NSFW? Shall we celebrate National Poetry Month by sharing a poem?

I like that poem even if it is a big indulgent. Wanted to put a poem of mine from poetry.com up but the website no longer exists :( – sorry. I like Please by Sappho

Come back to me, Gongyla, here tonight,
You, my rose, with your Lydian lyre.
There hovers forever around you delight:
A beauty desired.

Even your garment plunders my eyes.
I am enchanted: I who once
Complained to the Cyprus-born goddess,
Whom I now beseech

Never to let this lose me grace
But rather bring you back to me:
Amongst all mortal women the one
I most wish to see.

Heres a poem I composed for a balding ex. lol

The bad haircut

Thinning hairs upon my head
some cling to life and some are dead

She cut my fragile fronds so wrong
some too short and some too long

She set the blades to shear too short
and lopped the tower off my fort

A mule and plow might be prefered
to trample ‘cross my wispy herd

What evil scissors did she wield
to kill my sparsely planted field

Silky stalks and tender shoots
torn from my scalp with dying roots

A seasons growth, without a trace
harvested above my face

This is one of my favorites…

I Saw A Man Pursuing the Horizon by Stephen Maria Crane

I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never — ”

“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.

Jesus Christ….superstar
Went round the corner on his Yamaha
He did a skid
Then killed a kid
Crushed his balls on a dustbin lid

@ucme

Lol..I love humor! ;-)

I once saw a man commit a crime
I made the arrest and he’s doing time
To prison he goes and thats a fact
His prison clothes are colored black
Ten years to serve and thats okay
Cause I’ll be retired
On his release day.

You didn’t think i had a poem in me, did you?

@john65pennington

and living somewhere, far, far away! lol

Thats a big 10–4 Coloma!

from A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle

by Hugh MacDiarmid

The function, as it seems to me,
O’ Poetry is to bring to be
At lang, lang last that unity…

But wae’s me on the weary wheel!
Higgledy-piggledy in’t we reel,
And little it cares hoo we may feel.

Twenty-six thoosand years ’t’ll tak’
For it to threid the Zodiac
—A single roond o’ the wheel to mak’!

Lately it turned—I saw mysel’
In sic a company doomed to mell,
I micht ha’e been in Dante’s Hell.

It shows hoo little the best o’ men
E’en o’ themsels at times can ken—
I sune saw that when I gaed ben.

The lesser wheel within the big
That moves as merry as a grig,
Wi’ mankind in its whirligig,

And hasna turned a’e circle yet
Tho’ as it turns we slide in it,
And needs maun tak’ the place we get.

i have found what you are like
the rain

(Who feathers frightened fields
with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields

easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike

the air in utterable coolness

deeds of gren thrilling light
with thinned
newfragile yellows

lurch and press
—in the woods
which
stutter
and
sing
And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,
your kiss

-ee cummings

“a woman demands the spirit of a lion,
with her arms reaching for your throat
with her eyes piercing your heart
with her body pouncing.

a woman demands the spirit of a lion
and she demands this of you
with your hands becoming paws
with your hair becoming fur

a woman demands only that which she does herself.”

- by me, written just now.

Demon

“A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand
over the demon’s mouth sometimes…”- D. H. Lawrence

I mentioned my demon to a friend
and the friend swam in oil and came forth to me
greasy and cryptic
and said,
‘I’m thinking of taking him out of hock.
I pawned him years ago.’

Who would buy?
The pawned demon,
Yellowing with forgetfulness
and hand at his throat?
Take him out of hock, my friend,
but beware of the grief
that will fly into your mouth like a bird.

My demon,
too often undressed,
too often a crucifix I bring forth,
too often a dead daisy I give water to
too often the child I give birth to
and then abort, nameless, nameless…
earthless.

Oh demon within,
I am afraid and seldom put my hand up
to my mouth and stitch it up
covering you, smothering you
from the public voyeury eyes
of my typewriter keys.
If I should pawn you,
what bullion would they give for you,
what pennies, swimming in their copper kisses
what bird on its way to perishing?

No.
No.
I accept you,
you come with the dead who people my dreams,
who walk all over my desk
(as in Mother, cancer blossoming on her
Best & Co. tits-
waltzing with her tissue paper ghost)
the dead, who give sweets to the diabetic in me,
who give bolts to the seizure of roses
that sometimes fly in and out of me.
Yes.
Yes.
I accept you, demon.
I will not cover your mouth.
If it be man I love, apple laden and foul
or if it be woman I love, sick unto her blood
and its sugary gasses and tumbling branches.

Demon come forth,
even if it be God I call forth
standing like a carrion,
wanting to eat me,
starting at the lips and tongue.
And me wanting to glide into His spoils,
I take bread and wine,
and the demon farts and giggles,
at my letting God out of my mouth
anonymous woman
at the anonymous altar.

- by Anne Sexton

Another by Charles Bukowski:

“Are You Drinking?”

washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
“yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts.”
“are you drinking?” he will ask.
“are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?”
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
“taking off?” asks the motel
clerk.
“yes, it’s boring,”
I tell him.
“If you think it’s boring
out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be
back here.”
so here I am
propped up against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it’s just
my cat
this
time.

Charles Bukowski

TS Eliot
I grow old… I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
from the Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

—Robert Frost—

Triolet on a Line Apocryphally Attributed to Martin Luther by A.E. Stallings

Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night,
The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes?
Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons
And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite?
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes,
The booze and the neon and Saturday night?

I’m a lurvin’ this!

The boy stood on the burning deck
Like a statue as cold as Venus
The flames grew high & burnt his thigh
And also singed his penis.

Aaaah, makes sense, that most fluther types are also writers, closeted or otherwise.

Brainiacs to the 10th power. lol

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
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.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats

Here is one of my favourites evarz0rz;

Vampire (Strigoiul)

Vasile Alecsandri 1886

Near the cliff’s sharp edge, on high
Standing out against the sky,
Dost thou see a ruined cross
Weatherstained, o’ergrown by moss,
Gloomy, desolate, forsaken,
By unnumbered tempests shaken?

Not a blade of grass grows nigh it,
Not a peasant lingers by it.
E’en the sombre bird of night
Shuns it in her darksome flight,
Startled by the piteous groan
That arises from the stone.

All around, on starless nights,
Myriad hosts of livid lights
Flicker fretfully, revealing
At its foot a phantom, kneeling
Whilst it jabbers dismal plaints,
Cursing God and all the saints.

Tardy traveller, beware
Of that spectre gibbering there;
Close your eyes, and urge your steed
To the utmost of his speed;—
For beneath that cross, I ween,
Lies a Vampyre’s corpse obscene!

Though the night is black and cold
Love’s found story, often told,
Floats in whispers through the air,
Stalwart youth and maiden fair
Seal sweet vows of ardent passion
With their lips, in lovers’ fashion.

“Restless, pale, a shape I see
Hov’ring nigh; what may it be?
‘Tis a charger, white as snow,
Pacing slowly to and fro
Like a sentry. As he turns
Haughtily the sward he spurns.

“Leave me not, beloved, tonight!
Stay with me till morning’s light!’
Weeping, thus besought the maid;
‘Love, my soul is sore afraid!
Brave not the dread Vampyre’s power,
Mightiest at this mystic hour!’

Not a word he spake, but prest
The sobbing maiden to his breast;
Kissed her lips and cheeks and eyes
Heedless of her tears and sighs;
Waved his hand, with gesture gay,
Mounted smiled and rode away.

We rides across the dusky plain
Tearing along with might and main
Like some wild storm-fiend, in his flight
Nursed on the ebony breast of Night?
‘Tis he, who left her in her need—
Her lover, on his milk-white steed!

The blast in all its savage force
Strives to o’erthrow the gallant horse
That snorts defiance to his foe
And struggles onward. See! below
The causeway, ‘long the river-side
A thousand flutt’ring flamelets glide!

Now they approach, and now recede,
Still followed by the panting steed;
He nears the ruined cross! A crash,
A piteous cry, a heavy splash,
And in the rocky river-bed
Rider and horse lie crushed and dead.
Then from those dismal depths arise
Blaspheming yells and strident cries
Re-echoing through the murky air
And, like a serpent from its lair,
Brandishing high a blood-stained glaive
The Vampyre rises from his grave!

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire in thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art?
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand, and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

-William Blake

This is one of my favorites that I have written. It’s called Holiday Traffic

Driving home drunk with water
From snowglobes
To see a would-be father in your living room
Swords drawn, a prophet to your screams
While I tripped and fell on my own bayonet
Long dulled by your heart and lungs
To your photographs: my torture device
My crucifix in a shoebox
And I, a gilded cage
A sultan on your couch
Watching the cosmopolitan image
And your thirsty work
How close I was
Your uncooperative tongue
I’ve considered the lilies for far long enough
You schizophrenic Lilith atop my Christmas tree
And maybe one day, I’ll sling off your reigns
And cast you on the earth like a curse.

@zephyr826 I love Blake.

Oh rose thou art sick
The invisible worm that flies on the night on the howling storm,
has found out they bed of crimson joy.
And his dark, secret love does thy life destroy.

What I am
Not altruistic
Not benevolent
Not patient
I will want to give you every thing
I’ll ask for them too
Might be things you won’t expect
Maybe things you’ll tell me a man can’t do

Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frost-ground-swell under it.
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing;
I have come after them and made repair
When they have left not one stone upon stone.
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them makeor heard them made,
But at spring mending time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill,
And on the day we meet we walk the line
And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go,
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some are nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make that nearly balance:
Stay where you are until our backs are turned!
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more;
There is where it is we do not mend the wall;
There is where we it is we do not need the wall;
He is all pine and I an apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get acorns
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says “good fences make good neighbors”
Spring is the mischief in me and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head;
When do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What was I walling in or walling out.And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there that doesn’t like a wall,
That wants them down. I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like ann old stone-savage armed’
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of the trees.
He will not go beyond his fathers saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again “good fences make good neighbors”.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land That is one of my favorites too. I taught it in a class last year.

@stranger_in_a_strange_land Thank you I loved to see that again

In glowing style strikes the sliding shore
Immovable, transient, and unassuming
is the mindless heart that never beats
In glowing style strikes the sliding shore

— by me just now

I don’t want to be a pillow ( a gooses protest )

I don’t want ot be a pillow,
or a jacket or a throw
My life was not created
to warm people in the snow

I do not want my body parts
mashed into a can
and spread upon a cracker
in culinary land

Do not bathe my sad remains
with a citrus glaze
My life was not created
to be roasted, baked or braised

Do not pluck my downy breast
as berries from a vine
My simple life belongs to me
and all of me is mine

@Coloma Cool! I think I can guess who wrote that.

There once was a man from… never mind.

Watermelons
by Charles Simic

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

@janbb BTW nice to start with the Clifton poem—she’s been gone less than a year—nice tribute

I have lliminal to thank for turning me on to her.

Wind me up
Throw me down
Toss me
Like Salad
Ron Popiels Toy

Oh when will two sisters ever meet again?
Will they know each other?
Will they remember?
Will they embrace one another?

So long ago was the cord cut.
Two connected yet separated souls.
One alone and scared, the other surrounded yet empty.
One empty space waiting to be filled.

Years of growing up alone.
Looking back on memories of the past.
Waiting for the day to see each other again.
A building suspense.

One day they will meet again.
One day it will be real.
One day there will be peace.
One day two sisters will meet again.

@Symbeline C’est magnifique!!

Here is the first of Wallace Stevens’ ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’:

Among twenty snowy mountains
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

And here is ‘Reading Scheme’ by Wendy Cooper, which our class was given as an example of a villanelle:

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.
Jane has a big doll. Peter has a ball.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Here is Mummy. She has baked a bun.
Here is the milkman. He has come to call.
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

Go Peter! Go Jane! Come, milkman, come!
The milkman likes Mummy. She likes them all.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Here are the curtains. They shut out the sun.
Let us peep! On tiptoe Jane! You are small!
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.

I hear a car, Jane. The milkman looks glum.
Here is Daddy in his car. Daddy is tall.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

Daddy looks very cross. Has he a gun?
Up milkman! Up milkman! Over the wall!
Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.
Look, Jane, look! Look at the dog! See him run!

This poem was written by an old professor of mine, Bill Greenwell. It was penned in response to the Conservative Party, who as an election come-on have offered a tax benefit to married couples of £150 a year.

Hitch To Be Rich

I would like to marry you
For surely that’s what lovers do
And how much more do I adore
A weekly £2.94

I should like to share my life
To which end, will you be my wife?
My passion grows! It is immense
(Three quid! Well, bar about six pence)

My eyes, which water as you near,
Are wedded to your form, my dear:
What shakes my marital maracas?
A hundred and fifty annual smackers

Although I love you as you are
Let’s rush down to the registrar
Should we invest? Of course we oughter
At thirty-seven quid a quarter

This is a passion I can’t hide
Come live with me and be my bride
I know that you must be The One
For three bungs, each worth half a ton

Oh let our holy vows be blessed
And think of mutual interest
I must husband, you must wive as
That way we win thirty fivers

Let us say our vows with style
Let cash propel us down the aisle
Marriage! It is just the job
And earns us fifteen hundred bob

Conservatives may well be phoney
But I will vote for matrimony
Since, as I’ve told the happy vicar
It means a hundred-and-fifty nicker

Being a Poet
Jenny Bornholdt (NZ)

Yesterday I bought
a blender — blue — from
Briscoes, just like
Marion’s. Today
we’re dealing with the big
issues, like: How the World
Began and
Can We Have Fruit Loops
For Breakfast?
Friends ask
what I’m reading.
By the bed is Go, dog. Go.
We looked at it this morning
just before our fight
over the nature of
Weetbix. But it’s soggy
every morning, I hear myself say
that’s just what Weetbix does
that’s just its way.

Love Poem by A.E. Housman

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
“The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
‘Tis paid with sighs aplenty
And sold for endless rue.”
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, ‘tis true, ‘tis true.

Poems are overrated. As soon as you rhyme some words they become magically more interesting and respected than the same text written without similar sounding words.

Sorry for pooping your party, it had to be said.

@HTDC Erm, a lot of the above poems don’t rhyme!

I realise that, and that’s why they’re not as good. ;)

“A poem beigns in delight and ends in wisdom.” – Robert Frost

The hormone defense

In the wee hours of the morning
my hormones rock-n-roll
I wander to the kitchen
and towards the candy bowl

I’m faint of heart and clammy skinned
the house is very still
That hot flash got me thinking
I’d like to watch ‘Kill Bill’

I unwrap a bit of chocolate
medicinal, of course
Thirty seven pieces later
still I feel no remorse

I ponder moving to Great Briton
where PMS is a defense
Hormonal cromes of passion
need not have to make much sense

It could be as simple as
’ He brushed against my tender breast’
The last thing I remember is
the ice pick in his chest

I’d laugh aloud, ’ I’m sure a nut’
I didn’t mean to do it
It happened so very fast
’ I know, I know, I blew it!’

The judge and jury would convene
united they’d agree
To serve a lengthy sentence
of tea and sympathy

And with great understanding
of a womans fragile hell
they’d pass the hat to buy me lunch
and order Taco Bell.

Edit:Frost said “begins” of course!

@janbb Didn’t even notice the typo ‘til you pointed it out!

@jeanmay Ain’t that always the way?

@janbb hell I sent it to my writers’ group without noticing—* sigh *

Send the edit too.

Fledgling soul

Buoyant fledgling soul
clinging to a broken twig
wedged into the crotch of a splintered tree

Fragments of a fractured shell
sharp and white
glimmer in new grass

Exiled child
creep forth from your oppressive nest
cast off the soiled rags
of your fathers sins

As the dove ascends
the heart is weightless

and the cruel black bird
drops from the sky
like a heavy stone

Gadwicke son of Smethwick

Gadwicke, son of Smethwicke
was a cat who’d gone quite mad
hence, the nickname “Madman”
fell upon this furry cad

He came and went through windows
took his drink straight from the tap
refused to use a litter box
and drooled when in your lap

His behavior was atrocious
his attitude quite vain
and when discovered in the act
would glare with cool disdain

His fighting was disruptive
his reputation very scary
although a fancy cat was he
his brawls were legendary

No other creature, large or runt
dared to cross,
let alone confront

This madmans turf
was no mans land
and foolish nomads
bore his brand

One fine day in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight,
Back to back they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other

See the whole thing here.