GoonSquad
Gadfly or Fly Food?
Joined: May 12, 2007
Age: 43
Posts: 3592
Location: International House of Paincakes...
|
 Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 7:10 pm Post subject: Poem in Your Pocket Day!!!!! |
 |
|
4/26/12 is Poem in Your Pocket Day! CLICK!
Share your favorite (original or not) poems here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From Blake's Song of Innocence
| Quote: | The Chimney Sweeper (Songs of Innocence), 1789
When my mother died I was very young,
And my father sold me while yet my tongue
Could scarcely cry " 'weep! 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!"
So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep.
There's little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head,
That curl'd llke a lamb's back. was shav'd: so I said
"Hush. Tom! never mind it, for when your head's bare
You know that the soot cannot spoil your white hair."
And so he was quiet & that very night,
As Tom was a-sleeping, he had such a sight!
That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned or Jack.
Were all of them lock'd up in coffins of black.
And by came an Angel who had a bright key,
And he open'd the coffins & set them all free;
Then down a green plain leaping, laughing, they run,
And wash in a river. and shine in the Sun.
Then naked & white, all their bags left behind,
They rise upon clouds and sport in the wind;
And the Angel told Tom, if he'd be a good boy,
He'd have God for his father & never want joy.
And so Tom awoke; and we rose in the dark.
And got with our bags & our brushes to work.
Tho' the morning was cold, Tom was happy & warm;
So if all do their duty they need not fear harm. |
Such beautiful and CUTTING social commentary...
Here's a favorite modern poem by Delmore Schwartz:
| Quote: | Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day
Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(... that time is the fire in which we burn.)
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn ...)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(... that time is the fire in which they burn.)
Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;
Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.
|
Star Trek steals from the best! 
_________________
If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.~Marcus Aurelius |
|
| Back to top |
|
Mirror21
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 17, 2011
Age: 30
Posts: 1570
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
The land of tears--By Me
There is a secret place
Where humans go alone
It is dark and quiet
Except for human sobs
It is a cave so round and large
That a whole city could fit inside it
But when we all go there
We travel within it alone
The sun filters in through cracks
Better to see the flowing tears
It dries them as it can
We let them flow as we must
And when our chest is dry
So dry that even sobs sound strange
We make our way outside the cave
And hope never to see it again
Then some great beauty
Or some great sorrow
Rushes like an unbridled tide
And we run again to this land of tears
This secret cave
And cry |
|
| Back to top |
|
RainShadow
Blue Jay
Joined: Apr 17, 2012
Posts: 88
|
| Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2012 8:33 pm Post subject: |
|
|
This is an original piece I wrote for NAPOWRIMO (National Poetry Writing Month)
Teenage Love As I Knew It
My heart was violated
My body was broken
My eyes teared up
My soul cried out.
You never loved me
I was stupid to love you.
You forced my hand
I lost my trust.
You raised your voice
I lost my faith.
You raised your hand
I lost my love.
You were the first
Though not the last.
You violated my heart
You broke my body
You made me cry
You crushed my soul.
And for something a little less wrist slitting:
Shel Silverstein (A favorite along with EAP)
| Quote: |
The Nap Taker
No -- I did not take a nap --
The nap -- took -- me
Off the bed and out the window
Far beyond the sea,
To a land where sleepy heads
Read only comic books
And lock their naps in iron safes
So that they can't get took.
And soon as I came to that land,
I also came to grief.
The people pointed at me, shouting,
"Where's the nap, you thief?"
They took me to the courthouse.
The judge put on his cap.
He said, "My child, you are on trial
For taking someone's nap.
"Yes, all you selfish children,
You think just of yourselves
And don't care if the nap you take
Belongs to someone else.
It happens that the nap you took
Without a thought or care
Belongs to Bonnie Bowlingbrook,
Who's sittin' cryin' there.
"She hasn't slept in quite some time--
Just see her eyelids flap.
She's tired drowsy -- cranky too,
'Cause guess who took her nap?"
The jury cried, "You're guilty, yes,
You're guilty as can be,
But just return the nap took
And we might set you free."
"I did not take that nap," I cried,
"I give my solemn vow,
And if I took it by mistake
I do not have it now."
"Oh fiddle-fudge," cried out the judge,
Your record looks quite sour.
Last night I see you stole a kiss,
Last week you took a shower,
"You beat your eggs, you've whipped your cream,
At work you punched the clock,
You've even killed an hour or two,
We've heard you darn your socks,
We know you shot a basketball,
You've stolen second base,
And we can see you're guilty
From the sleep that's on your face.
"Go lie down on your blanket now
And cry your guilty tears.
I sentence you to one long nap
For ninety million years.
And when the other children see
This nap that never ends,
No child will ever dare to take
Somebody's nap again."
-Shel Silverstein
|
A Side not, I just realized that it's not 4/26 here  I'm a whole day early. It's all good, only 4 hours 22 minutes to go. |
|
| Back to top |
|
minotaurheadcheese
Velociraptor
Joined: Apr 21, 2012
Posts: 412
Location: the lone lands
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:55 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Here is one of my all-time favorite poems, "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold:
| Quote: | The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the {AE}gean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night. |
And here is something I recently wrote myself.
| Quote: | Grendel
I heard fall the first foot of heathen man on these dark shores:
Tree and hill were not alone in those years before time.
Prowled I foeless then, fatherless, and tree and hill were mine.
A mother bore me, no weaver of peace or girdle,
For naked walked we and our own in the deep and
Silent leaves of unuttered centuries.
Creaking boats carried speech-bearers far from kenning.
Kithless tongues resounded, and the silence listened
Waiting. An inbreath, and the axe
Splintered the astonished wood,
Turgid arms ripped from growing stalk,
Lithe virgin beech stripped and rent asunder
In rows erect were roofed, were raised.
A harp struck began the song
Awoke the world, and time was born
Kept and marked by the meter of advancing feet
Forever sundered slipped mothernight, in pit and heath a little
While to linger, to slumber unwaking in the forgotten.
Though the swords were sheathed, the torches flared and smoked
Flame leapt, clearing to clearing, and shadow fled.
It was then the wild heart was pierced, before the drawing of bright blades,
Song answered by wordless scream,
Black the blood bespeaking the mortal wound.
Doomed am I, keening, in the mists of foredawn to roam the silent hills unraveling.
My name burns on mirth-hall walls
Its syllables light the winding ways forth for far speech-bearers
But who will hear the cry in the night that screams “No more”?
--That bitters mead and molders in the unseasoned walls: No more
The naked shores where feet may fall anew
No more the upstretched arms of beech that grasp the moon
The dark heart beats no more upon the moors
And I in ancient darkness walk no more.
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
Bun
Bunnymen
Joined: Jan 09, 2012
Posts: 3250
|
| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 11:05 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I don't know too many poems...
| Quote: | He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise.
William Blake |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
Kein_Mitleid
Raven
Joined: Sep 25, 2011
Age: 20
Posts: 102
Location: West Virginia
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:08 am Post subject: |
|
|
I would like to share with you guys a haiku I made.
A haiku for you
This is a haiku for you
A haiku for you
a++ haiku |
|
| Back to top |
|
auntblabby
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief
Joined: Feb 13, 2010
Posts: 18189
Location: the island of loveable toy humans
|
| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:09 am Post subject: |
|
|
MY DONKEY-
everyone's got a donkey all their own-
no matter if one is supine or prone.
stand with back to mirror, with 'nother mirror in hand,
and you'll see straightaway, your donkey behind your gland.
though a few are quiet, most bray and sometimes stink-
but be glad you got one, 'else you couldn't sit, methinks.  |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
