A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Dave!

Malayalam wrote: »

Freedom by Seán O Riordain

(I love this poem, sometimes I read the Irish version aloud for myself, to keep the language alive in my head, and because i think it sounds better in the Irish original. PS it's a satire)

I’ll go out and mingle with people.
I’ll head down on my own two feet.
I’ll walk down tonight.

I’ll go down looking for Confinedom,
counteract the rabid freedom
coursing here.

I’ll fetter the pack of snarling thoughts
hounding me
in my aloneness.

I’ll look for a regular chapel
chock-a-block with people
at a set time.

I’ll seek the company of folk
who never practise freedom,
nor aloneness,

and listen to pennythoughts
exchanged
like something coined.

I’ll bear affection for people
without anything original
in their stockthoughts.

I’ll stay with them day and night.
I’ll be humble
and loyal to their snuffed minds

since I heard them
rising in my mind
without control.

I’ll give all my furious affection
to everything that binds them
to every stockthing:

to control, to contracts, to the communal temple,
to the poor common word,
to the concise time,

to the cowl, to the cockerel, to the cook,
to the weak comparison,
to the coward,

to the cosy mouse, to the cost, to the covert flea,
to the code, to the codex,
to the codicil,

to the cocky coming and going,
to the costly night gambling,
to the conferred blessing,

to the concerned farmer testing
the wind, contemplating
a field of corn,
to co-understanding, to co-memory,
to the co-behaviour of co-people,
to the co-stockthing.

And I condemn now and forever
the goings-on of freedom,
independence.

The mind is finished
that falls into the abyss of freedom.
There’s no hills made by god there,
only abstract hills — specifically of the imagination.
Every hill crawls with desires
that climb without ever reaching fulfilment.
There’s no limit to freedom
on Mount Fancy,
nor is there limit to desire,
nor any relief
to be found.



Saoirse

Raghaidh mé síos i measc na ndaoine
De shiúl mo chos
Is raghaidh mé síos anocht.

Raghaidh mé síos ag lorg daoirse
Ón mbinibshaoirse
Tá ag liú anseo

Is ceanglód an chonairt smaointe
Tá ag drannadh im thimpeall
San uaigneas

Is loirgeod an teampall rialta
Bhionn lán de dhaoine
Ag am fé leith

Is loirgeod comhluadar daoine
Nár chleacht riamh saoirse,
Ná uaigneas.
Is éistfead leis na scillingsmaointe,
A malartaítear
Mar airgead.

Is bhféarfad gean mo chroí do dhaoine
Nár samhlaidh riamh leo
Ach macsmaointe.

Ó fanfad libh de ló is d’oiche,
Is beidh mé íseal,
Is beidh mé dílis,
D’bhur snabsmaointe.

Mar do chuala iad ag fás im intinn,
Ag fás gan chuimse,
Gan mheasarthacht.

Is do thugas gean mo chroí go fíochmhar
Don rud tá srianta,
Don gach macrud.

Don smacht, don reacht, don teampall daoineach,
Don bhfocal bocht coitianta
Don am fé leith.

Don ab, don chlog, don seirbhiseach
Don chomparáid fhaitíosach,
Don bheaguchtach.

Don luch, don tomhas, don dreancaid bhideach,
Don chaibidil, don líne
Don aibítir.

Don mhórgacht imeachta is tíochta,
Don chearrbhachas istoíche,
Don bheannachtain.

Don bhfeirmeoir ag tomhas na gaoithe
Sa bhfómhar is é ag cuirnhneamh
Ar pháirc eornan.

Don chomhthuiscint, don chomh-sheanchuimhne,
Do chomhiompar comhdhaoine,
Don chomh-mhacrud

Is bheirim fuath anois is choíche
Do imeachtaí na saoirse,
Don neamhspleáchas.

Is atuirseach an intinn
A thit in iomar doimhin na saoirse,
Ní mhaireann cnoc dar chruthaigh Dia ann,
Ach cnoic theibi, sainchnoic shamhlaíochta.
Is bíonn gach cnoc díobh lán de mhianta
Ag dreapadóireacht gan chomhlíonadh,
Nil teora leis an saoirse
Ná le cnoca na samhlaíochta,
Ná níl teora leis na mianta,
Ná faoiseamh
Le fail.

DunnoKidz wrote: »

Now I wish boards had audio, if only to listen to that ^

Not sure if you guys are aware, but the band the Gloaming do an incredible version of this as Gaeilge, sung by Iarla Ó Lionáird... Enjoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKKjixV1U4Y

Dog walker 1234

The Bustle In A House

The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon Earth -

The Sweeping up the Heart
Putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity -

By Emily Dickinson

This sums up my mood today. A friend's Dad died this morning. Puts things in perspective.

Wowbagger

September 1913


By William Butler Yeats



What need you, being come to sense,

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

And prayer to shivering prayer, until

You have dried the marrow from the bone;

For men were born to pray and save:

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.





Yet they were of a different kind,

The names that stilled your childish play,

They have gone about the world like wind,

But little time had they to pray

For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,

And what, God help us, could they save?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.





Was it for this the wild geese spread

The grey wing upon every tide;

For this that all that blood was shed,

For this Edward Fitzgerald died,

And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,

All that delirium of the brave?

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,

It’s with O’Leary in the grave.





Yet could we turn the years again,

And call those exiles as they were

In all their loneliness and pain,

You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair

Has maddened every mother’s son’:

They weighed so lightly what they gave.

But let them be, they’re dead and gone,

They’re with O’Leary in the grave.

Wowbagger

Lepanto


WHITE founts falling in the courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard, It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips, For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross, The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.

Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young, In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along the winding road the noise of the Crusade. Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war, Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold.

Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, Spurning of his stirrups like the throne of all the world, Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. Love-light of Spain -- hurrah! Death-light of Africa! Don John of Austria Is riding to the sea.

( Only the first few verses as it is a long poem, apologies for the way it turned out)

DunnoKidz

Hope is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

donegal_man

A Clerihew

Sir Henry Rider Haggard
Was completely staggered
When his bride-to-be
Announced, “I am She!”

W.H. Auden

Hector Savage

I've always loved Robert Frost

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Dave!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEC5-3qcJ1c

Spring Offensive
BY WILFRED OWEN

Halted against the shade of a last hill,
They fed, and, lying easy, were at ease
And, finding comfortable chests and knees
Carelessly slept.
But many there stood still
To face the stark, blank sky beyond the ridge,
Knowing their feet had come to the end of the world.
Marvelling they stood, and watched the long grass swirled
By the May breeze, murmurous with wasp and midge,
For though the summer oozed into their veins
Like the injected drug for their bones’ pains,
Sharp on their souls hung the imminent line of grass,
Fearfully flashed the sky’s mysterious glass.

Hour after hour they ponder the warm field—
And the far valley behind, where the buttercups
Had blessed with gold their slow boots coming up,
Where even the little brambles would not yield,
But clutched and clung to them like sorrowing hands;
They breathe like trees unstirred.
Till like a cold gust thrilled the little word
At which each body and its soul begird
And tighten them for battle. No alarms
Of bugles, no high flags, no clamorous haste—
Only a lift and flare of eyes that faced
The sun, like a friend with whom their love is done.
O larger shone that smile against the sun,—
Mightier than his whose bounty these have spurned.

So, soon they topped the hill, and raced together
Over an open stretch of herb and heather
Exposed. And instantly the whole sky burned
With fury against them; and soft sudden cups
Opened in thousands for their blood; and the green slopes
Chasmed and steepened sheer to infinite space.

Of them who running on that last high place
Leapt to swift unseen bullets, or went up
On the hot blast and fury of hell’s upsurge,
Or plunged and fell away past this world’s verge,
Some say God caught them even before they fell.
But what say such as from existence’ brink
Ventured but drave too swift to sink.
The few who rushed in the body to enter hell,
And there out-fiending all its fiends and flames
With superhuman inhumanities,
Long-famous glories, immemorial shames—
And crawling slowly back, have by degrees
Regained cool peaceful air in wonder—
Why speak they not of comrades that went under?

Lisha

https://www.facebook.com/irishtimes/posts/10155625889361158

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/marked-women-unmarked-graves-and-my-typical-irish-childhood-of-sexual-harassment-1.3484373?mode=amp


The following poem by Anne Casey is extracted from the Autonomy anthology.

Still I Rise
(After Maya Angelou, 1928-2014)

You have stalked me down in city streets
With your grubby, prying eyes,
You have rubbed me with your smutty filth
But still, like dust, I rise.

Did my sexiness arouse you?
When I was barely aged thirteen?
When you trailed me with your wanting
Gobbing offers so obscene.

Just like storms and like winds,
Sure as sunset and sunrise,
As the stars climb the night skies,
Still I’ll rise.

When you followed me at eight
Years old to display your naked crotch,
Did my gaping mouth excite you?
Did you want to make me watch?

Does my indifference offend you?
Doesn’t make you quite so hard?
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got diamonds
In my own precious heart.

You may slam me with your words,
You may strip me with your eyes,
You may score me with your coarseness,
But still, like your heat, I’ll rise

Does my derisiveness distress you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I talk like I’ve got tactics
In the space behind my eyes?

Out of the sheds of men’s shamefulness
I rise
Up from an antiquity of blamefulness
I rise

I am handed down from Amazons, baptised in their blood
Daughter of Eve, I’d see you crawling in the mud.
Leaving behind nights of secrets and dread
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s flushed fulsome red
I rise
Bringing the rage that my fine sisters gave,
I am the cry and the call of the brave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Ipso

Reading On the Beach by Nevil Shute at the minute, so I looked this one up.

The Hollow Men - TS Elliot


Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

Sheridan81

GENETICS by Sinead Morrissey

My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –
I know my parents made me by my hands.

They may have been repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.

With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river,
at least I know their marriage by my hands.

I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
And when I turn it over,
my father’s by my fingers, my mother’s by my palms

demure before a priest reciting psalms.
My body is their marriage register.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.

So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
We know our parents make us by our hands.

DunnoKidz

(Sonnet XXVII)
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.

Wowbagger

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

(In need of a bit of peace I thought of this)

DunnoKidz

'TIS THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER
Thomas Moore (1779-1852)

'TIS the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone ;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone ;
No flower of her kindred,
No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
Or give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one !
To pine on the stem ;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
Go sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,
When friendships decay,
And from Love's shining circle
The gems drop away.
When true hearts lie wither'd,
And fond ones are flown,
Oh ! who would inhabit
This bleak world alone ?

DunnoKidz

Meg Merrilies
by John Keats

Old Meg she was a Gipsy,
And liv'd upon the Moors:
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.

Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants pods o' broom;
Her wine was dew of the wild white rose,
Her book a churchyard tomb.

Her Brothers were the craggy hills,
Her Sisters larchen trees—
Alone with her great family
She liv'd as she did please.

No breakfast had she many a morn,
No dinner many a noon,
And 'stead of supper she would stare
Full hard against the Moon.

But every morn of woodbine fresh
She made her garlanding,
And every night the dark glen Yew
She wove, and she would sing.

And with her fingers old and brown
She plaited Mats o' Rushes,
And gave them to the Cottagers
She met among the Bushes.

Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen
And tall as Amazon:
An old red blanket cloak she wore;
A chip hat had she on.
God rest her aged bones somewhere—
She died full long agone!

Sheridan81

THE RETARDED CHILDREN PLAY BASEBALL

Never mind the coaches who try
to teach them the game,
and think of the pleasure

of the large-faced boy
on second who raises hand and glove
straight up making the precise

shape of a ball, even though
the ball’s now over
the outfield. And think of the left

and right fielders going deeper
just to watch its roundness
materialize out of the sky

and drop at their feet. Both teams
are so in love with this moment
when the bat makes the ball jump

or fly that when it happens
everybody shouts, and the girl
with slanted eyes on first base

leaps off to let the batter by.
Forget the coaches shouting back
about the way the game is played

and consider the game
they’re already playing, or playing
perhaps elsewhere on some other field,

like the shortstop, who stands transfixed
all through the action, staring
at what appears to be nothing.

-Wesley McNair

DunnoKidz

Flash

I am less of myself and more of the sun;
The beat of life is wearing me
To an incomplete oblivion,
Yet not to the certain dignity
Of death. They cannot even die
Who have not lived.

The hungry jaws
Of space snap at my unlearned eye,
And time tears in my flesh like claws.

If I am not life’s, if I am not death’s,
Out of chaos I must re-reap
The burden of untasted breaths.
Who has not waked may not yet sleep.

~Hazel Hall

feargale

For the day that's in it:

Ecstasis

If there is
to have been one
moment, it could be this:
body sprung from turf, suspended,
ash-stick hoisted, level and at bay,
arm aloft to pluck a rough-seamed purse
of rag and yarn and glory from the sky;
that instant, all elements of body
and mind outstrained to reach for
the impossible, when, into my
hand like a bird
it came.

- John Fitzgerald.

feargale

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 (1849-1903)

SmallTeapot

Fantastic poem, thanks for sharing Feargale

I especially love the last 2 lines - simply beautiful

feargale wrote: »

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

twignme

Life, believe, is not a dream
so dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
foretells a pleasant day.
Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
but these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
Oh why lament its fall?

- Charlotte Brontë

feargale

Song of Autumn


Soon into frozen shades, like leaves, we'll tumble.
Adieu, short summer's blaze, that shone to mock.
I hear already the funereal rumble
Of logs, as on the paving-stones they shock.
Winter will enter in my soul to dwell —
Rage, hate, fear, horror, labour forced and dire!
My heart will seem, to sun that polar hell,
A dim, red, frozen block, devoid of fire.
Shuddering I hear the heavy thud of fuel.
The building of a gallows sounds as good!
My spirit, like a tower, reels to the cruel
Battering-ram in every crash of wood.
The ceaseless echoes rock me and appal.
They're nailing up a coffin, I'll be bound,
For whom? — Last night was Summer. Here's the Fall.
There booms a farewell volley in the sound.
II
I like die greenish light in your long eyes,
Dear: but today all things are sour to me.
And naught, your hearth, your boudoir, nor your sighs
Are worth the sun that glitters on the sea.
Yet love me, tender heart, as mothers cherish
A thankless wretch, Lover or sister, be
Ephemeral sweetness of the suns that perish
Or glory of the autumn swift to flee.
Brief task! The charnel yawns in hunger horrid,
Yet let me with my head upon your knees,
Although I mourn the summer, white and torrid
Taste these last yellow rays before they freeze.

- Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)

TheFortField

From June to December - Summer Villanelle


Prelude

It wouldn't be a good idea
to let him stay.
When they know each other better -
not today.
But she put on her new black knickers
Anyway.


Summer Villanelle

You know exactly what to do—
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh—
I think of little else but you.

It's bliss to have a lover who,
Touching one shoulder, makes me sigh—
You know exactly what to do.

You make me happy through and through,
The way the sun lights up the sky—
I think of little else but you.

I hardly sleep-an hour or two;
I can't eat much and this is why—
You know exactly what to do.

The movie in my mind is blue—
As June runs into warm July
I think of little else but you.

But is it love? And is it true?
Who cares? This much I can't deny:
You know exactly what to do;
I think of little else but you.


Wendy Cope

feargale

TheFortField wrote: »

From June to December - Summer Villanelle


Prelude

It wouldn't be a good idea
to let him stay.
When they know each other better -
not today.
But she put on her new black knickers
Anyway.


Summer Villanelle

You know exactly what to do—
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh—
I think of little else but you.

It's bliss to have a lover who,
Touching one shoulder, makes me sigh—
You know exactly what to do.

You make me happy through and through,
The way the sun lights up the sky—
I think of little else but you.

I hardly sleep-an hour or two;
I can't eat much and this is why—
You know exactly what to do.

The movie in my mind is blue—
As June runs into warm July
I think of little else but you.

But is it love? And is it true?
Who cares? This much I can't deny:
You know exactly what to do;
I think of little else but you.


Wendy Cope

There's a woman who knows her onions!

TheFortField

Love Is.....

Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paint-stained hands
Love is

Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don’t put out the light
Love is

Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you’re feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is

Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is a pink nightdress still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is

Love is you and love is me
Love is a prison and love is free
Love’s what’s there when you’re away from me
Love is…

Adrian Henri

Deja Boo

Sonnet 29 - William Shakespeare

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee—and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

TheFortField

In Paris With You

Don't talk to me of love. I've had an earful
And I get tearful when I've downed a drink or two.
I'm one of your talking wounded.
I'm a hostage. I'm maroonded.
But I'm in Paris with you.

Yes I'm angry at the way I've been bamboozled
And resentful at the mess I've been through.
I admit I'm on the rebound
And I don't care where are we bound.
I'm in Paris with you.

Do you mind if we do not go to the Louvre
If we say sod off to sodding Notre Dame,
If we skip the Champs Elysées
And remain here in this sleazy
Old hotel room
Doing this and that
To what and whom
Learning who you are,
Learning what I am.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris,
The little bit of Paris in our view.
There's that crack across the ceiling
And the hotel walls are peeling
And I'm in Paris with you.

Don't talk to me of love. Let's talk of Paris.
I'm in Paris with the slightest thing you do.
I'm in Paris with your eyes, your mouth,
I'm in Paris with... all points south.
Am I embarrassing you?
I'm in Paris with you.

James Fenton

donegal_man

Fifty Shades Of Grey - A Husband's Point Of View

The missus bought a Paperback,
down Shepton Mallet way,
I had a look inside her bag; ….
T’was “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

Well I just left her to it,
And at ten I went to bed.
An hour later she appeared;
The sight filled me with dread…

In her left hand she held a rope;
And in her right a whip!
She threw them down upon the floor,
And then began to strip.

Well fifty years or so ago;
I might have had a peek;
But Mabel hasn’t weathered well;
She’s eighty four next week!!

Watching Mabel bump and grind;
Could not have been much grimmer.
And things then went from bad to worse;
She toppled off her Zimmer!

She struggled back upon her feet;
A couple minutes later;
She put her teeth back in and said
I had to dominate her!!

Now if you knew our Mabel,
You’d see just why I spluttered,
I’d spent two months in traction
For the last complaint I’d uttered.

She stood there nude and naked
Bent forward just a bit
I went to hold her, sensual like
and stood on her left tit!

Mabel screamed, her teeth shot out;
My god what had I done!?
She moaned and groaned then shouted out :
“Step on the other one”!!

Well readers, I can’t tell no more;
About what occurred that day.
Suffice to say my jet black hair,
Turned fifty shades of grey!

John Summers

TheFortField

Words, Wide Night

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.

This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.

La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills
I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you

and this is what it is like or what it is like in words.

Carol Ann Duffy

Deja Boo

I Am Tired

I am tired, that is clear,
Because, at certain stage, people have to be tired.
Of what I am tired, I don't know:
It would not serve me at all to know
Since the tiredness stays just the same.
The wound hurts as it hurts
And not in function of the cause that produced it.
Yes, I am tired,
And ever so slightly smiling
At the tiredness being only this -
In the body a wish for sleep,
In the soul a desire for not thinking
And, to crown all, a luminous transparency
Of the retrospective understanding…
And the one luxury of not now having hopes?
I am intelligent: that's all.
I have seen much and understood much of what I
have seen.
And there is a certain pleasure even in tiredness
this brings us,
That in the end the head does still serve for
something.

Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa