I love this for its claustrophobia and desperation… Dare not to sleep, by Arnulf Øverland (translated, and apparently punchier in the original klingon)

I was awakened one morning, by the quaintest of dreams
‘twas like a voice, spoken to me
It sounded afar – like an underground stream,
I rose and said: Why do you call me?

Dare not to slumber! Dare not to sleep!
Dare not believe, it was merely a dream!
Yore I was judged.
The gallows were built in the court this evening,
They’ll come for me — 5’ in the morning

This dungeon is teeming,
And barracks stand dungeon by dungeon
we lie here, awaiting, in cold cells of stone,
We lie here, we rot, in these murky holes.

We know not ourselves, what does lie ahead
Who will be the next one they’ll reach for.
We moan and we shriek: But do you take heed?
Is there none among you who’ll hearken?

No one can see us,
None know what befalls us.
Yet more:
None will believe – what the day will bring us!

And then You defy: This dare not be true!
That men can be utterly evil.
There has to be some one with merits pure
Oh, brother, you still have a great deal to learn

They said: You will give your life, if commanded
We’ve given it now, for naught it was handed
The world has forgotten, we’ve all been deceived
Dare not to sleep in this hour – this eve.

You oughtn’t go to your business hence,
Or think: What’s your loss – or what is your gain?
You oughtn’t attribute your fields and your kine,
Nor say you’ve enough – with all that is thine.

You oughn’t abide, sitting calm in your home
Saying: Dismal it is, poor they are, and alone
You cannot permit it! You dare not, at all.
Accepting that outrage on all else may fall!
I cry with the final gasps of my breath:
You dare not repose, nor stand and forget

Pardon them not – they know what they do!
They breathe on hate-glows, and evil pursue,
They fancy to slay, they revel with cries,
Their desire is to gloat, when our world is at fire!
In blood they are yearning to drown one and all!
Don’t you believe it? You’ve heard the call!

You know how infants will soldiers remain,
While dashing through streets, fields, chanting ‘bout pain
Aroused by their mothers‘ assurance of glory
They’ll shelter their land – and they’ll never worry

You know the fatality of the lies,
that glory and faith and honor abides
You discern the dauntless dreams of a child,
A saber, a banner, he’ll flaunt them so wild,

And then they’ll leave home for a rainfall of steel,
‘Till last they hang ragged on barbed wire will,
Decaying for Hitler’s Aryan call,
That is what a man’s for – after all…

I couldn’t imagine – too late now it is
My sentence is just: The verdict’s no miss
I believed in prosperity, dreamt about peace
In labor and fellowship; love’s fragrant kiss
Yet those who don’t die on the battlefield,
Their heads for the axeman, will certainly yield

I cry in the gloom – if only you’d knew
There is but one thing – befitting to do
Defend yourself, while your hands are still yearning,
Protect your offspring – Europe is burning.

***

I shook from the chill. To dress, up I rose
Without stars were shining, so far, yet so close
‘twere simply a brilliant ray in the east,
Admonishing warning from the dream that just ceased

The day that soared up from earths furthermost strand
Augmenting with blood — and with firebrand
It grew with terror – like a breath that was lost
It seemed like the starlight – was slain by the frost.

I weighed: Something is imminent – and it’s dire
Our era is over — Europe’s on fire!

From “A Shropshire Lad” by A E Housman

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.

I love the bit about bursting in on god- which agnostic/atheist hasn’t done that when they really want something?

Er…all of them :roll:? What do I win?

Which reminds me:

It’s said that there are no atheists in foxholes
And that soldiers all pray not to die
But they don’t really believe that lie
That prayer alone will keep them from perdition.
Why else would they all cry,
“Praise the Lord, but pass the ammunition.”

– George Hunter

OK, my last one was oppressive and horrible, here’s something joyous.

The Ocean Surge, by Rumi (translation uncredited)

I want to be in such passionate adoration
that my tent gets pitched against the sky!
Let the beloved come and sit
like a guard dog in front of the tent.

When the ocean surges,
don’t let me just hear it.
Let it crash inside my chest!

(mostly for the last 3, I read it for the first time while struggling with stress and depression and it just said so simply what I wanted/needed to do- I was a bit of a passenger at the time and I made it basically my entire goal, to let it crash in my chest, good or bad.)

The Stolen Child

W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
.

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand

First heard in my late teens, an apprentice plasterer working on refurbs in a sink estate. I didn’t realise people could weave words together to affect me as much. That poem broadened my outlook and made me start to read and eventually study. I got out into the country and have been going ever since.

+1 Duckman. Nearly my favourite*

*The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

Find myself thinking about the coming “day” quite a lot as mine get older

Book Ends by Tony Harrison
I

Baked the day she suddenly dropped dead
we chew it slowly that last apple pie.

Shocked into sleeplessness you’re scared of bed.
We never could talk much, and now don’t try.

You’re like book ends, the pair of you, she’d say,
Hog that grate, say nothing, sit, sleep, stare…

The ‘scholar’ me, you, worn out on poor pay,
only our silence made us seem a pair.

Not as good for staring in, blue gas,
too regular each bud, each yellow spike.

At night you need my company to pass
and she not here to tell us we’re alike!

You’re life’s all shattered into smithereens.

Back in our silences and sullen looks,
for all the Scotch we drink, what’s still between ‘s
not the thirty or so years, but books, books, books.

II

The stone’s too full. The wording must be terse.
There’s scarcely room to carve the FLORENCE on it–

Come on, it’s not as if we’re wanting verse.
It’s not as if we’re wanting a whole sonnet!

After tumblers of neat Johnny Walker
(I think that both of us we’re on our third)
you said you’d always been a clumsy talker
and couldn’t find another, shorter word
for ‘beloved’ or for ‘wife’ in the inscription,
but not too clumsy that you can’t still cut:

You’re supposed to be the bright boy at description
and you can’t tell them what the **** to put!

I’ve got to find the right words on my own.

I’ve got the envelope that he’d been scrawling,
mis-spelt, mawkish, stylistically appalling
but I can’t squeeze more love into their stone.

There’s some fantastic stuff here folks. Good effort! 😀

Good call out, back laters with mine..

Now you will feel no rain

Now you will feel no rain,
for each of you will be a shelter to the other.

Now you will feel no cold,
for each of you will be warmth to the other.

Now there is no more loneliness for you;
now there is no more loneliness.

Now you are two bodies,
but there is only one life before you.

Go now to your dwelling place,
to enter into your days together

And may your days be good,
and long on the earth

I was reminded of this poem by the Atheist/Religion thread that was going earlier:

Church Going by Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there’s nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new-
Cleaned or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
“Here endeth” much more loudly than I’d meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate, and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort or other will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation — marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these — for whom was built
This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

His nob retracts,
unlike his made-up facts

Jambalaya!

How Pleasant To Know Mr. Lear.

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff.
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few find him pleasant enough.

His mind is concrete and fastidious,
His nose is remarkably big;
His visage is more or less hideous,
His beard it resembles a wig.

He has ears, and two eyes, and ten fingers,
(Leastways if you reckon two thumbs);
He used to be one of the singers,
But now he is one of the dumbs.

He sits in a beautiful parlour,
With hundreds of books on the wall;
He drinks a great deal of marsala,
But never gets tipsy at all.

He has many friends, laymen and clerical,
Old Foss is the name of his cat;
His body is perfectly spherical,
He weareth a runcible hat.

When he walks in waterproof white,
The children run after him so!
Calling out, “He’s gone out in his night-
Gown, that crazy old Englishman, oh!”

He weeps by the side of the ocean,
He weeps on the top of the hill;
He purchases pancakes and lotion,
And chocolate shrimps from the mill.

He reads, but he does not speak, Spanish,
He cannot abide ginger beer;
Ere the days of his pilgrimage vanish,
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!

I’m a huge Simon Armitage fanbouy..

Here’s one I like:

It is not through weeping,
but all evening the pale blue eye
on your most photogenic side has kept
its own unfathomable tide. Like the boy
at the dyke I have been there:

held out a huge finger,
lifted atoms of dust with the point
of a tissue and imagined slivers of hair
in the oil on the cornea. We are both
in the dark, but I go on

drawing the eyelid up by its lashes
folding it almost inside-out, then finding
and hiding every mirror in the house
as the iris, besieged with the ink
of blood rolls back

into its own orbit. Nothing
will help it. Through until dawn
you dream the true story of the boy
who hooked out his eye and ate it,
so by six in the morning

I am steadying the ointment
that will bite like an onion, piping
a line of cream while avoiding the pupil
and in no time it is glued shut
like a bad mussel.

Friends call round
and mean well. They wait
and whisper in the air-lock of the lobby
with patches, eyewash, the truth
about mascara.

Even the cats are on to it;
they bring in starlings, and because their feathers
are the colours of oil on water in sunlight
they are a sign of something.
In the long hours

beyond us, irritations heal
into arguments. For the eighteenth time
it comes to this: the length of your leg sliding out
from the covers, the ball of your foot
like a fist on the carpet

while downstairs
I cannot bring myself to hear it.
Words have been spoken; things that were bottled
have burst open and to walk in now
would be to walk in

on the ocean.

Far from crazy pavements –
The taste of silver spoons
A clinical arrangement
On a dirty afternoon
Where the fecal germs of Mr Freud
Are rendered obsolete
The legal term is null and void
In the case of Beasley Street

In the cheap seats where murder breeds
Somebody is out of breath
Sleep is a luxury they don’t need
– a sneak preview of death
Belladonna is your flower
Manslaughter your meat
Spend a year in a couple of hours
On the edge of Beasley Street

Where the action isn’t
That’s where it is
State your position
Vacancies exist
In an X-certificate exercise
Ex-servicemen excrete
Keith Joseph smiles and a baby dies
In a box on Beasley Street

From the boarding houses and the bedsits
Full of accidents and fleas
Somebody gets it
Where the missing persons freeze
Wearing dead men’s overcoats
You can’t see their feet
A riff joint shuts – opens up
Right down on Beasley Street

Cars collide, colours clash
Disaster movie stuff
For a man with a Fu Manchu moustache
Revenge is not enough
There’s a dead canary on a swivel seat
There’s a rainbow in the road
Meanwhile on Beasley Street
Silence is the code

Hot beneath the collar
An inspector calls
Where the perishing stink of squalor
Impregnates the walls
The rats have all got rickets
They spit through broken teeth
The name of the game is not cricket
Caught out on Beasley Street

The hipster and his hired hat
Drive a borrowed car
Yellow socks and a pink cravat
Nothing La-di-dah
OAP, mother to be
Watch the three-piece suite
When shit-stoppered drains
And crocodile skis
Are seen on Beasley Street

The kingdom of the blind
A one-eyed man is king
Beauty problems are redefined
The doorbells do not ring
A lightbulb bursts like a blister
The only form of heat
Here a fellow sells his sister
Down the river on Beasley Street

The boys are on the wagon
The girls are on the shelf
Their common problem is
That they’re not someone else
The dirt blows out
The dust blows in
You can’t keep it neat
It’s a fully furnished dustbin
Sixteen Beasley Street

Vince the ageing savage
Betrays no kind of life
But the smell of yesterday’s cabbage
And the ghost of last year’s wife
Through a constant haze
Of deodorant sprays
He says retreat
Alsations dog the dirty days
Down the middle of Beasley Street

People turn to poison
Quick as lager turns to piss
Sweethearts are physically sick
Every time they kiss
It’s a sociologist’s paradise
Each day repeats
On easy, cheesy, greasy, queasy
Beastly Beasley Street

Eyes dead as vicious fish
Look around for laughs
If I could have just one wish
I would be a photograph
On a permanent Monday morning
Get lost or fall asleep
When the yellow cats are yawning
Around the back of Beasley Street

Ulysses

Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1809 – 1892

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
Life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known—cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all,—
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle,
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me,
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.

Especially this bit:

Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
This poem won’t rhyme,
Get in the van.

(That Jonny Vegas poem on 8 out of ten cats knocked me for six too, especially in the context of the show.)

War is hell.

There is never a day goes past
When I do not think of the wreck
From which I emerged, so long ago

Adorned with the awkwardly-stitched chain mail
Partially embedded in the minds’ flesh, that I used
To protect myself from family.

And the under-inflated life belt,
Fashioned from crippled reflexes
With which
I stayed afloat on the waves of the world.

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”

But when the train came near to Wormit Bay,
Boreas he did loud and angry bray,
And shook the central girders of the Bridge of Tay
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

So the train sped on with all its might,
And Bonnie Dundee soon hove in sight,
And the passengers’ hearts felt light,
Thinking they would enjoy themselves on the New Year,
With their friends at home they lov’d most dear,
And wish them all a happy New Year.

So the train mov’d slowly along the Bridge of Tay,
Until it was about midway,
Then the central girders with a crash gave way,
And down went the train and passengers into the Tay!
The Storm Fiend did loudly bray,
Because ninety lives had been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

As soon as the catastrophe came to be known
The alarm from mouth to mouth was blown,
And the cry rang out all o’er the town,
Good Heavens! the Tay Bridge is blown down,
And a passenger train from Edinburgh,
Which fill’d all the peoples hearts with sorrow,
And made them for to turn pale,
Because none of the passengers were sav’d to tell the tale
How the disaster happen’d on the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

It must have been an awful sight,
To witness in the dusky moonlight,
While the Storm Fiend did laugh, and angry did bray,
Along the Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
Oh! ill-fated Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay,
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

William McGonagall

girls who frequent picture palaces
don’t go much for pschoanalysis
And though Mr Freud
is quite rightly annoyed
they still cling to their long standing fallacies

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

An anthem for all the insecure, balding, weak middle-aged men on here. Don’t know why I already loved it in my early 20s!

I was just thinking about that yesterday out on my run. I ate the peach 🙂

…yes to TS Oilets, first lines especially:

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent

Also the John Cooper Claaarke is all great. And the Larkin, who I have to face it is my favourite. Off to find an extract…

Toads

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,
Losers, 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 of 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 have both.

Murray Lachlan Young on Keith Richards falling out of a coconut tree

What the hell did you think you were doing?
So blind that you just could not see
Not a thought for your legion of worshipping fans
When you shinned up the trunk of that coconut tree

If you’re gonna go Keith go Keith go
If your gonna go Keith go Keith go
If your gonna go Keith go Keith go
Don’t do it like that Keith no Keith no

Go in the middle of a hard blues riff
Go at the end of a smacked up spliff
Speedball death plunge, Lear jet smash
Coked up gunfight, high-speed car crash

Kohl black eyes cracked rock-n-roll skin
With your hand on the fret board, cigarette grin
Do it like a king pin Debauchee
But not falling out of a coconut tree

Keith, man, what goaded you on?
Was it Ronnie Wood? That said you should?
Or was it Elton John that you tried to prove wrong?
When he called you King Kong, did you snag your sarong?
C’mon, C’mon, C’mon C’mawn!
Keith, baby, tell us please what the hell was going on?

Cause if you’re gonna go Keith, go Keith go
If you’re gonna go Keith go Keith go
And if you’re gonna go Keith go Keith go
Don’t do it like that Keith

No Keith

No.

My own favourite is the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and yes, the Iron Maiden version is probably the best.

However it’s a bit long to post here so instead here’s another “classic”:-

Shake and shake the ketchup bottle,
None’ll come, and then a lott’ll.

Last bit of Larkin on just how unlikely everything is that we’re here with our everyday trajectories, from the end of the Whitsun weddings train journey:

They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.

The German Guns by Pte S O Baldrick

Boom, boom, boom, boom

Boom, boom, boom

Boom, boom, boom, boom

Boom, boom, boom.

My winning entry into the Brooks 2014 haiku competition:

No sky and no ground
Just a Brooks Swallow and I
Gliding through Snowflakes

My favourite toilet poem:

Here I sat
To sit and think
All I did
Was shit and sink

My grandfather a few back wrote Hiawatha, bit long but I love this line on friendship:

Straight between them ran the pathway,
Never grew the grass upon it

Napoleons Retreat From Wigan
Twas on the plains of Irlam,
The year 1815
Napoleon were sat in his long johns,
Suppin’ Brasso with Josephine.

He’d chewed his nails to the very quick,
So he chewed ’em down to t’ slow
He was chewin’ very hard when up the back yard
Come a corporal his face all aglow.

Eh bean mon capitain,” he cried,
“Sackrit bloo murd alors parlez voox”
And boney spat out a big lump of nail and said
“Bugger me what’s to do?”

“It’s t’lads cried corporal pickin’ his nose,
“We played Wigan at billiards last night
And Wigan lads cheated and give us wobbly cues
And sewed all t pockets up tight”

“Ecky le pecky,” cried Boney,
“I’ll show ’em which team’s the best”
And he had a quick chew of his fingernails
And stuck his hand up his vest.

“Dish out some spud guns and catapults,” he cried,
“And give lads pea shooters all round
We’ll burn down the pie and peas shops,
And raze chippies down to t’ ground.”

“Us’ll run through Wigan like a dose of salts,
We’ll make ’em tremble and quake
We’ll loot and we’ll pillage and we’ll pinch things as well,
And we’ll smash all the Eccles cake!”

Well he borrowed the Irlam muck cart,
And some spuds to roast on t’ way
And with all of his lads in t’ wagon,
‘e pointed ‘is ‘orse Wigan way.

But weather turned rotten to spite him,
It snowed, rained and hailed and all t’ rest
And Boney started sulkin’ and chewin’ his nails,
And stickin’ his hand up his vest.

Soon the horse wouldn’t go no further,
It were weary and smelly and old
And it asked for a blanket and Time and a Half,
And boots for workin’ in t’ cold.

Well they traipsed through the snow for a fortneet,
Dischuffed to the knickers they were
They’d icicles hangin’ from their nom de plumes,
And tricycles hung from their hair.

So they traipsed through t’ slush round slag heaps,
And up by t’ canal and by t’ pier
Till they come to a door-mat in t’ snow sayin’ “BOG OFF”
And Boney said “Ey up lads we’re there!!”

But the gates of Wigan were bolted tight,
Said Boney, “Ooo what a pest”
And he had another chew of his fingernails,
And stuck his hand up his vest.

There he stood at the gates of Wigan,
Frozen tears ran in lumps down his chin
And he kicked on t’ front door with his wellies in temper,
And shouted “Come on then lerrus in!!! “

But there on the front door of Wigan,
A notice he read wi’ a groan
“WE HEARD AS ‘OW YOU WERE COMIN’,
SO WE FLITTED, THERE’S NO ONE AT ‘OME.”

Boney he were right blazin’,
But Wigan were blazin’ also
‘Cos Lord Mayor ‘ad left chip pan on t’ gas ring,
And Wigan were all aglow.

Well the flames grew higher and higher,
And Boney he got right depressed
So he had another chew of his fingernails,
And stuck his hand up his vest.

Well Wigan soon burnt down to ashes,
An’ it got cowld so they ‘ad to retreat
They’d et their boots and socks on t’ way,
So they ‘ad to walk ‘ome in bare feet.

Retreatin’ were t’ worst part o’ t’ business,
Cos t’ lads were startin’ to see red
And they hissed and booed at Boney up front,
An’ chucked snowballs at t’ back of his head.

Boney were fed up wi’ all this,
So that night he worked out a plan
He pawned all t’ lads’ muskets as they lay there in kip,
An’ he come ‘ome on t’ No. 11 tram.

It were dark when Boney got back to their street,
And stars were twinklin’ above
And Boney’s passions rose and burst all his buttons,
As he thowt of Josephine his love!!

He opened the door, stamped the snow off his boots,
Stuck his rifle in t’ plant pot in th’ hall
“I’m ‘ome sweety pie light of my life,”
And Josie just shouted rude things.

“Don’t think you can go out conquering” she said,
Enjoying yerself wi’ t’ lads
Yer t’ wust bloody stop-out i’ Irlam!”
Boney said, “There’s no answer to that.”

She said, “You’ve not finished papperin’ t’ lobby yet,
This ‘ouse is a right bloody mess
And you just stand there chewin’ your nails,
And stickin’ your hand up your vest.”

Well she ran downstairs and smashed ‘im in t’ gob,
An’ when he tried to get into bed
She got right nasty and picked up the po,
And smashed it over his head.

So you see what they say in th’ hysterical books
Isn’t always right
It were Boney that got deaf and dumb breakfast
And Josephine who said ‘Not tonight’

‘Cos she made him sleep downstairs on t’ hearth rug
Tossin’ and turnin’ without rest
Kickin’ the cat and chewin’ his nails
And stickin’ his hand up his vest!!!

Mike Harding

I was listening to RadMac on 6Music this afternoon, and they played a reading of a Kipling poem about his son, Jack, who he’d pulled strings to get him into the army, then he was killed, aged 18, at Loos.

“Have you news of my boy Jack?”
Not this tide.
“When d’you think that he’ll come back?”
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Has any one else had word of him?”
Not this tide.
For what is sunk will hardly swim,
Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

“Oh, dear, what comfort can I find?”
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind —
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,
This tide,
And every tide;
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!”
So very moving.

I have to admit, I’ve never really had much interest in poetry, although I’ve always liked well-written song lyrics, and frankly, the two are indistinguishable when done well, and on that basis, I find these lyrics to be lovely poetry, and more meaningful as I get older:

Across the purple sky, all the birds are leaving
But how can they know it’s time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I will still be dreaming
I have no thought of time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it’s time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
And I am not alone while my love is near me
I know it will be so until it’s time to go
So come the storms of winter and then the birds in spring again
I do not fear the time
For who knows how my love grows?
And who knows where the time goes?

Read more: Sandy Denny – Who Knows Where The Time Goes? Lyrics | MetroLyrics

The Rolling English Road by G K Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.

A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,

And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;

A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread

The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,

And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;

But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed

To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,

Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,

The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run

Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?

The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,

But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.

God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear

The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,

Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,

But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,

And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;

For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,

Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

Not last night but the night before,
Three Tom cats came knocking at my door,
One had a trumpet,
One had a drum,
And one had a pancake stuck to his bum

-God I miss Spike Milligan

..

The Lion and Albert

by Marriot Edgar

THE LION AND ALBERT

There’s a famous seaside place called Blackpool,
That’s noted for fresh air and fun,
And Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom
Went there with young Albert, their son.

A grand little lad was young Albert,
All dressed in his best; quite a swell
With a stick with an ‘orse’s ‘ead ‘andle,
The finest that Woolworth’s could sell.

They didn’t think much to the Ocean:
The waves, they was fiddlin’ and small,
There was no wrecks and nobody drownded,
Fact, nothing to laugh at at all.

So, seeking for further amusement,
they paid and went into the Zoo,
Where they’d Lions and Tigers and Camels,
And old ale and sandwiches too.

There were one great big Lion called Wallace;
His nose were all covered with scars-
He lay in a somnolent posture,
With the side of his face on the bars.

Now Albert had heard about Lions,
How they was ferocious and wild-
To see Wallace lying so peaceful,
Well, it didn’t seem right to the child.

So straightway the brave little feller,
Not showing a morsel of fear,
Took his stick with it’s’orse’s ‘ead ‘andle
…And pushed it in Wallace’s ear.

You could see that the Liion didn’t like it,
For giving a kind of a roll,
He pulled Albert inside the cage with ‘im,
And swallowed the little lad ‘ole.

Then Pa, who had seen the occurence,
And didn’t know what to do next,
Said “Mother! Yon Lion’s ‘et Albert”,
And Mother said, ‘Well I am vexed!”

Then Mr and Mrs Ramsbottom-
Quite rightly, when all’s said and done-
Complained to the Animal Keeper,
That the Lion had eaten their son.

The keeper was quite nice about it;
He said “What a nasty mishap.
Are you sure that it’s your boy he’s eaten?”
Pa said “Am I sure? There’s his cap!”

The manager had to be sent for.
He came and he said “What’s to do?”
Pa said “Yon Lion’s ‘et Albert,
And ‘im in his Sunday clothes, too.”

The Mother said, “Right’s right, young feller;
I think it’s a shame and a sin,
For a lion to go and eat Albert,
And after we’ve paid to come in.”

The manager wanted no trouble,
He took out his purse right away,
Saying “How much to settle the matter?”
And Pa said “What do you usually pay?”

But Mother had turned a bit awkward
When she thought where her Albert had gone.
She said “No! someone’s got to be summonsed”-
So that was decided upon.

Then off they went to the P’lice Station,
In front of the Magistrate chap;
They told ‘im what happened to Albert,
And proved it by showing his cap.

The Magistrate gave his opinion
That no one was really to blame
And he said that he hoped the Ramsbottoms
Would have further sons to their name.

At that Mother got proper blazing,
“And thank you, sir, kindly,” said she.
“What waste all our lives raising children
To feed ruddy Lions? Not me!”

MARRIOTT EDGAR

Another JCC

I wanna Be Yours…

I wanna be your vacuum cleaner
breathing in your dust
I wanna be your Ford Cortina
I will never rust
If you like your coffee hot
let me be your coffee pot
You call the shots
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your raincoat
for those frequent rainy days
I wanna be your dreamboat
when you want to sail away
Let me be your teddy bear
take me with you anywhere
I don’t care
I wanna be yours

I wanna be your electric meter
I will not run out
I wanna be the electric heater
you’ll get cold without
I wanna be your setting lotion
hold your hair in deep devotion
Deep as the deep Atlantic ocean
that’s how deep is my devotion

Lots of duplicates appearing – popular pomes…

I miss Spike Milligan

Soldier Freddy
was never ready,
But! Soldier Neddy,
unlike Freddy
Was always ready
and steady,

That’s why,
When Soldier Neddy
Is-outside-Buckingham-Palace-on-guard-in -the-pouring-wind-and-rain-being-steady-and-ready ,
Freddy
is home in beddy.

From: Poems for pensioners by Andy Seed (Valley press)

BHS (Before Health and Safety)

We swam in rivers,
Fell out of trees,
Jumped off the bus,
And skinned our knees.

We hid in the woods,
Fished in the lakes,
Raced on bikes
With dodgy brakes

We played near ponds,
On building sites;
Crossed busy roads,
Flew our own kites.

Throwing snowballs
For winter thrills;
Sliding on ice,
Sledging down hills.

Building tree houses,
Dens with sticks;
Making go karts,
learning new tricks.

With catapults, penknives,
Arrows and bows;
Stings and splinters,
Bloodied nose.

Armed with stink bombs,
or itching powder;
Jumping Jacks,
Or something louder.

We ate cakes and cream
And toffee and jam,
Pilfered apples
And tins of spam.

We drank from bottles,
Had lead painted toys;
And were whacked by teachers,
When naughty boys.

There were no bike helmets,
No childproof lids;
No mobile phones,
Just happy kids.

Classic Partridge for the wurkin classes…

When you return by Aonghas Macneacaill

When you return they’ll see
My words are true
I went to the hazelwood yesterday
Seeking hazelnuts for food
But on every branch and twig
Was your pursuing face
I went to the alehouse
To expel you from my head
Every glass I raised,
Your beauty overflowed from it
I went to bed early last night
To escape you in sleep
But you kept me awake till
I’d make you a song
When you return they’ll see
My words are true
I’d wish we were torn asunder
Were we not apart
Let your presence replace my image of you
And how I’d rejoice
You’ve brought me to foolish babbling
Tiring friends with praise of you
When you return they’ll see that
My words are true
When you return they’ll see
My words are true
They’ll see mountains dance with ripples
Mole and eagle step the reel
Red rasp held by kind sea-tangle
Sport before their eyes
My words are true
When you return,