Poems / poetry / verse

I. M. R. L. S. (1850–1894)

O, Time and Change, they range and range
From sunshine round to thunder!—
They glance and go as the great winds blow,
And the best of our dreams drive under:
For Time and Change estrange, estrange—
And, now they have looked and seen us,
O, we that were dear, we are all-too near
With the thick of the world between us.

O, Death and Time, they chime and chime
Like bells at sunset falling!—
They end the song, they right the wrong,
They set the old echoes calling:
For Death and Time bring on the prime
Of God's own chosen weather,
And we lie in the peace of the Great Release
As once in the grass together.

W. E. Henley

The ways are green

The ways are green with the gladdening sheen
Of the young year's fairest daughter.
O, the shadows that fleet o'er the springing wheat!
O, the magic of running water!
The spirit of spring is in every thing,
The banners of spring are streaming,
We march to a tune from the fifes of June,
And life's a dream worth dreaming.

It 's all very well to sit and spell
At the lesson there 's no gainsaying;
But what the deuce are wont and use
When the whole mad world 's a-maying?
When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,
And the air 's with love-notes teeming,
When fancies break, and the senses wake,
O, life's a dream worth dreaming!

What Nature has writ with her lusty wit
Is worded so wisely and kindly
That whoever has dipped in her manuscript
Must up and follow her blindly.
Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme
In the being and the seeming,
And they that have heard the overword
Know life's a dream worth dreaming.

W. E. Henley

More Christina:

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.

phew, light relief needed

There was a young lady from Joppa
Who came a Society cropper
She went to Ostend
With a gentleman friend
And the rest of the story's improper

ANON

Bloody Hell, Oliver.

This

going on

th sound of love
            grumbles

from th rear of a Pontiac

            i chase from highbury corner
on skinny tyres
           down th holloway road

a sound

 like sex
    or th longing

or remembrance

        with power 

to spare

comes

from a rickenbacker bass
                treble 
                    to th max
     and power to spare
            a remembrance
                    a longing

fingers pull round

        wound strings

grumbles

                    a sound like sex

an aria

    th story of love
    th king n queen of meat
                  a remembrance

a longing

     translated
       from th warp n woof
           th sucking of tides

piston and chamber

       gasping
             for power
             to spare

This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I have eaten

the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Spring has sprung
The grass is ris
I wonder where the birdies is?
Some say the birds are on the wing but thats absurd
Surly the wing is on the bird

Wells-Next-The-Sea

I came this little seaside town
And went a pub they call The Crown
Where straight away I happened see
A man who seemed quite partial me.
I proved susceptible his charms
And fell right in his open arms.
From time time, every now and then,
I hope meet up with him again.

Sophie Hannah

bump

Wilfred Owen's my favourite poet. Not very on brief as it's not funny - he was a war poet - but amazing:

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

final 2 lines of that were stuck in my head the other day, it's an excellent anti-war poem, vaguely remember studying it. (and some of the propoganda poetry used to recruit soldiers.Owens poetry is what stuck with me though)

^ Cute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cpw83LjbMU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cpw83LjbMU&feature=related

One of my favourite poems and I don't even speak German.

Fear it
By Steven B. Heiser

Fairy Tales are stories people use to escape
the travesties of everyday life.
Most of us are to afraid to face what each day brings
or we are told to fear it
most of us are afraid for our own reasons
and still to afraid to speak out in one solid voice
“STOP...” just stop.... please for just a moment
life hurts and I need to rest
When do I get my turn to play
why does everyone run away
from what I see
life cannot even face itself

I'm off to The Somme for the week of Easter and the royal wedding. Should be just the weather for motorbikes and war poems.

The Object Lesson

By Edward Gorey

It was already Thursday,
but his lordship's artificial limb could not be found;
therefore, having directed the servants to fill the baths,
he seized the tongs
and set out at once for the edge of the lake,
where the Throbblefoot Spectre still loitered in a distraught manner.

He presented it with a length of string
and passed on to the statue of Corrupted Endeavour
to await the arrival of autumn.

Meanwhile, on the tower,
Madame O___ in conversation with an erstwhile cousin
saw that his moustache was not his own,
on which she flung herself over the parapet
and surreptitiously vanished.

He descended, destroying the letter unread,
and stepped backwards into the water for a better view.

Heavens, how dashing! cried the people in the dinghy,
and Echo answered: Count the spoons!

On the shore a bat, or possibly an umbrella,
disengaged itself from the shrubbery,
causing those nearby to recollect the miseries of childhood.

It now became apparent (despite the lack of library paste)
that something had happened to the vicar;
guns began to go off in the distance.

At twilight, however, no message had come from the asylum,
so the others retired to the kiosk,
only to discover the cakes iced a peculiar shade of green
and the tea-urn empty
save for a card on which was written the single word:
Farewell.

here's one i wrote. twas a mere child so no abuse please ;)

i shot an arrow in the air
i did not look, i did not care
then it landed in my hair
my mother saw me and went spare

i shot another, i don't know why
it hit my neighbour in the eye
i didn't need to run away
she couldn't see me anyway

then i shot another arrow
unfortunately, it hit a sparrow
the sparrow then came hurtling down
and landed on poor mrs brown

this story was so action packed
but it's ended now coz i got whacked...

Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Oh bollocks to all this about being easily led,
I really do just want to shag you

Right. I'm trying to find out more about Louis Jenkins. So who knows stuff about him. I'm also looking for a copy of his book Before You Know It: Prose Poems 1970-2005. Anyone help me out? Hope so! Ta.

Old wounds leave good hollows

Where one who goes can hold

Himself in ghostly embraces

Of former powers and graces

Whose domain no strife mars–

I am made whole by my scars

For whatever now displaces

Follows all that once was

And without loss stows

Me into my own spaces

Samuel Menashe, 1926-2011

Sick man, I need your company

I've come to watch you die, but first

I need to tell you how it's worse

For me, left here with so much time

You fucker, listen, look at me!

I love you, blindly, selfishly.

I see you every day at work,

I watch you from afar,

I'd like to take you out one night,

And fuck you in my car.

One summer evening drunk to hell,
I sat there nearly lifeless;
An old man in the corner sang,
"Where The Water Lilies Grow".
And on the jukebox Johnny sang,
About a thing called love;
And it's how are you kid and what's your name,
And how would you bloody know?

In blood and death 'neath a screaming sky,
I lay down on the ground;
And the arms and legs of other men,
Were scattered all around.
Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed,
Then prayed and bled some more;
And the only thing that I could see,
Was a pair of brown eyes that was looking at me;
But when we got back, labeled parts one to three,
There was no pair of brown eyes waiting for me.

And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go,
For a pair of brown eyes.

I looked at him, he looked at me,
All I could do was hate him;
While Ray and Philomena sang,
Of my elusive dreams.
I saw the streams, the rolling hills,
Where his brown eyes were waiting;
And I thought about a pair of brown eyes,
What waited once for me.

So drunk to hell I left the place,
Sometimes crawling sometimes walking;
A hungry sound came across the breeze,
So I gave the walls a talking.
And I heard the sounds of long ago,
From the old canal;
And the birds were whistling in the trees,
Where the wind was gently laughing.

And a rovin' a rovin' a rovin' I'll go,
For a pair of brown eyes.

Thought I'd post this here. I read it last night (again!) in the middle of the storm - it seemed rather fitting.

Wind

by Ted Hughes

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up -
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap;
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.