Poetry

I like reading poetries these days. Show me the poetry you like the most. I will read it. Thx

Mary Oliver is a favourite - particularly “Wild Geese”

Going all the way by Charles Bukowski


If you’re going to try, go all the way.

Otherwise, don’t even start.

If you're going to try, go all the way.

This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs and maybe even your mind.

It could mean not eating for three or four days.

It could mean freezing on a park bench.

It could mean jail.

It could mean derision, mockery, isolation.

Isolation is the gift.

All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it.

And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds.

And it will be better than anything else you can imagine.

If you’re going to try, go all the way.

There is no other feeling like that.

You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire.

You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski is a great poet.

[image: media.discordapp.net]
Found this on instagram. No idea who wrote it tho
"To sail towards a kinder future to explore"
I like it a lot

• My favourite.. read it when i was in high school.

The Arrow and the Song

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

DESIDERATA

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

— Max Ehrmann, 1927

I quite enjoy stumbling upon poetry on the internet, so I'll contribute in turn to hopefully keep this going.

Hymn of Breaking Strain by Rudyard Kipling had been stuck in mind for so long at some point that I gave up on moving past it and just memorized it.


Found this by chance recently and instantly loved it:

Death of an Irishwoman by Michael Hartnett
Ignorant, in the sense
she ate monotonous food
and thought the world was flat,
and pagan, in the sense
she knew the things that moved
at night were neither dogs nor cats
but púcas and darkfaced men,
she nevertheless had fierce pride.
But sentenced in the end
to eat thin diminishing porridge
in a stone-cold kitchen
she clenched her brittle hands
around a world
she could not understand.
I loved her from the day she died.
She was a summer dance at the crossroads.
She was a card game where a nose was broken.
She was a song that nobody sings.
She was a house ransacked by soldiers.
She was a language seldom spoken.
She was a child’s purse, full of useless things.


Finally, a cute light verse:

Cosmic Gall by John Updike
Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids through a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed-you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.

Sun of the sleepless! Melancholy star!
Whose tearful beam glows tremulously far,
That show’st the darkness thou canst not dispel,
How like art thou to joy remember’d well!
So gleams the past, the light of other days,
Which shines, but warms not with its powerless rays;
A night-beam Sorrow watcheth to behold,
Distinct, but distant — clear, but oh, how cold!
George Gordon Byron

Poetry International
Search


TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN (TELL ME LIES ABOUT...
Poem
Adrian Mitchell
Side by side
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN (TELL ME LIES ABOUT VIETNAM)
I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I’ve walked this way
So stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Heard the alarm clock screaming with pain,
Couldn’t find myself so I went back to sleep again
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Every time I shut my eyes all I see is flames.
Made a marble phone book and I carved all the names
So coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

I smell something burning, hope it’s just my brains.
They’re only dropping peppermints and daisy-chains
So stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

Where were you at the time of the crime?
Down by the Cenotaph drinking slime
So chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam.

You put your bombers in, you put your conscience out,
You take the human being and you twist it all about
So scrub my skin with women
Chain my tongue with whisky
Stuff my nose with garlic
Coat my eyes with butter
Fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies, tell me lies about Aghanistan.
Tell me lies about Israel.
Tell me lies about Congo.
Tell me, tell me lies Mr Bush.
Tell me lies Mr B-B-Blair, Brown, Blair-Brown.
Tell me lies about Vietnam.



I'd recommend hearing the author snarl this out. It's on an album by a band called Pombagira. It's very powerful.

Man Called CountDakkula

A Limerick by CountDakkula

There once was a man who liked trees.
He said, "See the great sinhalese!"
It was rather orange,
But not very door hinge,
He just couldn't say no to the sneeze.

My friend erin gave it to me. I really like my friend
[image: media.discordapp.net]

I can’t get my brain
To shut the hell up.

I don’t want to talk right now.
Please leave me alone.
It isn’t you i promise, it’s me and
Nothing can stop me from thinking that it’s my fault and
Everything is my fault.
Why are things this way and why did i lose you and my friends?
I can’t help but think and feel depressed because I love you.
I don't want to lose you but I have and I'm not happy, I'm almost never happy anymore.
Or
Maybe I never was.
Emotions exhaust me but they’re all I know.
I don’t usually get angry but when i do i go off and just shut up!
You’re wrong, i’m right.
Why can’t you see that?
I need structure, it’s how i function.
And you are so incredibly unpredictable which excites me, even if no one knows, because that’s risky and i like new adventures but I need stability which my life, my existence, can’t provide.

==========

My buddy said it was sent from other person to her. Idk, she's a feeler. Feelers are odd. I don't understand her sometimes, but she's very cool person. So lemme put her so she doesn't feel I am ignoring her poems.

i carry your heart with me
e.e. cummings
The Poem - I Carry your Heart With Me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it (anywhere i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
i want no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


I gave this to my ex-boyfriend and sister
Still my favorite poem. I got it from watching movie "in her shoes"

"Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!"

"Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you! "

-Dr. Seuss

The Winter Palace, by Philip Larkin

 

Most people know more as they get older:

I give all that the cold shoulder.

 

I spent my second quarter-century

Losing what I had learnt at university.

 

And refusing to take in what had happened since.

Now I know none of the names in the public prints,

 

And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces

And swearing I've never been in certain places.

 

It will be worth it, if in the end I manage

To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.

 

Then there will be nothing I know.

My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.