Favorite Poems?

TOADS - Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison –
Just for paying a few bills!
That’s out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts –
They don’t end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines –
They seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets – and yet
No one actually starves .

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension !
But I know, all too well, that’s the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way to getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don’t say, one bodies the other
One’s spiritual truth;
But I do say it’s hard to lose either,
When you love both.

Heres my fav:

I wish I was never born
By Defiance

Before our own beginning.
Before our life’s daybreak.
We all were merely sleeping,
Not knowing joy or ache.
But those who have awoken,
Stir us from sleep unbidden.
Our fate they then have chosen,
Thinking that we should wake.

Though choice cannot be given
To those in darkness sleep,
Who are these people wakened,
To stop the slumber deep?
What gave them the right to do this?
To take our oblivion’s bliss.
Unthinking it could be missed.
Sowing what they’ll not reap.

One never did have a choice,
One could just only take.
For asleep one had no voice,
That choice… they cannot make.
Some are glad they’re not asleep,
While others don’t laugh or weep
But some want for dark to keep,
Never wanting to wake.

I too asked not conception,
I did not ask for birth.
Nor did I want ascension,
From darkness and its dearth.
The choice was made by father
And also by dear mother;
Not to let be but rather
On me force life and mirth.

I know them I cannot blame,
Its just reality.
But it pains me all the same;
This cruel finality.
The only time I could choose,
Was after that choice was used,
After that, I only muse,
For it mattered much to me.

But now I have awakened.
I now know what’s at stake.
If then I could have chosen,
Then this is for my sake;
From sleeping sleep unknowing,
From dreaming simply nothing,
From darkness everlasting,
I DID NOT WANT TO WAKE!

I did not want to wake.

I never wanted to awake…

This is really the only poem that I have read that has really made a serious impression on me. Not that I read poetry much, but whatever…
Good job Def.

:cool_laugh: ,that’s was great Deperc! Now it’s posted in a spot where it won’t be deleted either! I can’t post my very favorite because it may be taken the wrong way if I do…But one that always comes to mind especially the last line since I read it like 12 years ago is this one

The Abortion
Ann Sexton

Someone who should have been born is gone

Just as the earth puckered it’s mouth,
each bud puffing out from it’s knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south

Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair

its roads sunken in like a gray washboard
where in truth the ground cracks evilly,
A dark socket from which the coal has poured,

Someone who should have been born is gone

the grass as bristly and stout as chives
and me wondering when the ground will break
and me wondering how anything fragile survives

Up in Pennsylvania I met a little man
not Rumplestilskin, at all, at all
he took the fullness that love began

Returning north even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin

Somebody who should have been born is gone

Yes woman, such logic will lead
To loss without death, Or say what you meant
you coward…This baby that I bleed

OMG. I was checking this thread again and scrolling down, looking for new posts. I read from bottom to up when in forums, so when I blazed down to the bottom, I glimpse my username and the title of my poem, which I say to myself, couldn’t be. Then as I go up, I realize it is.

Thanks DePerc! :content: That really made my day. :smile: You’ve felt that way too huh?

Oh, Ellen, you should post your fave. How can a poem be taken the wrong way, anyway?

Here’s a golden oldie of mine. The flow is based entirely on internal rhyme and alliteration. This is not for the weak of heart.

Unsightful Parasites
by VeryGnawty

for Erin
Profligate parasites delight in the absence of light.
Smother mother earth with morbid egotism;
Halting the radiance of prism,
Nullifying magnetism,
All for the sake of pride.

Set aside heart apart from acceptance
For the chance of their own superiority.
Seniority undermines knowledge,
Authority deteriorates wisdom
In the Kingdom of the Dead.

Shed a tear in fear of losing that which you hold dear.
I hear a gasp as it slips through your grasp.
Reach out in vain through the pain with a bloodstained hand
For the sliver of light as you shiver in darkness,
Never to be seen again.

Now the corrupt have ruptured your construction.
Introduction to destruction: a degradation of escalation
To a fall of all that we know. The clouds contravene the pristine light,
Leaving a grieving shroud.

Oh Alvin, its a long story but its a poem that was written about me and I don’t want anything said about it anyway so I’ll just keep it as my own.

I was reading this topic and I saw the poem from Defiance that Deperc posted. In the first place I didn’t read him and didn’t saw it Defiance wrote it. I just had the feeling that it had something to do with Defiance. So I checked who posted it but it wasn’t Defiance, it was Deperc. I didn’t read the poem (I was gonna do after I read all the other things) and I red that it was from Defiance. I found it a little bit funny, I was right after all.
I read the poem, and it’s a nice poem :smile: I like it :smile:

I don’t have a favourite poem actually, there are some many great poems and I haven’t read that much poems.

Not every poem is like that. I have a book with poetry that’s kind of funny. Most of them get straigt to the point or don’t have a real point :tongue: but they’re good. Not my favorite because I like it when they have something mysterie and are sad. And that book is full of happy poems.

Gees I must have missed that post from ST…I love poetry for it’s imagery. I think a poem can make a point better than just saying it point blank…Like the one I posted…If you said “I just had an abortion and I’m sad” it doesn’t even come close to what the feeling is… like “you coward…this baby that I bleed”

Ah ok…

I have quite a few but I’ll write one that alot of you may already know. Like anamcara, sometimes personal especially the one’s closest to your heart just can’t be done justice when you write it for someone else to read. That’s why I chose this one instead of the others I have stashed away.

Dream-Land Edgar Allen Poe

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne regns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule-
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE-out of TIME

Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And charms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dew that drip all over,
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters-lone and dead,-
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,-
By the mountains-near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,-

By the gray woods,-by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,-
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,-
By each spot the most unholy-
In each nook most melancholy,-
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the Past-
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by-
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth-and Heaven.

For the heart whose woes are legion
'Tis a peaceful, soothing region-
For the spirit that walks in shadow
'Tis-oh, -tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not-dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, name NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.

It’s long but I like Edgar Allen Poe.

Big huge edit

(I was rereading some of the poems here then I look for yours then I realize it isn’t here anymore…Why’d you edit it out?)

Thought it wasn’t such a good idea to have it here after all, the author would probably get mad, although it is a great poem and I will always love it

/me thinks to himself. Understanding finally dawns on him.

Ah. I think I get it now.

Here’s one by Jim Morrison.

The Celebration of the Lizard

Lions in the street and roaming
Dogs in heat, rabid foaming
A beast caged in the heart of a city
The body of his mother
Rotting in the summer ground
He fled the town

He went down South and crossed the border
Left the chaos and disorder
Back there over his shoulder

One morning he awoke in a green hotel
With a strange creature groaning beside him
Sweat oozed from its shiny skin

Is everybody in?
The ceremony is about to begin

Wake up!
You can’t remember where it was
Had this dream stopped?

The snake was pale gold
Glazed and shrunken We were afraid to touch it
The sheets were hot dead prisons

Now, run to the mirror in the bathroom Look!
I can’t live thru each slow century of her moving
I let my cheek slide down
The cool smooth tile
Feel the good cold stinging blood
The smooth hissing snakes of rain . . .

Once I had, a little game
I liked to crawl back into my brain
I think you know the game I mean
I mean the game called ‘go insane’

Now you should try this little game
Just close your eyes forget your name
Forget the world forget the people
And we’ll erect a different steeple

This little game is fun to do
Just close your eyes no way to lose
And I’m right there I’m going too
Release control we’re breaking thru

Way back deep into the brain
Back where there’s never any pain
And the rain falls gently on the town
And in the labyrinth of streams
Beneath, the quiet unearthly presence of
Nervous hill dwellers in the gentle hills around Reptiles abounding
Fossils, caves, cool air heights

Each house repeats a mold
Windows rolled
Beast car locked in against morning
All now sleeping
Rugs silent, mirrors vacant
Dust blind under the beds of lawful couples
Wound in sheets
And daughters, smug
With semen eyes in their nipples

Wait
There’s been a slaughter here

(Don’t stop to speak or look around
Your gloves and fan are on the ground
We’re getting out of town
We’re going on the run
And you’re the one I want to come)

Not to touch the earth
Not to see the sun
Nothing left to do, but
Run, run, run
Let’s run

House upon the hill
Moon is lying still
Shadows of the trees
Witnessing the wild breeze
C’mon baby run with me
Let’s run

Run with me
Run with me
Run with me
Let’s run

The mansion is warm, at the top of the hill
Rich are the rooms and the comforts there
Red are the arms of luxuriant chairs
And you won’t know a thing till you get inside

Dead president’s corpse in the driver’s car
The engine runs on glue and tar
C’mon along, we’re not going very far
To the East to meet the Czar

Some outlaws lived by the side of the lake
The minister’s daughter’s in love with the snake
Who lives in a well by the side of the road
Wake up, girl! We’re almost home

Sun, sun, sun
Burn, burn, burn
Soon, soon, soon
Moon, moon, moon
I will get you
Soon!
Soon!
Soon!

Let the carnival bells ring
Let the serpent sing
Let everything

We came down
The rivers and highways
We came down from
Forests and falls

We came down from
Carson and Springfield
We came down from
Phoenix enthralled
And I can tell you
The names of the Kingdom
I can tell you
The things that you know
Listening for a fistful of silence
Climbing valleys into the shade

'I am the Lizard King
I can do anything
I can make the earth stop in its tracks
I made the blue cars go away

For seven years I dwelt
In the loose palace of exile
Playing strange games
With the girls of the island

Now I have come again
To the land of the fair, and the strong, and the wise

Brothers and sisters of the pale forest
O Children of Night
Who among you will run with the hunt?

Now Night arrives with her purple legion
Retire now to your tents and to your dreams
Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth
I want to be ready.

Good poem. Jim made three songs out of it… One is Not to Touch the Earth, he had the beginning of the Album American Prayer start with part of the poem, and a song that wasn’t on any of their albums, Go Insane.[/b]

Note this is not my poem! and that’s why I moved it into this topic.

I am just posting this poem here because I read it the other day and it is absolutely amazing. All of you poets could learn a thing or two from reading this

Lying
by Richard Wilbur

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle,
When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm.
Your reputation for saying things of interest
Will not be marred, if you hasten to other topics,
Nor will the delicate web of human trust
Be ruptured by that airy fabrication.
Later, however, talking with toxic zest
Of golf, or taxes, or the rest of it
Where the beaked ladle plies the chuckling ice,
You may enjoy a chill of severance, hearing
Above your head the shrug of unreal wings.
Not that the world is tiresome in itself:
We know what boredom is: it is a dull
Impatience or a fierce velleity,
A champing wish, stalled by our lassitude
To make or do. In the strict sense, of course,
We invent nothing, merely bearing witness
To what each morning brings again to light:
Gold crosses, cornices, astonishment
Of panes, the turbine-vent which natural law
Spins on the grill-end of the diner’s roof,
Then grass and grackles or, at the end of town
In sheen-swept pastureland, the horse’s neck
Clothed with its usual thunder, and the stones
Beginning now to tug their shadows in
And track the air with glitter. All these things
Are there before us; there before we look
Or fail to look; there to be seen or not
By us, as by the bee’s twelve thousand eyes,
According to our means and purposes.
So too with strangeness not to be ignored,
Total eclipse or snow upon the rose,
And so with that more rare conception, nothing.
What is it, after all, but something missed?
It is the water of a dried-up well
Gone to assail the cliffs of Labrador.
There is what galled the arch-negator, sprung
From Hell to probe with intellectual sight
The cells and heavens of a given world
Which he could take but as another prison:
Small wonder that, pretending not to be,
He drifted through the bar-like boles of Eden
In a black mist low creeping, dragging down
And darkening with moody self-absorption
What, when he left it, lifted and, if seen
From the sun’s vantage, seethed with vaulting hues.
Closer to making than the deftest fraud
Is seeing how the catbird’s tail was made
To counterpoise, on the mock-orange spray,
Its light, up-tilted spine; or, lighter still,
How the shucked tunic of an onion, brushed
To one side on a backlit chopping-board
And rocked by trifling currents, prints and prints
Its bright, ribbed shadow like a flapping sail.
Odd that a thing is most itself when likened:
The eye mists over, basil hints of clove,
The river glazes toward the dam and spills
To the drubbed rocks below its crashing cullet,
And in the barnyard near the sawdust-pile
Some great thing is tormented. Either it is
A tarp torn loose and in the groaning wind
Now puffed, now flattened, or a hip-shot beast
Which tries again, and once again, to rise.
What, though for pain there is no other word,
Finds pleasure in the cruellest simile?
It is something in us like the catbird’s song
From neighbor bushes in the grey of morning
That, harsh or sweet, and of its own accord,
Proclaims its many kin. It is a chant
Of the first springs, and it is tributary
To the great lies told with the eyes half-shut
That have the truth in view: the tale of Chiron
Who, with sage head, wild heart, and planted hoof
Instructed brute Achilles in the lyre,
Or of the garden where we first mislaid
Simplicity of wish and will, forgetting
Out of what cognate splendor all things came
To take their scattering names; and nonetheless
That matter of a baggage-train surprised
By a few Gascons in the Pyrenees—
Which having worked three centuries and more
In the dark caves of France, poured out at last
The blood of Roland, who to Charles his king
And to the dove that hatched the dovetailed world
Was faithful unto death, and shamed the Devil.

As you may have noticed recently I like putting up other peoples poems. I think it is important we all read and learn from professionals. Plus I often come across a poem I love and just want to share it.
So here is a vilanelle I think you all will get a kick out of.

Wendy Cope

Reading Scheme

Here is Peter. Here is Jane. They like fun.
Jane has a big doll. Pete 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!

Old bump… yay. :tongue:

Mommy

Mommy went to Heaven, but I need her here today,
My tummy hurts and I fell down, I need her right away,
Operator can you tell me how to find her in this book?

Is heaven in the yellow part, I don’t know where to look.
I think my daddy needs her too, at night I hear him cry.

I hear him call her name sometimes, but I really don’t know why.

Maybe if I call her, she will hurry home to me.
Is Heaven very far away, is it across the sea?
She’s been gone a long, long time she needs to come home now!
I really need to reach her, but I simply don’t know how.

Help me find the number please, is it listed under “Heaven”?
I can’t read these big big words, I am only seven.
I’m sorry operator, I didn’t mean to make you cry,

Is your tummy hurting too, or is there something in your eye?
If I call my church maybe they will know.

Mommy said when we need help that’s where we should go.
I found the number to my church tacked up on the wall.

Thank you operator, I’ll give them a call.

Theres many poems I would consider my favorites.
But I’ll choose this one, because of it’s sentimental value. :grin:

ALONE
by Edgar Allen Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were — I have not seen
As others saw — I could not bring
My passions from a common spring —
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow — I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone —
And all I lov’d — I lov’d alone —

Then — in my childhood — in the dawn
Of a most stormy life — was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still —
From the torrent, or the fountain —
From the red cliff of the mountain —
From the sun that 'round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold —
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by —
From the thunder, and the storm —
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view —

I have too many favorite poems. :grin:

I won a recitation contest with the following:
Poor Angels
by Edward Hirsch

At this hour the soul floats weightlessly
through the city streets, speechless and invisible,
astonished by the smoky blend of grays and golds
seeping out of the air, the dark half-tones

of dusk suddenly filling the urban sky
while the body sits listlessly by the window
sullen and heavy, too exhausted to move,
too weary to stand up or to lie down.

At this hour the soul is like a yellow wing
slipping through the treetops, a little ecstatic
cloud hovering over the sidewalks, calling out
to the approaching night, “Amaze me, amaze me,”

while the body sits glumly by the window
listening to the clear summons of the dead
transparent as glass, clairvoyant as crystal.
Some nights it is almost ready to join them.

Oh, this is a strange, unlikely tethering,
a furious grafting of the quick and the slow:
when the soul flies up, the body sinks down
and all night—locked in the same cramped room—

they go on quarreling, stubbornly threatening
to leave each other, wordlessly filling the air
with the sound of a low internal burning.
How long can this bewildering marriage last?

At midnight the soul dreams of a small fire
of stars flaming on the other side of the sky,
but the body stares into an empty night sheen,
a hollow-eyed darkness. Poor luckless angels,

feverish old loves: don’t separate yet.
Let what rises live with what descends.



Dream 2: Brian the Still-Hunter
By Margaret Atwood 

The man I saw in the forest
used to come to our house
every morning, never said anything;
I learned from the neighbours later
he once tried to cut his throat. 

I found him at the end of the path
sitting on a fallen tree
cleaning his gun.

There was no wind;
around us the leaves rustled.

He said to me:
I kill because I have to

but every time I aim, I feel
my skin grow fur
my head heavy with antlers
and during the stretched instant
the bullet glides on its thread of speed
my soul runs innocent as hooves. 

Is God just to his creatures? 

I die more often than many.

He looked up and I saw
the white scar made by the hunting knife
around his neck. 

When I woke
I remembered: he has been gone
twenty years and not heard from. 

[color=blue] ^ I haven't quite figured out what this means, but I love it.[/color]


O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell
By John Keats

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

^ My favorite poem to date


Mad Girl's Love Song
by Sylvia Plath

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

[color=blue]^ A little crazy... but I had to give a 5 minute analysis/presentation on this poem and I fell in love with it.[/color]