The Poetry Only Thread

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The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Moddey Screbbagh » Sat Sep 02, 2006 5:31 pm

The End and the Beginning<br><br>After every war<br>someone has to clean up.<br>Things won’t<br>straighten themselves up, after all.<br><br>Someone has to push the rubble<br>to the sides of the road,<br>so the corpse-laden wagons<br>can pass.<br><br>Someone has to get mired<br>in scum and ashes,<br>sofa springs,<br>splintered glass,<br>and bloody rags.<br><br>Someone must drag in a girder<br>to prop up a wall.<br>Someone must glaze a window,<br>rehang a door.<br><br>Photogenic it’s not,<br>and takes years.<br>All the cameras have left<br>for another war.<br><br>Again we’ll need bridges<br>and new railway stations.<br>Sleeves will go ragged<br>from rolling them up.<br><br>Someone, broom in hand,<br>still recalls how it was.<br>Someone listens<br>and nods with unsevered head.<br>Yet others milling about<br>already find it dull.<br><br>From behind the bush<br>sometimes someone still unearths<br>rust-eaten arguments<br>and carries them to the garbage pile.<br><br>Those who knew<br>what was going on here<br>must give way to<br>those who know little.<br>And less than little.<br>And finally as little as nothing.<br><br>In the grass which has overgrown<br>causes and effects,<br>someone must be stretched out,<br>blade of grass in his mouth,<br>gazing at the clouds.<br><br><br>—Wislawa Szymborska<br>(translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak) <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Moddey Screbbagh » Sat Sep 02, 2006 5:43 pm

This Be The Verse<br><br>They fuck you up, your mum and dad.<br> They may not mean to, but they do.<br>They fill you with the faults they had<br> And add some extra, just for you.<br>But they were fucked up in their turn<br> By fools in old-style hats and coats,<br>Who half the time were soppy-stern<br> And half at one another's throats.<br>Man hands on misery to man.<br> It deepens like a coastal shelf.<br>Get out as early as you can,<br> And don't have any kids yourself.<br><br>--Philip Larkin <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby vigilantwarrior » Sat Sep 02, 2006 7:30 pm

THE UNKNOWN KNOWN<br><br>for Jon Ronson and Jeff Wells<br><br>For the mind to believe in its own decisions, it must feel that it made those decisions without coercion. Coercive measures used by the operative, consequently, must not be detectable by ordinary means…There are some purely natural conditions under which minds may become more or less receptive to ideas, and MindWar should take full advantage of such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves.<br> <br>Colonel Paul E. Vallely, “From PSYOP to MindWar,” 1980<br><br><br>I am tired and given to sighing.<br>I am inclined to sleep.<br>Mister Secretary’s eye lupinely<br>stares the camera down,<br>and I cannot think liar,<br>cannot but admire<br>his non-evolving non-answer<br>to the questioners’ iterations.<br>He will say it again if he must,<br>and he will not perspire.<br>We do not torture, we abide<br>by the spirit of Geneva.<br>To release those photos now<br>would be unconscionable,<br>would undermine morale,<br>enflame and put at risk the mission,<br>and he smiles undetectably<br>at his non-admission, not bothering<br>to dispel the impression of a barrel<br>lousy with cankerous apples,<br>thinking what is a little sodomy,<br>the odd cigar burn or pistol clicks<br>to a hooded head next to Barney’s<br>I Love You, You Love Me amped-up<br>in a steel box with strobes<br>till they can’t say their names<br>or own their own screams<br>or control their bowels or bladders?<br>And what is shaking in a pool of piss<br>next to Doctor X’s miraculous patent?<br><br>The all-girl Fleetwood Mac cover band<br>works as well in Walmart as Gitmo.<br>The spectacles come off with a flourish.<br>He affects an indignant pause.<br>The fools think it’s what we get out of them.<br>Dammit, it’s what we put in.<br><br>On Fox the retired Major General<br>on retainer tells it like it is.<br><br>The Senator nods, a war for hearts and minds.<br><br>Silently high, again the jets<br>are mending their net of clouds.<br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Moddey Screbbagh » Sat Sep 02, 2006 9:57 pm

Dulce Et Decorum Est<br><br>Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,<br>Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,<br>Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs<br>And towards our distant rest began to trudge.<br>Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots<br>But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;<br>Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots<br>Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.<br><br>GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,<br>Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;<br>But someone still was yelling out and stumbling<br>And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--<br>Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light<br>As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.<br><br>In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,<br>He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.<br><br>If in some smothering dreams you too could pace<br>Behind the wagon that we flung him in,<br>And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,<br>His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;<br>If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood<br>Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,<br>Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud<br>Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--<br>My friend, you would not tell with such high zest<br>To children ardent for some desperate glory,<br>The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est<br>Pro patria mori.<br><br>-- Wilfred Owen <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Moddey Screbbagh » Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:05 pm

Call and Answer<br><br>Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days<br>And cry over what is happening. Have you noticed<br>The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?<br><br>I say to myself: “Go on, cry. What’s the sense<br>Of being an adult and having no voice? Cry out!<br>See who will answer! This is Call and Answer!”<br><br>We will have to call especially loud to reach<br>Our angels, who are hard of hearing; they are hiding<br>In the jugs of silence filled during our wars.<br><br>Have we agreed to so many wars that we can’t<br>Escape from silence? If we don’t lift our voices, we allow<br>Others (who are ourselves) to rob the house.<br><br>How come we’ve listened to the great criers—Neruda,<br>Akhmatova, Thoreau, Frederick Douglass—and now<br>We’re silent as sparrows in the little bushes?<br><br>Some masters say our life lasts only seven days.<br>Where are we in the week? Is it Thursday yet?<br>Hurry, cry now! Soon Sunday night will come.<br><br>-- Robert Bly <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Moddey Screbbagh » Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:21 pm

September 1, 1939<br>         <br>         I sit in one of the dives <br>On Fifty-second Street <br>Uncertain and afraid <br>As the clever hopes expire <br>Of a low dishonest decade: <br>Waves of anger and fear <br>Circulate over the bright <br>And darkened lands of the earth, <br>Obsessing our private lives; <br>The unmentionable odour of death <br>Offends the September night. <br>Accurate scholarship can <br>Unearth the whole offence <br>From Luther until now <br>That has driven a culture mad, <br>Find what occurred at Linz <br>What huge imago made <br>A psychopathic god: <br>I and the public know <br>What all schoolchildren learn, <br>Those to whom evil is done <br>Do evil in return. <br><br>Exiled Thucydides knew <br>All that a speech can say <br>About Democracy, <br>And what dictators do, <br>The elderly rubbish they talk <br>To an apathetic grave; <br>Analysed all in his book, <br>The enlightenment driven away, <br>The habit-forming pain, <br>Mismanagement and grief: <br>We must suffer them all again. <br><br>Into this neutral air <br>Where blind skyscrapers use <br>Their full height to proclaim <br>The strength of Collective Man, <br>Each language pours its vain <br>Competitive excuse: <br>But who can live for long <br>In an euphoric dream; <br>Out of the mirror they stare, <br>Imperialism's face <br>And the international wrong. <br><br>Faces along the bar <br>Cling to their average day: <br>The lights must never go out, <br>The music must always play, <br>All the conventions conspire <br>To make this fort assume <br>The furniture of home; <br>Lest we should see where we are, <br>Lost in a haunted wood, <br>Children afraid of the night <br>Who have never been happy or good. <br><br>The windiest militant trash <br>Important Persons shout <br>Is not so crude as our wish: <br>What mad Nijinsky wrote <br>About Diaghilev <br>Is true of the normal heart; <br>For the error bred in the bone <br>Of each woman and each man <br>Craves what it cannot have, <br>Not universal love <br>But to be loved alone. <br><br>From the conservative dark <br>Into the ethical life <br>The dense commuters come, <br>Repeating their morning vow; <br>'I will be true to the wife, <br>I'll concentrate more on my work,' <br>And helpless governors wake <br>To resume their compulsory game: <br>Who can release them now, <br>Who can reach the deaf, <br>Who can speak for the dumb? <br><br>All I have is a voice <br>To undo the folded lie, <br>The romantic lie in the brain <br>Of the sensual man-in-the-street <br>And the lie of Authority <br>Whose buildings grope the sky: <br>There is no such thing as the State <br>And no one exists alone; <br>Hunger allows no choice <br>To the citizen or the police; <br>We must love one another or die. <br><br>Defenceless under the night <br>Our world in stupor lies; <br>Yet, dotted everywhere, <br>Ironic points of light <br>Flash out wherever the Just <br>Exchange their messages: <br>May I, composed like them <br>Of Eros and of dust, <br>Beleaguered by the same <br>Negation and despair, <br>Show an affirming flame.<br><br>-- WH Auden <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Rigorous Intuition » Sat Sep 02, 2006 10:26 pm

What I Know Of God Is This<br><br><br>What I know of God is this:<br>That He has hands, for He touches me.<br>I can testify to nothing else;<br>Living among many unseen beings<br>Like the whippoorwill I'm constantly hearing<br>But was pointed out to me just once.<br><br>Last of our hopes when all hope's past<br>God, never let me call on Thee<br>Distracting myself from a last chance<br>Which goes just as quick as it comes;<br>And I have doubts of Your omnipotence.<br>All I ask is... Keep on existing<br>Keeping Your hands. Continue to touch me.<br><br>- <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://collections.ic.gc.ca/acorn/">Milton Acorn</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby chiggerbit » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:14 pm

Inside everybody's nose <br>There lives a sharp-toothed snail <br>So if you stick your finger in <br>He may bite off your nail <br>Stick it farther up inside <br>And he may bite your ring off <br>Stick it all the way, and he <br>May bite the whole darn thing off<br><br>Shel Silverstein<br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby chiggerbit » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:21 pm

Lester’s Magick Wishes<br><br>Lester was given a magick wish<br>By the goblin who lives in the banyan tree<br>And with his wish he wished for two more wishes<br>So now instead of just one wish he cleverly had three<br>And with each one of these<br>He simply wished for three more wishes<br> Which gave him three old wishes plus nine new<br>And with each of these twelve <br>He slyly wished for three more wishes<br>Which added up to forty-six:<br>Or is it fifty-two?<br>Well anyways he used each wish<br>To wish for wishes<br>Till he had<br> Five billion eight million seventeen thousand thirty-four<br>And then he spread them on the ground<br>And clapped his hands and danced around<br>And skipped and sang and then sat down<br>And wished for more<br>And more…and more…they multiplied<br>While other people smiled and cried<br>And loved and reached and touched and felt<br> Lester sat amid his wealth<br>Stacked mountain high like stacks of gold<br>Sat and counted…and grew old<br>Then one Thursday night they found him<br>Dead…with wishes piled around him<br>And they counted the lot and found that not<br>A single one was missing<br> All shiny and new…here take a few<br>And think of Lester as you do<br>In a world of apples and kisses and shoes<br>He wastes his wishes on wishing………<br><br>Shel Silverstein<br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Jill Burdigala » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:39 pm

Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century<br><br>Found a family, build a state,<br>The pledged event is still the same:<br>Matter in end will never abate<br>His ancient brutal claim.<br><br>Indolence is heaven's ally here,<br>And energy the child of hell:<br>The Good Man pouring from his pitcher clear<br>But brims the poisoned well.<br><br><!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>--Herman Melville</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Rigorous Intuition » Sat Sep 02, 2006 11:43 pm

cuz take away our playstations<br>and we are a third world nation<br>under the thumb of some blue blood royal son<br>who stole the oval office and that phony election<br>i mean<br>it don't take a weatherman<br>to look around and see the weather<br>jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks<br>and boy did he ever<br>and we hold these truths to be self evident:<br>#1 george w. bush is not president<br>#2 america is not a true democracy<br>#3 the media is not fooling me <br><br>- <!--EZCODE LINK START--><a href="http://www.peace-not-war.org/Music/AniDiFranco/">ani difranco</a><!--EZCODE LINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Rigorous Intuition » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:10 am

A Promise<br><br><br>I will never<br>return<br>the Holy Grail<br>to its<br>"rightful owners." <br><br>- Leonard Cohen <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby erosoplier » Sun Sep 03, 2006 12:41 am

<br>He whose vision cannot cover<br>History's three thousand years,<br>Must, in outer darkness hover,<br>Live within the day's frontiers<br><br><br>Goethe<br>Westostlicher Diwan <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby so buttons » Sun Sep 03, 2006 1:02 am

the children of the poor<br> 2<br><br>what shall i give my children? who are poor,<br>who are adjudged the leastwise of the land,<br>who are my sweetest lepers, who demand<br>no velvet and no velvety velour;<br>but who have begged me for a brisk contour,<br>crying that they are quasi, contraband<br>because unfinished, gaven by a hand<br>less than angelic, admirable or sure.<br>my hand is stuffed with mode, design, device.<br>but i lack access to my proper stone.<br>and plentitude of plan shall not suffice<br>nor grief nor love shall be enough alone<br>to ratify my little halves who bear<br>across an autumn freezing everywhere.<br><br>- gwendolyn brooks <p></p><i></i>
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Re: The Poetry Only Thread

Postby Sweejak » Sun Sep 03, 2006 1:27 am

<!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://rickburnley.com/pages/spoken_word/spokenword.html">rickburnley.com/pages/spo...nword.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <p></p><i></i>
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