Some Poems That We Might share ....

humegotitright

May I ask you why you like this poem? That does not mean that I do not like it. The imagery is, of course, very strong. You can ‘see’ what is happening in your mind’s eye. It’s almost like prose as it does not rhyme.

And this one was interesting… I think perhaps by the time he was finished writing it, he had had a great catharsis. Clarke’s use of the “F” word, well, of course along with his depiction of Chickentown does seem to paint a picture of how ‘futile’ life seems to be there in ‘Chickentown’ and maybe because of the absurdity of it, it can be seen as funny. You simply have to laugh in a place like that. His ranting is pretty nihilistic and maybe by the end of it, he’s well spent enough to be a little refreshed.

I think it would probably make a great rap song…though i don’t actually like rap, at least not the violent rap, I do like rap that tells a story, that is intelligent and makes you think. It can be seen as a funny poem.

There are many chickentowns in the world. Thank you for the poems humegotitright…

THE LITTLE BLACK BOY
William Blake

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:

"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

"And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

“For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, ‘Come out from the grove, my love and care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice’,”

Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy

I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.

Ah, I loved this poem…beautiful…full of love and compassion and understanding. I cry by the end of every reading of it. The very first time i read it, I cried and I thought my heart would break.

I believe that Blake was actually referring to a boy from ‘India’ when he wrote this but I can every bit as much imagine the words coming from the mind and the voice of a black boy too. There are spirits in the world like this.

I remember studying it in school. The poet, Edwin Morgan, is one of Scotland’s most famous poets, and we looked at a number of his poems. The imagery as you say is strong, and for me it highlights the issue prevelant in our society of seeing bad things happen, yet doing nothing about it. The most striking lines for me are the last two;

“In the background two drivers
keep their eyes on the road.”

The two drivers, see what is going on, yet do nothing.

Evidently Chickentown is a great poem. John Cooper Clarke has a whole range of poems that are hilarious, but this one strikes a chord with me due to the drudgery of ‘chickentown’, which as you say, could be anywhere.

Here’s another from John Cooper Clarke:

(I Married A) Monster From Outer Space

The milky way she walks around
All feet firmly off the ground
Two worlds collide, two worlds collide
Here comes the future bride
Gimme a lift to the lunar base
I wanna marry a monster from outer space

I fell in love with an alien being
whose skin was jelly - whose teeth were green
she had the big bug eyes and the death-ray glare
feet like water wings - purple hair
I was over the moon - I asked her back to my place
then I married the monster - from outer space

The days were numbered - the nights were spent
in a rent free furnished oxygen tent
when a cyborg chef served up moon beams
done super rapid on a laser beam
I needed nutrition to keep up the pace
when I married the monster from outer space

We walked out - tentacle in hand
you could sense that the earthlings would not understand
they’d go… nudge nudge …when we got off the bus
saying it’s extra-terrestial - not like us
and it’s bad enough with another race
but fuck me… a monster …from outer space

In a cybernetic fit of rage
she pissed off to another age
she lives in 1999
with her new boyfriend - a blob of slime
each time I see her translucent face
I remember the monster from outer space

DO NOT STAND AT MY GRAVE AND WEEP
Mary Elizabeth Frye

Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep,
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the Diamond glints on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle Autumn rain

When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quite birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there ,I did not die

I DO NOT THINK MY SONG WILL END
Johnny Hathcock

I do not think my song will end
While flowers, grass and trees
Abound with birds and butterflies
For I am one with these.

And I believe my voice will sound
Upon the whispering wind
So long as even one remains
Among those I call “friend.”

I shall remain in hearts and minds
Of loved ones that I knew,
And in the rocks and hills and streams
Because I love those, too.

So long as love and hope and dreams
Abide in earth and sky,
Weep not for me, though I be gone.
I shall not really die.

For my friend…
trmsu

THE SERENITY IN STONES
Simon J. Ortiz

I am holding this turquoise
in my hands.
My hands hold the sky
wrought in this little stone.
There is a cloud
at the furthest boundary.
The world is somewhere underneath.

I turn the stone, and there is more sky.
This is the serenity possible in stones,
the place of a feeling to which one belongs.
I am happy as I hold this sky
in my hands, in my eyes, and in myself.

Beautiful…
May we all find our own…
Mine is deep indigo…

That is wonderful.

Yes, it is.

A WAVE
Gussie Osborne

I sat on the beach and a beautiful wave
Came tumbling right up to me.
It threw some pink shells on the sand at my feet,
Then hurried straight back out to sea.

It ran away swiftly and leaped up in foam;
It bumped other waves in its glee.
I think it was hurrying to gather more shells,
To bring as a present for me.

My serenity…

Beautiful

One blessing had I, than the rest
So larger to my eyes
That I stopped gauging, satisfied,
For this enchanted size.

It was the limit of my dream,
The focus of my prayer,—
A perfect, paralyzing bliss
Contented as despair.

I knew no more of want or cold,
Phantasms both become,
For this new value in the soul,
Supremest earthly sum.

The heaven below the heaven above
Obscured with ruddier hue,
Life’s latitude leant over-full;
The judgment perished, too.

Why joys so scantily disburse,
Why Paradise defer,
Why floods are served to us in bowls,—
I speculate no more.

Not with a club the heart is broken,
Nor with a stone;
A whip, so small you could not see it,
I’ve known

To lash the magic creature
Till it fell,
Yet that whip’s name too noble
Then to tell.

Magnanimous of bird
By boy descried,
To sing unto the stone
Of which it died.

It’s all I have to bring to-day,
This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget,—
Some one the sun could tell,—
This, and my heart, and all the bees
Which in the clover dwell.

VIEWED FROM ANOTHER ANGLE
By David Pedlow

Grey the wind, grey the earth, grey the sky:
Ragged nimbus fringes mist the view;
The engine’s beat, turned back by earth and cloud
Pulses round my brain; flying in a world of grey.

Patches of sepia light brown the ripening crop
And then extinguish. The sun’s full circle,
Paler than last evening’s moon,
Washes the level barley fields, then disappears.

The grey cathedral roof writhes, warps, tears,
And for an instant perforates; creating space
In which I spiral tightly upwards,
Brushing against the breathing droplet walls of cloud.

I climb and climb past living cliffs, now black
Now grey, now white; bursting at last
Into an arctic world, whose powerful sun
Throws haloed shadows on the towering pack

Of icy crystals, that filter colour out from light
Still struggling down to earth.
Blue the sky, blinding the sun, brilliant the cloud,
That to those, earthbound, weeps down in shades of grey.

NIGHT
William Blake

The sun descending in the west,
The evening star does shine;
The birds are silent in their nest,
And I must seek for mine.
The moon, like a flower,
In heaven’s high bower,
With silent delight
Sits and smiles on the night.

Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen they pour blessing,
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.

They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm.
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.

When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep.
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.

And there the lion’s ruddy eyes
Shall flow with tears of gold,
And pitying the tender cries,
And walking round the fold,
Saying, "Wrath, by His meekness,
And, by His health, sickness
Is driven away
From our immortal day.

“And now beside thee, bleating lamb,
I can lie down and sleep;
Or think on Him who bore thy name,
Graze after thee and weep.
For, washed in life’s river,
My bright mane for ever
Shall shine like the gold
As I guard o’er the fold.”

Shame need not crouch

In such an Earth as Ours-

Shame-stand erect-

The Universe is yours.

Her poetry IS beautiful.

This poem sort of reminds me of your avatar.
Someone who has given it all but still does not even know it.
So beautiful but sad.

conceive a man,should he have anything
would give a little more than it away

(his autumn’s winter being summer’s spring
who moved by standing in november’s may)
from whose (if loud most howish time derange

the silent why’s of such a deathlessness)
remembrance might no patient mind unstrange
learn (nor could all earth’s rotting scholars guess
that life shall not for living find the rule)

and dark beginnings are his luminous ends
who far less lonely than a fire is cool
took bedfellows for moons mountains for friends

—open your thighs to fate and (if you can
withholding nothing) World,conceive a man

e.e. cummings

love’s function is to fabricate unknownness

(known being wishless;but love,all of wishing)
though life’s lived wrongsideout,sameness chokes oneness
truth is confused with fact,fish boast of fishing

and men are caught by worms (love may not care
if time totters,light droops,all measures bend
nor marvel if a thought should weigh a star
—dreads dying least;and less,that death should end)

how lucky lovers are (whose selves abide
under whatever shall discovered be)
whose ignorant each breathing dares to hide
more than most fabulous wisdom fears to see

(who laugh and cry) who dream,create and kill
while the whole moves;and every part stands still:

e.e. cummings

MIRACLES
Walt Whitman

WHY! who makes much of a miracle?
As to me, I know of nothing else but miracles,
Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,
Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,
Or wade with naked feet along the beach, just in the edge of the
water,
Or stand under trees in the woods,
Or talk by day with any one I love–or sleep in the bed at night with
any one I love,
Or sit at table at dinner with my mother,
Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,
Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive, of a summer forenoon, 10
Or animals feeding in the fields,
Or birds–or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,
Or the wonderfulness of the sun-down–or of stars shining so quiet
and bright,
Or the exquisite, delicate, thin curve of the new moon in spring;
Or whether I go among those I like best, and that like me best–
mechanics, boatmen, farmers,
Or among the savans–or to the soiree–or to the opera,
Or stand a long while looking at the movements of machinery,
Or behold children at their sports,
Or the admirable sight of the perfect old man, or the perfect old
woman,
Or the sick in hospitals, or the dead carried to burial, 20
Or my own eyes and figure in the glass;
These, with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,
The whole referring–yet each distinct, and in its place.

To me, every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the
same,
Every foot of the interior swarms with the same;
Every spear of grass–the frames, limbs, organs, of men and women,
and all that concerns them,
All these to me are unspeakably perfect miracles.

To me the sea is a continual miracle; 30
The fishes that swim–the rocks–the motion of the waves–the ships,
with men in them,
What stranger miracles are there?

when serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage—
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age

when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
—and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close

when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn—valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude—and march
denounces april as a saboteur

then we’ll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind (and not until)

Then out of the beautiful Moment we shall be.
Wow, that was a beautiful poem.
I so love poetry.
Thank you Three Times Great
t