it's work like this

[Bronte]

that makes me want to write , what is yours?


http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/243670


Love Poem for Ted Neeley In Jesus Christ Superstar
By Carrie Shipers Carrie Shipers
Lincoln, Neb., 2009

That man’s too old to play Christ, someone said
when you appeared onstage—thirty years
in those white robes, spotlights tracking
your graceful sleeves, the attentive angle
of your head as you worked a crowd. I agreed
that you looked tired, but when Mary Magdalene
anointed you, when you cast merchants
and money changers from the temple, I forgot
your thinning hair and wrinkled brow, forgot
how your story ended: your broken voice
crying on the cross, your body arched as you
ascended. I’d lost track of how many songs
were in the second act, thought there might
be more—the empty tomb, your appearance
on the road, to Peter in Jerusalem—but the cast
came out for applause: soldiers, Apostles,
and women; Annas, Caiaphas, Pilate; Mary
in her red dress; Peter, that sturdy fisherman;
Judas, who has all the best songs; and finally
you, head bowed at our ovation. I didn’t come
to worship but you’ve left me no choice—
I don’t care how old you are, how many times
you’ve done this act before—you still rock
those power ballads, still heal with the same
sweet force before you rise. We’ll always want
too much from you. Tonight, I’ll believe until
the curtain closes, your tour bus rolls away.

[Leanne]

That's pretty special, all right. I can't narrow anything down for me though... it's probably easier to define in the negative... it's Hallmark and anything Oprah likes that makes me want to do better (ok, that's not setting the bar very high, I know )

[billy]

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden, 1899
A response to the American take over of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

---

i now live in the Philippines and while it doesn't inspire me to write, it inspires me to think...which is often the precursor to writing

i sometimes get the urge to write after reading Carroll's jabberwok

[Bronte]

That's pretty special, all right. I can't narrow anything down for me though... it's probably easier to define in the negative... it's Hallmark and anything Oprah likes that makes me want to do better (ok, that's not setting the bar very high, I know )

well! that depends on the gin count

---

Rudyard Kipling, The White Man's Burden, 1899
A response to the American take over of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.

i now live in the Philippines and while it doesn't inspire me to write, it inspires me to think...which is often the precursor to writing

i sometimes get the urge to write after reading Carroll's jabberwok

yes good poem ,

but I can understand how a lot would misread the meaning here

Send forth the best ye breed—

In reality is not Ye for you/your but for the word “The” . The symbol Y was used as shorthand for TH way back then.. we have simply forgotten, and it gets used in the wrong context now
so it reads thus and Dick Kip erred but we can look past it, eh

Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best the breed
go bind your sons to exile

[rayheinrich]

Mussolini loved Kipling! But white supremacy doesn't make me want to
write poetry so much as take up arms against invading armies. (The
U.S. in this case.) As a merchant-marine engineer my 'uncle' George
loved Kipling's "McAndrew's Hymn". As a technical person myself,
i do too.
------------------
i hadn't written anything for years when, in a tiny little book store
in Falmouth Massachusetts, i stepped on this book that had fallen
on the floor. i picked it up, read this poem, and have been happily
writing ever since. (It was really the whole book that did it:
"The Water Inside the Water". Best poem book ever.)


Once, Driving West of Billings, Montana
By Susan Mitchell

I ran into the afterlife.
No fluffy white clouds. Not even stars. Only sky
dark as the inside of a movie theater
at three in the afternoon and getting bigger all the time,
expanding at terrific speed
over the car which was disappearing,
flattening out empty
as the fields on either side.

It was impossible to think
under that rain louder than engines.
I turned off the radio to listen, let my head
fill up until every bone
was vibrating—sky.

Twice, trees of lightning
broke out of the asphalt. I could smell
the highway burning. Long after, saw blue smoke twirling
behind the eyeballs, lariats
doing fancy rope tricks, jerking silver
dollars out of the air, along with billiard cues, ninepins.

I was starting to feel I could drive forever
when suddenly one of those trees was right in front of me.
Of course, I hit it—
branches shooting stars down the windshield,
poor car shaking like a dazed cow.
I thought this time for sure I was dead
so whatever was on the other side had to be eternity.

Saw sky enormous as nowhere. Kept on driving.

[Erthona]

Actually, if you saw Ted when he first started and now, that poem doesn't seem so Hallmarkish.

That would be cool to run into a lightening bolt!

wouldn't that be "one leg stools"?

[Bronte]

Actually, if you saw Ted when he first started and now, that poem doesn't seem so Hallmarkish.

That would be cool to run into a lightening bolt!

wouldn't that be "one leg stools"?

nearest I got to being hit by one
was the width of the road. BAM.
never saw it coming, WOH!
was all I said. I think
I have had near calls
on every form of death. It’s as if
I'm reliving every death I have gone though
and wondering how in hell it ends this time.
all I know it will be painful
it always is letting go.

And this is the kind of poem where I am at odds
with reading similes. They are part of the narrators
story voice It is expected. Also expected but never used
is the "hums" and ahh's that so many people use when
needing thinking time to express a point of view. Would be
interesting to see it done well in a poem; not by me but!
I never stop to think when I open my mouth..
some might have noticed