Poetry Corner, The

[GoodSpeak]

Poetry speaks to each of us in many and varyingly personal ways.

The beauty is, no poem can be interpreted the same way by anyone. It is a very unique form of literature inasmuch as it has no absolute form, no expectations, no shape, no immediate justification or gratification. Poems exist. They are what they are and it is the reader who must determine what each poem means for him or for her.

Post your favorite poems here.

[GoodSpeak]

I'll start:

What Do I Remember of the Evacuation?

By Joy Kogawa

What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember my father telling Tim and me
About the mountains and the train
And the excitment of going on a trip.
What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember my mother wrapping
A blanket around me and my
Pretending to fall asleep so she would be happy
Although I was so excited I couldn't sleep
(I hear there were people herded
Into the Hastings Park like cattle.
Families were made to move in two hours
Abandoning everything, leaving pets
And possessions at gun point.
I hear families were broken up
Men were forced to work. I heard
It whispered late at night
That there was suffering) and
I missed my dolls.
What do I remember of the evacuation?
I remember Miss Foster and Miss Tucker
Who still live in Vancouver
And who did what they could
And loved the children and who gave me
A puzzle to play with on the train.
And I remember the mountains and I was
Six years old and I swear I saw a giant
Gulliver of Gulliver's Travels scanning the horizon
And when I told my mother she believed it too
And I remember how careful my parents were
Not to bruse us with bitterness

And I remember the puzzle of Lorraine Life
Who said "Don't insult me" when I
Proudly wrote my name in Japanese
And Tim flew the Union Jack
When the war was over but Lorraine
And her friends spat on us anyway
and I prayed to the God who loves
All the children in his sight

That I might be white.

[Robert de St. Loup]

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.

4. The Wreck of the Deutschland

To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875

PART THE FIRST 1 THOU mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;
World’s strand, sway of the sea;
Lord of living and dead;
Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,	5
And after it almost unmade, what with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel thy finger and find thee.
2 I did say yes
O at lightning and lashed rod;	10
Thou heardst me truer than tongue confess
Thy terror, O Christ, O God;
Thou knowest the walls, altar and hour and night:
The swoon of a heart that the sweep and the hurl of thee trod
Hard down with a horror of height:	15
And the midriff astrain with leaning of, laced with fire of stress.
3 The frown of his face
Before me, the hurtle of hell
Behind, where, where was a, where was a place?
I whirled out wings that spell	20
And fled with a fling of the heart to the heart of the Host.
My heart, but you were dovewinged, I can tell,
Carrier-witted, I am bold to boast,
To flash from the flame to the flame then, tower from the grace to the grace.
4 I am soft sift	25
In an hourglass—at the wall
Fast, but mined with a motion, a drift,
And it crowds and it combs to the fall;
I steady as a water in a well, to a poise, to a pane,
But roped with, always, all the way down from the tall	30
Fells or flanks of the voel, a vein
Of the gospel proffer, a pressure, a principle, Christ’s gift.
5 I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and	35
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:
Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.	40
6 Not out of his bliss
Springs the stress felt
Nor first from heaven (and few know this)
Swings the stroke dealt—
Stroke and a stress that stars and storms deliver,	45
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by and melt—
But it rides time like riding a river
(And here the faithful waver, the faithless fable and miss).
7 It dates from day
Of his going in Galilee;	50
Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey;
Manger, maiden’s knee;
The dense and the driven Passion, and frightful sweat;
Thence the discharge of it, there its swelling to be,
Though felt before, though in high flood yet—	55
What none would have known of it, only the heart, being hard at bay,
8 Is out with it! Oh,
We lash with the best or worst
Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,	60
Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full!—Hither then, last or first,
To hero of Calvary, Christ, ’s feet—
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it—men go.
9 Be adored among men,	65
God, three-numberèd form;
Wring thy rebel, dogged in den,
Man’s malice, with wrecking and storm.
Beyond saying sweet, past telling of tongue,
Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;	70
Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.
10 With an anvil-ding
And with fire in him forge thy will
Or rather, rather then, stealing as Spring	75
Through him, melt him but master him still:
Whether at once, as once at a crash Paul,
Or as Austin, a lingering-out sweet skill,
Make mercy in all of us, out of us all
Mastery, but be adored, but be adored King.	80
PART THE SECOND 11 ‘Some find me a sword; some
The flange and the rail; flame,
Fang, or flood’ goes Death on drum,
And storms bugle his fame.
But wé dream we are rooted in earth—Dust!	85
Flesh falls within sight of us, we, though our flower the same,
Wave with the meadow, forget that there must
The sour scythe cringe, and the blear share come.
12 On Saturday sailed from Bremen,
American-outward-bound,	90
Take settler and seamen, tell men with women,
Two hundred souls in the round—
O Father, not under thy feathers nor ever as guessing
The goal was a shoal, of a fourth the doom to be drowned;
Yet did the dark side of the bay of thy blessing	95
Not vault them, the million of rounds of thy mercy not reeve even them in?
13 Into the snows she sweeps,
Hurling the haven behind,
The Deutschland, on Sunday; and so the sky keeps,
For the infinite air is unkind,	100
And the sea flint-flake, black-backed in the regular blow,
Sitting Eastnortheast, in cursed quarter, the wind;
Wiry and white-fiery and whirlwind-swivellèd snow
Spins to the widow-making unchilding unfathering deeps.
14 She drove in the dark to leeward,	105
She struck—not a reef or a rock
But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her
Dead to the Kentish Knock;
And she beat the bank down with her bows and the ride of her keel:
The breakers rolled on her beam with ruinous shock;	110
And canvas and compass, the whorl and the wheel
Idle for ever to waft her or wind her with, these she endured.
15 Hope had grown grey hairs,
Hope had mourning on,
Trenched with tears, carved with cares,	115
Hope was twelve hours gone;
And frightful a nightfall folded rueful a day
Nor rescue, only rocket and lightship, shone,
And lives at last were washing away:
To the shrouds they took,—they shook in the hurling and horrible airs.	120
16 One stirred from the rigging to save
The wild woman-kind below,
With a rope’s end round the man, handy and brave—
He was pitched to his death at a blow,
For all his dreadnought breast and braids of thew:	125
They could tell him for hours, dandled the to and fro
Through the cobbled foam-fleece, what could he do
With the burl of the fountains of air, buck and the flood of the wave?
17 They fought with God’s cold—
And they could not and fell to the deck	130
(Crushed them) or water (and drowned them) or rolled
With the sea-romp over the wreck.
Night roared, with the heart-break hearing a heart-broke rabble,
The woman’s wailing, the crying of child without check—
Till a lioness arose breasting the babble,	135
A prophetess towered in the tumult, a virginal tongue told.
18 Ah, touched in your bower of bone
Are you! turned for an exquisite smart,
Have you! make words break from me here all alone,
Do you!—mother of being in me, heart.	140
O unteachably after evil, but uttering truth,
Why, tears! is it? tears; such a melting, a madrigal start!
Never-eldering revel and river of youth,
What can it be, this glee? the good you have there of your own?
19 Sister, a sister calling	145
A master, her master and mine!—
And the inboard seas run swirling and hawling;
The rash smart sloggering brine
Blinds her; but she that weather sees one thing, one;
Has one fetch in her: she rears herself to divine	150
Ears, and the call of the tall nun
To the men in the tops and the tackle rode over the storm’s brawling.
20 She was first of a five and came
Of a coifèd sisterhood.
(O Deutschland, double a desperate name!	155
O world wide of its good!
But Gertrude, lily, and Luther, are two of a town,
Christ’s lily and beast of the waste wood:
From life’s dawn it is drawn down,
Abel is Cain’s brother and breasts they have sucked the same.)	160
21 Loathed for a love men knew in them,
Banned by the land of their birth,
Rhine refused them. Thames would ruin them;
Surf, snow, river and earth
Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light;	165
Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,
Thou martyr-master: in thy sight
Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers—sweet heaven was astrew in them.
22 Five! the finding and sake
And cipher of suffering Christ.	170
Mark, the mark is of man’s make
And the word of it Sacrificed.
But he scores it in scarlet himself on his own bespoken,
Before-time-taken, dearest prizèd and priced—
Stigma, signal, cinquefoil token	175
For lettering of the lamb’s fleece, ruddying of the rose-flake.
23 Joy fall to thee, father Francis,
Drawn to the Life that died;
With the gnarls of the nails in thee, niche of the lance, his
Lovescape crucified	180
And seal of his seraph-arrival! and these thy daughters
And five-livèd and leavèd favour and pride,
Are sisterly sealed in wild waters,
To bathe in his fall-gold mercies, to breathe in his all-fire glances.
24 Away in the loveable west,	185
On a pastoral forehead of Wales,
I was under a roof here, I was at rest,
And they the prey of the gales;
She to the black-about air, to the breaker, the thickly
Falling flakes, to the throng that catches and quails	190
Was calling ‘O Christ, Christ, come quickly’:
The cross to her she calls Christ to her, christens her wild-worst Best.
25 The majesty! what did she mean?
Breathe, arch and original Breath.
Is it love in her of the being as her lover had been?	195
Breathe, body of lovely Death.
They were else-minded then, altogether, the men
Woke thee with a we are perishing in the weather of Gennesareth.
Or is it that she cried for the crown then,
The keener to come at the comfort for feeling the combating keen?	200
26 For how to the heart’s cheering
The down-dugged ground-hugged grey
Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing
Of pied and peeled May!
Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,	205
With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,
What by your measure is the heaven of desire,
The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?
27 No, but it was not these.
The jading and jar of the cart,	210
Time’s tasking, it is fathers that asking for ease
Of the sodden-with-its-sorrowing heart,
Not danger, electrical horror; then further it finds
The appealing of the Passion is tenderer in prayer apart:
Other, I gather, in measure her mind’s	215
Burden, in wind’s burly and beat of endragonèd seas.
28 But how shall I … make me room there:
Reach me a … Fancy, come faster—
Strike you the sight of it? look at it loom there,
Thing that she … there then! the Master,	220
Ipse, the only one, Christ, King, Head:
He was to cure the extremity where he had cast her;
Do, deal, lord it with living and dead;
Let him ride, her pride, in his triumph, despatch and have done with his doom there.
29 Ah! there was a heart right!	225
There was single eye!
Read the unshapeable shock night
And knew the who and the why;
Wording it how but by him that present and past,
Heaven and earth are word of, worded by?—	230
The Simon Peter of a soul! to the blast
Tarpeian-fast, but a blown beacon of light.
30 Jesu, heart’s light,
Jesu, maid’s son,
What was the feast followed the night	235
Thou hadst glory of this nun?—
Feast of the one woman without stain.
For so conceivèd, so to conceive thee is done;
But here was heart-throe, birth of a brain,
Word, that heard and kept thee and uttered thee outright.	240
31 Well, she has thee for the pain, for the
Patience; but pity of the rest of them!
Heart, go and bleed at a bitterer vein for the
Comfortless unconfessed of them—
No not uncomforted: lovely-felicitous Providence	245
Finger of a tender of; O of a feathery delicacy, the breast of the
Maiden could obey so, be a bell to, ring of it, and
Startle the poor sheep back! is the shipwrack then a harvest, does tempest carry the grain for thee?
32 I admire thee, master of the tides,
Of the Yore-flood, of the year’s fall;	250
The recurb and the recovery of the gulf’s sides,
The girth of it and the wharf of it and the wall;
Stanching, quenching ocean of a motionable mind;
Ground of being, and granite of it: past all
Grasp God, throned behind	255
Death with a sovereignty that heeds but hides, bodes but abides;
33 With a mercy that outrides
The all of water, an ark
For the listener; for the lingerer with a love glides
Lower than death and the dark;	260
A vein for the visiting of the past-prayer, pent in prison,
The-last-breath penitent spirits—the uttermost mark
Our passion-plungèd giant risen,
The Christ of the Father compassionate, fetched in the storm of his strides.
34 Now burn, new born to the world,	265
Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!
Not a dooms-day dazzle in his coming nor dark as he came;	270
Kind, but royally reclaiming his own;
A released shower, let flash to the shire, not a lightning of fire hard-hurled.
35 Dame, at our door
Drowned, and among our shoals,
Remember us in the roads, the heaven-haven of the Reward:	275
Our King back, oh, upon English souls!
Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east,
More brightening her, rare-dear Britain, as his reign rolls,
Pride, rose, prince, hero of us, high-priest,
Our hearts’ charity’s hearth’s fire, our thoughts’ chivalry’s throng’s Lord.	280

[Gary Sisco]

Instead of reading Chairman Mao
I think I'll go and milk my cow.

-- Wendell Berry

[shrugs]

Skunk Hour

by Robert Lowell

For Elizabeth Bishop


Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village,
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall,
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl,
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull,
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
'Love, O careless Love . . . .' I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat . . . .
I myself am hell,
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.

[GoodSpeak]

OK.

For Dark Poems, here's another of my favorites:

Annabel Lee

by Edgar Allan Poe, 1849

This poem appeared in The International Miscellany.
"Annabel Lee" is generally credited to represent Poe's
young wife, Virginia Clemm.

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.


-The End-

[RBS]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GY8NR7jZCYs

"Images" by Tyrone Greene

Dark and lonely on a summer's night.
Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.
Watchdog barking. Do he bite?
Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.
Slip in his window. Break his neck.
Then his house I start to wreck.
Got no reason. What the heck?
Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L my landlord.

[Dr Dave]

Why is poetry in the corner? Poetry needs to get out and kick ass. Poetry needs to own the whole fucking block.

[Jesse]

The Buddhists Have the Ball Field
James Tate

The Buddhists have the ball field. Then the teams
arrive, nine on one, but only three on the other.
The teams confront the Buddhists. The Buddhists
present their permit. There is little point in
arguing it, for the Buddhists clearly have the
permit for the field. And the teams have nothing,
not even two complete teams. It occurs to one team
manager to interest the Buddhists in joining his
team, but the Buddhists won't hear of it. The teams
walk away with their heads hung low. A gentle rain
begins. It would have been called anyway, they
think suddenly.

[Jesse]

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

Ikkyu
Probably 1394-1481

[GoodSpeak]

The Ex-Basketball Player

by John Updike

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth's Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps--
Five on the side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One's nostrils are two S's, and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all--more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In '46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points,
A county record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an innertube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae's Lunchonette.
Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.
Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods
Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

[Ron Thorne]

The Weary Blues
by Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway . . . He did a lazy sway . . . To the tune o' those Weary Blues. With his ebony hands on each ivory key He made that poor piano moan with melody. O Blues! Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool. Sweet Blues! Coming from a black man's soul. O Blues! In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan-- "Ain't got nobody in all this world, Ain't got nobody but ma self. I's gwine to quit ma frownin' And put ma troubles on the shelf." Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor. He played a few chords then he sang some more-- "I got the Weary Blues And I can't be satisfied. Got the Weary Blues And can't be satisfied-- I ain't happy no mo' And I wish that I had died." And far into the night he crooned that tune. The stars went out and so did the moon. The singer stopped playing and went to bed While the Weary Blues echoed through his head. He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

[GoodSpeak]

Daybreak in Alabama

by Langston Hughes

When I get to be a composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew.
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
And touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.

[GoodSpeak]

The Whipping

By Robert Hayden

The old women across the way
Is whipping the boy again
And shouting to the neighborhood
Her goodness and his wrongs.

Wildly he crashes through elephant ears,
Pleads in dusty zinnias,
While she in spite of crippling fat
Pursues and corners him.

She strikes and strikes the shrilling circling
Boy till the stick breaks
In her hand. His tears are rainy weather
To woundlike memories:

My head gripped in bony vise
Of knees, the writhing struggle
To wrench free, the blows that hateful

Words could bring, the face that I
No longer knew or loved...
Well, it is over now, it is over,
And the boy sobs in his room,

And the woman leans muttering against
A tree, exhausted, purged-
Avenged in part for lifelong hidings
She has had to bear.

[Pete C]

...by Henry Gibson
Selected Poetry From His Two Albums


The Cobra
The cobra always wears a smile
As he creeps across the ground
He grins like he's up in the clouds
I think that he turns on.


Dogs Are Better Than Ants
Dogs are better than ants
Because you don't have to bend so far to pet them
In addition, they are sturdy old muzzlers
Who fetch us our slippers, papers, and twig chunks
Twig chunks
But most of all, they stay out of jelly jars and
Never go squish if you happen to step on them.

(I call that last poem my "platform poem"
because it always promises more than it delivers;
but I wrote it out of love.)


Why I Like The Lizard
I like the lizard because
He's always so interested in the welfare of others.
Well, take for example the fly,
Which he does. Slurrrrrrppppp.....


Patacake
Patacake, patacake, baker's man
Bake me a friend.


The Eyelash
The eyelash is a friend to man.
It lives to serve the eye.
It fights the dirt and dust and grime,
And keeps the eyeball dry.
Flick, flick. Flick, flick.
It's busy as a bee.
Flick, flick. Flick, flick.
It's helpin' you and me.

("That was an original folk song.
Which I wrote originally for my folks." H. Gibson)


Animal Trio
The bullfrog is my pal true blue.
He don't smoke or drink or chew.
His only hang-up is he sniffs glue.
If I was a bullfrog I would too.

I just found out what the aardvark does
When he's feeling kinda blue and wants to get a little buzz.
He sneaks off down to the edge of the beach
And turns himself on by sniffin' bleach.

The hedgehog is a groovy friend.
When he dresses like a hippy he's the livin' end.
He's only got one hang-up when he's at the logs.
He turns himself on smokin' dental floss.


Marshall McLuhan,
What are yuh doin'?


How I Saved A Baby Rhino from Slippin' In The Quicksand,
Whilst In Search Of My Fountain Pen,
Last Summer Along The Amazon River
With great difficulty.


Flowers
(Flowers have always been the motivating force of my life)

They are not all flower children,
All those that use the name.
A lot are just imposters,
Playin' at the game.

Beware (beware),
Beware (beware)
Of artificial flowers,
They may be nice to look at,
But they're dead and can not grow.
Beware (beware),
Beware (beware)
Of artificial flowers.
They're plastic up on top,
And they're wire down below.

The real flower children
Are filled with love.
Phonies, they just scoff at love -
Their hearts are made of wood.

Beware (beware),
Beware (beware)
Of artificial flowers,
They may be nice to look at,
But they're dead and can not grow.
Beware (beware),
Beware (beware)
Of artificial flowers.
They're plastic up on top,
And they're wire down below.

True blue flower children
Do not act strange or queer.
They know the world has got to change,
And it must start right here.

Beware (beware),
Beware (beware)
Of artificial flowers,
They may be nice to look at,
But they're dead and can not grow.
Beware (beware),
Beware (beware)
Of artificial flowers.
They're plastic up on top,
And they're wire down below.


The Thumbnail
Did you ever stop to figure
Why the thumbnail is so hard?
Well it hasn't any choice
With all that skin to guard.
It may look fat and pudgy
But it's heart is good and true.
It's prettier than a toenail
And easier to chew.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

How odd
Of God
To choose
The Jews.

-- William Norman Ewer


Not odd
Of God.
Goyim
Annoy 'im.

-- Leo Rosten

[clinthopson]

Tiger, tiger
My mistake
I thought that you were William Blake.

[GoodSpeak]

The Termite

Some primal termite knocked on wood
And tasted it, and found it good!
And that is why your Cousin May
Fell through the parlor floor today.

Ogden Nash


[Ogden Nash Aphorism: Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker.]

[clinthopson]

A wondrous bird is the pelican
His beak can hold more than his belly can

[GoodSpeak]

The Guppy
by Ogden Nash

Whales have calves,
Cats have kittens,
Bears have cubs,
Bats have bittens,
Swans have cygnets,
Seals have puppies,
But guppies just have little guppies.

[RBS]

Does anyone here have an aardvark?
Does anybody here have an aardvark?
Everyone here's got a right and left ear
But nobody here's got an aardvark.

Bob McCallister

[tippy]

Originally Posted by RBS

Does anyone here have an aardvark?
Does anybody here have an aardvark?
Everyone here's got a right and left ear
But nobody here's got an aardvark.

Bob McCallister

Important Note: Be sure that all the children have both ears before you read that one aloud in class.

[tippy]

Eating Bugs with Brian

Here I sit
eating bugs with Brian
He said that I should try 'em
raw before I fry 'em
here I sit
eating bugs with Brian



Eating Bugs with Brian II

he didn't even bring any chocolate

[Monte Smith]

What Do I Remember of the Evacuation?
By Monte Smith

I was on the potty.
Nobody likes a smahty
pants. Taking the piss.
I performed my toilets
are blue, roses are read-
ing poetry in the john.
"Books are a load of crap,"
Phillip Larkin said.
How après poo.
The slate was wiped clean.
I remember nutheen.

[Scott Dolan]

Not Haiku!!

[GoodSpeak]

[ahem]

Fish not with this melancholy bait

-Wm. Shakespeare

[GoodSpeak]

OK.

Since we seem to be in a goofy mood today here's a favorite poem and from the Beat Poet Lawrence Ferlinghettii:


Underwear

Lawrence Ferlinghetti


I didn't get much sleep last night
thinking about underwear
Have you ever stopped to consider
underwear in the abstract
When you really dig into it
some shocking problems are raised
Underwear is something
we all have to deal with
Everyone wears
some kind of underwear
Even Indians
wear underwear
Even Cubans
wear underwear
The Pope wears underwear I hope
Underwear is worn by Negroes
The Governor of Louisiana
wears underwear
I saw him on TV
He must have had tight underwear
He squirmed a lot
Underwear can really get you in a bind
Negroes often wear
white underwear
which may lead to trouble
You have seen the underwear ads
for men and women
so alike but so different
Women's underwear holds things up
Men's underwear holds things down
Underwear is one thing
men and women have in common
Underwear is all we have between us
You have seen the three-color pictures
with crotches encircled
to show the areas of extra strength
and three-way stretch
promising full freedom of action
Don't be deceived
It's all based on the two-party system
which doesn't allow much freedom of choice
the way things are set up
America in its Underwear
struggles thru the night
Underwear controls everything in the end
Take foundation garments for instance
They are really fascist forms
of underground government
making people believe
something but the truth
telling you what you can or can't do
Did you ever try to get around a girdle
Perhaps Non-Violent Action
is the only answer
Did Gandhi wear a girdle?
Did Lady Macbeth wear a girdle?
Was that why Macbeth murdered sleep?
And that spot she was always rubbing --
Was it really in her underwear?
Modern anglosaxon ladies
must have huge guilt complexes
always washing and washing and washing
Out damned spot -- rub don't blot --
Underwear with spots very suspicious
Underwear with bulges very shocking
Underwear on clothesline a great flag of freedom
Someone has escaped his Underwear
May be naked somewhere
Help!
But don't worry
Everybody's still hung up in it
There won't be no real revolution
And poetry still the underwear of the soul
And underwear still covering a multitude of faults
in the geological sense --
strange sedimentary stones, inscrutable cracks!
And that only the beginning
For does not the body stay alive
after death
and still need its underwear
or outgrow it
some organs said to reach full maturity
only after the head stops holding them back?
If I were you I'd keep aside
an oversize pair of winter underwear
Do not go naked into that good night
And in the meantime
keep calm and warm and dry
No use stirring ourselves up prematurely
"over Nothing"
Move forward with dignity
hand in vest
Don't get emotional
And death shall have no dominion
There's plenty of time my darling
Are we not still young and easy
Don't shout