Poem Corner

[NickInABox]

I thought it was time for some high-brow stuff in here, so here it is, the poem corner.

I'll start.

Ha Ha

Silence broken by the sound of
Someone gently laughing
In a cold room.

Strumming on the cement walls
I feel a sudden chill run
Down my spine.

Still I'm laughing ha
Ha ha ha
See me laughing ha
Ha ha ha

See you walking down a street now
Everything is fine now
The air is so warm

Then you get that empty feeling
Something that was coming
For a long time

Now I'm laughing ha
Ha ha ha
Hear me laughing ha
Ha ha ha

Gently from my quiet room I
Open up the door and
Feel a soft breeze

See you standing by my window
Throwing little stones to
Jar me from sleep

I start laughing ha
Ha ha ha
I am laughing ha
Ha ha ha
There's nothing more to say.

 

[cyph]

Pretty interesting... sounds like the description of an awkward moment.

Anyways. I prefer to perform poetry.

Spoken word FTW!

 

[Messianni]

Alrighty. I'll post a poem that struck my fancy a few days ago. It isn't mine, but by Charles Bukowski:

To The Whore Who Took My Poems

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

 

[Miss Chicken]

I love the work of the late Polish poet, Zbigniew Herbert

Here is one of his works

THE HEN

The hen is the best example of what living constantly with humans
leads to.
She has completely lost the lightness and grace of a bird.
Her tail sticks up over her protruding rump like a too large hat in bad taste.
Her rare moments of ecstasy,
when she stands on one leg
and glues up her round eyes with filmy eyelids,
are stunningly disgusting.
And in addition, that parody of song,
throat-slashed supplications over a thing unutterably comic:
a round, white, maculated egg.

The hen brings to mind certain poets.

 

[RJDiogenes]

Nice work, Nick. Interesting imagery and thematic juxtaposition; also, it reads like it could be set to music.

Here's one of mine that's handy:

Next Yesterday
© 2009 Rick Hutchins

East of the sun, west of the moon
They're everywhere -- might as well be nowhere
Things won't be changing anytime soon
If I had a place, then I might as well go there
They cry in the night -- I see through their anger
It's whistling, lost in a graveyard
I feel their pain, but I can't take the rancor
There are some things even I have to safeguard
It helps to remember
It helps to relive it
Since it worked out for the best
Then I might as well
Might as well forgive it
It's just whistling, lost in a graveyard

After tomorrow, the next yesterday
Will be written on the tips of my fingers
Still they cry in the night, though they have less to say
But it's in the silence that yesterday lingers
I'll go on ahead -- I'll go on alone
I'd rather feel a little less crowded
There's a winding path through parts unknown
Familiar territory -- no doubt about it
It helps me to remember
It helps me to relive it
Since it worked out for the best
Then I might as well
Might as well forgive it
There are some things even I have to safeguard

 

[Jadzia]

An Ode To Cleethorpes

I saw the sea.
The sea saw me.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Oh squiggly line in my eye fluid,
I see you there lurking on the periphery of my vision,
But when I look at you,
You scurry away.
Are you shy squiggly line?
Why only when I ignore you do you return to the centre of my eye?
Oh squiggly line it's alright,
You are forgiven.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

An Ode To Cleethorpes

I saw the sea.
The sea saw me.

Very Nietzschean.

In my first year of University I wrote two poems while studying for end of year exams. If I can dig them out someday I'll reproduce them.

One of them was about a spider in my residence dorm.

 

[Goliath]

Have to go with Byron.

"Darkness"

I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings--the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour
They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd,
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again;--a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought--and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails--men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devoured,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress--he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering scraped with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died--
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful--was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless--
A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge--
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon their mistress had expir'd before;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them--She was the Universe.​

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Seeing as we're starting to get into the more famous poets here, I thought I'd mention a dramatic poem I studied in school that has stayed with me for years:

"The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God" by J. Milton Hayes


(just to set the atmosphere, the poem is best read out in the sort of West Country accent that Benny Hill could adopt when reciting humorous verse... )


There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;
But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,
And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.

He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,
The fact that she loved him was plain to all.
She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begun
To celebrate her birthday with a ball.

He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;
They met next day as he dismissed a squad;
And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.

On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance,
And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:
But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,
Then went out into the night beneath the stars.

He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,
And a gash across his temple dripping red;
He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,
And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.

He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;
She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;
He bade her search the pocket saying, "That's from Mad Carew,"
And she found the little green eye of the god.

She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,
Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;
But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left alone
With the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.

When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,
She thought of him and hurried to his room;
As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air
Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.

His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through;
The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;
An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the Vengeance of the Little Yellow God.

There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.

 

[RevdKathy]

Seeing as we're starting to get into the more famous poets here, I thought I'd mention a dramatic poem I studied in school that has stayed with me for years:

"The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God" by J. Milton Hayes


(just to set the atmosphere, the poem is best read out in the sort of West Country accent that Benny Hill could adopt when reciting humorous verse... ).....

That's my party piece! (along with a very rude version of Christmas Night in the Workhouse)

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Seeing as we're starting to get into the more famous poets here, I thought I'd mention a dramatic poem I studied in school that has stayed with me for years:

"The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God" by J. Milton Hayes


(just to set the atmosphere, the poem is best read out in the sort of West Country accent that Benny Hill could adopt when reciting humorous verse... ).....

That's my party piece!

You recite it in a Benny Hill voice too?

 

[RevdKathy]

I have a natural west country accent.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

I have a natural west country accent.

Touché.

 

[The Lady Eve]

"William Topaz McGonagall, poet and tragedian of Dundee, has been widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language.

A self-educated hand loom weaver from Dundee, he discovered his discordant muse in 1877 and embarked upon a 25 year career as a working poet, delighting and appalling audiences across Scotland and beyond."

http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/

An example of McGonagall's oeuvre:

The Death of Fred Marsden, the American Playwright

A pathetic tragedy I will relate,
Concerning poor Fred. Marsden's fate,
Who suffocated himself by the fumes of gas,
On the 18th of May, and in the year of 1888, alas!

Fred. Marsden was a playwright, the theatrical world knows,
And was highly esteemed by the people, and had very few foes;
And in New York, in his bedroom, he took his life away,
And was found by his servant William in his bedroom where he lay.

The manner in which he took his life : first he locked the door,
Then closed down the window, and a sheet to shreds he tore
And then stopped the keyholes and chinks through which air might come,
Then turned on the single gas-burner, and soon the deed was done.

About seven o'clock in the evening he bade his wife good-night,
And she left him, smoking, in his room, thinking all was right,
But when morning came his daughter said she smelled gas,
Then William, his servant, called loudly on him, but no answer, alas!

Then suspicion flashed across William's brain, and he broke open the door,
Then soon the family were in a state of uproar,
For the room was full of gas, and Mr Marsden quite dead,
And a more kind-hearted father never ate of the world's bread.

And by his kindness he spoiled his only child,
His pretty daughter Blanche, which made him wild;
For some time he thought her an angel, she was so very civil,
But she dishonoured herself, and proved herself a devil.

Her father idolised her, and on her spared no expense,
And the kind-hearted father gave her too much indulgence,
Because evening parties and receptions were got up for her sake,
Besides, he bought her a steam yacht to sail on Schroon Lake.

His means he lavished upon his home and his wife,
And he loved his wife and daughter as dear as his life;
But Miss Blanche turned to folly, and wrecked their home through strife,
And through Miss Marsden's folly her father took his life.


There are 8 more stanzas of the poem. If you're curious about Mrs. Marsden and the wicked Blanche the rest of the poem is here:

Mcgonagallonline

 

[Zulu Romeo]

McGonagall: legend. And a local hero.

 

[Holdfast]

Inspired by today's local poetry news...

There once was a poet called Ruth,
Who played fast and loose with the truth.
She smeared her competition,
and won Professor's position,
but resigned when they found she lacked proof...



(OK, so it doesn't scan properly, but I just made it up on the spur of the moment for this thread, so cut me some slack!)

 

[ITL]

Inspired by today's local poetry news...

There once was a poet called Ruth,
Who played fast and loose with the truth.
She smeared her competition,
and won Professor's position,
but resigned when they found she lacked proof...



(OK, so it doesn't scan properly, but I just made it up on the spur of the moment for this thread, so cut me some slack!)

Such bad poetry
Plus demon-eyed avatar?
Proof of pure evil.

 

[RJDiogenes]

^^ Well, at least you wrote it. And it's pretty funny.

Come on, folks, you're supposed to be Posting your own Poetry here.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Come on, folks, you're supposed to be Posting your own Poetry here.

The OP never said anything about that.