It's all about what you read. Shitty poetry sucks, just like shitty movies and shitty books. But the good stuff is worth reading and enjoying!
This one is for IP. Death Be Not Proud Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow; And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones and soul's delivery. Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell; And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, And better then thy stroke. why swell'st thou then? One short sleep passed, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die. John Donne
Never liked the light brigade. I'll throw one out for you, Indy. The Destruction of Sennacherib. The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, That host with their banners at sunset were seen: Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed; And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still! And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride; And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. And there lay the rider distorted and pale, With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail: And the tents were all silent, the banners alone, The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown. And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail, And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord! Byron is awesome.
I'll sing you a poem of a silly young king Who played with the world at the end of a string, But he only loved one single thing— And that was just a peanut-butter sandwich. His scepter and his royal gowns, His regal throne and golden crowns Were brown and sticky from the mounds And drippings from each peanut-butter sandwich. His subjects all were silly fools For he had passed a royal rule That all that they could learn in school Was how to make a peanut-butter sandwich. He would not eat his sovereign steak, He scorned his soup and kingly cake, And told his courtly cook to bake An extra-sticky peanut-butter sandwich. And then one day he took a bit And started chewing with delight, But found his mouth was stuck quite tight From that last bite of peanut-butter sandwich. His brother pulled, his sister pried, The wizard pushed, his mother cried, "My boy's committed suicide From eating his last peanut-butter sandwich!" The dentist came, and the royal doc. The royal plumber banged and knocked, But still those jaws stayed tightly locked. Oh darn that sticky peanut-butter sandwich! The carpenter, he tried with pliers, The telephone man tried with wires, The firemen, they tried with fire, But couldn't melt that peanut-butter sandwich. With ropes and pulleys, drills and coil, With steam and lubricating oil— For twenty years of tears and toil— They fought that awful peanut-butter sandwich. Then all his royal subjects came. They hooked his jaws with grapplin' chains And pulled both ways with might and main Against that stubborn peanut-butter sandwich. Each man and woman, girl and boy Put down their ploughs and pots and toys And pulled until kerack! Oh, joy— They broke right through that peanut-butter sandwhcih A puff of dust, a screech, a squeak— The king's jaw opened with a creak. And then in voice so faint and weak— The first words that they heard him speak Were, "How about a peanut-butter sandwich?" - Shel Silverstein
Not a huge fan of poetry but I like Invictus by William Earnest Hensley Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
Hadn't read this one before, lyls, but it's nice. Looking at that dude's situation makes me feel bad about some of the stuff I take for granted in my life!
This guy came to Wabash tonight to perform some of his poems. He was fantastic. This one was amazing. Watch it. [video=youtube;Qnl_zG2KwR0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qnl_zG2KwR0[/video] “WHAT’S GENOCIDE?” by Carlos Andres Gomez their high school principal told me I couldn’t teach poetry with profanity so I asked my students, “Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.” in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas then straightened out like an SS infantry “Okay. Please put your hands down. Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.” blank stares mixed with curious ignorance a quivering hand out of the crowd half-way raised, like a lone survivor struggling to stand up in Kigali “Luz, are you sure about that?” “No.” “That’s what I thought.” “Carlos—what’s genocide?” they won’t let you hear the truth at school if that person says “****” can’t even talk about “****” even though a third of your senior class is pregnant. I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school how to use a condom that will save her life and that of the orphan she will be forced to give to the foster care system— “Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?” “Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.” while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys *******s during recess I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home and you want me to censor my language “Carlos, what’s genocide?” your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers call themselves “World History” and don’t mention King Leopold or diamond mines call themselves “Politics in the Modern World” and don’t mention Apartheid “Carlos, what’s genocide?” you wonder why children hide in adult bodies lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses learn to fetishize the size of their asses and simultaneously hate their lips my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper from East Harlem still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley? schools were built in the shadows of ghosts filtered through incest and grinding teeth molded under veils of extravagant ritual “Carlos, what’s genocide?” “Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?” “My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.” …what’s genocide? they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B, now they just kill mothers with silent poison stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them …what’s genocide? Ridwan’s father hung himself in the box because he thought his son was ashamed of him …what’s genocide? Maureen’s mother gave her skin lightening cream the day before she started the 6th grade …what’s genocide? she carves straight lines into her beautiful brown thighs so she can remember what it feels like to heal …what’s genocide? …what’s genocide? “Carlos, what’s genocide?” “Luz, this… this right here… is genocide.” –from Rattle #27, Summer 2007 Tribute to Slam Poetry
Loving this guy's poetry. He is really good. Take a minute to listen and read it! [video=youtube;Q2sQSoA3BTg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2sQSoA3BTg[/video] “Never again” by Carlos Andrés Gómez Her face now a splattered Pollock of broken teeth, infant fossil smeared through the belly of a hollow bottle blues tune, he gathers himself up and with every earnest fiber in his body, looks his freshly battered wife, the love of his life, in the eyes, and says, I’m so sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to do that. I swear, it will never happen again. It’s only human, right? Like checks we can’t cash and children we can’t raise: words without end. Bigger than the gushing glass of time we obsess over, our collected lineages like a speck of dust swallowed by a tidal wave. We say forever & forget in four days, say never and forget in 49 years or four months. A room full of 7th graders had never heard the word Rwanda. A room of adults, less than 3 years removed, couldn’t remember the date of Hurricane Katrina. For all the good intentions overflowing our fragile guts, we have to spoil it with over-swollen, over-trying words like forever, like never or ever, like, I’d never say never, but I couldn’t really ever see myself marrying a black girl, or, I would never steal anything…even if I was starving, and, of course, I will love you, forever. So we get matching tattoos: to prove Forever. As if these fragile vessels we wear will harbor us forever, regardless of religious belief after the Holocaust they said, Never again. And then French banks fronted money for 580,000 smuggled machetes from Uganda to Rwanda and turned countrysides into gaping canyons of misplaced crimson-tinged limbs, after which they said, Never again. The blood still damp, a boiling cauldron of the same brand just across the border in the Congo, haunting ghosts on horseback in Sudan, and bystanders have the nerve to say Never again. Bill Clinton had never been there until he went. 4 years too late to hear the wind’s stolen secrets, the crushed whispers from the mangled pews of Nyamata Church where a pastor gave up his entire congregation of 2,000 to butchers who hacked them up like slaughterhouse poultry while they kneeled to pray, and our former president had the nerve to brand words into that guilt-ridden Witness Book like I did, pages upon pages of the same scarred-up phrase stacked one atop the other like a freshly open grave: Never again. Never again. Never again. How dare white people sob at a memorial they built? Damp tissues falling out of their pockets like blood money, a French diplomat hugs his wife in the Children’s Sanctuary of the Kigali Memorial, I look beyond them to the wall-sized photo of a child: Ariane Age: 4 Favourite food: Cake Enjoyed: Singing and dancing Cause of death: Stabbed in her eyes and head Irene and Uwamwezi Ages: 6 and 7 Relationship: Sisters Favourite toy: A doll they shared Cause of death: A grenade thrown in their shower Nadia Age: 8 Favourite sport: Jogging with her father Favourite song: “My Native Land Which God Chose for me” Cause of death: Hacked by machete David Age: 10 Dream: Becoming a doctor Last word: ‘UNAMIR will come for us.” Cause of death: Tortured to death I hear that sobbing French couple tremble to make sense of what they stayed silent on, their arms clumsily entangled & all I can think of is those two Tutsi sisters hand-cuffed to each other and drowned in the septic tank behind their Aunt’s house. I don’t have enough intelligence or hope or enough empathy in these stupid bones propping me up to call what I’m feeling pain or sadness or even anger because the so-called devils in Rwanda look like my boys from high school and the shy woman at the church with a machete scar draping half her neck reminds me of my ex- girlfriend and the sobbing French diplomat reminds me of myself. I spilled an entire drink, a vodka-cranberry down a Rwandese man’s brand new white shirt at a night club & he looked at me, with a big reassuring smile and said, “No, no…it is okay, my brother. There are bigger things. A shirt is just a shirt. I can easily get another one of those.”
There swims the Sperm whale Mouth wide open in the sea Eating what may come along Fish and trash and things. -bmb
Just wrote a 14 page analysis of this poem for a final paper. Diving into the Wreck, by Adrienne Rich First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.
There is never a reason to write a paper longer than the piece it is dedicated to. Especially a paper that is 14x longer than the piece it is dedicated to.
Can we go on down, downtown, In that I want to see, To the down Downtown, With that I might agree, With the down, downtown sound of my soul, With the down, downtown sound so droll. Paradigm of statues, Virgins we will undo, Angry at myself, Angry what I could do. Resigned to my faults, Faults are in the Earth, I think they cause earthquakes. -pooch
