Post Your Fave Poems

[Xervello]

Dorothy Parker's "A Certain Lady"

Oh, I can smile for you, and tilt my head,
And drink your rushing words with eager lips,
And paint my mouth for you a fragrant red,
And trace your brows with tutored finger-tips.
When you rehearse your list of loves to me,
Oh, I can laugh and marvel, rapturous-eyed.
And you laugh back, nor can you ever see
The thousand little deaths my heart has died.
And you believe, so well I know my part,
That I am gay as morning, light as snow,
And all the straining things within my heart
You'll never know.

Oh, I can laugh and listen, when we meet,
And you bring tales of fresh adventurings, --
Of ladies delicately indiscreet,
Of lingering hands, and gently whispered things.
And you are pleased with me, and strive anew
To sing me sagas of your late delights.
Thus do you want me -- marveling, gay, and true,
Nor do you see my staring eyes of nights.
And when, in search of novelty, you stray,
Oh, I can kiss you blithely as you go ....
And what goes on, my love, while you're away,
You'll never know.

 

[Xervello]

Sylvia Plath's "Daddy"

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of *you*,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
and drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always *knew* it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

 

[Liliford_]

'Dulce et Decorum Est' Wilfred Owen.


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

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

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

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

 

[Xervello]

Haunting description of war. Nice choice, Lils. I had to look up what that latin phrase meant. For those who don't know, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori means 'it is sweet and right to die for your country'.

 

[Kiwong]

Spring Hail by Les Murray

Spring Hail - Les Murray - Poem - Australian Poetry Library

 

[hidwell]

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone


W. H. Auden


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.

 

[Xervello]

I remember that from Four Weddings and a Funeral, hidwell.

 

[hidwell]

I remember that from Four Weddings and a Funeral, hidwell.

I have seen the movie, but didn't recall that poem in it. I recall the poem from a T.V. show about 3 years ago.

 

[Xervello]

Matthew read it during the eulogy at Gareth's funeral.

 

[Xervello]

Sara Teasdale's "The Look"

Strephon kissed me in the spring,
Robin in the fall,
But Colin only looked at me
And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,
Robin's lost in play,
But the kiss in Colin's eyes
Haunts me night and day.

 

[kihira]

'Codicil' from R. F. Delderfield's 'Diana'

On Foxhayes edge go scatter my ashes
above the ground in sunlit splashes,
Where all about my powdered bones
the trefoil weaves between the stones.
Where what I was feeds foxglove roots
and robust April parsley shoots
Five miles or more from a churchyard drab
where underneath a lettered slab,
the body that has served me well
would bloat in clay, pathetic shell.
At Foxhayes edge atop the grass
I'll sense successive seasons pass
I'll see the beeches overhead
turn tangerine and rusty red
I'll hear the sky-seen of the their leaves
wind gossiping to younger trees.
Then, with the fall of blue-smoke dusk
I'll settle in the rustling husk
of brittle, sun-dried bracken stalk
to hear the spruce and larches talk
And see the lovers come and go;
or later, when the New Years snow
builds up in drifts below the hedge
crisping the blades of dock and sedge
I'll wait content, to stir in sleep
the hour the earliest violets peep
for with them all the wood will rustle
under the west wind's old maid's bustle
lifting perhaps a speck of me
and bearing it due south to sea

 

[Xervello]

I'll hear the sky-seen of the their leaves
wind gossiping to younger trees.

I love that line.

 

[Xervello]

Lascelles Abercrombie's "The Box"

Once upon a time, in the land of Hush-A-Bye,
Around about the wondrous days of yore,
They came across a kind of box
Bound up with chains and locked with locks
And labeled "Kindly do not touch; it's war."
A decree was issued round about, and all with a flourish and a shout
And a gaily colored mascot tripping lightly on before.
Don't fiddle with this deadly box, or break the chains, or pick the locks.
And please don't ever play about with war.
The children understood. Children happen to be good
And they were just as good around the time of yore.
They didn't try to pick the locks or break into that deadly box.
They never tried to play about with war.
Mommies didn't either; sisters, aunts, grannies neither
'Cause they were quiet, and sweet, and pretty
In those wondrous days of yore.
Well, very much the same as now,
And not the ones to blame somehow
For opening up that deadly box of war.
But someone did. Someone battered in the lid
And spilled the insides out across the floor.
A kind of bouncy, bumpy ball made up of guns and flags
And all the tears, and horror, and death that comes with war.
It bounced right out and went bashing all about,
Bumping into everything in store.
And what was sad and most unfair
Was that it didn't really seem to care
Much who it bumped, or why, or what, or for.
It bumped the children mainly. And I'll tell you this quite plainly,
It bumps them every day and more, and more,
And leaves them dead, and burned, and dying
Thousands of them sick and crying.
'Cause when it bumps, it's really very sore.
Now there's a way to stop the ball. It isn't difficult at all.
All it takes is wisdom, and I'm absolutely sure
That we can get it back into the box,
And bind the chains, and lock the locks.
But no one seems to want to save the children anymore.
Well, that's the way it all appears, 'cause it's been bouncing round for years and years
In spite of all the wisdom wizzed since those wondrous days of yore
And the time they came across the box,
Bound up with chains and locked with locks,
And labeled "Kindly do not touch; it's war."

 

[Sial Axetder]

 

[hidwell]

When I reveal my weaknesses
Please handle them with care;
Can you accept them with respect
And show me you’re still there?

For I am lonely deep inside,
Unsure of who I am;
Unable to face normal things,
Just doing what I can.

How can I expose my soul?
Tell what I feel inside?
It often creates ridicule,
That’s why I’ve learnt to hide.

Remind me of the little things
That I am valued for,
And gently, please accompany me
Towards the opening door.

 

[jaim38]

^I like this poem. It speaks to me.

 

[Xervello]

When I reveal my weaknesses
Please handle them with care;
Can you accept them with respect
And show me you’re still there?

For I am lonely deep inside,
Unsure of who I am;
Unable to face normal things,
Just doing what I can.

How can I expose my soul?
Tell what I feel inside?
It often creates ridicule,
That’s why I’ve learnt to hide.

Remind me of the little things
That I am valued for,
And gently, please accompany me
Towards the opening door.

Was that written by you?

 

[Mito]

Far Arden - Wilderness (Jim Morrison)

And so I say to you
The silk handkerchief was
Embroidered in China or Japan
Behind the steel curtain
And no one can cross the borderline
without proper credentials.
This is to say that we are all
Sensate and occasionally sad
And if every partner in crime
Were to incorporate promises
In his program the dance
Might end and all our friends
would follow.
Who are our friends?
Are they sullen and slow?
Do they have great desire?
Or are they one of the multitude who
Walk doubting their impossible regret.
Certainly things happen and reoccur
in continuous promise.
All of us have found a safe niche
Where we can store up riches and talk to our fellows
On the same premise of disaster
But this will not do.
No, this will never do.
These are continents and shores which
Beseech our understanding.
Seldom have we been so slow.
Seldom have we been so far.
My only wish is to see
Far Arden again.
The truth is on his chest
The cellular excitement has
Totally inspired our magic Veteran.
And now for an old trip.
I'm tired of thinking.
I want the old forms to reassert their sexual cool.
My mind is just - you know.
And this morning before I sign off
I would like to tell you about Texas Radio & the Big Beat.
It moves into the perimeter of
Your sacred sincere and dedicated smile
Like a calm surviver of the psychic war.
He was no general for he was not old.
He was no private for he could not be sold.
He was only a man and his
Dedication extended to the last degree.
Poor pretentious soldier, come home.

 

[Shenmue]

"A Prayer for Clowns"

God bless all clowns.
Who star in the world with laughter,
Who ring the rafters with flying jest,
Who make the world spin merry on its way.

God bless all clowns.
So poor the world would be,
Lacking their piquant touch, hilarity,
The belly laughs, the ringing lovely.

God bless all clowns.
Give them a long good life,
Make bright their way—they're a race apart!
Alchemists most, who turn their hearts' pain,
Into a dazzling jest to lift the heart.
God bless all clowns.

 

[planemo]

shakespeare - sonnetXXX

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancelled woe,
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight:
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restor'd and sorrows end.