Poems that you love

[abu nuwas]

You hard too hard on yourself. There is so much ultra famous stuff about, that no-one really can store it all. And sometimes, like you, we get something in our head, and have no cause to re-examine it -- we know it, right? Sometimes I don't believe the evidence of my own senses!

I don't know that this counts as a favorite, exactly, it is certainly a bit short on metaphor, but it was a wonderful use of poetry to make a political point, in this case, in response to a Bill in Parliament about disestablishing parts of the Church of England in Wales. It is by GK Chesterton:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Antichrist...om:_An_Ode

[Leanne]

He was beautifully sarcastic, old Gil

[billy]

I had never realised this...I've always listened to John betjeman reading it out...and sort of assumed it was his as it seams to be everywhere and I had never heard mention of A E Housman (until I just looked it up). Like I said I do not follow any particular poet as such I just like a wide range of individual poems. So flunk the blond...I'm well used to it..."got it wrong again" will be inscribed on my tomb.

for ages i thought that Plath's "the bell jar" was a poem" mainly because all i'd ever seen of it was excerpts. i was mortified when jack told me it was a book...i've hated him ever since.

---

i love some of spike mill's poems though i can't remember any thanks for that one leanne.

[Keith]

I love this by Mike Harding its called Akroyds Funeral and it never fails t' make me laugh

AKROYD’S FUNERAL

It was dark as a coal-hole picnic
On the day Grandad Akroyd dropped dead;
Work was scarce as rocking-horse droppings,
Not a church roof for miles had lead.

So cold that the flame on the candle,
Got frozen one Wednesday night,
And we had to warm it up in the oven
Before we could get it to light.

Some brass monkeys outside sung carols soprano,
You could ‘ear ‘em cursin’ and swearin’,
As they wandered ’round lost in the cold and the frost
They couldn’t find their bearings.

On Sunday our chicken for dinner
Was a pigeon from off next door’s loft.
And me Dad pumped it up with his bike pump, too hard
And our Sunday dinner buggered off.

‘What would you like to eat now, Dad?’
Said our Mam, picking her nose,
‘Hard boiled eggs,’ our Dad said,
‘You can’t get your fingers in those.’

We couldn’t afford to kill t’ chicken,
So we boiled some water up hot,
And with bunches of dried peas tied to its knees,
It Paddled about on the top.

Me Grandad had mortgaged his pension
‘Til 1994,
While me Gran in her vest, was outside doing her best,
With a red light above t’coal shed door.

‘I can’t stand’t no more,’ the old man cried,
A mad light shone in his glass eye,
‘We’ll have to defraud the insurance man
Hands up, I want a volunteer to die.’

Mam said she would have, but she were too busy,
Our Albert said his library book was due back,
Gran said she would but her and her mate,
Had got tickets for last Saturday’s match.

So we drew straws to settle the matter,
But there was never no doubt,
‘Cos me Dad cut me Grandad’s in haIf wi’t’ bread-knife,
Just as he was pulling it out.

I’m too old to die,’ he said, using the cat
As a club to belabour me Dad,
‘All right,’ me Dad says, ‘you don’t have to die…
Just lie down and pretend as you are.’

So me Grandad lay down on the hearth-rug,
And we called the doctor in.
Gran took out a bottle and glasses,
And got him smashed on her dandelion gin.

He said me Grandad had died of a very rare disease,
A bad case of tropical frostbite,
Then he staggered off out and we all heard a shout
From the street ‘cos he slipped in some dog shite.

Our Billy ran round for the Man from the Pru,
Gran filled him with dandelion gin,
He paid £4.10 in used chipshop yen
And said, ‘When are you burying him?’

‘Oh, We weren’t thinking of burying him,’ Grandma said,
‘Thinking of having stuffed meself,
Or embalming him in Plasticraft,
And keeping him on’t mantelshelf.’

‘Nay, yon is illegal,’ said Man from Pru.
‘Grandad will have to be buried,
In a box and shroud in constipated ground.’
At this Grandad looked reet worried.

The Man from the Pru’ said he’d come to the burying
And see as how things were done quite right,
Then he staggered off out and we all heard a shout
From the street ‘cos he slipped on that stuff that I told
you about before.

‘I’ve just done that, ‘said the doctor,
So the insuranceman rubbed his nose in it.

So the pretend corpse now had to be buried,
Me Dad got an old kipper crate,
When the holes got plugged and the wood it looked good
With plastic brass handles on – great.

‘We’ll only bury you just till he’s gone,
Then we’ll dig you up, honest,’ Dad said.
It took a bottle of gin before Grandad gave in
And lay int’ box to play dead.

Me Gran looked down at the box saying, ‘What a lovely corpse.’
Tears fell on her dripping and toast,
When the body at rest shoved his hand up her vest, saying
‘Now then, how’s that for a ghost?’

So we put the box on big Mabel’s coal cart
And off to t’cemetery we set,
We followed on bikes and all seemed quite right
Until another burying we met.

A policeman was stood on point duty,
‘Cos there was a fault on the traffic lights,
But he fell to the ground with his arms flaying round
‘Cos’ he slipped on the road on another load of that stuff I was
telling you about before.

‘We just done that,’ said the doctor and the insurance man,
So the policeman rubbed their noses in it.

As he spun on the ground the traffic flew round,
And the two buryings got in a jam,
Their driver took a poke at me Dad wi’ a wrench
And got a kick up the shoemaker’s off me Mam.

When we sorted it out we’d got the wrong box;
Grandma said, ‘Ee, we won’t see no more of him,’
When their driver come round our burying we found
Had gone to the crematorium.

By the time that we got there the service was done,
You could hear the organ play.
As the congregation wept hankies and sniffed,
And our kipper box was on its way.

The shutters were open, we all heard the flames,
And suddenly Grandad gave a yell,
And a coffin with legs and its arse end on fire
Ran out on t’conveyor belt!

O’er the pews and out through the window,
The burning kipper box ran,
And we all cheered the crate as it swam through the lake
Chased by me Dad and me Mam.

‘A blessed miracle,’ said me Gran,
But the Man from the Pru went quite white;
‘Ruined,’ he roared, he would have said more
But he slipped in the road on some more of that stuff I’ve been telling you about.

‘I’ve just done that, ‘said the policeman,
So the insurance man rubbed his nose in it.

[Leanne]

Reminds me a little bit of Finnegan's Wake, but with (just slightly) less alcohol.

[billy]

i love stuff like that.
harding and jasper carrot were good at at vocalising them.

[Leanne]

One of cidermaid's posts in another thread reminded me of the Catholic poet mystics, whose work I've always loved, especially St John of the Cross and Therese of Liseux (my confirmation saint, so I'm biased). A very good friend of mine, David Hirt, is a Capuchin friar and an amazing poet -- on a regular basis he makes me wish I was a religious person, at least for the space of a poem. I keep meaning to get him back here, he did join up at one point. Anyway, I digress. One of my favourite poems is by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who wrote mostly from his Abbey in Kentucky.

Aubade -- The City

Now that the clouds have come like cattle
To the cold waters of the city's river,
All the windows turn their scandalized expression
Toward the tide's tin dazzle,

And question, with their weak-eyed stare,
The riotous sun.

From several places at a time
Cries of defiance,
As delicate as frost, as sharp as glass,
Rise from the porcelain buildings
And break in the blue sky.

Then, falling swiftly from the air,
The fragments of this fragile indignation
Ring on the echoing streets
No louder than a shower of pins.

But suddenly the bridges' choiring cables
Jangle gently in the wind
And play like quiet piano-strings.

All down the faces of the buildings
Windows begin to close
Like figures in a long division.

Those whose eyes all night have simulated sleep,
Suddenly stare, from where they lie, like wolves,
Tied in the tangle of the bedding,

And listen for the waking blood
To flood the apprehensive silence of their flesh.
They fear the heart that now lies quenched may quicken,
And start to romp against the rib,
Soft and insistent as a secret bell.

They also fear the light will grow
Into the windows of their hiding places, like a tree
Of tropical flowers
And put them, one by one, to flight.

Then life will have to begin.
Pieces of paper, lying in the streets,
Will start up, in the twisting wind,
And fly like idiot birds before the faces of the crowds.
And in the roaring buildings
Elevator doors will have begun
To clash like sabres.

[Todd]

That's a gorgeous poem Leanne. Here's one way less important that I still love:

Introduction of the Shopping Cart
by: Gerald Costanzo


There was a man
who collected facts.

After work he rode twenty stories,
let himself in
to cartons filled with index cards
and his crucial lists.

Facts reveal useful lives.
He got things right.

The shopping cart invented
by Sylvan Goldman,
Oklahoma City, 1937.

When the man passed on
his relatives came.

P.T. Barnum had four daughters.

They searched through his cartons
for ten dollar bills.

The sky, which on cloudless
days appears to be azure,
has no true color.

He wasn’t eccentric.
When they found nothing,
they threw everything
out.

His final fact:
you live and you die.

The shopping cart. P.T. Barnum.

The sky

[Leanne]

A great poem about real value, Todd. I pity the people who see only money as being worth anything (but maybe that's because I don't have any money )

[Todd]

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

[shemthepenman]

Cascando by Samuel Beckett

1

why not merely the despaired of
occasion of
wordshed

is it not better abort than be barren

the hours after you are gone are so leaden
they will always start dragging too soon
the grapples clawing blindly the bed of want
bringing up the bones the old loves
sockets filled once with eyes like yours
all always is it better too soon than never
the black want splashing their faces
saying again nine days never floated the loved
nor nine months
nor nine lives

2

saying again
if you do not teach me I shall not learn
saying again there is a last
even of last times
last times of begging
last times of loving
of knowing not knowing pretending
a last even of last times of saying
if you do not love me I shall not be loved
if I do not love you I shall not love

the churn of stale words in the heart again
love love love thud of the old plunger
pestling the unalterable
whey of words

terrified again
of not loving
of loving and not you
of being loved and not by you
of knowing not knowing pretending
pretending

I and all the others that will love you
if they love you

3

unless they love you

[Todd]

That was really nice almost like a darker Tonight I Write by Neruda.

[Smiffy]

John Cooper Clarke found fame as a punk poet in the 80's in England and still writes and performs today, this is a tad different from some of the selections I have read on this thread and is maybe better heard when read by the poet, can be found on You Tube with some of his other stuff.


TWAT

Like a Night Club in the morning, you’re the bitter end.
Like a recently disinfected shit-house, you’re clean round the bend.
You give me the horrors
too bad to be true
All of my tomorrow’s
are lousy coz 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 favour, here... wear this polythene bag.

You’re like a dose of scabies,
I’ve got you under my skin.
You make life a fairy tale... 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.

Your 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 is some kind of bat
They can’t find a good word for you,
but I can...
TWAT.

JOHN COOPER CLARKE

[shemthepenman]

[and another one]

Epiphanies #8 by James Joyce

Dull clouds have covered the sky. Where three roads meet and before a swampy beach a big dog is recumbent. From time to time he lifts his muzzle in the air and utters a prolonged sorrowful howl. People stop to look at him and pass on; some remain, arrested, it may be, by that lamentation in which they seem to hear the utterance of their own sorrow that had once its voice but is now voiceless, a servant of laborious days. Rain begins to fall.

[shemthepenman]

This poem makes me cry every time I read it (as do a fistful of Dylan songs, every time [for example, A hard rain’s a-gonna fall, who killed davey moore, sad eyed lady of the lowlands, sara, ballad in plain D... the list goes on)

LAST THOUGHTS ON WOODY GUTHRIE - by bob dylan

When yer head gets twisted and yer mind grows numb
When you think you're too old, too young, too smart or too dumb
When yer laggin' behind an' losin' yer pace
In a slow-motion crawl of life's busy race
No matter what yer doing if you start givin' up
If the wine don't come to the top of yer cup

If the wind's got you sideways with one hand holdin' on
And the other starts slipping and the feeling is gone
And yer train engine fire needs a new spark to catch it
And the wood's easy findin' but yer lazy to fetch it
And yer sidewalk starts curlin' and the street gets too long
And you start walkin' backwards though you know it’s wrong
And lonesome comes up as down goes the day
And tomorrow's mornin' seems so far away

And you feel the reins from yer pony are slippin'
And yer rope is a-slidin' 'cause yer hands are a-drippin'
And yer sun-decked desert and evergreen valleys
Turn to broken down slums and trash-can alleys
And yer sky cries water and yer drain pipe's a-pourin'
And the lightnin's a-flashing and the thunder's a-crashin'
And the windows are rattlin' and breakin' and the roof tops a-shakin'
And yer whole world's a-slammin' and bangin'

And yer minutes of sun turn to hours of storm
And to yourself you sometimes say
"I never knew it was gonna be this way
Why didn't they tell me the day I was born?"

And you start gettin' chills and yer jumping from sweat
And you're lookin' for somethin' you ain't quite found yet
And yer knee-deep in the dark water with yer hands in the air
And the whole world's a-watchin' with a window peek stare
And yer good gal leaves and she's long gone a-flying
And yer heart feels sick like fish when they're fryin'

And yer jackhammer falls from yer hand to yer feet
And you need it badly but it lays on the street
And yer bell's bangin' loudly but you can't hear it's beat
And you think yer ears might a been hurt
Or yer eyes've turned filthy from the sight-blindin' dirt
And you figured you failed in yesterday’s rush
When you were faked out an' fooled white facing a four flush

And all the time you were holdin' three queens
And it's makin you mad, it's makin' you mean
Like in the middle of Life magazine
Bouncin' around a pinball machine

And there's something on yer mind you wanna be saying
That somebody someplace oughta be hearin'
But it's trapped on yer tongue and sealed in yer head
And it bothers you badly when your layin' in bed
And no matter how you try you just can't say it
And yer scared to yer soul you just might forget it
And yer eyes get swimmy from the tears in yer head
And yer pillows of feathers turn to blankets of lead

And the lion's mouth opens and yer staring at his teeth
And his jaws start closin with you underneath
And yer flat on your belly with yer hands tied behind
And you wish you'd never taken that last detour sign
And you say to yourself, "Just what am I doin'
On this road I'm walkin', on this trail I'm turnin'
On this curve I'm hanging
On this pathway I'm strolling, in the space I'm taking
In this air I'm inhaling?

Am I mixed up too much, am I mixed up too hard?
Why am I walking, where am I running?
What am I saying, what am I knowing?
On this guitar I'm playing, on this banjo I'm frailin'
On this mandolin I'm strummin', in the song I'm singin'
In the tune I'm hummin', in the words I'm thinkin'
In the words that I'm writing

In this ocean of hours I'm all the time drinkin'
Who am I helping, what am I breaking?
What am I giving, what am I taking?
But you try with your whole soul best
Never to think these thoughts and never to let
Them kind of thoughts gain ground
Or make yer heart pound
But then again you know why they're around
Just waiting for a chance to slip and drop down


"Cause sometimes you hear'em when the night times comes creeping
And you fear that they might catch you a-sleeping
And you jump from yer bed, from yer last chapter of dreamin'
And you can't remember for the best of yer thinking
If that was you in the dream that was screaming
And you know that it's something special you're needin'
And you know that there's no drug that'll do for the healin'
And no liquor in the land to stop yer brain from bleeding


You need something special, you need something special, all right
You need a fast flyin' train on a tornado track
To shoot you someplace and shoot you back
You need a cyclone wind on a stream engine howler
That's been banging and booming and blowing forever
That knows yer troubles a hundred times over


You need a Greyhound bus that don't bar no race
That won't laugh at yer looks, your voice or your face
And by any number of bets in the book
Will be rollin' long after the bubblegum craze
You need something to open up a new door
To show you something you seen before
But overlooked a hundred times or more
You need something to open your eyes

You need something to make it known
That it's you and no one else that owns
That spot that yer standing
That space that you're sitting
That the world ain't got you beat
That it ain't got you licked
It can't get you crazy no matter how many
Times you might get kicked

You need something special all right
You need something special to give you hope
But hope's just a word that maybe you said or maybe you heard
On some windy corner 'round a wide-angled curve
But that's what you need man, and you need it bad A
And yer trouble is you know it too good
Cause you look an' you start getting the chills
Cause you can't find it on a dollar bill

And it ain't on Macy's window sill
And it ain't on no rich kid's road map
And it ain't in no fat kid's fraternity house
And it ain't made in no Hollywood wheat germ
And it ain't on that dimlit stage
With that half-wit comedian on it
Ranting and raving and taking yer money
And you thinks it's funny

No you can't find it in no night club or no yacht club
And it ain't in the seats of a supper club
And sure as hell you're bound to tell that no matter how hard you rub
You just ain't a-gonna find it on yer ticket stub
No, and it ain't in the rumors people're tellin' you
And it ain't in the pimple-lotion people are sellin' you
And it ain't in no cardboard-box house
Or down any movie star's blouse

And you can't find it on the golf course
And Uncle Remus can't tell you and neither can Santa Claus
And it ain't in the cream puff hair-do or cotton candy clothes
And it ain't in the dime store dummies or bubblegum goons
And it ain't in the marshmallow noises of the chocolate cake voices
That come knockin' and tappin' in Christmas wrappin'

Sayin' "Ain't I pretty and ain't I cute?
Look at my skin
Look at my skin shine, look at my skin glow
Look at my skin laugh, look at my skin cry"
When you can't even sense if they got any insides
These people so pretty in their ribbons and bows
No you'll not now or no other day
Find it on the doorsteps made out-a paper mache?
And inside it the people made of molasses
That every other day buy a new pair of sunglasses

And it ain't in the fifty-star generals and flipped-out phonies
Who'd turn yuh in for a tenth of a penny
Who breathe and burp and bend and crack
And before you can count from one to ten
Do it all over again but this time behind yer back, my friend
The ones that wheel and deal and whirl and twirl
And play games with each other in their sand-box world

And you can't find it either in the no-talent fools
That run around gallant and make all rules for the ones that got talent
And it ain't in the ones that ain't got any talent but think they do
And think they're foolin' you
The ones who jump on the wagon
Just for a while 'cause they know it's in style
To get their kicks, get out of it quick
And make all kinds of money and chicks

And you yell to yourself and you throw down yer hat
Sayin', "Christ do I gotta be like that!
Ain't there no one here that knows where I'm at?
Ain't there no one here that knows how I feel?
Good God Almighty that stuff ain't real!

No but that ain't yer game, it ain't even yer race
You can't hear yer name, you can't see yer face
You gotta look some other place
And where do you look for this hope that yer seekin'?
Where do you look for this lamp that's a-burnin'?
Where do you look for this oil well gushin'?
Where do you look for this candle that's glowin'?
Where do you look for this hope that you know is there
And out there somewhere
And your feet can only walk down two kinds of roads?

Your eyes can only look through two kinds of windows
Your nose can only smell two kinds of hallways
You can touch and twist and turn two kinds of doorknobs
You can either go to the church of your choice
Or you can go to Brooklyn State Hospital
You'll find God in the church of your choice
You'll find Woody Guthrie in Brooklyn State Hospital

And though it's only my opinion
I may be right or wrong
You'll find them both
In the Grand Canyon at sundown

[softlyfalling]

Have you ever read the poetry/lyrics of Leonard Cohen? There are so many heartbreaks and sorrow in the words, but this song always makes me so sad:

"Heart With No Companion"

I greet you from the other side
Of sorrow and despair
With a love so vast and shattered
It will reach you everywhere
And I sing this for the captain
Whose ship has not been built
For the mother in confusion
Her cradle still unfilled

For the heart with no companion
For the soul without a king
For the prima ballerina
Who cannot dance to anything

Through the days of shame that are coming
Through the nights of wild distress
Tho' your promise count for nothing
You must keep it nonetheless

You must keep it for the captain
Whose ship has not been built
For the mother in confusion
Her cradle still unfilled

For the heart with no companion ...

I greet you from the other side ...

[softlyfalling]

oh my I have certainly read a lot of leonard cohen and listened to a great deal more... he really is great. However, I don't know why, but Dylan just is like beyond great for me; I don't find dylan's songs sad at all (there are some), but so positive and affirmative... I don't know, he just gets me in that place where sorrow, humour and a punch life affirmation all meet.
But cohen is a fucking master too... and Tom Waits (eg. 'I want you'

I had so many Dylan vinyls...all played to death on my crappy little turntable...but I have never been able to choose ONE artist, or even one genre because I define and enhance my moods with music. Hey, there are times when only "Fucking Perfect" by Pink will do, or "Closer" by NIN...and at other times, the soundtrack for the Japanese film KIKUJIRO, composed by Joe Hisaishi can penetrate my head.....no, wait...no lyrics there, hence any inferred poetry is completely personal and individually invented by the listener.

[ambrosial revelation]

Although I have many different poems that I love,
I always come back to this one by Sylvia Plath.

Black Rook in Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain-
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); sceptical
Yet politic, ignorant

Of whatever angel any choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur.
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance
Miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,

For that rare, random descent.

[Leanne]

Love Dorothy Parker! She knew that poetry was all a joke, and reminded us that jokes are not only bloody funny but also that they work best with irony.

[Brownlie]

Nettles



My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my billhook, honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.


Vernon Scannell