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Poetry Thread

Started by Biggus Dickus, September 11, 2021, 05:18:22 PM

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billy rubin



set the function, not the mechanism.

Biggus Dickus

The Nature Poem, by Richard Brautigan

The moon
is Hamlet
on a motorcycle
coming down
a dark road.
He is wearing
a black leather
jacket and
boots.
I have nowhere
to go.
I will ride
all night.
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

billy rubin

eliot drives me nuts i consider eliot to be pompous and self consciously affected in his smarmy intellectual style and pretentious and superficial appropriation of the literature of other cultures

and i keep coming back to his stuff over and over

i cant help myself

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
BY T. S. ELIOT

S'io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s'i'odo il vero,
Senza tema d'infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
               And should I then presume?
               And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet — and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"—
If one, settling a pillow by her head
               Should say: "That is not what I meant at all;
               That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
               "That is not it at all,
               That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind?   Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.


set the function, not the mechanism.

Biggus Dickus

What do you call a smart poem?


A High-Q

8)
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Davin

Quote from: Papasito Bruno on September 30, 2021, 01:50:11 PM
What do you call a smart poem?


A High-Q

8)
;D

A really quick pun

What is a smart poem called?

I'd say a High-Q
Always question all authorities because the authority you don't question is the most dangerous... except me, never question me.

Biggus Dickus

Quote from: Davin on September 30, 2021, 03:17:04 PM
Quote from: Papasito Bruno on September 30, 2021, 01:50:11 PM
What do you call a smart poem?


A High-Q

8)
;D

A really quick pun

What is a smart poem called?

I'd say a High-Q

That's a really good Hi-Q! 8)
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Bluenose

I read this at my sister's funeral yesterday:

An extract from the poem Wherever You Go by the Monks of Western Priory

I want to say something to all of you
who have become a part
of the fabric of my life.

The colour and texture
which you have brought into my being
have become a song,
and I will sing it forever.
There is an energy in us
which makes things happen
when the paths of other persons touch ours.
And we have to be there,
and let it happen.

When the time of our particular sunset comes,
our thing, our accomplishment
won't really matter a great deal.

But the clarity and care
with which we have loved others
will speak with vitality
of the great gift of life
we have been for each other.
+++ Divide by cucumber error: please reinstall universe and reboot.  +++

GNU Terry Pratchett


Dark Lightning

I don't know how you could get through that, reading it aloud. I teared up just reading it.  :hug:

Biggus Dickus

Quote from: Dark Lightning on October 07, 2021, 11:02:12 PM
I don't know how you could get through that, reading it aloud. I teared up just reading it.  :hug:

Yeah, me too...very beautiful poem.
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Biggus Dickus

"The Garden" by Franta Bass.

Franta was a Czech Jewish boy born in Brno on 4 September 1930, deported to Theresienstadt ghetto on 2 December 1941 (He wrote the poem while he was in the ghetto).

He was murdered in Auschwitz on 30 October 1944.



"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

Magdalena


"I've had several "spiritual" or numinous experiences over the years, but never felt that they were the product of anything but the workings of my own mind in reaction to the universe." ~Recusant

Biggus Dickus

No Images
by, Waring Cuney

She does not know
Her beauty,
She thinks her brown body
Has no glory.

If she could dance
Naked,
Under palm trees
And see her image in the river
She would know.

But there are no palm trees
On the street,
And dish water gives back no images.
"Some people just need a high-five. In the face. With a chair."

billy rubin

stupid eliot

i was reciting crap from the wasteland last night

and then there was this


Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.


set the function, not the mechanism.

No one

Allen and Walt say
that mister twenty fifteen
makes killer melktert

billyportne

Yes, seems like poetry is less popular than it once was but it still has the power to evoke a fresh look at everyday things. Here's my contribution. I once titled it Apotheosis but recently decided to title it Only She Knows.

When I was a boy,
God was a bearded old man—
an unapproachable Father
who came down from the mountain
with a long list of naughty and nice.

In my prodigal youth,
God was a lawless young man—
a coming-of-age Adventurer
who chose self over service,
growing up over buckling down.

When I grew up,
God became a long-legged Goddess,
breathlessly beautiful and mellifluously mine
on moon-lit nights.

After the war,
God was a grim Reaper
bleeding my world of art, leaves and common sense.

Now,
with the years piled up like pages in a book,
one on top of the other,
God is a Mother
birthing and nursing our times together
and apart.

Only She knows,
when it's time to say goodbye,
what severance we will suffer,
what separation we must endure.
Happiness is like moonshine. Make your own and you'll never run out. But keep in mind that life is not a playground. It's a classroom where you get the test first and the lesson after.