Poems
As for the next cavalcade of bullshit?!
Sweet baby Jesus wept in a manger!
I'm DH Lawrence?!
I'm "whining about the philistines cluttering up the thread"?
Only one comment about one INSECURE philistine, blokey bloke. YOU, BLOWIE! And that was after this:
#IGuessSelfPennedLatentHomosexualZ-GradeDoggerelIsAKindOfPoetry?!
#Blowin'sGotIssues
And you STILL haven't got a handle on what plagiarism is, have you? If I posted something and tried to pass it off as something I actually wrote, THAT IS PLAGIARISM.
Fuck, you should know this, the amount of times you've been pulled up before, numbnuts ("I forgot to cite" don't wash, dippy).
And then the piece of high shitfuckery, some fanciful, fever dream bullshit about the third world and prostitutes and "sweaty white man desires"?!?!
What the actual fuck??
Did I mention "psychological projection" and "unwitting self-analysis" in another thread?
Blowie's a gold mine. Maybe he'll post a photo of him writing another toilet wall masterpiece, in situ. Or bogging a top turn on a 3 footer. Fuck John John & Dane.
Same same.
Anyway, here's a poem by a poet. Michael Dransfield. An Aussie. Aptly titled.
Self-analysis by Michael Dransfield
you tire of it, this
cleverness
there are too many poems
two walls of shelves a desk
a safe all crammed with poems.
your letters turn into poems
your poems into drivel
soon there will be
no-one to write to
then you will claim you are misunderstood.
Blowin's poems are obsessed with gay sex. He'll say it's not gay tho, coz Indo Dreaming beats him up afterwards.
I'm a 2 rapidly heading towards 5.
And Sheep Shagger is getting excited ;)
Number 3 is definitely my retirement goal but as far as today goes I’d say about a 4.5 :-)
Some fantastic poems contributed so far. Cheers!
Dinosaurs:
Two old men,
last of their kind,
screaming at a world,
they no longer understand.
To wake
and go
would be so simple.
Morning ought not
to be complex.
The sun is a seed
cast at dawn into the long
furrow of history.
Yet
how the
first light
makes gold her hair
upon my arm.
How then
shall I leave,
and where away to go. Day
is so deep already with involvement.
That one's 'Pas de deux for Lovers', by Michael Dransfield, one of my favourites. He did a book called 'Streets of the Long Voyage' - good luck to finding a copy
Really like the use of 'where away' in that one, almost like 'wirraway'. I throw that one around in text here occasionally, no one has picked it so far.
velocityjohnno... that was beautiful poem. Any man, whose lived, can resonate with those words. More please!
Strongly recommend having a look at the following. I have found it hard to find published books of their poetry, so have approximately memorised my favs. As a Lit/History undergrad, Dransfield & Stow (both Australian) probably spoke more to me than any other poets.
https://rochfordstreetreview.com/2014/01/28/the-ultimate-commitment-the-...
OK - ever felt a bit aloof/alone amongst society?
In the cold weather
the cold city the cold
heart of something as pitiless as apathy
to be a poet in Australia
is the ultimate commitment.
When y’ve been thrown out of the last car
for speaking truthfully or mumbling poems
and the emptiness is not these stranded
endless plains but knowing that you are completely
alone in a desert full of strangers
and when the waves cast you up who sought
to dive so deep and come up with
more than water in yr hands
and the water itself is sand is air is something
unholdable
you realize that what you taste now in the mornings
is not so much blood as the failure of language
and no good comes of singing or of silence
the trees wont hold you you reject rejection
and the ultimate commitment
is survival
That one is called "Like this for years" Second last verse is magic, yes the waves have cast me back, yes, I was maybe looking for something more...
Also love his use of 'y've / yr' - 2 generations ahead of the abbreviating power of texting
https://jamestierney.wordpress.com/2012/09/25/the-lands-meaning-by-rando...
"...And certain of our young men,
who turned in despair from the bar, upsetting a glass,
and swore: “No more” (for the tin rooms stank of flyspray)
are sending word that the mastery of silence
alone is empire. What is God, they say,
but a man unwounded in his loneliness?"
That's an excerpt that has always stayed with me; (Stow's grandfather was a buddhist) and the genius of his work is the marriage of the primarily Western Australian landscape of the midwest (and further north) with concepts of self - grounding and finding self/growth in the land.
Wow, look at the toxicity taken over in this thread,
By the one and only, none other than the fucken' blow dread
A beautiful place, full of GOODVIBES it was for a short while,
With what we love about the world, and nature so wild,
But as sure as a shadow, here came our death,
Kill this shit about you!!.....i'm here now...RESPECT!! (SAID BLOWIN)
Oh shitty oh poo poo, not this kook again,
and who's that clinging to his handbag,
Info, couldn't get any worse i guess,
Because if there was a hell, as there is i'm sure
It would be the real life versions of these clowns
Greeting me at the door
Ummm.,. I don't really know what to say but that was actually, really really well written in my opinion.
I know this may be a big surprise- but there are other things in this world besides being a surfer, ok?
Thanks Zen. Cheers.
Yes Ballet is always an option. I think it would be harder than surfing. Just ask Tom Carroll!
Or Occy.
When will that day dawn, Lord, for which he waits
Who trusts in Thee? Lo, this prolonged delay
Destroys all hope and robs the soul of life.
Why streams the light from those celestial gates,
If death prevent the day of grace, and stay
Our souls for ever in the toils of strife?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Ough! by W.T. Goodge (1906)
The baker-man was kneading dough
And whistling softly, sweet and lough.
Yet ever and anon he’d cough
As though his head were coming ough!
“My world!” said he, “but this is rough:
This flour is simply awful stough!”
He punched and thumped it through and through,
As all good bakers always dough!
“I’d sooner drive,” said he, “a plough
Than be a baker, anyhough!”
Thus spake the baker kneading dough;
But don’t let on I told you sough!
Island Bay going the classics - Thermal, not so much.
Following IB's lead, another big quill, similar topic too.
Got this one etched down one of my son's wall - the subject being his spirit animal - and I've also 'borrowed' a line or two for a WOTD caption over the years:
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
At about 4:30 this morning I was awoken by a surprising baritone shouting. It was a familiar sound but not one I’d heard in a long time. Too long.
It was a bellow of anger, frustration and despair. My old mate upstairs who can barely raise a whisper these days and who routinely goes entire days without talking was yelling into the night with an energy not seen in years.
Turns out he’d been unable to move due to his condition and had been pushing his buzzer for assistance for quite some time. The buzzer must’ve died during the night. His typical silent endurance has been a testament to his personal strength but that gave way this morning. He somehow found his voice and started to yell. By the time I got there he was apoplectic. A man who never, ever whines or complains had broken down and was cursing his predicament. He demanded I kill him. Right there in front of his wife and daughter. I couldn’t even imagine this occurring until I saw it with my own eyes. He still didn’t cry but there was no attempt to hide his fury at his helplessness. We got him up and moved him to his chair then we left him alone.
Funny thing is that his outburst made everyone a bit hopeful . No one said as much and it’s not like people were kicking up their heels but just to have him back for a moment, energised and ALIVE even if it was anger and complaints seemed like a gift. He’d been in his near-trance for so long that it was like he’d already left us in some way.
What they say is true- anger IS an energy. I went to see him just now and he actually sung a few words of an old Roy Orbison song( he was a professional singer previously). Even he is cheerful now. It’s like the pit of despair released something that made him realise he’s still alive. It gave him strength.
The poem I posted earlier this morning was straight after dealing with his demands to be given assistance to exit this world. Now he feels the joy of vitality and it’s made the sun seem a lot brighter for everyone.
That deserves a new poem:
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,—act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
Moving away from the classics (I fcuken love the first stanza of The Second Coming, though), here's more earth flavours from a Kiwi:
She kissed me first
She'll deny it, but it's true
I was there
At least in the beginning
Blowy, why did you have to put the last bit in? I guess you're kinda conditioned to get a response so you've almost pre-empted a reaction but you didn't need to.
If you put something down from the heart and someone hangs shit on you for that, then let that reflect on them, not you.
Anyway...
This one's for anyone who is annoyed by yet more suburban development, and wonders whether it will ever stop. The poem was written in 1937, remains controversial, and the author's relatives are still apologising to the town concerned. Love the rhythm and the final line as you seem to breathe out the final syllable, and it's almost as if you are being cleansed as well.
Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.
Mess up the mess they call a town—
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.
And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:
And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.
But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.
It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead
And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.
In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.
Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.
That was 'Slough' by Sir John Betjeman, poet laureate.
Edit spelling lol
Beautifully written and expressed lyrical verse there, blowin.
You are a poet indeed.
Thank you.
I wish. Not my writing.
Oh.
Petit Testament
In the twenty-fifth year of my age
I find myself to be a dromedary
That has run short of water between
One oasis and the next mirage
And having despaired of ever
Making my obsessions intelligible
I am content at last to be
The sole clerk of my metamorphoses.
Begin here:
In the year 1943
I resigned to the living all collateral images
Reserving to myself a man’s
Inalienable right to be sad
At his own funeral.
(Here the peacock blinks the eyes
of his multipennate tail.)
In the same year
I said to my love (who is living)
Dear we shall never be that verb
Perched on the sole Arabian Tree
Not having learnt in our green age to forget
The sins that flow between the hands and feet
(Here the Tree weep gum tears
Which are also real: I tell you
These things are real)
So I forced a parting
Scrubbing my few dingy words to brightness.
Where I have lived
The bed-bug sleeps in the seam, the cockroach
Inhabits the crack and the careful spider
Spins his aphorisms in the comer.
I have heard them shout in the streets
The chiliasms of the Socialist Reich
And in the magazines I have read
The Popular Front-to-Back.
But where I have lived
Spain weeps in the gutters of Footscray
Guernica is the ticking of the clock
The nightmare has become real, not as belief
But in the scrub-typhus of Mubo.
It is something to be at last speaking
Though in this No-Man’s-language appropriate
Only to No-Man’s-Land.
Set this down too:
I have pursued rhyme, image, and metre,
Known all the clefts in which the foot may stick,
Stumbled often, stammered,
But in time the fading voice grows wise
And seizing the co-ordinates of all existence
Traces the inevitable graph
And in conclusion:
There is a moment when the pelvis
Explodes like a grenade. I
Who have lived in the shadow that each act
Casts on the next act now emerge
As loyal as the thistle that in session
Puffs its full seed upon the indicative air.
I have split the infinite. Beyond is anything.
- Ern Malley
I've known many restless summers
The sand dunes I imagine
A place without a postcard
Flower people were so beautiful
But straight and loud's the way
Good luck the beatnik spirit
Beautiful thread team… thanks all. Amazing how a few written words give you goose bumps, or a tear in your eye, in a nice way! Keep it up lads.
And here was me thinking (wrongly) that all you Aussies had logophobia.
This is a poem attributed to the fortune-teller Mother Shipton:
OVER A WILD and stormy sea
Shall a noble sail,
Who to find will not fail
A new and fair countree,
From whence he shall bring:
A Herb and a root
That all men shall suit,
And please both the plowman and the king;
And let them take no more than measure,
But shall have the even pleasure,
In the belly and the brain.
Carriages without horses shall go,
And accidents fill the world with woe.
Primrose Hill in London shall be
And in its centre a Bishop's See.
Around the world thoughts shall fly
In the twinkling of an eye.
Waters shall yet more wonders do;
How strange, yet shall be true,
The world upside down shall be,
And gold found at the root of a tree.
Through hills men shall ride
And no horse or ass by their side,
Under water men shall walk,
Shall ride, shall sleep, and talk;
In the air men shall be seen,
In white, in black, and in green.
A great man shall come and go —
Three times shall lovely France
Be led to play a bloody dance;
Before her people shall be free
Three tyrant rulers shall she see;
Three times the people's hope is gone,
Three rulers in succession see,
Each springing from different dynasty.
Then shall the worser fight be done,
England and France shall be as one.
The British Olive next shall twine
In marriage with the German vine.
Men shall walk over rivers and under rivers.
Iron in the water shall float,
As easy as a wooden boat;
Gold shall be found, and found (shown?)
In a land that's not now known.
Fire and water shall more wonders do.
England shall at last admit a Jew; (foe?)
The Jew that was held in scorn
Shall of a Christian be born and born.
A house of glass shall come to pass
In England, but alas!
War will follow with the work,
In the land of Pagan and Turk,
And State and State in fierce strife,
Will seek each other's life.
But when the North shall divide the South,
An eagle shall build in the lion's mouth.
Taxes for blood and for war,
Will come to every door.
All England's sons that plough the land,
Shall be seen, book in hand;
Learning shall so ebb and flow,
The poor shall most learning know.
Waters shall flow where corn shall grow,
Corn shall grow where waters doth flow.
Houses shall appear in the vales below,
And covered by hail and snow;
The world then to an end shall come
In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-one. "
[Martha Shipton was born near Knaresborough, July 1488, and baptized as Ursula Sonthiel: married an artisan named Toby Shipton, settled in York, England, and started prophesying, dying about 1561. Her prophecies were regarded as pure fiction, being put in shape from time to time by scribes for commercial purposes. The accepted version given above is said to have been the work of one Charles Hindley, and was published about 1862, and, as related, " caused great anxiety " to many persons who expected the end of the world in 1881.]
The Charge of the Light Brigade
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.
IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!
Alfred Lord Tennyson
My heart of silk
is filled with lights,
with lost bells,
with lilies and bees.
I will go very far,
farther than those hills,
farther than the seas,
close to the stars,
to beg Christ the Lord
to give back the soul I had
of old, when I was a child,
ripened with legends,
with a feathered cap
and a wooden sword.
Federico Garcia Lorca - Myself
Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move about the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.
T.S Eliot - lines from Burnt Norton (contained in the Four Quartets)
Supafreak wrote:
Oh we are all of them , every single one ......
Fantastic series of poems folks, wonderful.
another to add, velocityjohnno...
I went off with my hands in my torn coat pockets ;
My overcoat too was becoming ideal ;
I travelled beneath the sky, Muse! and I was your vassal ;
Oh dear me! what marvellous loves I dreamed of !
My only pair of breeches had a big whole in them.
– Stargazing Tom Thumb, I sowed rhymes along my way.
My tavern was at the Sign of the Great Bear.
– My stars in the sky rustled softly.
And I listened to them, sitting on the road-sides
On those pleasant September evenings while I felt drops
Of dew on my forehead like vigorous wine ;
And while, rhyming among the fantastical shadows,
I plucked like the strings of a lyre the elastics
Of my tattered boots, one foot close to my heart !
Arthur Rimbaud - My Bohemian Life (Fantasy)
I do like JCC.
HIRE CAR
Double park – don’t lock the door
Push the pedals through the floor
Give it loads and then some more
It’s a hire car baby
Grip the stick – grind the gears
Watch that distance disappear
Never yours in a thousand years
It’s a hire car baby
Hire-car, hire-car
Why would anybody buy a car?
Bang it, prang it, say ta ta
It’s a hire car baby
Bad behaviour on the street
Save yourself a couple of sheets
Collision rate keeps it sweet
It’s a hire car baby
Show this motor no respect
Bump it, dump it, call collect
What else do the firm expect
It’s a hire car baby
Drive the fucker anywhere
Just like you don’t care
Put it down to wear and tear
It’s a hire car baby
Pray the person who hired it last
Didn’t drive it quite so fast
This dakarum dodgem doesn’t last
It’s a hire car baby
Try not to kill yourself
Or injure anybody else
Don’t forget to fasten your belts
Rent it, dent it, bang it, prang it
Bump it, dump it, scorch it, torch it
Crash and burn it, don’t return it
Lost deposit, let ’em earn it
Who cares, it’s on the firm
It’s a hire car baby
John Cooper Clarke judging a poetry competition....Joe's takes the (urinal) cake (approx 1 min onwards...)
Nice one jwithay. Johnny Vegas' poem on Cats do Countdown was also jawdropping, albeit not as amusing.
Last orders.
Haiku on peace
Brilliant blackers! JCC's reaction says it all
mickseq, is that from a video game? was strange seeing a mindfulness meditation with what looked to be playstation overlays! It put me in the mood for some zen buddhism...
Hammering a dent out of a bucket
a woodpecker
answers from the woods
Gary Snyder - A Dent in a Bucket
jwithay wrote:Brilliant blackers! JCC's reaction says it all
mickseq, is that from a video game? was strange seeing a mindfulness meditation with what looked to be playstation overlays! It put me in the mood for some zen buddhism...
Hammering a dent out of a bucket
a woodpecker
answers from the woodsGary Snyder - A Dent in a Bucket
yeah its from Ghost of Tsushima, lots of opportunities to write different haiku, really great!
Inspired by blackers' recent photo. One from Alexander S Pushkin.
Tempest
You saw perched on a cliff a maid,
Her raiment white above the breakers,
When the mad sea reared up and played
Its whips of spray on coastal acres
And now and then the lightnings flush,
And purple gleams upon her hover,
And fluttering up in swirling rush,
The wind rides in her airy cover?
Fair is the sea in gales arrayed,
The heavens drained of blue and flashing,
But fairer on her cliff the maid
Than storms and skies and breakers crashing.
"One day you will ask me
which is more important?
My life or yours?
I will say mine and
you will walk away
Not knowing that
You are my life."
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
"I didn’t like having to explain to
them, so I just shut up, smoked a
cigarette, and looked at the sea."
Albert Camus, The Stranger
Hey Mick, just sitting here and there's a raging storm outside. Listening quietly to Erik Satie Gnossiennes No.1 (Lent) while I'm between things and it's kinda put me in a melancholy mood. That Gibran poem you posted above is lovely. Very thought provoking. Cheers.
I like Mary Oliver's writings.
'A Thousand Mornings', a little book of collected works, is a good place to start.
And this poem by John Donne:
No man is an island,
entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were.
as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
or of thine own were.
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind;
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.