What poems come to our minds?

[Ibby]

The Motorcycle Song

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorcycle
And I don't want a tickle
I'd rather ride my motorcycle
And I dont want to die
I want to ride my motorcy... cle...

Arlo Guthrie

[Kubulai]

Perhaps this thread deserves a bump

That Robert Rankin verse really stuck in my mind, It was what I was searching for when I found this thread.

Here is one by

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Last Leaf

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone!"

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said--
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago--
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.

[wolf]

Cool first post. Welcome.

[Sundae]

Great bumping action - I hadn't seen this thread before


Autumn

It will not always be like this,
The air is windless, a few last
Leaves adding their decoration
To the trees' shoulders, braiding the cuffs
Of the boughs with gold; a bird preening
In the lawns' mirror. Having looked up
From the day's chores, pause a minute,
Let the mind take its photograph
Of the bright scene, something to wear
Against the heart in the long cold.

R S Thomas

[Stormieweather]

I saw you tonight
...You were with a girl
I could have called to you
But what to say?
...That my eyes were
these reluctant thieves?
...That some innocent design
had brought our cars to rest
side by side at a
three-way light?

I looked across
(a Peeping Tom)
from the passing lane
You were spilling out
a good belly laugh
(those sweet familiar ribbons)
My spirit caught your
fire again and

It wasn't until later that
I remembered how I rubbed
cream into theose flesh leather
seats of yours...My earrings
were in the glove compartment
where the registration still
bears my name...Oh,
it was perfect

You jumped the light
rushing
on your way up the hill
to my old bed
with her...Leaving me
an unwilling voyeur
My heart
was a
beggar






-Merrit Malloy

[Sundae]

The Bite

Dark corsage I can't
unpin, I'm stuck with it,
drawing wry comment
for days, however I hide
this stamp that approves
the boundary, proves that you
stop short of blood, all jokes
aside. But note
how readily my veins
leap up: a little harder and
the whole heart would follow,
I'd turn inside out, bleak pocket
for your rummaging,
magician's hat. And yet
I don't; I let you pass
like this small stormcloud on
my white, impassive throat.

Tracy Ryan

(lower case letters as shown in the anthology)

[Shawnee123]

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

-e.e. cummings

[Sundae]

Another sestina as UT has set the ball rolling, on a Cellarite topic too:

IVF

I come home early, feel the pale house close
around me as the pressure of my blood
knocks at my temples, feel it clench me in
its cramping grasp, the fierceness of its quiet
sanctioning the small and listless hope
that I might find it mercifully empty.

Dazed, I turn the taps to fill the empty
tub, and draw the bathroom door to close
behind me. I lie unmoving, feel all hope
leaching from between my legs as blood
tinges the water, staining it the quiet
shade of a winter evening drifting in

on sunset. Again, no shoot of life sprouts in
this crumbling womb that wrings itself to empty
out the painfully-planted seeds. The quiet
doctors, tomorrow, will check their notes and close
the file, wait for the hormones in my blood
to augur further chances, more false hope.

My husband holds to patience, I to hope,
and yet our clockworks are unwinding. In
the stillness of the house, we hear our blood
pumped by hearts that gall themselves, grow empty:
once, this silence, shared, could draw us close
that now forebodes us with a desperate quiet.

I hear him at the door, but I lay quiet,
as if, by saying nothing, I may hope
the somehow his unknowingness may close
a door on all the darkness we've let in:
the nursery that's seven years too empty;
the old, unyielding stains of menstrual blood.

Perhaps I wish the petitioning of my blood
for motherhood might falter and fall quiet,
perhaps I wish that we might choose to empty
our lives of disappointment, and of hope,
but wishes founder - we go on living in
the shadow of the cliffs now looming close:

the blood that's thick with traitorous clots of hope;
the quiet knack we've lost, of giving in;
the empty room whose door we cannot close.

Kona MacPhee



I like sestinas because they remind me of change-ringing (the traditional way of ringing church bells) in that the line endings can be numbered to show the necessary position of the words. Traditionally this is 123456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531

And because the rigid structure and repetition create a claustrphobic atmosphere than reflects strong emotions very well.

[Sundae]

The Back Seat of My Mother's Car

We left before I had time
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass;
I was calling to you - Daddy! - as we screeched away into
the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.
You were mouthing something I still remember, the noiseless words
piercing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset
pouring itself out across the sky. The ensuing silence
was the one clear thing I could decipher -
the roar of the engine drowning your voice,
with the cool slick glass between us.

With the cool slick glass between us,
the roar of the engine drowning, your voice
was the one clear thing I could decipher -
pouring itself out across the sky, the ensuing silence
piercing me like that catgut shriek that flew up, furious as a sunset.
You were mouthing something: I still remember the noiseless words,
the distance, my own hand tingling like an amputation.
I was calling to you, Daddy, as we screeched away into
the dusty August air. I pressed my face to the glass,
cold as ether, and I could see your fat mole-fingers grasping
for the slit in the window where the sky streamed in
rivers down my face and legs, but at the same time I was reaching out
to stem the burning waters running over me like tiny
hands in that vacuous half-dark. I wanted
to comfort you, to tell you that we nearly touched.
We left before I had time.

Julia Copus

Sorry to post two in a row, but if we're talking clever use of language, I couldn't wait to bring this one to the party. It amazes me.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Well, UG, but yeah.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Well, UG, but yeah.

Apologies - abbreviation typo rather than mistaken identity

[Spexxvet]

THE LEADEN ECHO

HOW to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?
Ó is there no frowning of these wrinkles, rankéd wrinkles deep,
Dówn? no waving off of these most mournful messengers, still messengers, sad and stealing messengers of grey?
No there ’s none, there ’s none, O no there ’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may,
And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils, hoar hair,
Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death’s worst, winding sheets, tombs and worms and tumbling to decay;
So be beginning, be beginning to despair.
O there ’s none; no no no there ’s none:
Be beginning to despair, to despair,
Despair, despair, despair, despair.

THE GOLDEN ECHO

Spare!
There ís one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singeing of the strong sun,
Tall sun’s tingeing, or treacherous the tainting of the earth’s air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Oné. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us, everything that ’s fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matchèd face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets móre, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth: it is an everlastingness of, O it is an all youth!
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost; every hair
Is, hair of the head, numbered.
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind what while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyheaded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
O then, weary then why
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept.—Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where.—
Yonder.—What high as that! We follow, now we follow.—Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

[Shawnee123]

Dover Beach
by Matthew Arnold
The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; -on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

[1867]

[TheChuck]

The wedding Vows I wrote for my wife and I is what I think of when I think of poems.

My Wife said:
Chuck, you are my best friend, my sounding board, my rock and my strength.
You are my shoulder to cry on, your strong arms lift me higher than I have ever been.
Chuck, I choose you to be my husband and I make just one promise:
To do anything in my God-given power to make you happy the rest of your life, as you have and will do for me.
You are the love of my life, the joy in my heart, the peace in my mind, and the breath in my lungs.
You are the laughter in my voice, the butterflies in my stomach, the smile on my face, and the tears in my eyes.
This day, I devote my life to you, my heart to you, my mind to you and only you. I thank God every day, since the moment I met you, for the wonderful blessing of you.
Charles -- I do. Forever and always.


Then I said:
Becky, All my life, I've waited for you to come into it. All my life I've prayed for you to come into it.
Today, all of my hopes, my prayers, and my dreams come true.
All of this happens today because I fell in love with you.
As you have been by my side through my darkest hours, so will be a light in yours.
As you have cared for me in times of infirmity, so will I keep you sheltered when storms arise.
Becky I choose you to be my wife.
I will love you all my life. You and no other.
I will be your shoulder to cry on.
The rock you stand on.
The staff that you lean on.
And the wings that allow you to fly.
We will travel this journey of life together with the Lord as our guide. With all my being, I pledge my love to you
Rebecca —I do. Forever and always.

[DanaC]

Since Larkin's come up I love Larkin's poetry. This is one of my favourites:

Sunny Prestatyn – Philip Larkin

Come to Sunny Prestatyn
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the sand
In tautened white satin.
Behind her, a hunk of coast, a
Hotel with palms
Seemed to expand from her thighs and
Spread breast-lifting arms.

She was slapped up one day in March.
A couple of weeks, and her face
Was snaggle-toothed and boss-eyed;
Huge tits and a fissured crotch
Were scored well in, and the space
Between her legs held scrawls
That set her fairly astride
A tuberous cock and balls

Autographed Titch Thomas, while
Someone had used a knife
Or something to stab right through
The moustached lips of her smile.
She was too good for this life.
Very soon, a great transverse tear
Left only a hand and some blue.
Now Fight Cancer is there.