Trees
 

TREES

by: Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918)
THINK that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth's sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair; Upon whose bosom snow has lain; Who intimately lives with rain. Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.

Got curious and went digging on wiki for why the author died so young... He was a soldier in WW1, should have guessed from the date. He and his wife already had 5 children by then.

Technical World Magazine, Feb 1909

like many trades, the better the job is done, the less it is noticed.

Yeah, so Roses ARE red.
I made up the rest
If you got some big FUCKen secret,
Then why don't you sing ME something.

I'm in the midst of a Trauma.
Leave a message,... I'll call you back.
Leave it by the bed.

Some people SHOULD die
That's just unconscious knowledge.
Because, because...
the bigger you get,
the wider you spread,
you gotta depend on me...
... now.
your vision is dead.
The more your dream is dead
Vision's, take yourself from my eyes
Like an eagle's claw

Read more: Janes Addiction - Pig's In Zen Lyrics | MetroLyrics


~Perry Ferrel

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that, for destruction, ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

Following a night of extraordinary wind and rain (extraordinary for this corner of the county).

Wind

This house has been far out at sea all night,
The woods crashing through darkness, the booming hills,
Winds stampeding the fields under the window
Floundering black astride and blinding wet

Till day rose; then under an orange sky
The hills had new places, and wind wielded
Blade-light, luminous black and emerald,
Flexing like the lens of a mad eye.

At noon I scaled along the house-side as far as
The coal-house door. Once I looked up –
Through the brunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes
The tent of the hills drummed and strained its guyrope,

The fields quivering, the skyline a grimace,
At any second to bang and vanish with a flap:
The wind flung a magpie away and a black-
Back gull bent like an iron bar slowly. The house

Rang like some fine green goblet in the note
That any second would shatter it. Now deep
In chairs, in front of the great fire, we grip
Our hearts and cannot entertain book, thought,

Or each other. We watch the fire blazing,
And feel the roots of the house move, but sit on,
Seeing the window tremble to come in,
Hearing the stones cry out under the horizons.

Ted Hughes

FTR, this poem is a staple of comprehension/ literacy appreciation exams. I hated it.
I always found Ted Hughes too brutal and disturbing for poetry, his images and comparisons unsettling. Forgive me, I was >15. In my defence it wasn't because I was a Plath fan.

Love to eat them mousies
mousies what I love to eat
bite they little heads off
nibble on they tiny feat

- B. Kliban
from Cat

See now that's the sort of thing that confuses people about poetry.
Like some abstract art, it's so simple it shouldn't count.

But it bloody does, because it's so simple it's a marvel; like finding a glistening piece of cherry that's slipped unchopped into a fruit cake.
Glorious.

'If'
 

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Rudyard Kipling.

Father in the Railway Buffet

What are you doing here, ghost, among these urns,
These film-wrapped sandwiches and help-yourself biscuits,
Upright and grand, with your stick, hat and gloves,
Your breath of eau-de-cologne?

What have you to say to these head-scarfed tea-ladies,
For whom your expensive vowels are as exotic as Japan?
Stay, ghost, in your proper haunts, the clubland smokerooms,
Where you know the waiters by name.

You have no place among these damp and nameless.
Why do you walk here? I came to say goodbye.
You were ashamed of me for being different.
It didn't matter.

You who never even learned to queue.

U A Fanthorpe.

(my favourite poems of hers always hurt my throat. this even more than most)

Missed this when you posted it. What an awesome poem.

She's an awesome poet.

Well now, guess who replaced her Dragon Book of Verse (which went to the charity shop in a pre-move clearout because Mum thought it was just an old schoolbook - which it was, but one I read fortnightly)

I'll give you a clue. It was someone posting right now in this thread.

I've referenced Timothy Winters before, but searching suggests I've never shared the poem.
It has an easily accessible and consistent rhythm and rhyme scheme, unlike much of the blank verse I often post. Which may be why it comes to mind quite frequently. Then again, I'm a bugger for quotes of any kind, even from sitcoms.

Timothy Winters

Timothy Winters comes to school
With eyes as wide as a football-pool,
Ears like bombs and teeth like splinters:
A blitz of a boy is Timothy Winters.

His belly is white, his neck is dark,
And his hair is an exclamation-mark.
His clothes are enough to scare a crow
And through his britches the blue winds blow.

When teacher talks he won't hear a word
And he shoots down dead the arithmetic bird,
He licks the pattern off his plate
And he's not even heard of the Welfare State.

Timothy Winters has bloody feet
And he lives in a house on Suez Street,
He sleeps in a sack on the kitchen floor
And they say there aren't boys like him anymore.

Old Man Winters likes his beer
And his missus ran off with a bombardier,
Grandma sits in the grate with a gin
And Timothy's dosed with an aspirin.

The Welfare Worker lies awake
But the law's as tricky as a ten-foot snake,
So Timothy Winters drinks his cup
And slowly goes on growing up.

At Morning Prayers the Master helves
For children less fortunate than ourselves,
And the loudest response in the room is when
Timothy Winters roars "Amen!"

So come one angel, come on ten:
Timothy Winters says "Amen
Amen amen amen amen."
Timothy Winters, Lord.
Amen.


Charles Causley