Post a poem that you like a lot.

Rowan Tree 🌳

maybe this time i'll win :)
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Jun 10, 2011
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'Well' by Paula Meehan

I know this path by magic not by sight.
Behind me on the hillside the cottage light
is like a star that's gone astray. The moon
is waning fast, each blade of grass a rune
inscribed by hoarfrost. This path's well worn.
I lug a bucket by bramble and blossoming blackthorn.
I know this path by magic not by sight.
Next morning when I come home quite unkempt
I cannot tell what happened at the well.
You spurn my explanation of a sex spell
cast by the spirit who guards the source
that boils deep in the belly of the earth,
even when I show you what lies strewn
in my bucket — a golden waning moon,
seven silver stars, our own porch light,
your face at the window staring into the dark.
 
Untitled poem by Simon Armitage

I am very bothered when I think
of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades
and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;
then called your name, and handed them over.

O the unrivalled stench of branded skin
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,
then couldn’t shake off the two burning rings. Marked,
the doctor said, for eternity.

Don’t believe me, please, if I say
that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,
of asking you if you would marry me.
 
"Lady Lazarus" by Sylvia Plath


I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
 
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker
 
Dulce et Decorum est - Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
 
This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin

They fuck 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 fucked 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.
 
Inauguration Poem - Sally Wen Mao

A girl stalked a sheep in a field. The sheep began to bleed
& the whole field smelled like carnage.
A butcher had moved in and slaughtered the sheep.

Red, the stain on her dress. Empty, her basket. The depletion
of resources winter sowed — the house on the hill in disrepair.
In the vacated house, the girl tried to flush

the blood down the toilet but the infrastructure
couldn’t completely erase the evidence of life.

The girl studied Islamic history, the origin
of arithmetic. The stain turned the girl into a lady
in her country’s blighted first-world landscape.

History’s pages were open, one by one they ripped.
When she asked the spout for water, it rusted.

She grew cold. She grew weary. She grew sad.
If only she could ban the butcher in solidarity

with the bad children, the refugees and outcasts.
Instead she drove into the city, the urban sprawl
swallowing her. She went into a store, got caught stealing

a candy bar. Surveillance footage showed she had
no remorse. She justified: We all live on stolen
land. Why not one bar of chocolate, subsidized?


Then she remembered prisoners, their tombstones
unmarked. A cop arrested her, trapped
her in the back of the police van. Trillions

of atoms spinning inside her body, an unrealized
commodity for strange men’s agendas. Order,
dystopia, blueprint of urban catastrophe.

The streets, without strangers, all barren.
The trees, without protection, all windswept.
 
I learned this for my English O Level and I still love it. The ecomony of it is as fitting as it is frightening.

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - WB Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love

My country is Kiltartan Cross
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds

I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death

That phrase "a lonely impulse of delight" has stuck with me my whole life. So much conveyed in so few words.
 
This made me cry when I first read it.


The Two-Headed Calf - Laura Gilpin

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum.

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass.
And as he stares into the sky, he sees
twice as many stars as usual.
 
Some people say they're called BOSOMS
Others just say they're called TITS
But the words I like BEST
For describing your CHEST
Are your WIBBLY WOBBLY BITS

We got a lovely birthday card for a lady friend of ours with that poem on about 30 years ago and I've never forgotten it
 
Goosey, Goosey Gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs, downstairs,
In my lady's chamber.

There I met an old man
Who would not say his prayers;
I took him by the left leg,
And threw him down the stairs.

My grandad had a mug with this on
 
ikka usun teisse
usun et olete
olete head
head ja siirad
siirad ja andekad
aga
aga te ei oska naisega käituda
te ei tea
ei tea kuidas vittu
vittu õigesti lakkuda
ei tea
te ei tea
et persest
persest tuleb kõvasti
kõvasti kinni hoida
nikkumise ajal
ja te ei saa aru
mis teemad on intiimsed
intiimsed meie jaoks
neid ei tohi
ei tohi teiste ees
teiste ees kõva häälega rääkida
nõme see
kustutab usalduse
te ei tea
kui täis joote end
olete rõvedad
tahaks teid kohapeal
kohapeal maha lasta
te ei tea
munnigi te ei tea
ja see käib nii pinda
kuidas mina tean
kuidas mina tean kõiki neid asju
kõiki neid asju
kuidas teid
kuidas teid end hästi tundma panna kuidas oskan mina
oskan mina teid panna
panna endasse
panna endasse armuma
armuma nii
et te ärkate ellu
ahh
ebaaus
ainus mida teiega tunnen on valu
valu
valu ja siiski ka lootus
ehk te polegi nii lollid
kuigi nagunii olete
sest olete ju poisid
faking poisid
poisid
lollid poisid
 
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.

And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.

And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
 

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