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Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
A buddy of mine apparently just dug up our old creative writing publication from HS and found some cheesy poem I had in there. Anyway I wrote this one in college, loosely based on my ex, and was fairly proud of it at the time. Kind of hard to read now, but still fun. Also I have to put in Code format because the shape matters. But that kind of gives it away, which makes it a little cheesy. It's only cool if you figure the shape out on your own, if then. But whatever. FYI - If I was reading it aloud I would go slow, with a lot of pauses.
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre> M . If beauty is not path nor infinite source, nor a deliberate striptease of the the layers of purpose, then she is beautiful. In gilded awkwardness an insolent grace whorls and pre- cipitates as a halting, flinching thrust and parry into the wrought black hull of inflection. Inflection which neither grazes nor punctures. Of a tongue, mordant and dry, but for the rare streams of spittle which slip under the inner fences of precursor and pratter. Like a bitter line stitching the raw fabric of a romantic comedy, the lent ear of hope- fulness on a necklace with eleven others. On a flat snare her intention bleats rhythms of scintilla and flare--an ugly, suffering boom resonates the marrow. But her nuzzle is golden her touch sublime. Any hollow pretense, filled in with a baleful glare. In perfect measure the beaming strength and corrosive salt tears. A tender throbbing clutch, and a shot of quavering lust. If the whole is not perfection, then she is perfect. </pre><hr /> |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
So obvious, but so good...
TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. |
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By me:
Somewhere a man makes little packets of ketchup for my hamburger. I'm really fascinated by haikus, and that's the only one I've written that I liked at all. My favorite poem is by Cummings: "next to of course god america i love you land of the pilgrims' and so forth oh say can you see by the dawn's early my country 'tis of centuries come and go and are no more what of it we should worry in every language even deafanddumb thy sons acclaim your glorious name by gorry by jingo by gee by gosh by gum why talk of beauty what could be more beaut- iful than these heroic happy dead who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter they did not stop to think they died instead then shall the voice of liberty be mute?" He spoke. And drank rapidly a glass of water |
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Manuel Machado - Retrato
RETRATO Esta es mi cara y ésta es mi alma: leed. Unos ojos de hastío y una boca de sed... Lo demás, nada... Vida... Cosas... Lo que se sabe... Calaveradas, amoríos... Nada grave, Un poco de locura, un algo de poesía, una gota del vino de la melancolía... ¿Vicios? Todos. Ninguno... Jugador, no lo he sido; ni gozo lo ganado, ni siento lo perdido. Bebo, por no negar mi tierra de Sevilla, media docena de cañas de manzanilla. Las mujeres... -sin ser un tenorio, ¡eso no!-, tengo una que me quiere y otra a quien quiero yo. Me acuso de no amar sino muy vagamente una porción de cosas que encantan a la gente... La agilidad, el tino, la gracia, la destreza, más que la voluntad, la fuerza, la grandeza... Mi elegancia es buscada, rebuscada. Prefiero, a olor helénico y puro, lo "chic" y lo torero. Un destello de sol y una risa oportuna amo más que las languideces de la luna Medio gitano y medio parisién -dice el vulgo-, Con Montmartre y con la Macarena comulgo... Y antes que un tal poeta, mi deseo primero hubiera sido ser un buen banderillero. Es tarde... Voy de prisa por la vida. Y mi risa es alegre, aunque no niego que llevo prisa. |
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This isn't necessarily my favorite poem. But, one of many favorites by one of my favorite writers, Charles Bukowski.
The text suffers from the censoring software; some of its power is reduced by the omissions. Without the harsh language the juxtaposition of the writing is somewhat lost. Like A Flower In The Rain I cut the middle fingernail of the middle finger right hand real short and I began rubbing along her [censored] as she sat upright in bed spreading lotion over her arms face and breasts after bathing. then she lit a cigarette: "don't let this put you off," an smoked and continued to rub the lotion on. I continued to rub the [censored]. "You want an apple?" I asked. "sure, she said, "you got one?" but I got to her- she began to twist then she rolled on her side, she was getting wet and open like a flower in the rain. then she rolled on her stomach and her most beautiful ass looked up at me and I reached under and got the [censored] again. she reached around and got my [censored], she rolled and twisted, I mounted my face falling into the mass of red hair that overflowed from her head and my flattened [censored] entered into the miracle. later we joked about the lotion and the cigarette and the apple. then I went out and got some chicken and shrimp and french fries and buns and mashed potatoes and gravy and cole slaw,and we ate.she told me how good she felt and I told her how good I felt and we ate the chicken and the shrimp and the french fries and the buns and the mashed potatoes and the gravy and the cole slaw too. |
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IF.....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This has inspired me since I saw it on a Mark Messier highlight tape I have. Rudyard Kipling If IF you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch, if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! |
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W.B. Yeats - 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? |
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<u>Birches</u>
WHEN I see birches bend to left and right Across the line of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the sun. But I was going to say when Truth broke in With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm (Now am I free to be poetical?) I should prefer to have some boy bend them As he went out and in to fetch the cows— Some boy too far from town to learn baseball, Whose only play was what he found himself, Summer or winter, and could play alone. One by one he subdued his father's trees By riding them down over and over again Until he took the stiffness out of them, And not one but hung limp, not one was left For him to conquer. He learned all there was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches; And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken across it, and one eye is weeping From a twig's having lashed across it open. I'd like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. May no fate wilfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Not to return. Earth's the right place for love: I don't know where it's likely to go better. I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree, And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more, But dipped its top and set me down again. That would be good both going and coming back. One could do worse than be a swinger of birches. --Robert Frost |
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W.H. Auden, "Shield of Achilles"
She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal His hands had put instead An artificial wilderness And a sky like lead. A plain without a feature, bare and brown, No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood, Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down, Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood An unintelligible multitude, A million eyes, a million boots in line, Without expression, waiting for a sign. Out of the air a voice without a face Proved by statistics that some cause was just In tones as dry and level as the place: No one was cheered and nothing was discussed; Column by column in a cloud of dust They marched away enduring a belief Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief. She looked over his shoulder For ritual pieties, White flower-garlanded heifers, Libation and sacrifice, But there on the shining metal Where the altar should have been, She saw by his flickering forge-light Quite another scene. Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke As three pale figures were led forth and bound To three posts driven upright in the ground. The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died. She looked over his shoulder For athletes at their games, Men and women in a dance Moving their sweet limbs Quick, quick, to music, But there on the shining shield His hands had set no dancing-floor But a weed-choked field. A ragged urchin, aimless and alone, Loitered about that vacancy; a bird Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone: That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third, Were axioms to him, who'd never heard Of any world where promises were kept, Or one could weep because another wept. The thin-lipped armorer, Hephaestos, hobbled away, Thetis of the shining breasts Cried out in dismay At what the god had wrought To please her son, the strong Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles Who would not live long. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
All, some great stuff in here. Here's a Sylvia Plath poem I've always loved, with the passage that's always stuck with me in bold:
Sow God knows how our neighbor managed to breed His great sow: Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid In the same way He kept the sow--impounded from public stare, Prize ribbon and pig show. But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour Through his lantern-lit Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door To gape at it: This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling With a penny slot For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling, About to be Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling In a parsley halo; Nor even one of the common barnyard sows, Mire-smirched, blowzy, Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-cruise-- Bloat tun of milk On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies Shrilling her hulk To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast Brobdingnag bulk Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black compost, Fat-rutted eyes Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood must Thus wholly engross The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight, Helmed, in cuirass,Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat By a grisly-bristled Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat. But our farmer whistled, Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape, And the green-copse-castled Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop, Slowly, grunt On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape A monument Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want Made lean Lent Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint, Proceeded to swill The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking continent. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Two by 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. HE WISHES FOR THE CLOTHS OF HEAVEN Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Wordsworth:
The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
some fine poets represented already; yeats, auden, frost, bukowski are all terrific, but my favorite 20th century poet is easily wallace stevens. here's a fragment of his great long poem "notes toward a supreme fiction": Fat girl, terrestrial, my summer, my night, How is it I find you in difference, see you there In a moving contour, a change not quite completed? You are familiar yet an aberration. Civil, madam, I am, but underneath A tree, this unprovoked sensation requires That I should name you flatly, waste no words, Check your evasions, hold you to yourself, Even so when I think of you as strong or tired. Bent over work, anxious, content, alone, You remain the more than natural figure. You Become the soft-footed phantom, the irrational Distortion, however fragrant, however dear. That's it: the more than rational distortion, The fiction that results from feeling. Yes, that. They will get it straight one day at the Sorbonne. We shall return at twilight from the lecture Pleased that the irrational is rational, Until flicked by feeling, in a gildered street, I call you by name, my green, my fluent mundo. You will have stopped revolving except in crystal. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Sonnet 49:
Against that time, if ever that time come, When I shall see thee frown on my defects, When as thy love hath cast his utmost sum, Call'd to that audit by advised respects; Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass And scarcely greet me with that sun thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity,-- Against that time do I ensconce me here Within the knowledge of mine own desert, And this my hand against myself uprear, To guard the lawful reasons on thy part: To leave poor me thou hast the strength of laws, Since why to love I can allege no cause. - Shakespeare |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
[ QUOTE ]
So obvious, but so good... TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. [/ QUOTE ] A wonderful and misunderstood masterpiece. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Always liked this one for some reason.
Edmund Spenser My love is like to ice, and I to fire: How come it then that this her cold is so great Is not dissolved through my so hot desire, But harder grows the more I her entreat? Or how comes it that my exceeding heat Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold, But that I burn much more in boiling sweat, And feel my flames augmented manifold? What more miraculous thing may be told, That fire, which is congealed with senseless cold, Should kindle fire by wonderful device? Such is the power of love in gentle mind, That it can alter all the course of kind. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
I am a pretty big William Carlos Williams fan, and though people give mad props for 'The Red Wheelbarrow,' I find that I enjoy this one much more:
This Is Just To Say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox and which you were probably saving for breakfast Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold |
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BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS
By A.E. HOUSMAN (1859-1936) Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain. The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Going over some of my old English notebooks I also found this one:
George Gordon, Lord Byron - Darkness I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went--and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires--and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings--the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire--but hour by hour They fell and faded--and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash--and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless--they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought--and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails--men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress--he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects--saw, and shriek'd, and died-- Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless-- A lump of death--a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge-- The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them--She was the Universe. |
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Carmen de Boheme
SINUOUSLY winding through the room On smokey tongues of sweetened cigarettes, -- Plaintive yet proud the cello tones resume The andante of smooth hopes and lost regrets. Bright peacocks drink from flame-pots by the wall, Just as absinthe-sipping women shiver through With shimmering blue from the bowl in Circe's hall. Their brown eyes blacken, and the blue drop hue. The andante quivers with crescendo's start, And dies on fire's birth in each man's heart. The tapestry betrays a finger through The slit, soft-pulling; -- -- -- and music follows cue. There is a sweep, -- a shattering, -- a choir Disquieting of barbarous fantasy. The pulse is in the ears, the heart is higher, And stretches up through mortal eyes to see. Carmen! Akimbo arms and smouldering eyes; -- Carmen! Bestirring hope and lipping eyes; -- Carmen whirls, and music swirls and dips. "Carmen!," comes awed from wine-hot lips. Finale leaves in silence to replume Bent wings, and Carmen with her flaunts through the gloom Of whispering tapestry, brown with old fringe: -- The winers leave too, and the small lamps twinge. Morning: and through the foggy city gate A gypsy wagon wiggles, striving straight. And some dream still of Carmen's mystic face, -- Yellow, pallid, like ancient lace. Hart Crane |
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I, Too, Sing America
by Langston Hughes I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America. |
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Robert Frost
The Mending Wall Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-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 Where they have left not one stone on a stone, But they would have the rabbit out of hiding, To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean, No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to 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 so nearly balls We have to use a spell to make them balance: 'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!' We wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of out-door game, One on a side. It comes to little more: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across 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: 'Why 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 I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it 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 an old-stone savage armed. He moves in darkness as it seems to me~ Not of woods only and the shade of trees. He will not go behind his father's saying, And he likes having thought of it so well He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." |
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Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Funeral Blues by 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 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 woods; For nothing now can ever come to any good. |
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[ QUOTE ]
Wordsworth: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. [/ QUOTE ] Man, I love Wordsworth |
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Its a song but he is considered a Poet
LEONARD COHEN LYRICS "Anthem" The birds they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be. Ah the wars they will be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again bought and sold and bought again the dove is never free. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. We asked for signs the signs were sent: the birth betrayed the marriage spent Yeah the widowhood of every government -- signs for all to see. I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me. Ring the bells that still can ring ... You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum You can strike up the march, there is no drum Every heart, every heart to love will come but like a refugee. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
I suffered a horrible loss almost a year ago. I read and think of this poem often.
The Ball Poem by John Berryman What is the boy now, who has lost his ball, What, what is he to do? I saw it go Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then Merrily over—there it is in the water! No use to say 'O there are other balls': An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy As he stands rigid, trembling, staring down All his young days into the harbour where His ball went. I would not intrude on him, A dime, another ball, is worthless. Now He senses first responsibility In a world of possessions. People will take balls, Balls will be lost always, little boy, And no one buys a ball back. Money is external. He is learning, well behind his desperate eyes, The epistemology of loss, how to stand up Knowing what every man must one day know And most know many days, how to stand up And gradually light returns to the street A whistle blows, the ball is out of sight, Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere, I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move With all that move me, under the water Or whistling, I am not a little boy. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
here's one of my all-time faves; by Yusef Komunyakaa
My Father's Love Letters On Fridays he'd open a can of Jax After coming home from the mill, & ask me to write a letter to my mother Who sent postcards of desert flowers Taller than men. He would beg, Promising to never beat her Again. Somehow I was happy She had gone, & sometimes wanted To slip in a reminder, how Mary Lou Williams' "Polka Dots & Moonbeams" Never made the swelling go down. His carpenter's apron always bulged With old nails, a claw hammer Looped at his side & extension cords Coiled around his feet. Words rolled from under the pressure Of my ballpoint: Love, Baby, Honey, Please. We sat in the quiet brutality Of voltage meters & pipe threaders, Lost between sentences . . . The gleam of a five-pound wedge On the concrete floor Pulled a sunset Through the doorway of his toolshed. I wondered if she laughed & held them over a gas burner. My father could only sign His name, but he'd look at blueprints & say how many bricks Formed each wall. This man, Who stole roses & hyacinth For his yard, would stand there With eyes closed & fists balled, Laboring over a simple word, almost Redeemed by what he tried to say. Written by Yusef Komunyakaa |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Jack Kerouac - Chinese Poem Song
(if you search for "Warren Zevon Chinese Poem Song" on iTunes, you'll hear a version recorded by Warren Zevon for the Kerouac tribute CD Kicks, Joy, Darkness that's absolutely amazing) Running Through - Chinese Poem Song O I today Sad as Chu Yuan Stumbled to the store In broiling Florida October Morning heat cursing For my wine, sweating Like rain, & came to my chair Weak & trembling Wondering if I'm crazy at last - O Chu Yuan! No! No suicide! Wine please wine! What shall we all do All knowing we're dying Without wine to guide us To winking at death & life too -- My heart belongs To Chinese poets & their scrolls We cant just die --Men need wine & poetry at least O Mao, poet Mao, Not Boss Mao, Here in America Wine is laughed at & poetry a joke --Death's a grim reminder to everybody already dead crashing in cars all around here- Here men & women dryly scowl At poets' sad attempts To make our lot Lesser- I, a poet, suffer Even for bugs I find upsidedown Dying in the grass- So I drink wine Alone- I shudder to think How dead The astronauts Are Going to a dead Moon Of no wine All our best men Are laughed at In this nightmare land But the newspapers preen In virtue-Throughout The world the left & right, The east & west, are both vicious- The happy old winebibber is gone- I want him to reappear- For Modern China preens In virtue too For no better reason Than America- Nobody has respect for the cat Asleep, and I am hopelessly Inadequate in this poem -Nobody has respect for the self centered irresponsible wine invalid -Everybody wants to be strapped in a hopeless space suit where they cant move -I urge you, China, go back to Li Po & Tao Yuan Ming What am I talking about? I don't know, I'm sick today- I didn't sleep all night, Walked stumbling in the field To get wine, now I'm drinking it, I feel better and worse- I have something to say to Mao & the poets of China that wont come out- It's all about how America Ignored poetry & wine, & so does China, & I'm a fool without a river & a boat & a flower suit- without a wineshop at dawn -Without self respect- - -Without the truth- but I'm a better man than all of you- that's what I wanted to say |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Wordsworth: The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. [/ QUOTE ] Man, I love Wordsworth [/ QUOTE ] Ironic, because this week I have been quoting that very Auden poem you cite above. Seems we have similar tastes. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
The old pond
A frog jumps in The sound of water -Basho Tiny acorn seed Weathers the seasons each year A towering oak Uncompromising You must obey its rules The laws of nature What’s a warrior? One who never flees nor fears The moment’s challenge Wealth is very good Peace of mind even better Wealth and peace of mind School starts today! Soon my head will be filled with More useless knowledge Intelligent man Exhausting twelve hour work days Meanwhile, my dog naps -Kintamayama |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
L'invitation au voyage
Mon enfant, ma soeur, Songe à la douceur D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble! Aimer à loisir, Aimer et mourir Au pays qui te ressemble! Les soleils mouillés De ces ciels brouillés Pour mon esprit ont les charmes Si mystérieux De tes traîtres yeux, Brillant à travers leurs larmes. Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté. Des meubles luisants, Polis par les ans, Décoreraient notre chambre; Les plus rares fleurs Mêlant leurs odeurs Aux vagues senteurs de l'ambre, Les riches plafonds, Les miroirs profonds, La splendeur orientale, Tout y parlerait À l'âme en secret Sa douce langue natale. Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté. Vois sur ces canaux Dormir ces vaisseaux Dont l'humeur est vagabonde; C'est pour assouvir Ton moindre désir Qu'ils viennent du bout du monde. - Les soleils couchants Revêtent les champs, Les canaux, la ville entière, D'hyacinthe et d'or; Le monde s'endort Dans une chaude lumière. Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté, Luxe, calme et volupté. -- Charles Baudelaire |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
I'm not big on poetry, but this is definitely my favorite.
Self-Portrait at 28 by David Berman I know it's a bad title but I'm giving myself a gift on a day nearly cancelled by sunlight when the entire hill is approaching the ideal of Virginia brochured with goldenrod and loblolly and i think "at least I have not woken up with a bloody knife in my hand" by then having absently wandered one hundred yards from my house while still seated in this chair with my eyes closed. It is a certain hill. The one I imagine when I hear the word "hill," and if the apocalypse turns out to be a world-wide nervous breakdown, if our five million minds collapse at once, well i'd call that a surprise ending and this hill would still be beautiful, a place I wouldn't mind dying alone or with you. I am trying to get at something and I want to talk very plainly to you so that we are both comforted by the honesty. You see, there is a window by my desk I stare out when I'm stuck, though the outdoors has rarely inspired me to write and I don't know why I keep staring at it. My childhood hasn't made good material either, mostly being a mulch of white minutes with a few standout moments: popping tar bubbles on the driveway in the summer, a certain amount of pride at school every time they call it "our sun," and playing football when the only play was "go out long" are what stand out now. If squeezed for more information I can remember old clock radios with flipping metal numbers and an entree called Surf and Turf. As a way of getting in touch with my origins, every night I set the alarm clock for the time I was born, so that waking up becomes a historical reenactment and the first thing I do is take a reading of the day and try to flow with it, like when you're riding a mechanical bull and you strain to learn the pattern quickly so you don't inadvertently resist it. II. I can't remember being born and no one else can remember it either even the doctor who I met years later at a cocktail party. It's one of the little disappointments that makes you think about getting away going to Holly Springs or Coral Gables and taking a room on the square with a landlady whose hands are scored by disinfectant, telling the people you meet that you are from Alaska, and listen to what they have to say about Alaska until you've learned much more about Alaska than you ever will about Holly Springs or Coral Gables. Sometimes I'm buying a newspaper in a strange city and think "I am about to learn what it's like to live here." Oftentimes there's a news item about the complaints of homeowners who live beside the airport and I realize that I read an article on this subject nearly once a year and always receive the same image: I am in bed late at night in my house near the airport listening to the jets fly overhead, a strange wife sleeping beside me. In my mind the bedroom is an amalgamation of various cold medicine commercial sets (there is always a box of tissue on the nightstand). I know these recurring news articles are clues, flaws in the design, though I haven't figured out how to string them together yet. But I'm noticing that the same people are dying over and over again, for instance, Minnie Pearl who died this year for the fourth time in four years. III. Today is the first day of Lent and once again I'm not really sure what it is. How many more years will I let pass before I take the trouble to ask someone? It reminds me of this morning when you were getting ready for work. I was sitting by the space heater, numbly watching you dress, and you asked why I never wear a robe I had so many good reasons I didn't know where to begin. If you were cool in high school you didn't ask too many questions. You could tell who'd been to last night'sbig big metal concert by the new t-shirts in the hallways. You didn't have to ask and that's what cool was: the ability to deduce, to know without asking. And the pressure to simulate coolness means not asking what you don't know, which is why kids grow even more stupid. A yearbook's endpages filled with promises to stay in touch stands as proof of the uselessness for a letter from the class stoner ten years on but... Do you remember the way the girls would call out "love you!" conveniently leaving out the "I" as if they didn't want to commit to their own declaration. I agree that the "I" is a pretty heavy concept and I hope you won't get uncomfortable if I should go into some deeper stuff here. IV. There are things I've given up on like recording funny answering-machine messages. It's part of growing older and the human race as a group has matured along the same lines. It seems our comedy dates the quickest. If you laugh out loud at Shakespeare's jokes I hope you won't be insulted If I say you're trying too hard. Even sketches from the original Saturday Night Live seem slow-witted and obvious now. It's just that are advances are irrepressible now. Nowaday kids can't even set up lemonade stands. It makes people feel too self-conscious about the past, though try explaining that to a kid. I'm not saying it should be this way. All this new technology will eventually give us new feelings that will never completely displace the old ones, leaving everyone feeling quite nervous, and split in two. We will travel to Mars even as folks on the Earth are still ripping open potatoe chip bags with their teeth. Why? I don't have the time or intelligence to make all the connections, like my friend Gordon (this is a true story) who, having grown up in Braintree Massachusetts, had never pictured a brain snagged in a tree until I brought it up. He'd never broken teh name down to its parts. By then it was too late. He had moved to Coral Gables. V. The hill outside my window is still looking beautiful, suffused in a kind of golden national park light, and it seems to say, I'm sorry the world could not possibly use another poem about Orpheus but I'm available if you're not working on a self-portrait or anything. I'm watching my dog have nightmares, twitching and whining on the office floor, and I try to imagine what beast has cornered him in the meadow where his dreams are set. I'm just letting the day be what it is: a place for a large number of things to gather and interact- not even a place but an occasion, a reality for real things. Friends warned me not to get too psychadelic or religious with this piece: "they won't accept it if its too psychadelic or religious," but these are valid topics and I'm the one with the dog twitching on the floor, possibly dreaming of me, that part of me that would beat a dog for now good reason, no reason that a dog could see. I am trying to get at something so simple that I have to talk plainly so the words don't disfigure it, and if it turns out that what I say is untrue, then at least let it be harmless like a leaky boat in the reeds that is bothering no one. VI. I can't trust the accuracy of my own memories, many of them having blended with sentimental telephone and margerine commercials, plainly ruined by Madison Avenue, though no one seems to call the advertising world "Madison Avenue" anymore. Have they moved? I need an update on this. But first I have some business to take care of. I walked out to the hill behind our house which looks positively Alaskan today, and it would be easier to explain this if I had a picture to show you, but I was with our young dog and he was running through the tall grass like running through the tall grass is all of life together, until a bird calls out or he finds a beer can and that thing fills all the space in his head. You see, his mind can only hold one thought at a time and when he finally hears me call his name he looks up and [censored] his head. For a single moment my voice is everything: Self-portrait at 28. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Catyoul - Thank you for posting that Baudelaire poem, and not translating. Even though we may not understand it, I love people quoting poets and authors in the native language used.
Now, in conjunction with the W.C.W. poem I posted, a short ditty by Keats. I am a big fan of short poems - not because they are quicker to read, but just because so much can be said in such a short span. This is one of my favorites. Keats is one of my favorite poets, and while 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is magnificent, I think this poem speaks volumes: This Living Hand This living hand, now warm and capable Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold And in the icy silence of the tomb So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood, So in my veins red life might stream again, And thou be conscience-calm'd. See, here it is - I hold it towards you. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
From 'Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke' Edited and Translated by Stephen Mitchell Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels' hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure, and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying. And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to in our need? Not angels, not humans, and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take into our vision; there remains for us yesterday's street and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left. Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for-that longed-after, mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers? But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate. Don't you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying. Yes - the springtimes needed you. Often a star was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you out of the distant past, or as you walked under an open window, a violin yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission. But could you accomplish it? Weren't you always distracted by expectation, as if every event announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you going and coming and often staying all night.) But when you feel longing, sing of women in love; for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost) who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified. Begin again and again the never-attainable praising; remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was merely a pretext for achieving his final birth. But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back into herself, as if there were not enough strength to create them a second time. Have you imagined Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl deserted by her beloved might be inspired by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love and might say to herself, "Perhaps I can be like her"? Shouldn't this most ancient of sufferings finally grow more fruitful for us? Isn't it time that we lovingly freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured: as the arrow endures the bowstring's tension, so that gathered in the snap of release it can be more than itself. For there is no place where we can remain. Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly, kneeling and didn't notice at all: so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure God's voice -far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence. It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young. Didn't their fate, whenever you stepped into a church in Naples or Rome, quietly come to address you? Or high up, some eulogy entrusted you with a mission, as, last year, on the plaque in Santa Maria Formosa. What they want of me is that I gently remove the appearance of injustice about their death - which at times slightly hinders their souls from proceeding onward. Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer, to give up customs one barely had time to learn, not to see roses and other promising Things in terms of a human future; no longer to be what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave even one's own first name behind, forgetting it as easily as a child abandons a broken toy. Strange to no longer desire one's desires. Strange to see meanings that clung together once, floating away in every direction. And being dead is hard work and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel a trace of eternity. -Though the living are wrong to believe in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created. Angels (they say) don't know whether it is the living they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent whirls all ages along in it, through both realms forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar. In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us: they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth-: could we exist without them? Is the legend meaningless that tells how, in the lament for Linus, the daring first notes of song pierced through the barren numbness; and then in the startled space which a youth as lovely as a god had suddenly left forever, the Void felt for the first time that harmony which now enraptures and comforts and helps us. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Rimbaud ftw
Le dormeur du val C'est un trou de verdure où chante une rivière, Accrochant follement aux herbes des haillons D'argent ; où le soleil, de la montagne fière, Luit : c'est un petit val qui mousse de rayons. Un soldat jeune, bouche ouverte, tête nue, Et la nuque baignant dans le frais cresson bleu, Dort ; il est étendu dans l'herbe, sous la nue, Pâle dans son lit vert où la lumière pleut. Les pieds dans les glaïeuls, il dort. Souriant comme Sourirait un enfant malade, il fait un somme : Nature, berce-le chaudement : il a froid. Les parfums ne font pas frissonner sa narine ; Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine, Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit. A translation: The Sleeper in the Valley There’s a recess in the greenery, where the river sings Tangling wildly in the tattered grass Silvery; where the sun from the proud mountain Glimmers; It’s a little valley that sparkles with light. A young soldier, mouth open, head bare, And nape bathing in the cool blue cresses Sleeping; he’s spread out on the grass, under the clouds, Pale on his green bed where the light rains down. Feet in the gladiolas, he sleeps. Smiling like A sick child would smile, he dozes. Warmly lull him Nature, he’s cold. The scents no longer make his nose quiver He sleeps in the sun, hand on his chest Tranquil, he has two red holes on his right side. |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. -Dylan Thomas ---------------------------- There's a letter on the desktop That I dug out of a drawer The last truce we ever came to From our adolescent war And I start to feel a fever From the warm air through the screen You come regular like seasons Shadowing my dreams The Mississippi's mighty But it starts in Minnesota At a place that you could walk across with five steps down And I guess that's how you started Like a pinprick to my heart But at this point you rush right through me And I start to drown And there's not enough room in this world for my pain Signals crossed and love gets lost and time passed makes it plain Of all my demon spirits I need you the most I'm in love with your ghost I'm in love with your ghost Dark and dangerous like a secret That's whispered in a hush When I wake the things I dreamt about you Last night make me blush When you kiss me like a lover Then you sting me like a viper I go follow you to the river Play your memory like the piper And I feel it like a sickness How this love is killing me But I'd walk into the fingers Of your fire willingly And I dance the edge of sanity I've never been this close In love with your ghost Unknowing captor You'll never know how much you Pierce my spirit But I can't touch you Can you hear it A cry to be free? Oh, I'm forever under lock and key As you pass through me Now I see your face before me I would launch a thousand ships To bring your heart back to my island As the sand beneath me slips As I burn up in your presence And I know now how it feels To be weakened like Achilles With you at my heels And my bitter pill to swallow Is the silence that I keep It poisons me I can't swim free The river is too deep Though I'm baptized by your touch I'm no worse at most In love with your ghost You are shadowing my dreams -Indigo Girls |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
When I was in 7th grade, I wrote a Haiku that my overtly gay English teacher went batty over:
As the big dogs sits The small dog proudly stands up And feels much bigger |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream--and not make dreams your master, If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!" If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! --Rudyard Kipling |
Re: Post your favorite poem (by yourself or others)
Not too deep like many of the poems already posted, but quite humorous (or so I thought).
The Perfect high Shel Silverstein There once was a boy named Gimme-Some-Roy... He was nothin' like me or you, 'cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do. As a kid, he sat in the cellar...sniffing airplane glue. And then he smoked banana peels, when that was the thing to do. He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, he breathed helium on the sly, and his life became an endless search to find the perfect high. But grass just made him wanna lay back and eat chocolate-chip pizza all night, and the great things he wrote when he was stoned looked like s*** in the morning light. Speed made him wanna rap all day, reds laid him too far back, Cocaine-Rose was sweet to his nose, but the price nearly broke his back. He tried PCP, he tried THC, but they never quite did the trick. Poppers nearly blew his heart, mushrooms made him sick. Acid made him see the light, but he couldn't remember it long. Hash was a little too weak, and smack was a lot too strong. Quaaludes made him stumble, booze just made him cry, Then he heard of a cat named Baba Fats who knew of the perfect high. Now, Baba Fats was a hermit cat...lived high up in Nepal, High on a craggy mountain top, up a sheer and icy wall. "Well, hell!" says Roy, "I'm a healthy boy, and I'll crawl or climb or fly, Till I find that guru who'll give me the clue as to what's the perfect high." So out and off goes Gimme-Some-Roy, to the land that knows no time, Up a trail no man could conquer, to a cliff no man could climb. For fourteen years he climbed that cliff...back down again he'd slide He'd sit and cry, then climb some more, pursuing the perfect high. Grinding his teeth, coughing blood, aching and shaking and weak, Starving and sore, bleeding and tore, he reaches the mountain peak. And his eyes blink red like a snow-blind wolf, and he snarls the snarl of a rat, As there in repose, and wearing no clothes, sits the god-like Baba Fats. "What's happenin', Fats?" says Roy with joy, "I've come to state my biz I hear you're hip to the perfect trip... Please tell me what it is. "For you can see," says Roy to he, "I'm about to die, So for my last ride, tell me, how can I achieve the perfect high?" "Well, dog my cats!" says Baba Fats. "Another burned out soul, Who's lookin' for an alchemist to turn his trip to gold. It isn't in a dealer's stash, or on a druggist's shelf Son, if you would find the perfect high, find it in yourself." "Why, you jive mother-f*****!" says Gimme-Some Roy, "I climbed through rain and sleet, I froze three fingers off my hands, and four toes off my feet! I braved the lair of the polar bear, I've tasted the maggot's kiss. Now, you tell me the high is in myself? What kinda s*** is this? My ears, before they froze off," says Roy, "had heard all kindsa crap; But I didn't climb for fourteen years to hear your sophomore rap. And I didn't climb up here to hear that the high is on the natch, So you tell me where the real stuff is, or I'll kill your guru ass!" "Okay...okay," says Baba Fats, "You're forcin' it outta me... There is a land beyond the sun that's known as Zabolee. A wretched land of stone and sand, where snakes and buzzards scream, And in this devil's garden blooms the mystic Tzutzu tree. Now, once every ten years it blooms one flower, as white as the Key West sky, And he who eats of the Tzutzu flower shall know the perfect high. For the rush comes on like a tidal wave...hits like the blazin' sun. And the high? It lasts forever, and the down don't never come. But, Zabolee Land is ruled by a giant, who stands twelve cubits high, And with eyes of red in his hundred heads, he awaits the passer-by. And you must slay the red-eyed giant, and swim the river of slime, Where the mucous beasts await to feast on those who journey by. And if you slay the giant and beasts, and swim the slimy sea, There's a blood-drinking witch who sharpens her teeth as she guards the Tzutzu tree." "Well, to hell with your witches and giants," says Roy, "To hell with the beasts of the sea Why, as long as the Tzutzu flower still blooms, hope still blooms for me." And with tears of joy in his sun-blind eyes, he slips the guru a five, And crawls back down the mountainside, pursuing the perfect high. "Well, that is that," says Baba Fats, sitting back down on his stone, Facing another thousand years of talking to God, alone. "Yes, Lord, it's always the same...old men or bright-eyed youth... It's always easier to sell 'em some s*** than it is to tell them the truth." |
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