What's your favourite poem?

Hammer89

I don't know about you fine people, but I have certain vices, certain behaviours, which sometimes make me feel completely powerless with regards to stopping. Trying to quit sometimes feels like I'd be more successful if I tried to derail one of those orange and black trains - you know, the very loud and very fast express ones, the ones that used to make me run into the station and cover my ears as a nipper - by running into one of them. It's almost as if I have absolutely no say over what happens to me, like I'm the passenger in a sidecar being driven by a nutcase who is speeding toward a precipice with his eyes shut.

Before you refer me to the Personal Issues section, or give me the number of Pieta House, I should stress that I am not suicidal or depressed, in spite of the fact I've used some pretty grim analogies to describe how it feels. I'm actually pretty content, because I always find optimism in a poem that my brother turned me on to, a poem called Invictus.

Now what the poem means, who the f*ck knows and who the f*ck cares, but I am very fond of the final two lines - "I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul".

I tend to repeat both lines whenever I'm rationalising the recurrence of certain behaviours. I find the lines to be a glaring reminder that, actually, you do have a say in your future, and you can, if you want, climb out of the sidecar and take control of the steering wheel and brakes, and kick that other c*nt out. You don't necessarily have to be a passenger in your own self-destruction if you don't want to be.

In fact, I think it's probably worth remembering in times of any sort of strife, any moment where you think, 'You know what, I might give up here'. It's astonishing how such simple language can also be so profound and effective.

JustAThought

" My candle burneth at both ends; it gives a lovely light,
But o my foes and o my friends. It will not last the night"

Anon (I think)

Lorelli!

I always liked The Lake by Roger McGough in School but this was my poetry growing up...

I wandered lonely as a cloud..

dulux99

Itsy bitsy spider

Roller-coaster of emotions every time

hatrickpatrick

Even as an adult and being into plenty of "proper" art, music, and poetry, my favourite poems are still generally plucked from compilations by Gabriel FitzMaurice of poems designed to have kids in utter hysterics. Was given a book by him as a kid ("But Dad...") and it's stuck with me ever since.

An Apple For The Teacher

Bring apples to eat, the teacher said,
But me, I'd rather mush
So I threw mine down the toilet,
But the apple wouldn't flush.

It just kept bobbing like a ball,
As the flush foamed all about
So I put my hand in the toilet bowl,
And took the apple out.

I washed it in a basin
(So nobody would know)
Then dried it on my jumper
And gave it to Mister O.

(That's what we call our teacher)
He rubbed it once or twice...
And then he ate my apple;
He said 'twas very nice.

Hammer89

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Even as an adult and being into plenty of "proper" art, music, and poetry, my favourite poems are still generally plucked from compilations by Gabriel FitzMaurice of poems designed to have kids in utter hysterics. Was given a book by him as a kid ("But Dad...") and it's stuck with me ever since.

An Apple For The Teacher

Bring apples to eat, the teacher said,
But me, I'd rather mush
So I threw mine down the toilet,
But the apple wouldn't flush.

It just kept bobbing like a ball,
As the flush foamed all about
So I put my hand in the toilet bowl,
And took the apple out.

I washed it in a basin
(So nobody would know)
Then dried it on my jumper
And gave it to Mister O.

(That's what we call our teacher)
He rubbed it once or twice...
And then he ate my apple;
He said 'twas very nice.

I like how it's written like a child. '(That's what we call our teacher)'

Liamalone

Hey diddle diddle
The cat did a piddle
All over the kitchen floor
Can't remember the rest

Hammer89

Liamalone wrote: »

Hey diddle diddle
The cat did a piddle
All over the kitchen floor
Can't remember the rest

We sold him to a Korean,
So he could be eaten,
And now Mr Mittens does piddle no more.

mickrock

John Cooper Clarke—Evidently Chickentown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF4xtdSdMmY

DEFTLEFTHAND

The Times Are Tidy.

AllForIt

Jack and Jill went up the hill
I can't abide poetry

Tell me how

Wordsworth's Daffodils or Joyce Kilmer's Trees.
Both are very simple but accurately describe living things in the natural sense.

Cleopatra_

Sylvia Plath's poem Child.

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing. I want to fill it with color and ducks, The zoo of the new.

Whose names you meditate --- April snowdrop, Indian pipe,

Little Stalk without wrinkle, Pool in which images Should be grand and classical.

Not this troublous Wringing of hands, this dark Ceiling without a star.

Cleopatra_

Also W.H. Auden's poem funeral blues.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with the juicy bone.
Silence the pianos and, with muffled drum,
Bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling in the sky the message: “He is dead!”
Put crepe bows around 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 Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.
I thought that love would last forever; 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

Birneybau

'This Be The Verse' by Philip Larkin:

They fcuk you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fcuked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

diomed

I Married a Monster from Outer Space

youngblood

I always thought this first line was v powerful/depressing/scary/vivid

I felt a funeral, in my brain.....


Emily Dickinson

somefeen

Its a long one, but I'm very fond of 'Digging' by Seamus Heaney.
I've never read anyone's analysis of it really but my own interpretation of it has gotten me through some very stressful times.

Between my finger and thumb
The squat pen rests
Snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner’s bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I’ll dig with it.

DickSwiveller

My favourite passage from a poem is from TS Eliot's Four Quartets, the last poem, 'Little Gidding'

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time"

There is something very powerful about those lines.

Conservatory

The poems by Patti Smith in bird land or the start of the song horses I’m enjoying it lately and see it more as poetry than music.

His father died and left him a little farm in New England.
All the long black funeral cars left the scene
And the boy was just standing there alone
Looking at the shiny red tractor
Him and his daddy used to sit inside
And circle the blue fields and grease the night.
It was if someone had spread butter on all the fine points of the stars
'Cause when he looked up they started to slip.
Then he put his head in the crux of his arm
And he started to drift, drift to the belly of a ship,
Let the ship slide open, and he went inside of it
And saw his daddy 'hind the control board streamin' beads of light,
He saw his daddy 'hind the control board,
And he was very different tonight
'Cause he was not human, he was not human.

And then the little boy's face lit up with such naked joy
That the sun burned around his lids and his eyes were like two suns,
White lids, white opals, seeing everything just a little bit too clearly
And he looked around and there was no black ship in sight,
No black funeral cars, nothing except for him the raven
And fell on his knees and looked up and cried out,
“No, daddy, don't leave me here alone,
Take me up, daddy, to the belly of your ship,
Let the ship slide open and I'll go inside of it
Where you're not human, you are not human.”

But nobody heard the boy's cry of alarm.
Nobody there 'cept for the birds around the New England farm
And they gathered in all directions, like roses they scattered
And they were like compass grass coming together into the head of a shaman bouquet
Slit in his nose and all the others went shooting
And he saw the lights of traffic beckoning like the hands of Blake
Grabbing at his cheeks, taking out his neck,
All his limbs, everything was twisted and he said,
“I won't give up, won't give up, don't let me give up,
I won't give up, come here, let me go up fast,
Take me up quick, take me up, up to the belly of a ship
And the ship slides open and I go inside of it where I am not human.”

I am helium raven and this movie is mine,
So he cried out as he stretched the sky,
Pushing it all out like latex cartoon, am I all alone in this generation?
We'll just be dreaming of animation night and day
And won't let up, won't let up and I see them coming in,
Oh, I couldn't hear them before, but I hear 'em now,
It's a radar scope in all silver and all platinum lights
Moving in like black ships, they were moving in, streams of them,
And he put up his hands and he said, “It's me, it's me,
I'll give you my eyes, take me up, oh now please take me up,
I'm helium raven waitin' for you, please take me up,
Don't let me here,” the son, the sign, the cross,
Like the shape of a tortured woman, the true shape of a tortured woman,
The mother standing in the doorway letting her sons
No longer presidents but prophets
They're all dreaming they're gonna bear the prophet,
He's gonna run through the fields dreaming in animation
It's all gonna split his skull
It's gonna come out like a black bouquet shining
Like a fist that's gonna shoot them up
Like light, like Mohammed Boxer
Take them up up up up up up
Oh, let's go up, up, take me up, I'll go up,
I'm going up, I'm going up
Take me up, I'm going up, I'll go up there
Go up go up go up go up up up up up up up
Up, up to the belly of a ship.
Let the ship slide open and we'll go inside of it
Where we are not human, we're not human.

Well, there was sand, there were tiles,
The sun had melted the sand and it coagulated
Like a river of glass
When it hardened he looked at the surface
He saw his face
And where there were eyes were just two white opals, two white opals,
Where there were eyes there were just two white opals
And he looked up and the rays shot
And he saw raven comin' in
And he crawled on his back and he went up
Up up up up up up
Sha da do wop, da shaman do way, sha da do wop, da shaman do way,
Sha da do wop, da shaman do way, sha da do wop, da shaman do way,
Sha da do wop, da shaman do way,
We like birdland.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

The Perfect High - Shel Silverstien

http://www.subgenius.com/updates/5-99news/X0028_The_Perfect_High.html

Probably a bit too long to repost here.

Westernyelp

The song of wandering Aengus

Walter Bishop

The poems of John Lillison, England's greatest one-armed poet, as seen in The Man With Two Brains:

Pointy Birds

Oh pointy birds
Oh pointy pointy
Anoint my head
Anointy nointy

and In Dillman's Grove

In Dillman's Grove my love did die
and now in ground shall ever lie
None could ever replace her visage
Until your face brought thoughts of kissage

DickSwiveller

Bob Dylan 'Mr Tambourine man'

Then take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time.....

To dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Colonel Claptrap

You are a rumble in the sky
You are a flickering star
You are hope in the darkness
You are warmth in the cold
You are a hand to reach for
You are a face to behold
You are Rescue 116.

Stigura

The end of " When We Two Parted ", by Byron, has brought a tear to my eye for decades now:

If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

Fcuk! That's some powerful sh!t

_Brian

https://youtu.be/m6m7z9QDIVU

Foggy Jew

The Ballad of Father Gilligan. WB Yeats.
"He who is wrapped in purple robes, with planets in his care
Took pity on the least of things, asleep upon a chair".

chite

Charity

I drop a coin
In a box.

Hollow. empty.
Resonating.
Almost threatening.

Like Cautious anxiety
Amongst
craving hunger.

And Speechless gratitude
Amongst
Murdered mercy.

I drop a coin
In a box.

And then I walk away.



(Dunno who wrote the above poem, found it online & thought it was good. Pretty much anything by Patrick Kavanagh is gold. This next poem is very appropriate in my little plot of veg when they'll start descending onto them, sans slug pellets, glyphosate etc.)


The Uprising of the Slugs

There lay, upon the garden path, a victim of the genocide.
A mass of oily, melted flesh congealing in the sun.
The Gardener had sprinkled there a concoction of pesticides,
A rain of child-taste-deterrent Blitzem and Baysol.

Like a candle waxed the gruesome corpse, it's optic nerves a liquid broth,
Its mouth a gasping opening, gunge spilled from pneumostome.
And yet this death would trigger revolution in the grass and moss,
And by the waste disposal bin a Hortensian army.

Each gender-less Mollusca knew the horrors that were yet to come,
That to their fated nemesis their lives were not worth leaf or rose,
But they gathered in the masses by some natural phenomenon,
Each soldier left a trail as they slithered along patios.

For years there was resistance, a guerrilla war on fertile soil,
One side it fought for pleasure whilst the other for their basic needs.
But now there was an end in sight, prospects of peace and end of toil,
For oozing over decking came the rippling of pulsing feet.

They found him by the sink garden, arranging thyme with utmost care,
And in their thousands leeched upon his warm, succulent skin,
Their slow assault soon took it's toll, with radula they scalped his hair,
And those that found an orifice devoured him from within.

From then there was utopia among the scores of garden pests,
For where that damned dictator stood there lies a heap of clean white bone.
Reminders of authority now caked in slimed invertebrates,
With eyes that saw but shadow they caressed ancestral home.

degsie

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This thread is shyte
And it's all down to you (OP)

BuboBubo

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
This one doesn't

Hey diddle diddle
The Cat did a piddle
All over the kitchen mat
The little dog laughed to see such fun
Then piddled all over the cat

Little spider on the wall
Have you got no home at all?
Have you got no mam or dad?
Squishy squashy
That's too bad

Conservatory

degsie wrote: »

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This thread is shyte
And it's all down to you (OP)

I’d put in this to maintain the rhythm

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This thread is shyte (you see)
And it’s all down to you (op)

The reason for this is it keeps whether you use the brackets or not.
I did however enjoy the thread.

Tell me how

You don't have to get involved you know. You don't get it, you don't get it. No big deal. It's not like homework where you have to make an effort.

Cleopatra_

Tell me how wrote: »

You don't have to get involved you know. You don't get it, you don't get it. No big deal. It's not like homework where you have to make an effort.

That's an A+ and a gold star for Tell me how

RhubarbCrumble

Ever since I did my leaving over 20 years ago, this has always been my favourite :

No Second Troy - WB Yeats

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

BuboBubo

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high oer vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd
Get off my fcukin daffodils.

banie01

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

Ever since I did my leaving over 20 years ago, this has always been my favourite :

No Second Troy - WB Yeats

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

I was torn between this, or Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower came...
But no 2nd Troy is a masterpiece, it always strikes me as an ode to the havoc love can wreak, and yet leave you wanting more.

Cleopatra_

W.B. Yeats - When you are old

When you are old and grey and full of sleep, And nodding by the fire, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false or true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars, Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

indioblack

"The rain it raineth on the just,
and also on the unjust fella.
But mostly on the just because,
the unjust steals the just's umbrella."

bodice ripper

Another September
by Thomas Kinsella

Dreams fled away, this country bedroom, raw
With the touch of dawn, wrapped in a minor peace,
Hears through an open window the garden draw
Long pitch black breaths , lay bear its apple trees,
Ripe pear trees, brambles, windfall-sweethened soil,
Exhale rough sweetness against the starry slates.
Nearer the river sleeps St.Johns, all toil
Locked fast inside a dream with iron gates.

Domestic autumn, like an animal
Long used to handling by those countrymen,
Rubs her kind hide against the bedroom wall
Sensing a fragrant child come back again
- Not this half tolerated consciousness
That plants its grammar in her unyielding weather
But that unspeaking daughter, growing less
familiar where we fell asleep together.

Wakeful moth-wings blunder near a chair
Toss their light shell at the glass and go
To inhabit the living starlight,Stranded hair
Stirs on the still linen. It is as though
The black breathing that billows her sleep, her name,
Drugged under judgement, waned and - bearing daggers
And balances - down the lampless darkness they came,
Moving like women: Justice, Truth, such figures.

Pinch Flat

Her name was Honour,
She made me an offer,
And all night long,
I was on her an off her

The Princess Bride

My favourite.

DickSwiveller

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

My favourite Yeats poem is An Irish Airman foresees his Death. These lines I find particularly haunting:

"Nor law nor duty bade me fight,
nor public officials, nor cheering crowds,
a lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the clouds"

Also love WH Auden's poem In Memory of Sigmund Freud

"to us he is no more a person
now but a whole climate of opinion
under whom we conduct our different lives".

Mrsmum

It Couldn't Be Done
By Edgar Guest

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
But he with a chuckle replied
That "maybe it couldn't," but he would be one
Who wouldn't say so till he'd tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn’t be done, and he did it!

Somebody scoffed: "Oh, you’ll never do that;
At least no one ever has done it;"
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
And the first thing we knew he'd begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
That couldn't be done, and he did it.

There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
That "cannot be done," and you'll do it.

take everything

RhubarbCrumble wrote: »

Ever since I did my leaving over 20 years ago, this has always been my favourite :

No Second Troy - WB Yeats

"Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?"

I like Yeats as well.
He was a very interesting guy. Thought to possibly have Asperger's and got into mysticism later in life.
Always searching for some kind of meaning.

Purple Mountain

During my convent elocution days, they made us recite The Owl and the PussyCat.
I couldn't hide my giggles...'Oh lovely Pussy, oh Pussy my love, what a beautiful Pussy you are'..
All recited in dramatic effect style.

endacl

Pointy Birds

Pointy birds,
pointy, pointy.

Anoint my head,
anointy, nointy.

-John Lillison
(England's greatest one-armed poet)

Mrsmum

When all the others were away at Mass
Seamus Heaney

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives –
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

DickSwiveller

Yeats 'Second Coming'

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.