hand
The poor shall now great wisdom know
Great houses stand in farflung vale
All covered o'er with snow and hail

A carriage without horse will go
Disaster fill the world with woe.
In London, Primrose Hill shall be
In centre hold a Bishop's See

Around the world men's thoughts will fly
Quick as the twinkling of an eye.
And water shall great wonders do
How strange. And yet it shall come true.

Through towering hills proud men shall ride
No horse or ass move by his side.
Beneath the water, men shall walk
Shall ride, shall sleep, shall even talk.
And in the air men shall be seen
In white and black and even green

A great man then, shall come and go
For prophecy declares it so.

In water, iron, then shall float
As easy as a wooden boat
Gold shall be seen in stream and stone
In land that is yet unknown.

And England shall admit a Jew
You think this strange, but it is true
The Jew that once was held in scorn
Shall of a Christian then be born.

A house of glass shall come to pass
In England. But Alas, alas
A war will follow with the work
Where dwells the Pagan and the Turk

These states will lock in fiercest strife
And seek to take each others life.
When North shall thus divide the south
And Eagle build in Lions mouth
Then tax and blood and cruel war
Shall come to every humble door.

Three times shall lovely sunny France
Be led to play a bloody dance
Before the people shall be free
Three tyrant rulers shall she see.

Three rulers in succession be
Each springs from different dynasty.
Then when the fiercest strife is done
England and France shall be as one.

The British olive shall next then twine
In marriage with a german vine.
Men walk beneath and over streams
Fulfilled shall be their wondrous dreams.

For in those wondrous far off days
The women shall adopt a craze
To dress like men, and trousers wear
And to cut off their locks of hair
They'll ride astride with brazen brow
As witches do on broomstick now.

And roaring monsters with man atop
Does seem to eat the verdant crop
And men shall fly as birds do now
And give away the horse and plough.

There'll be a sign for all to see
Be sure that it will certain be.
Then love shall die and marriage cease
And nations wane as babes decrease

And wives shall fondle cats and dogs
And men live much the same as hogs.

In nineteen hundred and twenty six
Build houses light of straw and sticks.
For then shall mighty wars be planned
And fire and sword shall sweep the land.

When pictures seem alive with movements free
When boats like fishes swim beneath the sea,
When men like birds shall scour the sky
Then half the world, deep drenched in blood shall die.

For those who live the century through
In fear and trembling this shall do.
Flee to the mountains and the dens
To bog and forest and wild fens.

For storms will rage and oceans roar
When Gabriel stands on sea and shore
And as he blows his wondrous horn
Old worlds die and new be born.

A fiery dragon will cross the sky
Six times before this earth shall die
Mankind will tremble and frightened be
for the sixth heralds in this prophecy.

For seven days and seven nights
Man will watch this awesome sight.
The tides will rise beyond their ken
To bite away the shores and then
The mountains will begin to roar
And earthquakes split the plain to shore.

And flooding waters, rushing in
Will flood the lands with such a din
That mankind cowers in muddy fen
And snarls about his fellow men.

He bares his teeth and fights and kills
And secrets food in secret hills
And ugly in his fear, he lies
To kill marauders, thieves and spies.

Man flees in terror from the floods
And kills, and rapes and lies in blood
And spilling blood by mankinds' hands
Will stain and bitter many lands

And when the dragon's tail is gone,
Man forgets, and smiles, and carries on
To apply himself - too late, too late
For mankind has earned deserved fate.

His masked smile - his false grandeur,
Will serve the Gods their anger stir.
And they will send the Dragon back
To light the sky - his tail will crack
Upon the earth and rend the earth
And man shall flee, King, Lord, and serf.

But slowly they are routed out
To seek diminishing water spout
And men will die of thirst before
The oceans rise to mount the shore.

And lands will crack and rend anew
You think it strange. It will come true.

And in some far off distant land
Some men - oh such a tiny band
Will have to leave their solid mount
And span the earth, those few to count,
Who survives this (unreadable) and then
Begin the human race again.

But not on land already there
But on ocean beds, stark, dry and bare
Not every soul on Earth will die
As the Dragons tail goes sweeping by.

Not every land on earth will sink
But these will wallow in stench and stink
Of rotting bodies of beast and man
Of vegetation crisped on land.

But the land that rises from the sea
Will be dry and clean and soft and free
Of mankinds' dirt and therefore be
The source of man's new dynasty.

And those that live will ever fear
The dragons tail for many year
But time erases memory
You think it strange. But it will be.

And before the race is built anew
A silver serpent comes to view
And spew out men of like unknown
To mingle with the earth now grown
Cold from its heat and these men can
Enlighten the minds of future man.

To intermingle and show them how
To live and love and thus endow
The children with the second sight.
A natural thing so that they might
Grow graceful, humble and when they do
The Golden Age will start anew.

The dragon's tail is but a sign
For mankind's fall and man's decline.
And before this prophecy is done
I shall be burned at the stake, at one
My body singed and my soul set free
You think I utter blasphemy
You're wrong. These things have come to me
This prophecy will come to be.

Bill

24-09-19, 04:15

Ode To An Angel

Allow me to place my vulnerable heart in your hand,
Let it be safe, never hurt, hushed nor harmed,
As a rose with precious petals, always cherished, not crushed,
Caressed by your fingertips to speak of its life without love,

Let it thrive and be nurtured in your gentle tender care,
So it may know freedom to reveal all its pain laid bare,
Please protect and treasure it with all your power,
Do not allow this world to let your love grow sour,
As strong winds and heavy rains destroy a delicate flower,

If you could open your heart so it could learn from your love,
It would forever adore this angel sent to heal from above,
For it has never experienced what life should mean,
To be held as something special as if never before seen,

For it has always only known to be abused and misused,
From countless cutting words leaving scars that never heal,
It has only ever learned to hide away from this hurtful world,
To search the depths for the deepest pit or a dark unused well,

For to feel the tenderness of an angels caring touch feels unreal,
Foreign and alien knowing only a box with an eternal doomed seal,
To be imprisoned for all its days, never allowed fun or to be free,
Never even to feel the gaze of an angels eyes that will only see,
How neglected and ignored, this loving heart has been, and will forever be.

mezzaninedoor

24-09-19, 15:33

( this one, for once, isn't mine )

#HowDareYou said Greta
And Trump said I dare
I’m rich and important
And you’re not - so there!
I’m young and I matter
The young speaker said
We will deal with your ego
Long after you’re dead
We try to alert you
And ask you to see
This is all that we have
There is no planet B

From Amelia16510

( i'll post one of mine in due course )

Quinn1

25-09-19, 02:26

From the second that you’re in this world
They tell you what is “Fair “
The questions you’re allowed too ask
and the ones you wouldn’t dare
Placed on the path they’v paved for you life pushes you along
without the chance to stop and think
if it’s right where you belong
But beyond your pathways edges,is where living really starts
A land of risks and danger,and a land of broken hearts
They will tell you,you should fear this land
that there’s no good there at all
as they live their lives as they’ve been taught
Behind expectations wall.
But the best people you will ever meet
have wandered off their track
found themselves along the way
and have no need to wander back
So forget about life’s road map
follow your heart at any cost
for you will never truly find yourself
If you’re too scared to get lost.

Pkstracy

13-10-19, 00:49

she sits and watches the world go by
they stop and ask her, how she is
she smiles and replies, I am fine
She smiles and says please sit if only
for a bit, that is if you have the time
No,?, Really I am fine, they walk away
and she just stays, in a daze, her days
so gray. She sits and watches the world go by,
they stop and ask her how she is.
She smiles and says I'm fine.
They don't know that she hides
behind her smile, while inside her world is gray.
She sits day by day and watches the world go by
wishing she were fine.
~Tracy Kelly, 2018~ (yes I wrote this)

Quinn1

13-10-19, 10:03

Hi Tracy:D
You wrote a lovely poem x
I haven’t forgot the feathers :winks:

Pkstracy

13-10-19, 18:37

Thanks Quinn, my first one ever. Sweet about the feathers.

KK77

19-01-21, 16:44

THE THUNDER, PERFECT MIND

Translated by George W. MacRae

I was sent forth from the power,
and I have come to those who reflect upon me,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,
and you hearers, hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not banish me from your sight.
And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
For I am the first and the last.
I am the honored one and the scorned one.
I am the whore and the holy one.
I am the wife and the virgin.
I am <the mother> and the daughter.
I am the members of my mother.
I am the barren one
and many are her sons.
I am she whose wedding is great,
and I have not taken a husband.
I am the midwife and she who does not bear.
I am the solace of my labor pains.
I am the bride and the bridegroom,
and it is my husband who begot me.
I am the mother of my father
and the sister of my husband
and he is my offspring.
I am the slave of him who prepared me.
I am the ruler of my offspring.
But he is the one who begot me before the time on a birthday.
And he is my offspring in (due) time,
and my power is from him.
I am the staff of his power in his youth,
and he is the rod of my old age.
And whatever he wills happens to me.
I am the silence that is incomprehensible
and the idea whose remembrance is frequent.
I am the voice whose sound is manifold
and the word whose appearance is multiple.
I am the utterance of my name.

Why, you who hate me, do you love me,
and hate those who love me?
You who deny me, confess me,
and you who confess me, deny me.
You who tell the truth about me, lie about me,
and you who have lied about me, tell the truth about me.
You who know me, be ignorant of me,
and those who have not known me, let them know me.
For I am knowledge and ignorance.
I am shame and boldness.
I am shameless; I am ashamed.
I am strength and I am fear.
I am war and peace.
Give heed to me.
I am the one who is disgraced and the great one.
Give heed to my poverty and my wealth.
Do not be arrogant to me when I am cast out upon the earth,
and you will find me in those that are to come.
And do not look upon me on the dung-heap
nor go and leave me cast out,
and you will find me in the kingdoms.
And do not look upon me when I am cast out among those who
are disgraced and in the least places,
nor laugh at me.
And do not cast me out among those who are slain in violence.
But I, I am compassionate and I am cruel.
Be on your guard!
Do not hate my obedience
and do not love my self-control.
In my weakness, do not forsake me,
and do not be afraid of my power.
For why do you despise my fear
and curse my pride?
But I am she who exists in all fears
and strength in trembling.
I am she who is weak,
and I am well in a pleasant place.
I am senseless and I am wise.
Why have you hated me in your counsels?
For I shall be silent among those who are silent,
and I shall appear and speak,
Why then have you hated me, you Greeks?
Because I am a barbarian among the barbarians?
For I am the wisdom of the Greeks
and the knowledge of the barbarians.
I am the judgement of the Greeks and of the barbarians.
I am the one whose image is great in Egypt
and the one who has no image among the barbarians.
I am the one who has been hated everywhere
and who has been loved everywhere.
I am the one whom they call Life,
and you have called Death.
I am the one whom they call Law,
and you have called Lawlessness.
I am the one whom you have pursued,
and I am the one whom you have seized.
I am the one whom you have scattered,
and you have gathered me together.
I am the one before whom you have been ashamed,
and you have been shameless to me.
I am she who does not keep festival,
and I am she whose festivals are many.
I, I am godless,
and I am the one whose God is great.
I am the one whom you have reflected upon,
and you have scorned me.
I am unlearned,
and they learn from me.
I am the one that you have despised,
and you reflect upon me.
I am the one whom you have hidden from,
and you appear to me.
But whenever you hide yourselves,
I myself will appear.
For whenever you appear,
I myself will hide from you.
Those who have [...] to it [...] senselessly [...].
Take me [... understanding] from grief.
and take me to yourselves from understanding and grief.
And take me to yourselves from places that are ugly and in ruin,
and rob from those which are good even though in ugliness.
Out of shame, take me to yourselves shamelessly;
and out of shamelessness and shame,
upbraid my members in yourselves.
And come forward to me, you who know me
and you who know my members,
and establish the great ones among the small first creatures.
Come forward to childhood,
and do not despise it because it is small and it is little.
And do not turn away greatnesses in some parts from the smallnesses,
for the smallnesses are known from the greatnesses.
Why do you curse me and honor me?
You have wounded and you have had mercy.
Do not separate me from the first ones whom you have known.
And do not cast anyone out nor turn anyone away
[...] turn you away and [... know] him not.
[...].
What is mine [...].
I know the first ones and those after them know me.
But I am the mind of [...] and the rest of [...].
I am the knowledge of my inquiry,
and the finding of those who seek after me,
and the command of those who ask of me,
and the power of the powers in my knowledge
of the angels, who have been sent at my word,
and of gods in their seasons by my counsel,
and of spirits of every man who exists with me,
and of women who dwell within me.
I am the one who is honored, and who is praised,
and who is despised scornfully.
I am peace,
and war has come because of me.
And I am an alien and a citizen.
I am the substance and the one who has no substance.
Those who are without association with me are ignorant of me,
and those who are in my substance are the ones who know me.
Those who are close to me have been ignorant of me,
and those who are far away from me are the ones who have known me.
On the day when I am close to you, you are far away from me,
and on the day when I am far away from you, I am close to you.
[I am ...] within.
[I am ...] of the natures.
I am [...] of the creation of the spirits.
[...] request of the souls.
I am control and the uncontrollable.
I am the union and the dissolution.
I am the abiding and I am the dissolution.
I am the one below,
and they come up to me.
I am the judgment and the acquittal.
I, I am sinless,
and the root of sin derives from me.
I am lust in (outward) appearance,
and interior self-control exists within me.
I am the hearing which is attainable to everyone
and the speech which cannot be grasped.
I am a mute who does not speak,
and great is my multitude of words.
Hear me in gentleness, and learn of me in roughness.
I am she who cries out,
and I am cast forth upon the face of the earth.
I prepare the bread and my mind within.
I am the knowledge of my name.
I am the one who cries out,
and I listen.
I appear and [...] walk in [...] seal of my [...].
I am [...] the defense [...].
I am the one who is called Truth
and iniquity [...].
You honor me [...] and you whisper against me.
You who are vanquished, judge them (who vanquish you)
before they give judgment against you,
because the judge and partiality exist in you.
If you are condemned by this one, who will acquit you?
Or, if you are acquitted by him, who will be able to detain you?
For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashions you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.
Hear me, you hearers
and learn of my words, you who know me.
I am the hearing that is attainable to everything;
I am the speech that cannot be grasped.
I am the name of the sound
and the sound of the name.
I am the sign of the letter
and the designation of the division.
And I [...].
(3 lines missing)
[...] light [...].
[...] hearers [...] to you
[...] the great power.
And [...] will not move the name.
[...] to the one who created me.
And I will speak his name.
Look then at his words
and all the writings which have been completed.
Give heed then, you hearers
and you also, the angels and those who have been sent,
and you spirits who have arisen from the dead.
For I am the one who alone exists,
and I have no one who will judge me.
For many are the pleasant forms which exist in numerous sins,
and incontinencies,
and disgraceful passions,
and fleeting pleasures,
which (men) embrace until they become sober
and go up to their resting place.
And they will find me there,
and they will live,
and they will not die again.