What's the most haunting piece of poetry you've ever read?

[JoyJoyHollywood]

What is the most haunting, memorable piece of prose you have ever experienced? Mine is Death of the Ball Turrent Gunner, by Randall Jarrell. I heard it years ago and have never been able to forget it.

DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.


Sad, but very touching. What's yours?

[Azrael]

William Wordsworth- Tintern Abbey
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww138.html
William Blake- Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience
http://www.gailgastfield.com/innocence/soi.html
http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/blake/collections/songs_of_experience.html
The Divine Image-
To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
An to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every dime
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk, or jew;
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.
Or...
Allen Ginsberg- Howl
http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt

[JoyJoyHollywood]

They are beautiful, Azrael. Thank you.

[Herbwoman39]

"Death Is Nothing At All"

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are.
Call me by my old familiar name; speak to me in the easy way that you always used.
Put no difference in your tone; wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Pray, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household name that it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just round the corner.
All is well......

(Henry Scott Holland, 1847-1918, Canon of St. Paul's Cathedral)



I want this read at my memorial service as a reminder to those I love that I'm not really gone...just out of sight for now.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Lovely Herbwoman.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

When a Beggar Beholds You....

Anonymous (c. 324 A.D.) translated by Gertrude L. Joerissen.

When the breeze inflates your two robes of silk
you look like a Goddess enveloped in clouds.

When you pass, the flowers of the mulberry tree drink in your perfume. When you carry the lilacs that you have gathered, they tremble with joy.

Bands of gold encircle your ankles, stones of blue gleam in your girdle. A bird of jade has made it's nest in your hair. The roses of your cheeks mirror themselves in the great pearls of your collar.

When you look at me I see the river Yuen flowing. When you speak to me I hear the music of the wind among the pines of my own country.

When a horseman meets you at dusk he thinks it is already dawn, and brutally he brings his horse to a standstill

....When a beggar beholds you, he forgets his hunger.

[biwords]

There lived a wife at Usher's Well,
And a wealthy wife was she;
She had three stout and stalwart sons,
And sent them over the sea.

They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
Whan word came to the carline wife,
That her three sons were gane.

They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely three,
Whan word came to the carlin wife
That her three sons were gone.

"I wish the wind may never cease,
Nor fashes in the flood,
Till my three sons come hame to me,
In earthly flesh and blood."

It befell about the Martinmass,
When nights are long and mirk,
The carlin wife's three sons came hame,
And their hats were o the birk.

It neither grew in syke nor ditch,
Nor yet in ony sheugh;
But at the gates o Paradise,
That birk grew fair enough

"Blow up the fire my maidens,
Bring water from the well;
For a' my house shall feast this night,
Since my three sons are well."

And she has made to them a bed,
She's made it large and wide,
And she's taen her mantle her about,
Sat down at the bed-side.

Up then crew the red, red, cock,
And up the crew the gray;
The eldest to the youngest said,
'Tis time we were away.

The cock he hadna crawed but once,
And clappd his wings at a',
When the youngest to the eldest said,
Brother, we must awa.

The cock doth craw, the day both daw,
The cahannerin worm doth chide;
Gin we be mist out o our place,
A sair pain we maun bide.

"Fare ye weel, my mother dear!
Fareweel to barn and byre!
And fare ye weel, the bonny lass
That kindles my mother's fire!"

--traditional Scots

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Heart rending, Biwords, truly.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)
By William Blake
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 sieze 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 watered 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?

1794

[creach]

There are a few...

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
(no doubt some of u saw the version they did on the simpsons not quite the same but ah well!)

And my super bestest ever fave is The Severed Garden by Jim Morrison

Wow, I'm sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain
South
Cruel bindings.
The servants have the power
Dog-men and their mean women
Pulling poor blankets over
Our sailors

I'm sick of dour faces
Staring at me from the tv
Tower, I want roses in
My garden bower; dig?
Royal babies, rubies
Must now replace aborted
Strangers in the mud
These mutants, blood-meal
For the plant that's plowed.

They are waiting to take us into
The severed garden
Do you know how pale and wanton thrillful
Comes death on a strange hour
Unannounced, unplanned for
Like a scaring over-friendly guest you've
Brought to bed
Death makes angels of us all
And gives us wings
Where we had shoulders
Smooth as raven's
Claws

No more money, no more fancy dress
This other kingdom seems by far the best
Until it's other jaw reveals incest
And loose obedience to a vegetable law.

I will not go
Prefer a feast of friends
To the giant family.

[creach]

oh i forgot one!

The Soldier by Rupert Brooke...

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

That was great. His voice was hypnotic, wasn't it?

[FalconAngel]

here's one that my wife found that she remembered from school. It was written in WWI. It is rather haunting.

http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html

[JoyJoyHollywood]

That had incredible soul, FalconAngel. Much like Sargent's Gassed.

http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Gassed/Gassed.htm

[cand86]

My favorite poem has always been "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. I remember reading it in junior high, and my textbook had the most gorgeous picture to match the narrative, and the teacher read it perfectly, driving home the words . . . it sets the ghostly mood right from my favorite line ("the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas").

It just calls to me.

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html

[biwords]

It's always interesting to compare Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen. Brooke wrote at the war's beginning, and he's filled with idealistic bosh. I'm not sure that he even saw battle; if he did, he must have laughed at talk of "into cleanness leaping". He died of blood poisoning early in the war (1915). Owen, on the other hand, was a real man of the trenches, and writes with real authority.

Brooke WAS cute tho. Hell, I'd do him.

[crimsonvelvet]

My favorite poem has always been "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. I remember reading it in junior high, and my textbook had the most gorgeous picture to match the narrative, and the teacher read it perfectly, driving home the words . . . it sets the ghostly mood right from my favorite line ("the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas").

It just calls to me.

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html

Same for me! I love the highwayman. I recited it for a talent show in high school, unfortunately only half the room understood it. :( Lorena Mckennitt put music to the words on her Book Of Shadows album I think. It was really good. :)

[celticfire42]

After recent events in my life...my Godmother sent me these words:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies

its called LEISURE


or the classic...SERENITY PRAYER

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference

Even if you dont believe in a God, the rest of the words make sense to me

:bipride:

[anne27]

The first time I read this it struck me and I memorized it then. I was about 12-13 and it's brought me strength many times though the years.


Invictus


Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

[biwords]

Same for me! I love the highwayman. I recited it for a talent show in high school, unfortunately only half the room understood it. :( Lorena Mckennitt put music to the words on her Book Of Shadows album I think. It was really good. :)

The late Phil Ochs did, too, and did a great job with it. I'm surprised that McKennitt didn't just use Ochs's music - ? Anyone else remember Ochs? I had the pleasure of meeting him once, a couple of years before his suicide.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

My favorite poem has always been "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes. I remember reading it in junior high, and my textbook had the most gorgeous picture to match the narrative, and the teacher read it perfectly, driving home the words . . . it sets the ghostly mood right from my favorite line ("the moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas").

It just calls to me.

http://www.potw.org/archive/potw85.html

Oh my God, that was lovely-beautiful enough to make me cry.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.


My soul has grown deep like the rivers.


I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.


I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.


My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

[mouse46]

:flag4: Mine is Elizabeth Barrett Browning's
How do I love thee?Let me count the ways.I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seem to lose with my lost saints,- I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!-- and , if God choose, I shall love thee better after death..

[JoyJoyHollywood]

That was lovely.

[AdamKadmon43]

The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe

That has always been my favorite too. I memorized the whole blasted thing when I was a kid, and I can still recite it.

I also like this one:

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA

Charles Wolfe

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.

No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him;
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest,
With his martial cloak around him.

Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.

We thought, as we hollow'd his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o'er his head
And we far away on the billow!

Lightly they'll talk of the spirit that's gone
And o'er his cold ashes upbraid him, -
But little he'll reck, if they let him sleep on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.

But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring,
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.

Slowly and sadly we laid him down
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.

Adam

[NWMtnHawk]

Sunset and evening star,
and one clear call for me…
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea…

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
when that which drew from out the boundless deep,
Turns again home….

Twilight and evening bell,
and after that the dark…
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
when I embark…

For though from out our bourne of Time and Place,
The flood may bear me far….
I hope to see my Pilot face to face,
When I have crossed the bar.
...ALFRED TENNYSON…

[NWMtnHawk]

Death is no fearsome mystery
He is well known to thee and me
He hath no secret he can keep
That would trouble any good mans’ sleep
Turn not thy face from death away
Fear him not he’s not thy master
Rushing at thee faster, and faster
Not thy master, but servant to
The Maker of thee, what, or who
Created Death, created thee
And is the only mystery.

-THE BOOK OF COUNTED SORROWS-

[NWMtnHawk]

NO BETTER A SPELL INVENT

Why does the past haunt me so?
Why can I never just let it go?
Every so often while lost in sleep,
I see her face and she says, “Remember me?”

Remember, yeah, well I can never forget,
A master of the black arts, could no better a spell, invent . . .
Ever since I left her, that one dreary day,
I’ve never wanted anything as much as I wanted then to stay . . .

From the moment our eyes met, my whole life stopped,
And I knew of the misery to come, or so I thought . . .
As time grew, I found a misery I’d never foreseen,
The ghost of the woman I loved once, now ancient history . . .

I’ve since gone on alone, living the life I’ve always led,
The memories scattered behind me, across the miles since traveled . . .
But now and again, every so often, while lost in sleep,
I see her face, and she says, “Remember me?”

Remember yeah, well I can never forget,
A master of the black arts, could no better a spell, invent . . .

I wrote this a decade or more ago -NWMtnHawk-

[NWMtnHawk]

THE SAVIOR LAUGHS INSTEAD

I’ve spent my whole life changing,
A series of phases, or of stages,
When the world around me is raging,
As morality keeps rearranging,
Some things should still remain . . .

I’ve seen a good man wasted,
His victory yet untasted,
A teenage girl, quite suddenly dead,
From a husband, not quite right in the head,
As he cries for himself, The Savior laughs instead . . .

Who has the right to justify?
While they wreck, and rape, and crucify?
Pillage and plunder and take the Earths’ life,
The corporate seats will look you in the eye,
And calmly tell you God and Christ, are a lie . . .

Every day our Faith is tested,
As the world becomes more infected,
Who cares how many, or why they’re dead?
Due to a man, not quite right, in the head,
And they’ll ask, even then, why The Savior laughs instead . . .

-Another of mine from a decade or more ago-

[JoyJoyHollywood]

NWMnthawk, that was wonderful.

[NWMtnHawk]

Thanks Joy Joy, sweet of you to say that.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Thanks Joy Joy, sweet of you to say that.

Well, it's quite true.

[jamiehue]

i really am enjoying this.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

i really am enjoying this.

I know, it's the same for me. It's wonderful to read all of the posts-everyone is so different, yet their tastes seem to be so impeccable. I love it.

[TaylorMade]

Mine is very simple- two lines. Supposedly found on a gravestone.

As you are, I once was
As I am, so you will be.

I plan on putting it on my own.

*Taylor*

[JoyJoyHollywood]

She Walks In Beauty
Lord Byron

She walks in Beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair’d the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Mine is very simple- two lines. Supposedly found on a gravestone

As you are, I once was
As I am, so you will be.

I plan on putting it on my own.

*Taylor*

Taylor, that's so simply and wonderfully lovely.

[biwords]

Byron also wrote an epitaph for his political enemy, Lord Castlereagh, which reads:

Posterity shall ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this!
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh;
Stop, traveller, and piss.

I guess that doesn't qualify as one of the most haunting pieces of poetry I've ever read. Fills in our picture of Byron, tho. (He was bi, but I guess everyone knows that?)

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Byron also wrote an epitaph for his political enemy, Lord Castlereagh, which reads:

Posterity shall ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this!
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh;
Stop, traveller, and piss.

I guess that doesn't qualify as one of the most haunting pieces of poetry I've ever read. Fills in our picture of Byron, tho. (He was bi, but I guess everyone knows that?)

That's wonderful-absolutely fabulous! Stop, traveller, and piss. Oh, thank God for minds like his.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

To His Mistress
Pierre de Ronsard

Many of their freed bodies
Discovered themselves in strange countries
Changed in miraculous ways,
One to a serpent, another to a stone.

One into a flower, another into a shrub,
One into a wolf, another into a dove,
One was changed into a stream,
And one into a swallow.

I would be a mirror.
You would always look into me.
I could be your shirt.
You would wear me.

With great delight I would become
Water while I bathed your body;
And become the perfume of you,
And give you my scent.

I would be the ribbon binding
Your lovely breasts.
I would be the necklace
Around you lovely throat.

I want to be the coral
That your lips are touching.
All night and day I would kiss
Your sweet lips and mouth.

[biwords]

That's gorgeous, JoyJoy. Whose translation?

While awaiting execution for treason in 1586, Chidiock Tichborne wrote his only known poem:

Tichborne's Elegy

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain;
The day is past, and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

My tale was heard and yet it was not told,
My fruit is fallen, and yet my leaves are green,
My youth is spent and yet I am not old,
I saw the world and yet I was not seen;
My thread is cut and yet it is not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I looked for life and saw it was a shade,
I trod the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I was but made;
My glass is full, and now my glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

Wikipedia adds:

In June 1586, Tichborne agreed to take part in the Babington Plot to murder Queen Elizabeth and replace her with the Catholic Mary Queen of Scots who was next in line to the throne. The plot was foiled by Sir Francis Walsingham using double agents, most notably Robert Poley who was later witness to the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and though most of the conspirators fled, Tichborne had an injured leg and was forced to remain in London. On August 14 he was arrested and he was later tried and sentenced to death in Westminster Hall...On September 20, 1586, Tichborne was executed with Anthony Babington, John Ballard, and four other conspirators. They were disembowelled while still alive on specially erected gallows in St Giles Field, London as a warning to other would-be conspirators; however, when the Queen heard reports of these particularly gruesome executions, she gave orders that the remaining seven conspirators were to be allowed to hang until 'quite dead' before being disembowelled.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Biwords, that was incredibly moving. I felt my eyes well up. So very touching.
Thank you for telling it.

The Ronsard was translated by Richard A. Branyon.
I found it in "A Treasury of French Love."

[biwords]

Thank you. Your choices have been wonderful, too. This is a great thread.

[Toad82]

Before I add my favorite I would like to say that this has been one of the best threads I have read on here. I chose the poem I did because I first read it over 8 years ago and I still think about it. I find it haunting because I can see myself within Richard Cory. I find that most people are blind to the bones of every day life and that in and of it self is haunting to me. RJ :lokai:



Richard Cory
by
Edwin Arlington-Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said “Good morning”
And he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, yes richer than a king,
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Oh, Toad82......that was stunning in it's emotion. What an wonderfully human poem. How often so many of us feel like completely unknown strangers to those around us.

It's funny how the power and grace of a phrase has the ability to enduce such stillness in our souls. I am constantly moved by the posts here.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

While this is not technically poetry, I believe that it some of the most beautiful prose on earth. Chief Seattle was a Susquamish chief who lived in the islands of Puget Sound. This probably came from 1854.

Chief Seattle's Letter

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."

[biwords]

THE BURIAL OF SIR JOHN MOORE AT CORUNNA

Charles Wolfe

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried.

We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lantern dimly burning...[etc. as above]
Adam

Adam, I hope you'll forgive me for reproducing the following parody. I believe it's anonymous. "John Thomas" is, of course, Brit slang for the penis.

The Burial of Sir John Thomas

Not a sound was made, but the ottoman shook,
And my darling looked awfully worried
As round her fair body a firm hold I took,
And John Thomas we silently buried.

We buried him deeply in dead of the night,
The tails of our nightshirts upturning,
With squeals of rapture and fits of delight
While the nightlights were so dimly burning.

Few and short were the sighs we gave,
Though we oftentimes groaned as in sorrow,
As with each joyous stroke in rapture we'd rave
With scarcely a thought for tomorrow.

When John Thomas came out of his warm, narrow bed
As droopy as any sad willow,
How lowly hung down his now lifeless head;
How gladly he'd rest on his pillow!

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Ha! Brilliant!

[Azrael]

As far as I know this poem is untitled. It's the spoken part from 'To live is to die' off ...And Justice For All. A memorial for a musical wunderkind cut down in his prime.
'When a man lies he murders
Some part of the world
These are the pale deaths which
Men miscall their lives
All this I cannot bear
To witness any longer
Cannot the kingdom of salvation
Take me home'

Cliff Burton 1962-1986 RIP (original bassist for Metallica, for those of you saying who?)

[Ally Kat]

Halt! the march is over,
Day is almost done;
Loose the cumbrous knapsack,
Drop the heavy gun.
Chilled and wet and weary,
Wander to and fro,
Seeking wood to kindle
Fire amidst the snow.

Shivering, 'midst the darkness,
Christian men are found,
There devoutly kneeling
On the frozen ground,
Pleading for their country,
In the hour of woe,
For it's soldiers marching,
Shoeless through the snow.

Margaret Junkin Preston
(Stonewall Jackson's sister in law)

[lastlaf44]

This poem stuck in my head and creeped me out as a kid, lol.

"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

To my Sir, with regard.


For You My Love
Jacques Prevert

I went to the market of birds
And I bought some birds
For you
my love

I went to the market of flowers
And bought some flowers
For you
my love

I went to the market of iron
And bought some chains
Some heavy chains
For you
my love

Then I went to the market of slaves
And I searched for you
But I did not find you there
my love.

[TaylorMade]

While this is not technically poetry, I believe that it some of the most beautiful prose on earth. Chief Seattle was a Susquamish chief who lived in the islands of Puget Sound. This probably came from 1854.

Chief Seattle's Letter

"The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know - there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all."

You're gonna hate me, but . . . it was the work of a playwright in the 1970's (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/fake.html).

Damn fine piece of writing, tho.

*Taylor*

[JoyJoyHollywood]

You're gonna hate me, but . . . it was the work of a playwright in the 1970's (http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/fake.html).

Damn fine piece of writing, tho.

*Taylor*

Actually, there have been more than a few of them...this one was supposed to have been remembered from his speach to his people.

[MarieDelta]

The one piece that's always haunted me?

TS Eliot - The Wasteland (http://www.bartleby.com/201/1.html)


This section in particular:

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
Frisch weht der Wind
Der Heimat zu.
Mein Irisch Kind,
Wo weilest du?
'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer. "

[mike9753]

"The Bells"
by
Edgar Allan Poe

The Bells

I
Hear the sledges with the bells-
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And an in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

III

Hear the loud alarum bells-
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now- now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of Despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows:
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling,
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-
Of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells,bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people- ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the paean of the bells!
And he dances, and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the paean of the bells-
Of the bells:
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells-
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells-
Of the bells, bells, bells:
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells-
Bells, bells, bells-
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

[MarieDelta]

Sleeping Sickness - Julia Serano (http://www.genderenders.com/av/sleeping%20sickness.mov)


in the name of the father
the son
and the holy spirit
amen
that’s how it begins
my nights are spent
composing insomniac open letters to you
two hour long monologues
that end in exhaustion
and sometimes in the middle of my day
i’ll remember that i fell asleep
before ending my previous night’s prayer
with a proper amen
and i'll wonder whether my channel to you is still open
my every word an invocation
the sounds of my atari games
little league practice
and eighth grade history class
becoming the annoying background noise of heaven

and maybe forgetting to say amen
makes my life one long continuous prayer
and if so, then you were there that afternoon
when i tucked my penis tightly behind my legs
just to see what i’d look like without it
when i wrapped bedroom curtains around my body
like a prom dress
turned tattered shoe laces
into necklaces and bracelets
and you were there later that same night
when i began another prayer within a prayer
to once again beg for your forgiveness

wanting to be a girl
never came up in CCD or sunday mass
and it’s not covered in the ten commandments
but from everything the nuns and priests taught me about you
i know that you do not approve
and when i turn to your holy words
to look for anything that might shed some light
onto whatever this is that i’m going through
i keep returning to the same story
the one about abraham
and how you commanded him to sacrifice his son to you
stopping the blade only seconds before
he actually went through with it
and forgive me father
for i can’t help but think
that that was a fucked up thing to do

and maybe i'm like abraham
and this is just another one of your tests
maybe you put girl thoughts
into the heads of twelve year old boys
just to see how they'll react
maybe i'm an experiment
and you're up in heaven looking down on me
taking notes as i tear myself apart in self-hatred
tossing and turning in bed
as if acting out my inevitable burning in hell

and at first
my sins made me even more devout
i’d lie awake each night
clutching the glow-in-the-dark rosary beads
that my grandmother gave me
repeating the words that i once heard her say
“blessed are those who have not seen yet believe”
and i want to believe
but more and more it just feels
like you're torturing me
and i’m doing the best that i can
to plug up all the holes
in this disintegrating dam
as my brain bleeds rivers of bad thoughts
that pour out of my mouth and hands
like wounds that won’t clot
and i can’t understand
why you won’t help
when i’ve asked you over and over again
to please either turn me into a girl
or else make these thoughts stop

the nuns say that you answer all prayers
it’s just that sometimes the answer is no
well, i'm tired of praying to a god
who only offers me
thou shalt not's
i'm tired from lack of sleep
from keeping secrets
that burn so much that they hollow me out
i am tired of hurting so much
that sometimes i pray
that i don't wake up
so forgive me father for i have sinned
i have dared to share
all of myself with you
forcing you to watch
one long sacrilegious prayer
within a prayer
within a prayer
within a prayer
like a serpent swallowing its own soul
like a serpent swallowing itself whole
and maybe tonight
i'll finally be cured of this sleeping sickness
because the last few years
of living in absolute shame
and unbelievable pain
has made me fearless enough to finally say
amen.

[biwords]

Light-hearted, but to me still haunting, is A Song About Myself by John Keats (1795-1821):

I.

There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
He took
In his knapsack
A book
Full of vowels
And a shirt
With some towels,
A slight cap
For night cap,
A hair brush,
Comb ditto,
New stockings
For old ones
Would split O!
This knapsack
Tight at's back
He rivetted close
And followed his nose
To the north,
To the north,
And follow'd his nose
To the north.

II.

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
For nothing would he do
But scribble poetry-
He took
An ink stand
In his hand
And a pen
Big as ten
In the other,
And away
In a pother
He ran
To the mountains
And fountains
And ghostes
And postes
And witches
And ditches
And wrote
In his coat
When the weather
Was cool,
Fear of gout,
And without
When the weather
Was warm-
Och the charm
When we choose
To follow one's nose
To the north,
To the north,
To follow one's nose
To the north!

III.

There was a naughty boy
And a naughty boy was he,
He kept little fishes
In washing tubs three
In spite
Of the might
Of the maid
Nor afraid
Of his Granny-good-
He often would
Hurly burly
Get up early
And go
By hook or crook
To the brook
And bring home
Miller's thumb,
Tittlebat
Not over fat,
Minnows small
As the stall
Of a glove,
Not above
The size
Of a nice
Little baby's
Little fingers-
O he made
'Twas his trade
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle-
A kettle
Of fish a pretty kettle
A kettle!

IV.

There was a naughty boy,
And a naughty boy was he,
He ran away to Scotland
The people for to see-
There he found
That the ground
Was as hard,
That a yard
Was as long,
That a song
Was as merry,
That a cherry
Was as red,
That lead
Was as weighty,
That fourscore
Was as eighty,
That a door
Was as wooden
As in England-
So he stood in his shoes
And he wonder'd,
He wonder'd,
He stood in his
Shoes and he wonder'd.

[BiOhioDude]

I read this for an 11th grade English project.. almost 20 years ( hate admitting it). THis has always stuck with me.


Ode To an Athlete Dying Young
A.E. Housman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears;

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Wow, those were great.

Marie Delta, I've never read a poem like Sleeping Sickness before. Thank you so much for exposing that poet to me.

You know, I used to catch minnows and keep them in a tub too, Biwords. I used to try and keep them and feed them crumbs, but would always let them go.

That was a very refreshing poem BiOhioDude. Once again, I have never read a poem like that before. Thank you.

I used to have a slight obsession with Poe's Bells. It used to run through my head faster and faster, over and over. It seemed to me to be the mantra of the modern world. Bells everywhere, going faster and faster.

Thank y'all so much for exposing me to such amazing prose. Reading the posts has been a wonderfully expanding experience for me. Thank you so much.

[darkeyes]

He lived, he saw
He loved, he lost
He died

Anon

[meteast chick]

Emily Dickinson is one of my 2 favorite poets. Don't discount her for haunting...I've always considered this hauntingly beautiful...

"I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names."

There's also

"Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity— "

and yet another

"I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see."

[the mage]

Old trees just get stronger,
Old rivers get wider every day.
Old people just get lonesome,
waiting for someone to say,
"hello in there,
hello".


John Prine. rip.

[biwords]

The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux

Alfred Edward Housman

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

There's one spoilt spring to scant our mortal lot,
One season ruined of our little store.
May will be fine next year, as like as not:
But ay, but then we shall be twenty-four.

We for a certainty are not the first
Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled
Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed
Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.

It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

If here to-day the cloud of thunder lours
To-morrow it will hie on far behests;
The flesh will grieve on other bones than ours
Soon, and the soul will mourn in other breasts.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Biwords, that was great. This one is a little long, but I've always had a deep fondness for it.

SHERWOOD
by Alfred Noyes

Sherwood in the twilight, is Robin Hood awake?
Grey and ghostly shadows are gliding through the brake,
Shadows of the dappled deer, dreaming of the morn,
Dreaming of a shadowy man that winds a shadowy horn.

Robin Hood is here again: all his merry thieves
Hear a ghostly bugle-note shivering through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Merry, merry England has kissed the lips of June:
All the wings of fairyland were here beneath the moon,
Like a flight of rose-leaves fluttering in a mist
Of opal and ruby and pearl and amethyst.

Merry, merry England is waking as of old,
With eyes of blither hazel and hair of brighter gold:
For Robin Hood is here again beneath the bursting spray
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Love is in the greenwood building him a house
Of wild rose and hawthorn and honeysuckle boughs:
Love is in the greenwood, dawn is in the skies,
And Marian is waiting with a glory in her eyes.

Hark! The dazzled laverock climbs the golden steep!
Marian is waiting: is Robin Hood asleep?
Round the fairy grass-rings frolic elf and fay,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Oberon, Oberon, rake away the gold,
Rake away the red leaves, roll away the mould,
Rake away the gold leaves, roll away the red,
And wake Will Scarlett from his leafy forest bed.

Friar Tuck and Little John are riding down together
With quarter-staff and drinking-can and grey goose-feather.
The dead are coming back again, the years are rolled away
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

Softly over Sherwood the south wind blows.
All the heart of England his in every rose
Hears across the greenwood the sunny whisper leap,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Hark, the voice of England wakes him as of old
And, shattering the silence with a cry of brighter gold
Bugles in the greenwood echo from the steep,
Sherwood in the red dawn, is Robin Hood asleep?

Where the deer are gliding down the shadowy glen
All across the glades of fern he calls his merry men--
Doublets of the Lincoln green glancing through the May
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day--

Calls them and they answer: from aisles of oak and ash
Rings the Follow! Follow! and the boughs begin to crash,
The ferns begin to flutter and the flowers begin to fly,
And through the crimson dawning the robber band goes by.

Robin! Robin! Robin! All his merry thieves
Answer as the bugle-note shivers through the leaves,
Calling as he used to call, faint and far away,
In Sherwood, in Sherwood, about the break of day.

[MarieDelta]

I'm a fan of Alfred Noyes as well

The Highwayman
By Alfred Noyes

Part One
I
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV
And dark in the old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say-

V
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

Part Two
I
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gipsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching-
Marching-marching-
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

II
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through the casement, the road that he would ride.

III
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say-
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

IV
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till here fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like
years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

VI
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs
ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did
not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up strait and still!

VII
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night
!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him-with her death.

VIII
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

IX
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * * * *

X
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding-
Riding-riding-
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

Marie Delta, I always rush to see what you have posted since Sleep Sickness.

Isn't it amazing what wonderful taste in prose everyone here has? You know, I firmly believe that one could not find a better, more varied and stimulating forum of poetry than the one we have right here. It is my extreme pleasure to experience the posts that all of you have taken the time to submit.

I also believe that any lover of the written word would be overjoyed to come across the posts that you have written. I do believe that you have outclassed, outshone and outsmarted any other forum on the web with your intelligence, sympathy, grace, uniqueness and candor. Well done. Very well done.

You have given me many hours of joy and led me to artists I had never had the pleasure of before. And that is a gift that is deeply revered on my part.

Thank you everyone, form the bottom of my heart.

[kitten]

I am enthralled with all the beauty of these words shared in this thread.

**My favorite is a page from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran

Then the woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
and the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potters oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed out with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.
Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.


Thanks for the opportunity to share as well.

[MarieDelta]

Thank you for starting this thread Joy, it has introduced me to new poets and reminded me of some that I had forgotten.

All in all it has been a pleasure to read.

Thank you for starting this discusion, and thank you to everyone who has contributed.

Marie

[kinky_matt]

The Indispensable Man
Sometime when you're feeling important;

Sometime when your ego's in bloom

Sometime when may be feeling
You're the most important man in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going

Would leave an unfillable hole,

Just follow these simple instructions

And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining

Is a measure of how you will be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,

You may stir up the water galore,

But stop and in a minute
It looks just the same as before.

The moral of this story is simple

Do just the best that you can,

Be proud of yourself but remember,
There Is no indispensable man.

[JoyJoyHollywood]

This is from Alan, who is currently serving in a very hot country.

Edgar A. Guest

The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall:
'Tis these that make a soldier great. He's fighting for them all.

'Tis not the pomp and pride of kings that make a soldier brave;
'Tis not allegiance to the flag that over him may wave;
For soldiers never fight so well on land or on the foam
As when behind the cause they see the little place called home.
Endanger but that humble street whereon his children run,
You make a soldier of the man who never bore a gun.

What is it through the battle smoke the valiant solider sees?
The little garden far away, the budding apple trees,
The little patch of ground back there, the children at their play,
Perhaps a tiny mound behind the simple church of gray.
The golden thread of courage isn't linked to castle dome
But to the spot, where'er it be -- the humblest spot called home.

And now the lilacs bud again and all is lovely there
And homesick soldiers far away know spring is in the air;
The tulips come to bloom again, the grass once more is green,
And every man can see the spot where all his joys have been.
He sees his children smile at him, he hears the bugle call,
And only death can stop him now -- he's fighting for them all.

[MarieDelta]

I just read this one, it gave me goose bumps:

Day Of Remembrance
© S. Bear Bergman, 2003

I’m scrolling and scrolling,
names on my screen keep rolling,
more than I expected to see, hundreds,
too many to count quickly, too many to die so early,
one day before they would have is too early, outrageous,
sentenced to death for being courageous,
living out loud in an age such as this, where every border’s guarded
and marked with gendered piss, this
here is only for us, only for you, what is it mommy?
not now honey, that’s rude — why is it rude? that’s a bad attitude,
that’s what you’ll do? Parents, that’s unworthy of you,
if something’s unusual, let children know what’s different,
buy him a tutu - let that be the end of it, let them grow
unencumbered by expectation, there’s all kinds of situations,
gender, race, ethnic variations, none of them cut or dried,
no lie,
cause otherwise, we get “boys don’t cry”,
we tell our boys not to cry, they swallow the tears, the fears,
they erode every other feeling until it explodes,
looking like Gwen in a shallow grave by the road,
like Marsha being fished out whole,
looking like Brandon full of anger’s holes. We won’t accept this,
the idea is ludicrous, you want to kill a kid
because he wants to wear a dress?
Ridiculous.
We will not go gently, not into any night or memory,
we’re here today remember our family, taken too early,
I hope they come back to haunt their killers fully,
inhabit their uncertainty, give them their own inescapable
enemy, and for those of us still alive, stand up!
stand up and shout,
stand up and be what it’s about,
be the change you want to see in the world,
live like a flag unfurled,
be heard,
today we are here to remember, today we are peaceful
in honor, today we are heard together,
but tomorrow this event’s a lesson to miscreants, anyone with ill intent,
our spirit unbreakable, a lot at stake,
our numbers unmistakable, proclaiming,
I’m here with my tribe,
this family’s my wealth,
and I would die with them
before I would live by myself.

[Lorrie]

This one is very well-known and haunting:

The Highwayman
by Alfred Noyes

Part One
I
The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor,
And the highwayman came riding-
Riding-riding-
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

II
He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

III
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

IV
And dark in the old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
But he loved the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say-

V
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by moonlight,
Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

VI
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
(Oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and galloped away to the West.

Part Two
I
He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gipsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching-
Marching-marching-
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door.

II
They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every window;
And hell at one dark window;
For Bess could see, through the casement, the road that he would ride.

III
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
She heard the dead man say-
Look for me by moonlight;
Watch for me by moonlight;
I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

IV
She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till here fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like
years,
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

V
The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
Blank and bare in the moonlight;
And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain.

VI
Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs
ringing clear;
Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did
not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up strait and still!

VII
Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night
!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moonlight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him-with her death.

VIII
He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

IX
Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with a bunch of lace at his throat.

* * * * * *

X
And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
A highwayman comes riding-
Riding-riding-
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

XI
Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard,
And he taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter,
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

[biwords]

Horses and cobblestones and melodrama.....well then, how about this, from Walter de la Mare?

The Listeners

"Is there anyone there?" said the Traveler,
knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in silenced champed the grasses
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a birds flew out of the turret,
Above the Traveler's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time:
"Is there anyone there?" he said.

But no one descended to the Traveler;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill.
Leaned over and looked into his gray eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Harkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveler's call.

And he felt in his heart the strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
"Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even,
Louder, and lifted his head:--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
that I kept my word," he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left wake:
Ay they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on the stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.

-------
Brrrrrr! Someone put another log on the fire, I'll get more marshmallows....

Some suitably creepy music accompanies the poem (there mistitled, incidentally) at http://members.tripod.com/poems_of_fairy/Vol%202%20More%20Poems/Vol2%20page%203.html

-------

[IanBorthwick]

Please forgive me, but I wanted to submit my poetry, as all the other stuff I like from other poets has been mentioned already.

Happiness....Forbidden.

The yawning chasm of pain engulfs
no light above, below or around.
Stumbling over one agony after another
the grief becomes my only friend.

Years roll by, mask firmly in place
no longer seeking the brightness
Holding fast to the knowledge
here, purgatory, is where I belong.

Blood, tears, shedding them no more
feelings gone numb and vague at last
Joyous in my misery, clutching it
so I never have to try ever again.

The stygian night breaks suddenly
sensation rushes into my limbs
Lethal wounds bleed again, I feel
Oh God, how can someone do this now?

Too scared to let go, holding tightly
the pains heal at last and recede
The valley of horrors is gone finally
and hope is rekindled in my breast.

Haunting your life from the fringes
tasting your brilliance, supplicating
Hope becomes the latest torture
please God don't let this be a new pain!

God doesn't hear, neither do you
fresh wounds open, all from love
The chasm calls to me once more
sleeplessly contemplating I'm too lost.

Love me, I begged you, love me
nothing more in all the world, zero
But too hard, too much, too far
all that was brightened fades to gray.

Angels wing away, and demons mock
tears flow like rivers screaming damnation
No salvation, mercy, respite, only aching
to love and feel baptised in you.

Falling again into enfolding darkness
merciful oblivion awaits, reaching out
For me with kind claws to rip my heart
and soul to unfeeling bits once more.

Taste of ashes, tears flow in receding light
staring with hands outstretched, declaring
My love for you will never die, I know
a miracle I asked for not a friend.

The bottom finally comes, no breath left
the horrors circle in, talons scything
Take me! Finish me! Merciful Devils
take me to your busom, cleave my love!



I wrote this in a deep depression some years back, and to this day I read it and it looks like something someone else wrote. Hardly can believe it was my hand that did it. And allow me to submit another:

Close Out The Light

So long, blinking in the quietness,

wandering for time without count,

gaps appear in the night to remind

you are there still, waiting to walk in.

Curious light peers through the chinks

and I race to block the holes one by one.

Close out the light, block the dreams,

tomorrow is not where you belong

stay in yesterday with the pain and joys.

Pedestals in my mind suit you best

sweet angel of mercy and sorrow!

Dreams are supposed to bring hope,

don't visit any on me, please!

Shut out the sun and moon's glow

Sepulcheral solemnity suits me fine.

Ghostly rhythms in my heart for light

is enough to hold me against the cold.

Bring down the shades over my eyes

but not because I love the dark!

Do it to show kindness to one

addicted to your Incandescence.

[Lorrie]

I'm a fan of Alfred Noyes as well

The Highwayman
By Alfred Noyes


Oh sorry! I didn't see it posted here first before I posted mine. :(

[biwords]

More creepy melodrama -- "The Demon Lover":

‘O WHERE have you been, my long, long love,
This long seven years and mair?’
‘O I’m come to seek my former vows
Ye granted me before.’

‘O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For they will breed sad strife;
O hold your tongue of your former vows,
For I am become a wife.’

He turned him right and round about,
And the tear blinded his ee:
‘I wad never hae trodden on Irish ground,
If it had not been for thee.

‘I might hae had a king’s daughter,
Far, far beyond the sea;
I might have had a king’s daughter,
Had it not been for love o thee.’

‘If ye might have had a king’s daughter,
Yer sel[f] ye had to blame;
Ye might have taken the king’s daughter,
For ye kend [knew] that I was nane [none].

‘If I was to leave my husband dear,
And my two babes also,
O what have you to take me to,
If with you I should go?’

‘I hae seven ships upon the sea-
The eighth brought me to land
With four-and-twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand.’

She has taken up her two little babes,
Kissd them baith cheek and chin:
‘O fair ye weel, my ain two babes,
For I’ll never see you again.’

She set her foot upon the ship,
No mariners could she behold;
But the sails were of the taffetie,
And the masts of beaten gold.

She had not sailed a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
When dismal grew his countenance,
And drumlie [clouded] grew his ee [eyes].

They had not saild a league, a league,
A league but barely three,
Until she espied his cloven foot,
And she wept right bitterlie.

‘O hold your tongue of your weeping,’ says he,
‘Of your weeping now let me be;
I will shew you how the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy.’

‘O what hills are yon, yon pleasant hills,
That the sun shines sweetly on?’
‘O you are the hills of heaven,’ he said,
‘Where you will never win.’

‘O whaten a mountain is yon,’ she said,
‘All so dreary wi frost and snow?’
‘O yon is the mountain of hell,’ he cried,
‘Where you and I will go.’

He strack the tap-mast wi his hand,
The fore-mast wi his knee,
And he brake that gallant ship in twain,
And sank her in the sea.

[Skater Boy]

Well, I did fall asleep a few times whilst reading this thread. :bigrin:

Anyway, I'm sure you'll all agree that Dr. Seuss was perhaps the greatest poet ever.

Here's an easy game to play...
Here's an easy thing to say...
New socks. Two socks.
Whose socks? Sue's socks.

Who sews whose socks?
Sue sews Sue's socks.
Who sees who sew whose new socks, sir?
You see Sue sew Sue's new socks, sir.


(I mean... its SO simple, and yet SO beautiful. I hadn't realized that the theme of "sewing socks" could be relevant in so many different ways, but I went to sleep that night with images of needles and thread in my mind! Who cannot appreciate the theme of a young girl, dutifully creating something special and new through her own diligence and hard work? It is my view that this last stanza was Seuss' attempt to highlight the inherent productivity and self-sufficiency of womankind. And the final two lines of the stanza could be seen as a reflection of MANkind's inability to recognize this without being constantly reminded).

I would not, could not, in a box.
I could not, would not, with a fox.
I will not eat them with a mouse.
I will not eat them in a house.
I will not eat them here or there.
I will not eat them anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them Sam-I-am.

Note Seuss' use of the repetition of first-person singular pronouns, and forceful negatives to express the main character's PASSIONATE rejection of Green Eggs and Ham- something he has never even tasted. For me, its obvious that Seuss is using this seemingly irrational rejection of "Green Eggs and Ham" to symbolise the resistance to (and suppression of) our own desires. A more graphic representation of the phrase: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks". In the conclusive stanza of the work, the main character finally submits to the temptation of tasting the Green Eggs and Ham:


Sam, if you will let me be,
I will try them, you will see


And in essence, what Seuss is communicating to us is a parallel between the Green Eggs and Ham, and the "Forbidden Fruit" from the Tree Of Knowledge in the Garden Of Eden. The anti-hero of the work ("Sam-I-am") could be seen as a personification of the Serpent who tempted Adam. And thus the work ends with the main character having succumbed to the temptation.

His mood, however, is far from that of a banished Adam. It is one filled with the optimism associated with self discovery. Our main character has been tempted, succumbed to this temptation, and in doing so, has learned something new about himself. And this new pleasure would appear far more powerful than any potential negative consequences of giving in to the temptation.

I do so like green eggs and ham!
Thankyou, thankyou, Sam-I-am!

It could therefore be said that in this case, Seuss has written a work comparable in many respects to parts of the Biblical Book Of Genesis. Yet, has ammended the content to communicate a far more positive, forgiving and realistic message.

For this reason, coupled with his pro-Feminist stance, I highly recommend that you read your children the works of Dr. Seuss, rather than The Bible.

Yes, Seuss' works really are on par with those produced by the greatest of literary minds, as I'm sure you will agree. :)

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y97/JBASHORUN/eggs_ham.jpg

[StashaNsam]

When poet Robert Frost was asked, "Why is it that you write in riddles?" he replied, "So, if the wrong person reads it, they won't understand!" Thus, his haunting poem about the choices we make in life is more about what we believe we have chosen... rather than what others think.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

...Robert Frost

[Skater Boy]

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Well, by my reckoning, this poem is referring to how someone is unhappy with a life choice that they have made at some point. The division of the two paths would indicate that a choice or decision needed to be made (a metaphor for a life decision). the fact that he/she chose the road less travelled would suggest that the decision was perhaps not the best or maybe most typical one. and the mention of "sighing" whilst relating the story would indicate the person is probably not completely happy with the outcome.

I think most people have have come to at least one cross-roads like this in their life. Perhaps not such a major one, but every wrong decision is a choice that affects which path we take in life.

[biwords]

Funny -- I read pride (in the author's own nonconformity rather than regret in the words

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The 'sigh' may just indicate nostalgia (since it will occur 'ages hence') rather than regret. Or regret, not over a wrong choice, but over the fact that the author couldn't in fact take BOTH roads, as he says he'd wanted to.

I think Frost messed up a bit in saying that one road was less travelled, yet that they were worn about the same. Doubtless this is deliberate but the meaning is obscure, at least to me.

[Sarasvati]

What do you think about this one by Edward L Ferraunt.


Death's Living Parallel

Wake up Boscatle, the post you await
may never arrive and there's a nervous quaking
in your coastal Cornucopia!

But Boscastle just dozes away,
his pipe fuming with the thoughts of a
long since extinguished life.

All things are coming from and going to
and going from and coming to -
but the penniless Postmaster
knows not which way to turn.

Outside St. Materiana's Post Office
there's a fisher boat that needs upanchoring
if the day is to be awakened from the night.

It's little Mary Ann Thompson
returning from the dead seas
with her nzambi waves of embroidered emotion
lashing against the sleeping rocks.

She's his childhood sweetheart,
but the unnerved Boscastle just hangs there
impotent and inert
with his postcard peace in stitches.

[DrJay]

W. H. Auden later disowned this poem, but it's still chilling 68 years later. Here are its first two stanzas.


September 1, 1939


I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

[shameless agitator]

Try this one out


Evolution

Buffalo Bill opens a pawn shop on the reservation
right across the border from the liquor store
and he stays open 24 hours a day,7 days a week

and the Indians come running in with jewelry
television sets, a VCR, a full-lenght beaded buckskin outfit
it took Inez Muse 12 years to finish. Buffalo Bill

takes everything the Indians have to offer, keeps it
all catalogues and filed in a storage room. The Indians
pawn their hands, saving the thumbs for last, they pawn

their skeletons, falling endlessly from the skin
and when the last Indian has pawned everything
but his heart, Buffalo Bill takes that for twenty bucks

closes up the pawn shop, paints a new sign over the old
calls his venture THE MUSEUM OF NATIVE AMERICAN CULTURES
charges the Indians five bucks a head to enter.

Sherman Alexie

[biwords]

I love it! Thank you, agitator sans shame....

[shameless agitator]

No worries. I absolutely love Sherman Alexie. He's done some wonderful novels as well and a movie called Smoke Signals. I'll warn everybody now though you should have a whole box of kleenex available before watching that movie.

This poem's kinda my anthemhttp://memory.loc.gov/rbc/rbpe/rbpe01/rbpe012/01206000/001dq.gif
Couldn't find a plain text version online & didn't want to type the whole bloody thing. This is just the first stanza. The whole poem is 3 pages long.

[shameless agitator]

Here's another one that keeps coming back to me.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face him self when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be;a son who will know Thee- and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.

Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here, let him learn to stand up in the storm; here, let him team compassion for those who fall.

Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goals will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.

And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously.

Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength.

Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, "I have not lived in vain."~General Douglas McArthur

I first came across this in an album my dad gave me. He asked a friend to write something & this is what he gave him. Dad never realized his friend (my godfather) didn't actually write it. Now of course I have sons, so it's taken on whole new meanings.

[Skater Boy]

I've been reading this one lately. Called "Crow's First Lesson" by Ted Hughes. "God" has just created the Earth, and Crow is kind of like an evil being:



God tried to teach Crow how to talk.

"Love," said God. "Say, Love."

Crow gaped, and the white shark crashed into the sea

And went rolling downwards, discovering its own depth.



"No, no," said God. "Say Love. Now try it. Love."

Crow gaped, and a bluefly, a tsetse, a mosquito

Zoomed out and down

To their sundry flesh-pots.



"A final try," said God. "Now, Love."

Crow convulsed, gaped, retched and

Man's bodiless prodigious head

Bulbed out onto the earth, with swivelling eyes,

Jabbering protest --



And Crow retched again, before God could stop him.

And woman's vulva dropped over man's neck and tightened.

The two struggled together on the grass.

God struggled to part them, cursed, wept --



Crow flew guiltily off.


http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y97/JBASHORUN/CROW1.jpg

[MarieDelta]

A new Poem / a new author for me

At Pegasus - Terrance Hayes


They are like those crazy women
who tore Orpheus
when he refused to sing,

these men grinding
in the strobe & black lights
of Pegasus. All shadow & sound.

"I'm just here for the music,"
I tell the man who asks me
to the floor. But I have held

a boy on my back before.
Curtis & I used to leap
barefoot into the creek; dance

among maggots & piss,
beer bottles & tadpoles
slippery as sperm;

we used to pull off our shirts,
& slap music into our skin.
He wouldn't know me now

at the edge of these lovers' gyre,
glitter & steam, fire,
bodies blurred sexless

by the music's spinning light.
A young man slips his thumb
into the mouth of an old one,

& I am not that far away.
The whole scene raw & delicate
as Curtis's foot gashed

on a sunken bottle shard.
They press hip to hip,
each breathless as a boy

carrying a friend on his back.
The foot swelling green
as the sewage in that creek.

We never went back.
But I remember his weight
better than I remember

my first kiss.
These men know something
I used to know.

How could I not find them
beautiful, the way they dive & spill
into each other,

the way the dance floor
takes them,
wet & holy in its mouth.

[izzfan]

Marie, I've just read the poems you've posted and they're really haunting and thought provoking.

As for the most haunting piece of poetry, I've read.... There was this Simon Armitage poem that's quite creepy called "I say I say I say" [I think that's the right one] which is about people who have tried to kill themselves.

I generally read more prose than poetry though so I don't really know that many poets etc....

Izzfan :flag2:

[Germanicus]

W. H. Auden later disowned this poem, but it's still chilling 68 years later. Here are its first two stanzas.


September 1, 1939


I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Not bad, but Auden's "Spain 1937" is much better

[Germanicus]

"Doggerel"

Naked iron men,
stood in the sand.

Fish 'n' chips with salty gravy,
not eaten by hand.

Latinate lovers arm-in-arm,
traisping through Manchester's gothic charm.

Conversations and questions intense,
which only now make some sense.

[MarieDelta]

the butcher's craft
by paul summers

the butcher's wife is beautiful.
irish, i think, from that singing lilt.
hardly surprising he bagged such a catch,
a man with a trade, an ancient craft -
his deft knife skating on the rind,
his stitching immaculate.

later, in their humid bathroom,
he double-checks a lump on her breast,
his strong hands reading the curves,
a tender smile masking fear,
the smell of meat still on his fingers.

[rumblebug]

Swinburne::

From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.


Swinburne, "The Garden of Proserpine"

[Bluebiyou]

It's all in the meter, man!

#2 for me. Edgar Allen Poe's Iambic quadrameter "The Raven" is as obsessively attractive as Christmas tune 'Ring Christmass bells' and loaded with Poe's morbidity of love and death.

#1 would be Poe's (Poe again?) triambic quadrameter "Annabel Lee".

"But we loved with a love that was more than love
I and my Annabel Lee"

"for no one can ever dissever my soul
from the soul of the beautiful Annabel Lee"

Why? The triambic meter sustained throughout the whole poem gives the entire poem the effect of a song/dance (a waltz to be exact - one-two-three one-two-three ...); while Poe balances it up with sufficient love-meets-heaven before measuring out the morose... death and separation. Okay, nearly triambic, Poe breaks it only when he has to, but still... the meter of the verse provides the poem's own music.

[FalconAngel]

"Late Lament" by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues

Breathe deep, the gathering gloom.
Watch lights fade from every room.
Bedsitter people look back and lament,
Another day's useless energies spent.

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one.
Lonely man cries for love and has none.
New mother picks up and suckles her son.
Senior citizens wish they were young.

Cold-hearted orb, Rules the night.
Removes the color from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow, white
But we decide which is right,
and which is an illusion.


And;

The Highwayman
(this piece is an old Irish poem that was set to music by Loreena McKennit and Stevie Nicks)

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees
The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon the cloudy seas
The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor
And the highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding,
The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door
He'd a french cocked hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin
A coat of claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin
They fitted with never a wrinkle; his boots were up to the thigh!
And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky
Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard
And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but all was locked and
barred;
He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
But the landlord's blackeyed daughter,
Bess, the landlord's daughter
Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair
"One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize tonight,
But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
Yet if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
Then look for me by the moonlight,
Watch for me by the moonlight,
I'll come to thee by the moonlight, though hell should bar the way"
He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand
But she loosened her hair I' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast; and he
kissed its
Waves in the moonlight, (oh, sweet black waves in the moonlight!)
The he tugged at his rein in the moonlight,
And galloped away to the west
He did not come at the dawning; he did not come at noon,
And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
A red-coat troop came marching,
Marching, marching
King George's men came marching, up to the old inn-door
The said no word to the landlord, the drank his ale instead,
But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow
bed;
Two of them knelt at the casement, with muskets at their side!
There was death at every windows,
And hell at one dark window;
For bess could see, through the casement, the road that he would ride
They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
"Now keep good watch!" And they kissed her
She heard the dead man say
Look for me by the moonlight
Watch for me by the moonlight
I'll come to thee by the moonlight, though hell should bar the way!
She twisted her hands behind her, but all the knots held good!
She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat of blood!
They stretched and strained in the darkness and the hours crawled by
like years!
Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
The tip of one finger touched it!
The trigger at least was hers!
Tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs were ringing clear
Tlot-tlot, in the distance!
Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill
The highwayman came riding,
Riding, riding!
The red-coats looked to their priming!She stood up straight and still!
Tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot, in the echoing night!
Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
Her eyes grew wide for a moment!
She drew one last deep breath,
Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
Her musket shattered the moolight,
Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him with her death!
He turned; he spurred to the west; he did not know she stood
Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her
Own red blood! Not till the dawn he heard it; his face grew grey to hear
How bess, the landlord's daughter,
The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness
there
Back,he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier
Brandished high! - blood-red were the spurs I' the golden noon;
Wine-red was his velvet coat,
When they shot him down on the highway,
Down like a dog on the highway,
And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his
throat.
Still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon the cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor
A highwayman comes riding,
Riding, riding,
A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

[MarieDelta]

scared to death - Julia Serano

few people make it through high school
without having at least one classmate commit suicide
for me, it was tony newman
in eleventh grade
he locked himself in the garage
with the car running
the act seemed so unlike him
he was one of the few popular kids
who everyone genuinely liked
and every time i saw him
he was either laughing
or making someone else laugh
apparently, he never spoke about being depressed
and he didn’t leave a note
so the reason he took his own life
remained a mystery
it lingered like a lump in people’s throats

i had a theory
that i never shared with anyone
i wondered whether tony felt like i did
i was transgendered
although at the time
i didn’t have a word for it
but i was good enough at math
to know that statistically
there had to be at least a few other people
keeping the same secret
and i don’t know if tony was transgendered
but i put two and two together
because i knew
that suicide had crossed my mind
a few hundred times
and i knew
that i’d rather be dead
than be caught dressed as a girl
and i knew
how much it hurt
to have thoughts that you don’t want
but you can’t turn off

and now i know
that this is nothing new
there are statistics that suggest
that up to 50 percent of transgendered people
try to end their life
if not by suicide, then indirectly through substance abuse
and everyday i consider myself lucky
to have made it this far

although sometimes
i still feel like i’m only one step away from the grave
because once every two weeks
someone like me is murdered
for being transgendered
and these are no unfortunate accidents
no victims of circumstance
these victims
are almost always beating beyond recognition
these are attempts at total obliteration
and i can’t help but wonder whether i am next
because at least once a week
i get up on stage and out myself
in songs and spoken word pieces
and i worry that this makes me a target
because all it takes is one asshole in the audience
who feels that his manhood
is threatened by my mere existence

but i remind myself
that there are many ways to die
and the slowest
most torturous one of all
is being scared to death
because being intimidated into silence
is like being suffocated
in both cases
someone else is taking your last breath

so tonight i speak
on behalf of an entire endangered species
because i know
that silence really does equal death
and i know
that the only thing that stops injustice is protest
and my words are a tribute
to every transgendered voice that has been silenced
whether by suicide
or homicide
or those who are still alive
but frightened into keeping quiet
and i hope
that this piece will be
one of a million small acts
that together
add up
to fighting back

[bisubbie]

Here is another one from World War 1. It was writen in 1915 by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae MD. He was in the Canadian Army. I first read it on an American Legion calander years ago.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

__________________________________________________ __________


It always struck a place in my heart

bisubbie

[Not2str8]

There once was a man from Nantuckett.........................:)

[MarieDelta]

HOWL

For Carl Solomon

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
cohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
until the noise of wheels and children brought
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
and trembling before the machinery of other
skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
in policecars for committing no crime but their
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
scripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
East River to open to a room full of steamheat
and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
incantations which in the yellow morning were
stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
stores where they thought they were growing
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
phonograph records of nostalgic European
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
Denver and finally went away to find out the
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
impossible criminals with golden heads and the
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their
hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
and subsequently presented themselves on the
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-
stantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-
therapy occupational therapy pingpong &
amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the
East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-
mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
moon,
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
flung out of the tenement window, and the last
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-
nished room emptied down to the last piece of
mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that
imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of
hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
now you're really in the total animal soup of
time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
ing plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
and dash of consciousness together jumping
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
prose and stand before you speechless and intel-
ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
yet putting down here what might be left to say
in time come after death,
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
suffering of America's naked mind for love into
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand
years.

II

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagi-
nation?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men
weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy
judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment!
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stun-
ned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a canni-
bal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking
tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows!
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose fac-
tories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen!
Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy!
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch!
Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs!
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about
us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies!
gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions!
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! De-
spairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides!
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell!
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving!
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the
street!

III

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel very strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful
typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and
is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit
the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the
spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the
harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the
abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul
is innocent and immortal it should never die
ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a
cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the
fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the
superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
here O victory forget your underwear we're
free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

[Germanicus]

Memory of Marie A.
Bertolt Brecht

On that day in blue moon September
Silent under a young plum tree
I held her there, my quiet, pale love
In my arms like a lovely dream.
And above us, in fair summer sky
Was a cloud that caught my eye
It was so white and high above;
When I looked up again, it was there no more.

And since that day, many, many moons
Have floated quietly, down and past.
The plum trees have been cut down
And if you ask me, what has happened to my love?
I will say: I do not recall.
Yet, I certainly know what you mean.
But I really don’t remember that face
I know this much: I kissed it long ago

And that kiss, too, would have been forgotten
If not for that wondrous cloud
I know that cloud and shall know it forever:
It was so white and came from high above.
Perhaps the plum trees bloom there still
Perhaps that woman has seven children now
But that cloud bloomed but for a moment;
When I looked up again, it had vanished into the wind

[laloo333]

What a lovely selection! and nice to know there are quite a few cultured bisexuals. I'm going to add this, by Li Po.

Fair one, when you were here, I filled the house with flowers.
Fiar one, now you are gone - only an empty couch is left.
On the couch the embroidered quilt is rolled up: I cannot sleep.
It is three years since you went. The perfume you left behind
haunts me still

The perfume strays behind me forever, but where are you Beloved?
I sigh - the yellow leaves fall from the branch.
I weep - the dew twinkes white on the branches


Someone post some Service and some Villon to round out the collection!

[Bluebiyou]

Holy Cow, Marie Delta! Is that your favorite poem under 100,000 words?
:)

Okay, I'm convinced. I'll add "Highwayman" to my list of top poems.
So, #3 I have "The Highwayman"
#2, The Raven (Edgar Allen Poe).

and #1:

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Edgar Allan Poe

[MarieDelta]

:) To some a feast, to others a mere snack

Hers another from Julia Serano:


deconstructive surgery
being an out trans-woman
there is one question
that follows me around where ever i go
inquiring minds want to know
have i "gone all the way"
you know, have i had “the surgery”

and to me, it feels like a no-win inquisition
if i tell the truth: “no, not yet”
then i get to deal
with everybody else's emotional baggage
because nothing makes people more paranoid
than a real life female with a phallus
straight men shake in their boots
at the possibility
that they might accidentally
become attracted to me
and those who patrol
the gates of women-only spaces
are often dead-set on discriminating against me
driven by the ridiculous belief
that my girly little estrogenized penis
is somehow still pulsating
with hyper-masculine energy

on the other hand
having the operation
has its own stigma attached to it
no medical methodology
induces as much fear and anxiety as SRS
sex reassignment surgery
a friend told me that he once saw SRS
on the video "faces of death"
sandwiched in between
real life shark attacks and murder attempts
some people go so far
as to call SRS a form of self-mutilation
conveniently ignoring the fact
that more common procedures
such as nose jobs and liposuction
also involve the removal
of a small amount
of non-essential tissue

most people are surprised when i tell them
that the surgeons don't really cut the penis off
they just turn it inside out
and move the nerve endings around
to make a functional and realistic looking
clitoris and vagina
at that point, i am invariably asked if i want SRS
so that i can have sex with a man
and you should see the blank stares i get
when i reply: "no, but i’m really looking forward
to having my wife fuck me
with a strap-on dildo"

see, we live in a phallic-obsessed culture
where we're all trained to believe
that everything having to do
with gender and sexuality
somehow revolves around the penis
that's why so many clueless straight guys
come on to dykes
with pick-up lines like
"once you've had the real thing baby
you won't ever go back"
they actually buy into that crap
and it is also why most people can't even talk
about transsexual women or SRS
without centering the discussion
around "the penis"

but the thing that nobody seems to get
is that my desire to have SRS
has absolutely nothing to do with my penis
this is about me wanting to have
a clitoris and vagina
but we don’t even have the language
to describe this desire
it's the ultimate freudian slipwe naturally assume
that all young girls suffer from penis envy
but we can’t imagine that any boy
could possibly have its polar opposite
it’s all in the words we use
when someone is bold or brave
we say they have “balls”
while words like "pussy" and "cunt"
are only ever spoken as insults
and while everyone seems to understand
how the penis works
we treat female genitalia
like they’re a mysterious black box
most young women aren't even taught
the names of all their body parts
many people are unaware
that the clitoris even exists
and as for the vagina
well aren’t we all taught
to see that as simply the hole
where the penis is supposed to go?

so it’s no wonder that most people assume
that i must be mentally ill
because in this culture
wanting to be a woman
is something most people find literally unimaginable
and when i do have SRS
my surgically deconstructed genitals
will no doubt be seen by some
to be an abomination or blasphemy
because my cunt
will be the ultimate question mark
asking how powerful can the penis really be
if a sane and smart person like me
decides that she can do without it?

and if the world supposedly revolves around the penis
then my SRS will knock it off its axis
and phallic symbols everywhere
will come crashing down
like nothing more than a house of cards
after all, a cigar is always just a cigar
and i am simply me
and i refuse to let anyone project
their penis obsessions onto my body
as far as i’m concerned
if they can't fathom
why i might want to trade in my penis
for a clitoris and vagina
then they're the ones
who have the gender disorder.

[Bluebiyou]

:clap:
Outstanding Marie.
Excellent, insightful an enlightening.
:clap:

[BI BOYTOY]

What is the most haunting, memorable piece of prose you have ever experienced? Mine is Death of the Ball Turrent Gunner, by Randall Jarrell. I heard it years ago and have never been able to forget it.

DEATH OF THE BALL TURRET GUNNER
by Randall Jarrell
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.


Sad, but very touching. What's yours?

i dont know about being a haunting poem but my favorite poem is THE RAVEN by edger alan poe. anyone know it?:bigrin::bigrin::bigrin: my next favorite is not realy a poem but a song. THE LORDS PRAYER. by the group metalica. it puts a rather haunting twist the the lords prayer. :bibounce:

[someotherguy]

Fleas

by Ogden Nash



Adam
Had 'em.

[DGoncz]

Boytoy, I have lyrics in mind, too.

When I first heard this riddle song recorded a capella I started crying. Later, when I was listening to it alone, the tears came flooding out. I was transitioning to poly and wrote a verse and refrain about that then. I'll give part of the original, from a web trascription with errors. Some I've corrected.

What's the Use of Wings?
(Brian Bedford)

"I could have been a giant," said the bonsai tree
"But someone bound my roots and held me down."
"I could have reached the Heavens," said the snowy owl
"But they clipped my wings and kept me on the ground."

I think I heard them tell me that they loved me
That they'd care for me--without them I would die
But what's the use of roots if you can't spread them?
What's the use of wings if you can't fly?

"I could have been a singer," said the Myna bird
"But they caged me and told me what to say."
"I could have run forever," said the pony
"But they bridled me and made me go their way."

I think I heard them tell me that they loved me
That they'd care for me forever so it seems
What's the use of voices without freedom?
What's the use of living other's dreams?"

Why do people cage the things they love the most?
Is it simply that they fear to be alone?
If you give your love its freedom, it will stay awhile
If it leaves you, it was never yours to own

A similar sentiment in a song by the Police if I remember right, but not haunting the way this is.


i dont know about being a haunting poem but my favorite poem is THE RAVEN by edger alan poe. anyone know it?:bigrin::bigrin::bigrin: my next favorite is not realy a poem but a song. THE LORDS PRAYER. by the group metalica. it puts a rather haunting twist the the lords prayer. :bibounce:

[Papelucho]

The most haunting I've ever read was by Kahlil Gibran...but I don't remember the title and can't find it. :tongue:. He's an amazing poet.

Here's one from Pablo Neruda who is powerful:

The Dictators

An odor has remained among the sugarcane:
a mixture of blood and body, a penetrating
petal that brings nausea.
Between the coconut palms the graves are full
of ruined bones, of speechless death-rattles.
The delicate dictator is talking
with top hats, gold braid, and collars.
The tiny palace gleams like a watch
and the rapid laughs with gloves on
cross the corridors at times
and join the dead voices
and the blue mouths freshly buried.
The weeping cannot be seen, like a plant
whose seeds fall endlessly on the earth,
whose large blind leaves grow even without light.
Hatred has grown scale on scale,
blow on blow, in the ghastly water of the swamp,
with a snout full of ooze and silence

I also love The Raven by Poe. Last year I learned something fascinating about why that poem sounds so good. During the poem, poe begins some words with the ending of the previous word, making them run together:

Quoth the raven nevermore.

:)

[mfanycomb]

I've enjoyed most of the citations previously mentioned here and found some new interesting verse.

But to haunt--something which incorporially hangs on to us--is not something most verse does to me. The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde has continually visited me with it's spirit repeatedly returning over 40 years with it's message of doom.

I won't cite the entire poem just the lines which have always haunted me.



The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

[Germanicus]

Fleas

by Ogden Nash



Adam
Had 'em.

"A bit of talcum
Is always walcum"

[MarieDelta]

I Met A Genius


I met a genius on the train
today
about 6 years old,
he sat beside me
and as the train
ran down along the coast
we came to the ocean
and then he looked at me
and said,
it's not pretty.

Charles Bukowski

[Chaia]

Same for me! I love the highwayman. I recited it for a talent show in high school, unfortunately only half the room understood it. :( Lorena Mckennitt put music to the words on her Book Of Shadows album I think. It was really good. :)

I was going to put up The Highwayman as well--one of my favorites. I have Lorena McKennitt's album with the poem set to music and I still get chills when I listen to it!

Incredible poems that have been shared! Some I have read and some that are new to me and I will enjoy reading them again.

[MarieDelta]

Resurrecting this thread as it is a favorite of mine..

Criminal
for model-citizens everywhere
©2001 Alix Olson.


They sat me down
in the big green police chair
With a big green light cornering my soul.
They said:
You tell us who’s the boogey man, ma’am
You point out the Criminal.
And they tell me they can tell I’m a
First-class, top-notch, jury-duty, law-abiding
Kind of chick.
So, I flash my big, bright smile, I say:
Well, I’m glad that’s what you think.

And they hand me a box of composites
Stacked in some kind of alphabetical caste
Where last names don’t seem to matter,
Goes from A to Black to Blacker.
But I’m a model-citizen and
Model-citizens don’t cause kinks.
Yes, I’m a model-citizen
So I sit my top-notch ass down to think.

In the morning paper, they say:
Those spam-eating spics
are out to scam your family.
Yeah, they’ll rob your job,
Soak up the last three drops in this
Trickle down, down,
Down-under country.
Well, while big-business takes its little piggies
To market
By keeping us dependent,
The morning paper says:
The Criminal’s
The Immigrant.

And on the four o’clock pop-rock talk show, Joe says:
Yeah, a dyke is easy to spot.
She looks like a man, talks like a man, acts like a man, Yeah
But she’s sure as hell not.
And all the other guests say:
Yeah, Joe, I think she’s out to get your woman.
And by five o’clock, all the other Joe’s in America know
The Criminal’s
The Lesbian

And on the TV News, it’s:
Poor Black Women (colon) The Expert Opinion
And all these white male scholars saying:
Well, she shouldn’t have a baby if she can’t feed him.
But she shouldn’t have an abortion either,
She should just know better.
You see, knowledge is power
Yeah, but power is money and
Money’s what matters.

And in the New York Times,
it’s handcuffed protestors in Seattle
And the headline reads:
Angry Activists Start a Battle
And the World Bank Leaders and the WTO
And Disney and Visa and Mansanto
And Goodyear and Texaco
All smile and say:
Sure is nice to own the paper on a day like today!

So, I’m sitting in the big, green police chair
With a big, green light cornering my soul.

They say:
You tell us who’s the boogey man, ma’am
You point out the criminal

So I finger the composites stacked in my hand,
I flash my big, bright model-citizen smile.
I say:
I’m sorry Sir.
But the criminal
Ain’t in this pile.

[Billys_gurl]

"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came"
by Robert Browning

I.
My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.



II.
What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,



III.
If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.



IV.
For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.



V.
As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside ("since all is o'er," he saith,
"And the blow fallen no grieving can amend;")



VI.
While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.



VII.
Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among "The Band" - to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps - that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now—should I be fit?



VIII.
So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.



IX.
For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.



X.
So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers - as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure trove.



XI.
No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. "See
Or shut your eyes," said Nature peevishly,
"It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
'Tis the Last Judgment's fire must cure this place,
Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free."



XII.
If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness? 'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.



XIII.
As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!



XIV.
Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.



XV.
I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards - the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.



XVI.
Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.



XVII.
Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest men should dare (he said) he durst.
Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!



XVIII.
Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.



XIX.
A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.



XX.
So petty yet so spiteful! All along
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of mute despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.



XXI.
Which, while I forded, - good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
—It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.



XXII.
Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage—



XXIII.
The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.



XXIV.
And more than that - a furlong on - why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.



XXV.
Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood—
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.



XXVI.
Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.



XXVII.
And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap—perchance the guide I sought.



XXVIII.
For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains - with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me, - solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.



XXIX.
Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when—
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den!



XXX.
Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!



XXXI.
What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart
Built of brown stone, without a counterpart
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.



XXXII.
Not see? because of night perhaps? - why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,—
"Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!"



XXXIII.
Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,—
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.



XXXIV.
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came."

[Canticle]

CURFEW MUST NOT RING TONIGHT
by Rose Hartwick Thorpe (1850-1939)

Slowly England's sun was setting oe'r the hilltops far away,
Filling all the land with beauty at the close of one sad day;
And its last rays kissed the forehead of a man and maiden fair,--
He with steps so slow and weary; she with sunny, floating hair;
He with bowed head, sad and thoughtful, she, with lips all cold and white,
Struggling to keep back the murmur, "Curfew must not ring to-night!"

"Sexton," Bessie's white lips faltered, pointing to the prison old,
With its walls tall and gloomy, moss-grown walls dark, damp and cold,--
"I've a lover in the prison, doomed this very night to die
At the ringing of the curfew, and no earthly help is nigh.
Cromwell will not come till sunset;" and her lips grew strangely white,
As she spoke in husky whispers, "Curfew must not ring to-night!"

"Bessie," calmly spoke the sexton (every word pierced her young heart
Like a gleaming death-winged arrow, like a deadly poisoned dart),
"Long, long years I've rung the curfew from that gloomy, shadowed tower;
Every evening, just at sunset, it has tolled the twilight hour.
I have done my duty ever, tried to do it just and right:
Now I'm old, I will not miss it. Curfew bell must ring to-night!"

Wild her eyes and pale her features, stern and white her thoughtful brow,
As within her secret bosom, Bessie made a solemn vow.
She had listened while the judges read, without a tear or sigh,
"At the ringing of the curfew, Basil Underwood must "die.
And her breath came fast and faster, and her eyes grew large and bright;
One low murmur, faintly spoken. "Curfew must not ring to-night!"

She with quick step bounded forward, sprang within the old church-door,
Left the old man coming slowly, paths he'd trod so oft before.
Not one moment paused the maiden, But with eye and cheek aglow,
Staggered up the gloomy tower, Where the bell swung to and fro;
As she climbed the slimy ladder, On which fell no ray of light,
Upward still, her pale lips saying, "Curfew shall not ring to-night!"

She has reached the topmost ladder, o'er her hangs the great dark bell;
Awful is the gloom beneath her, like the pathway down to hell.
See! the ponderous tongue is swinging; 'tis the hour of curfew now,
And the sight has chilled her bosom, stopped her breath, and paled her brow.
Shall she let it ring? No, never! Her eyes flash with sudden light,
As she springs, and grasps it firmly: "Curfew shall not ring to-night!"

Out she swung,-- far out. The city Seemed a speck of light below,--
There twixt heaven and earth suspended, As the bell swung to and fro.
And the sexton at the bell-rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell,
Sadly thought that twilight curfew rang young Basil's funeral knell.
"Still the maiden, clinging firmly, quivering lip and fair face white,
Stilled her frightened heart's wild throbbing: "Curfew shall not ring tonight!"

It was o'er, the bell ceased swaying; and the maiden stepped once more
Firmly on the damp old ladder, where, for hundred years before,
Human foot had not been planted. The brave deed that she had done
Should be told long ages after. As the rays of setting sun
Light the sky with golden beauty, aged sires, with heads of white,
Tell the children why the curfew did not ring that one sad night.

O'er the distant hills comes Cromwell. Bessie sees him; and her brow,
Lately white with sickening horror, has no anxious traces now.
At his feet she tells her story, shows her hands, all bruised and torn;
And her sweet young face, still hagggard, with the anguish it had worn,
Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light.
"Go! your lover lives," said Cromwell. "Curfew shall not ring to-night!"

Wide they flung the massive portals, led the prisoner forth to die,
All his bright young life before him. Neath the darkening English sky,
Bessie came, with flying footsteps, eyes aglow with lovelight sweet;
Kneeling on the turf beside him, laid his pardon at his feet.
In his brave, strong arms he clasped her, kissed the face upturned and white,
Whispered, "Darling, you have saved me, curfew will not ring to-night."

[MarieDelta]

"educated guess" by Ani DiFranco

looks like my crazy family
is down one crazy daughter cuz
i'm shipwrecked in a desert that
once was underwater just
looking for a swift turn of phrase
some colors to fly
as i float by
in the parade

plus i dream in skin scented sentences
of a stronger faster fiercer you
and to each noun, verb and predicate
i dedicate a vivid hue
but you ain't done too well
getting past your permanent pastel
have you now?
yes, the desert seemed so promising
and then it paled somehow

so school is in session
get your chin off your desk
now pick up your pencil
and turn over your test
use your education
and take an educated guess
about me

i've got a slot at eye level like
a speakeasy door
and i know you know the password
cuz i've seen you here before
and i've got something sweet for you
and i don't care if it is more than you deserve
i've got a lot of love and a lot of nerve
so watch me while i take this curve

yes school is in session
get your chin off your desk
now pick up your pencil
and turn over your test
use your education
and take an educated guess
about me

plus i have this whole new family
and i'm in love with each of them
and i'm on this list called lucky
whenever i'm in reach of them
and i'm learning how to say
that i'd be happy either way
with your love

i'm calling on the stars above

school is in session
get your chin off your desk
now pick up your pencil
turn over your test
use your education
and take an educated guess
about me

words and music by ani difranco © 2004 righteous babe music / BMI

[Realist]

A fool there was,
who gave his soul
for a hank of hair
and piece of bone.

[Lady_Passion]

By William Bliss Carman

The Soul of April

Over the wintry threshold
Who comes with joy to-day,
So frail, yet so enduring,
To triumph o'er dismay?

Ah, quick her tears are springing,
And quickly they are dried,
For sorrow walks before her,
But gladness walks beside.

She comes with gusts of laughter, --
The music as of rills;
With tenderness and sweetness,--
The wisdom of the hills.

Her hands are strong to comfort,
Her heart is quick to heed.
She knows the signs of sadness,
She knows the voice of need.

There is no living creature,
However poor or small,
But she will know its trouble,
And hasten to its call.

Oh, well they fare forever,
By mighty dreams possessed,
Whose hearts have lain a moment
On that eternal breast.

"The Soul Of April" is my absolute favorite above all. Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne" and Jeff Buckley's version of the song "Hallelujah" (also written by Leonard Cohen) tie for second.

[bemyonlyone]

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/my-lady/

She was a 17th century nun in Mexico...but I find a lot of her poems expressing love for other women haunting. I find that she's really dead on about the feelings you get, as I experience them now. Her words are so true, even 315 years after her death.

[MarieDelta]

O Captain my Captain by Walt Whitman

O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up--for you the flag is flung for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

[Herbwoman39]

I have loved this poem ever since I first heard it in the movie "Four Weddings And A Funeral". It's by W.H. Auden and I still get teary-eyed whenever I read it.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[TwylaTwobits]

STILL LEARNING...

I've learned-
that you can do something in an instant
that will give you heartache for life.

I've learned-
that it's taking me a long time
to become the person I want to be.

I've learned-
that you should always leave loved ones
with loving words. It may be the last time you see them.

I've learned-
that you can keep going
long after you can't.

I've learned-
that we are responsible for what we do,
no matter how we feel.

I've learned-
that either you control your attitude
or it controls you.

I've learned-
that regardless of how hot and steamy
a relationship is at first, the passion fades
and there had better be something else
to take its place.

I've learned-
that heroes are the people
who do what has to be done
when it needs to be done,
regardless of the consequences.

I've learned-
that money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I've learned-
that my best friend and I can do anything
or nothing and have the best time.

I've learned-
that sometimes the people you expect
to kick you when you're down
will be the ones to help you get back up.

I've learned-
that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be
angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

I've learned-
that true friendship continues to grow,
even over the longest distance.
Same goes for true love.

I've learned-
that just because someone doesn't love
you the way you want them to doesn't
mean they don't love you with all they have.

I've learned-
that no matter how good a friend is,
they're going to hurt you every once in a while
and you must forgive them for that.

I've learned-
that it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others.
Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I've learned-
that no matter how bad your heart is broken
the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I've learned-
that our background and circumstances
may have influenced who we are,
but we are responsible for who we become.

I've learned-
that just because two people argue,
it doesn't mean they don't love each other
And just because they don't argue,
it doesn't mean they do.

I've learned-
that we don't have to change friends
if we understand that friends change.

I've learned-
that you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret.
It could change your life forever.

I've learned-
that two people can look at the exact same thing
and see something totally different.

I've learned-
that your life can be changed in a matter of hours
by people who don't even know you.

I've learned-
that even when you think you have no more to give,
when a friend cries out to you,
you will find the strength to help.

I've learned-
that credentials on the wall
do not make you a decent human being.

I've learned-
that the people you care about most in life
are taken from you too soon



This was written by someone very dear to me, but I won't out them, if they want to come forward and claim it as their right then you will know.

[bigbadmax]

If

by Rudyard Kipling

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
‘ Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Jerusalem by William Blake

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

[void()]

The first time I read this it struck me and I memorized it then. I was about 12-13 and it's brought me strength many times though the years.


Invictus

I like this one as well. _IF_ is good as well.

Void smiles after reading _Criminal_.

[Miehm]

Kipling has always moved me, but there's another I can't recall the name, or even the whole poem. My favorite by Kipling is certainly a Hymn before action. Next after that is That Day, followed by the Sons of Martha.

THE EARTH is full of anger,
The seas are dark with wrath,
The Nations in their harness
Go up against our path:
Ere yet we loose the legions—
Ere yet we draw the blade,
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, aid!

High lust and froward bearing,
Proud heart, rebellious brow—
Deaf ear and soul uncaring,
We seek Thy mercy now!
The sinner that forswore Thee,
The fool that passed Thee by,
Our times are known before Thee—
Lord, grant us strength to die!

For those who kneel beside us
At altars not Thine own,
Who lack the lights that guide us,
Lord, let their faith atone.
If wrong we did to call them,
By honour bound they came;
Let not Thy Wrath befall them,
But deal to us the blame.

From panic, pride, and terror,
Revenge that knows no rein,
Light haste and lawless error,
Protect us yet again.
Cloak Thou our undeserving,
Make firm the shuddering breath,
In silence and unswerving
To taste Thy lesser death!

Ah, Mary pierced with sorrow,
Remember, reach and save
The soul that comes to-morrow
Before the God that gave!
Since each was born of woman,
For each at utter need—
True comrade and true foeman—
Madonna, intercede!

E’en now their vanguard gathers,
E’en now we face the fray—
As Thou didst help our fathers,
Help Thou our host to-day!
Fulfilled of signs and wonders,
In life, in death made clear—
Jehovah of the Thunders,
Lord God of Battles, hear!

[b3atl3sf4n]

Anna Belle Lee by Edgar Allen Poe.