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Favourite Poem?

  • 16-09-2014 9:57am
    #1
    Users Awaiting Email Confirmation Posts: 5,620 ✭✭✭El_Dangeroso


    Do you have a favourite poem? I've always liked the down to earth poems of Pat Ingoldsby. For Rita with Love is something that always makes me tear up a little.

    Thomas Kinsella's Mirror in February starts to have a bit more meaning as you traverse your fourth decade.


«13

Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,143 ✭✭✭D-FENS


    Why do you cry, Willy?
    Why do you cry?
    Why, Willy?
    Why, Willy?
    Why, Willy? Why?

    Author Unknown


  • Posts: 7,499 ✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    I found a robin in the snow,
    It had a broken wing, you know.
    So I picked it up and fed it bread,
    Then I gently crushed its little head.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,195 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    I like Paddy Kavanagh. He's possessed of a beautiful misery, like an Irish Dylan Thomas. Here's "Memory Of My Father":

    Every old man I see
    Reminds me of my father
    When he had fallen in love with death
    One time when sheaves were gathered.

    That man I saw in Gardiner Street
    Stumble on the kerb was one,
    He stared at me half-eyed,
    I might have been his son.

    And I remember the musician
    Faltering over his fiddle
    In Bayswater, London.
    He too set me the riddle.

    Every old man I see
    In October-coloured weather
    Seems to say to me
    "I was once your father."


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 204 ✭✭STADEdeLUC


    Dickinson is a gem


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 3,039 ✭✭✭MJ23


    "A thing of beauty is a joy forever"

    John Keats


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,571 ✭✭✭0byme75341jo28


    "Child" by Sylvia Plath.

    Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
    I want to fill it with color and ducks,
    The zoo of the new
    Whose name you meditate--
    April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
    Little

    Stalk without wrinkle,
    Pool in which images
    Should be grand and classical

    Not this troublous
    Wringing of hands, this dark
    Ceiling without a star.


    That last stanza gets me everytime.

    Oh, and I agree OP. "Mirror in February" is brilliant.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,811 ✭✭✭Gone Drinking


    First poem I learnt in school that actually made me think was Funeral Blues by W H Auden. As depressing as it is, its up there with my favourites!

    Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
    Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
    Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
    Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

    Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
    Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
    Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
    Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

    He was my North, my South, my East and West,
    My working week and my Sunday rest,
    My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
    I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

    The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
    Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
    Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
    For nothing now can ever come to any good.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,169 ✭✭✭The Peanut


    I know it's churned out at weddings but I really love the images conjured by Yeats here.

    HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half-light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,629 ✭✭✭magma69


    THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
    His rollrock highroad roaring down,
    In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
    Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

    A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
    Turns and twindles over the broth
    Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
    It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

    Degged with dew, dappled with dew
    Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
    Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
    And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

    What would the world be, once bereft
    Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
    O let them be left, wildness and wet;
    Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,195 ✭✭✭✭jimgoose


    There's another couple that I like, that are as far as I know not attributed.
    This is a Haiku written by a young Kamikaze pilot in 1945, shortly before he took off:

    If only we might fall
    Like Cherry blossoms in the spring
    So pure and radiant.



    And this is an old Viking prayer:

    Lo, there do I see my father.
    Lo, there do I see my mother,
    and my sisters, and my brothers.
    Lo, there do I see the line of my people,
    Back to the beginning!

    Lo, they do call to me.
    They bid me take my place among them,
    In the halls of Valhalla!
    Where the brave may live forever!


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 10,383 ✭✭✭✭Birneybau


    This Be The Verse

    This Be The Verse



    By Philip Larkin 1922–1985 Philip Larkin

    They fcuk you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
    They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.

    But they were fcuked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,
    Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another’s throats.

    Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
    Get out as early as you can,
    And don’t have any kids yourself.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 397 ✭✭The Purveyor of Truth


    O Botox, O Botox, I’m ever so keen,
    To look as I looked at the age of sixteen,
    Induce paralysis, do as I ask,
    Give me, O give me a face like a mask.

    O take up a surgical bicycle pump,
    And give me some lips that are lovely and plump,
    Young men will stagger and say ‘Oh my GOD!
    Here comes Pam Ayres…and she looks like a COD!’


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,569 ✭✭✭Hoop66


    Cargoes - John Masefield (1878-1967)

    Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
    Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
    With a cargo of ivory,
    And apes and peacocks,
    Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.

    Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
    Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
    With a cargo of diamonds,
    Emeralds, amythysts,
    Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.

    Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack,
    Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
    With a cargo of Tyne coal,
    Road-rails, pig-lead,
    Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.

    It was the first poem I ever "studied" at school, and it's a great one for teaching rythm, meter & things like alliteration.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,285 ✭✭✭Summer wind


    The daffodils by William Wordsworth.

    For oft, when on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood
    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude
    And then my heart with pleasure fills
    And dances with the daffodils.

    This never fails to brighten my mood and I think it's pure magic.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,169 ✭✭✭The Peanut


    magma69 wrote: »
    THIS darksome burn, horseback brown,
    His rollrock highroad roaring down,
    In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
    Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

    A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
    Turns and twindles over the broth
    Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
    It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

    Degged with dew, dappled with dew
    Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
    Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
    And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

    What would the world be, once bereft
    Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
    O let them be left, wildness and wet;
    Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

    Hopkins had an incredible way with words; the imagery is stunning but it is almost like a tongue-twister to read.

    Another one along those lines is The Windhover.

    I CAUGHT this morning morning’s minion, king-
    dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
    Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
    High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
    In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
    As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
    Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
    Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

    Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
    Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
    Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

    No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
    Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
    Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 795 ✭✭✭kingchess


    A psalm of life by henry Longfellow- Live of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing,leave behind us Footprints on the sands of Time


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,681 ✭✭✭✭P_1


    Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth" would have to go down as one of my favourites.

    What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
    — Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
    Can patter out their hasty orisons.
    No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
    The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

    What candles may be held to speed them all?
    Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
    Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
    Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
    And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 588 ✭✭✭Deranged96


    The Times Are Tidy- Sylvia Plath
    Unlucky the hero born
    In this province of the stuck record
    Where the most watchful cooks go jobless
    And the mayor's rôtisserie turns
    Round of its own accord.

    There's no career in the venture
    Of riding against the lizard,
    Himself withered these latter-days
    To leaf-size from lack of action:
    History's beaten the hazard.

    The last crone got burnt up
    More than eight decades back
    With the love-hot herb, the talking cat,
    But the children are better for it,
    The cow milks cream an inch thick.

    Not too into poetry, but this one I love.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,554 ✭✭✭tigger123


    The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe is my favourite, never gets old. I love the lyrical bounce and construct as much as the content.


  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Do you have a favourite poem? I've always liked the down to earth poems of Pat Ingoldsby. For Rita with Love is something that always makes me tear up a little.

    Thomas Kinsella's Mirror in February starts to have a bit more meaning as you traverse your fourth decade.

    I love lots of poetry Pat Ingoldsby had a short poem about loneliness and a jaffa cake that I love the last line goes something like.. I am growing more of me to keep myself company.

    I always though Mirror in February is not a poem a teenager could identify with.

    I like this we had it at our wedding.

    Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

    And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want?

    To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.


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  • Moderators, Category Moderators, Music Moderators Posts: 14,321 CMod ✭✭✭✭The Master


    On the antiquity of microbes, by Eric Shackle

    "Adam Had 'em"


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 2,105 ✭✭✭beano345


    Patrick pearses. "The rebel"

    http://www.thefuture.ie/notes/rebel-padraig-mac-piarais/

    Or the poem in the lonesome boatman "silent Annie"

    http://martindardis.com/id236.html


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,639 ✭✭✭Sugar Free


    Perhaps clichéd, though I haven't came across many people who know the poem but my favourite was always Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

    Invictus

    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.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,666 ✭✭✭tritium


    Invictus
    BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY
    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.



    The Raven by Poe is pretty damn good too bit someone beat me to it


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,716 ✭✭✭✭Earthhorse


    There's so much great poetry out there it's a shame to choose a favourite; Dickinson, Cummings, Bukowski, Cope. But I'll throw up one by Simon Armitage that's always stayed in my mind.

    To His Lost Lover

    Now they are no longer
    any trouble to each other

    he can turn things over, get down to that list
    of things that never happened, all of the lost

    unfinishable business.
    For instance… for instance,

    how he never clipped and kept her hair, or drew a hairbrush
    through that style of hers, and never knew how not to blush

    at the fall of her name in close company.
    How they never slept like buried cutlery –

    two spoons or forks cupped perfectly together,
    or made the most of some heavy weather –

    walked out into hard rain under sheet lightning,
    or did the gears while the other was driving.

    How he never raised his fingertips
    to stop the segments of her lips

    from breaking the news,
    or tasted the fruit

    or picked for himself the pear of her heart,
    or lifted her hand to where his own heart

    was a small, dark, terrified bird
    in her grip. Where it hurt.

    Or said the right thing,
    or put it in writing.

    And never fled the black mile back to his house
    before midnight, or coaxed another button of her blouse,

    then another,
    or knew her

    favourite colour,
    her taste, her flavour,

    and never ran a bath or held a towel for her,
    or soft-soaped her, or whipped her hair

    into an ice-cream cornet or a beehive
    of lather, or acted out of turn, or misbehaved

    when he might have, or worked a comb
    where no comb had been, or walked back home

    through a black mile hugging a punctured heart,
    where it hurt, where it hurt, or helped her hand

    to his butterfly heart
    in its two blue halves.

    And never almost cried,
    and never once described

    an attack of the heart,
    or under a silk shirt

    nursed in his hand her breast,
    her left, like a tear of flesh

    wept by the heart,
    where it hurts,

    or brushed with his thumb the nut of her nipple,
    or drank intoxicating liquors from her navel.

    Or christened the Pole Star in her name,
    or shielded the mask of her face like a flame,

    a pilot light,
    or stayed the night,

    or steered her back to that house of his,
    or said “Don’t ask me how it is

    I like you.
    I just might do.”

    How he never figured out a fireproof plan,
    or unravelled her hand, as if her hand

    were a solid ball
    of silver foil

    and discovered a lifeline hiding inside it,
    and measured the trace of his own alongside it.

    But said some things and never meant them –
    sweet nothings anybody could have mentioned.

    And left unsaid some things he should have spoken,
    about the heart, where it hurt exactly, and how often.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 668 ✭✭✭Coopaloop


    Mid term break by Seamus Heaney, a very sad poem but one I always remembered from school.

    I sat all morning in the college sick bay 
    Counting bells knelling classes to a close. 
    At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. 

    In the porch I met my father crying-- 
    He had always taken funerals in his stride-- 
    And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. 

    The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram 
    When I came in, and I was embarrassed 
    By old men standing up to shake my hand 

    And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,' 
    Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, 
    Away at school, as my mother held my hand 

    In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. 
    At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived 
    With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. 

    Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops 
    And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him 
    For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, 

    Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, 
    He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. 
    No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. 

    A four foot box, a foot for every year.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 11,264 ✭✭✭✭jester77


    tigger123 wrote: »
    The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe is my favourite, never gets old. I love the lyrical bounce and construct as much as the content.

    The Bells is my favourite Poe poem.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 801 ✭✭✭Roadtoad


    One had a lovely face,
    and two or three had charm,
    but charm or face were in vain

    because the mountain grass
    cannot but keep the form
    where the mountain hare has lain.

    WBY


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,012 ✭✭✭eamonnq


    The Raven, as posted by previous posters.

    Too long to paste on the thread though!!


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,133 ✭✭✭FloatingVoter


    Poem,Or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal

    take it from me kiddo
    believe me
    my country,'tis of

    you, land of the Cluett
    Shirt Boston Garter and Spearmint
    Girl With The Wrigley Eyes(of you
    land of the Arrow Ide
    and Earl &
    Wilson
    Collars)of you i
    sing:land of Abraham Lincoln and Lydia E. Pinkham,
    land above all of Just Add Hot Water And Serve--
    from every B.V.D.

    let freedom ring

    amen. i do however protest, anent the un
    -spontaneous and otherwise scented merde which
    greets one(Everywhere Why)as divine poesy per
    that and this radically defunct periodical. i would

    suggest that certain ideas gestures
    rhymes, like Gillette Razor Blades
    having been used and reused
    to the mystical moment of dullness emphatically are
    Not To Be Resharpened. (Case in point

    if we are to believe these gently O sweetly
    melancholy trillers amid the thrillers
    these crepuscular violinists among my and your
    skyscrapers--Helen & Cleopatra were Just Too Lovely,
    The Snail's On The Thorn enter Morn and God's
    In His andsoforth

    do you get me?)according
    to such supposedly indigenous
    throstles Art is O World O Life
    a formula:example, Turn Your Shirttails Into
    Drawers and If It Isn't An Eastman It Isn't A
    Kodak therefore my friends let
    us now sing each and all fortissimo A-
    mer
    i

    ca,I
    love,
    You. And there're a
    hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers,like
    all of you successfully if
    delicately gelded(or spaded)
    gentlemen(and ladies)--pretty

    littleliverpil-
    heated-Nujolneeding-There's-A-Reason
    americans(who tensetendoned and with
    upward vacant eyes,painfully
    perpetually crouched,quivering,upon the
    sternly allotted sandpile
    --how silently
    emit a tiny violetflavoured nuisance:Odor?

    ono.
    comes out like a ribbon lies flat on the brush

    e. e. cummings (1922)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 347 ✭✭Miss Lizzie Jones


    Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
    Sailed off in a wooden shoe —
    Sailed on a river of crystal light,
    Into a sea of dew.
    "Where are you going, and what do you wish?"
    The old moon asked the three.
    "We have come to fish for the herring fish
    That live in this beautiful sea;
    Nets of silver and gold have we!"
    Said Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

    The old moon laughed and sang a song,
    As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
    And the wind that sped them all night long
    Ruffled the waves of dew.
    The little stars were the herring fish
    That lived in that beautiful sea —
    "Now cast your nets wherever you wish —
    Never afeard are we";
    So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
    Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

    All night long their nets they threw
    To the stars in the twinkling foam —
    Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
    Bringing the fishermen home;
    'Twas all so pretty a sail it seemed
    As if it could not be,
    And some folks thought 'twas a dream they'd dreamed
    Of sailing that beautiful sea —
    But I shall name you the fishermen three:
    Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

    Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
    And Nod is a little head,
    And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
    Is a wee one's trundle-bed.
    So shut your eyes while mother sings
    Of wonderful sights that be,
    And you shall see the beautiful things
    As you rock in the misty sea,
    Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:
    Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 801 ✭✭✭Roadtoad


    ...men that saw her
    drank deep and were silent
    ...
    and oh, she was the Sunday in every week.

    AC


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 214 ✭✭scottp68877


    Coopaloop wrote: »
    Mid term break by Seamus Heaney, a very sad poem but one I always remembered from school.

    I sat all morning in the college sick bay 
    Counting bells knelling classes to a close. 
    At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. 

    In the porch I met my father crying-- 
    He had always taken funerals in his stride-- 
    And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. 

    The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram 
    When I came in, and I was embarrassed 
    By old men standing up to shake my hand 

    And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble,' 
    Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, 
    Away at school, as my mother held my hand 

    In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. 
    At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived 
    With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. 

    Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops 
    And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him 
    For the first time in six weeks. Paler now, 

    Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, 
    He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. 
    No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. 

    A four foot box, a foot for every year.

    A remember studying that in school aswell. That last line gets me every time.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 584 ✭✭✭rorrissey


    From Clearances 3 by Seamus Heaney.

    When all the others were away at Mass
    I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
    They broke the silence, let fall one by one
    Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
    Cold comforts set between us, things to share
    Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
    And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
    From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

    So while the parish priest at her bedside
    Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
    And some were responding and some crying
    I remembered her head bent towards my head,
    Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
    Never closer the whole rest of our lives.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,868 ✭✭✭djflawless


    Bobby Sands-weeping winds


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,034 ✭✭✭griffin100


    Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.
    WB Yeats.

    Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half light,
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 33,754 ✭✭✭✭Princess Consuela Bananahammock


    The Perfect High
    (Shel Silverstien)

    There once was a boy named Gimme-Some-Roy...
    He was nothin' like me or you,
    'cause laying back and getting high was all he cared to do.

    As a kid, he sat in the cellar...sniffing airplane glue.
    And then he smoked banana peels, when that was the thing to do.
    He tried aspirin in Coca-Cola, he breathed helium on the sly,
    and his life became an endless search to find the perfect high.

    Rest of it here because it's kinda long

    Everything I don't like is either woke or fascist - possibly both - pick one.



  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,299 ✭✭✭✭The Backwards Man


    I'm drunk
    You're a skunk
    Slam dunk


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,682 ✭✭✭Kat1170


    Wouldn't call it my favourite poem, but I learnt this way back in the 70's in National School and for some reason it has stuck in my head ever since.




    Lone Dog


    I'M a lean dog, a keen dog, a wild dog, and lone;
    I'm a rough dog, a tough dog, hunting on my own;
    I'm a bad dog, a mad dog, teasing silly sheep;
    I love to sit and bay the moon, to keep fat souls from sleep.

    I'll never be a lap dog, licking dirty feet,
    A sleek dog, a meek dog, cringing for my meat,
    Not for me the fireside, the well-filled plate,
    But shut door, and sharp stone, and cuff and kick, and hate.

    Not for me the other dogs, running by my side,
    Some have run a short while, but none of them would bide.
    O mine is still the lone trail, the hard trail, the best,
    Wide wind, and wild stars, and hunger of the quest!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 81,220 ✭✭✭✭biko


    "I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
    A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself."
    - D. H. Lawrence

    and of course



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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 18,299 ✭✭✭✭The Backwards Man


    Kris Kristofferson is an awesome poet.

    Well I woke up Sunday mornin', with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt
    And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more, for dessert
    Then I fumbled through my closet, for my clothes and found my cleanest dirty shirt
    And I shaved my face and combed my hair and, stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

    I'd smoked my brain the night before on, cigarettes and songs that I'd been pickin'
    But I lit my first and watched a small kid cussin' at a can, that he was kickin'
    Then I crossed the empty street and caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin' chicken
    And it took me back to somethin', that I'd lost somehow somewhere along the way

    On the Sunday morning sidewalks, wishin' Lord, that I was stoned
    'Cause there's something in a Sunday, makes a body feel alone
    And there's nothin' short of dyin', half as lonesome as the sound
    On the sleepin' city side walks, Sunday mornin' comin' down

    In the park I saw a daddy, with a laughing little girl who he was swingin'
    And I stopped beside a Sunday school and listened to the song that they were singin'
    Then I headed back for home and somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin'
    And it echoed through the canyons like the disappearing dreams of yesterday

    On the Sunday morning sidewalks, wishin' Lord, that I was stoned
    'Cause there's something in a Sunday, makes a body feel alone
    And there's nothin' short of dyin', half as lonesome as the sound
    On the sleepin' city side walks, Sunday mornin' comin' down





  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 8,207 ✭✭✭The King of Moo


    The Hollow Men, by T.S Eliot.

    Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

    A penny for the Old Guy

    I
    We are the hollow men
    We are the stuffed men
    Leaning together
    Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
    Our dried voices, when
    We whisper together
    Are quiet and meaningless
    As wind in dry grass
    Or rats' feet over broken glass
    In our dry cellar

    Shape without form, shade without colour,
    Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

    Those who have crossed
    With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
    Remember us—if at all—not as lost
    Violent souls, but only
    As the hollow men
    The stuffed men.

    II
    Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
    In death's dream kingdom
    These do not appear:
    There, the eyes are
    Sunlight on a broken column
    There, is a tree swinging
    And voices are
    In the wind's singing
    More distant and more solemn
    Than a fading star.

    Let me be no nearer
    In death's dream kingdom
    Let me also wear
    Such deliberate disguises
    Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
    In a field
    Behaving as the wind behaves
    No nearer—

    Not that final meeting
    In the twilight kingdom

    III
    This is the dead land
    This is cactus land
    Here the stone images
    Are raised, here they receive
    The supplication of a dead man's hand
    Under the twinkle of a fading star.

    Is it like this
    In death's other kingdom
    Waking alone
    At the hour when we are
    Trembling with tenderness
    Lips that would kiss
    Form prayers to broken stone.

    IV
    The eyes are not here
    There are no eyes here
    In this valley of dying stars
    In this hollow valley
    This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

    In this last of meeting places
    We grope together
    And avoid speech
    Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

    Sightless, unless
    The eyes reappear
    As the perpetual star
    Multifoliate rose
    Of death's twilight kingdom
    The hope only
    Of empty men.

    V
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o'clock in the morning.

    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
    Life is very long

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the

    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 14,329 ✭✭✭✭Cienciano


    The reason why
    The reason why
    The reason why I had to die.
    Did I bleed the blood of greed?
    What was my destiny?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 120 ✭✭mayoman ngalway


    mine is from a book i read in school for the Jr cert going back nearly 20 years!!!
    the book was called 'the outsiders'
    the poem was credited to Robert Frost,
    and it goes.........

    Nature's first green is gold,
    Her hardest hue to hold.
    Her early leaf's a flower;
    But only so an hour.
    Then leaf subsides to leaf,
    So Eden sank to grief,
    So dawn goes down to day
    Nothing gold can stay.

    Probably the only thing that has stayed with me from that time!!!!!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,800 ✭✭✭Lingua Franca


    Some of my favourites have already been mentioned here.
    djflawless wrote: »
    Bobby Sands-weeping winds

    Bobby Sands wrote some excellent poems.


    The Rhythm Of Time

    There’s an inner thing in every man,
    Do you know this thing my friend?
    It has withstood the blows of a million years,
    And will do so to the end.

    It was born when time did not exist,
    And it grew up out of life,
    It cut down evil’s strangling vines,
    Like a slashing searing knife.

    It lit fires when fires were not,
    And burnt the mind of man,
    Tempering leadened hearts to steel,
    From the time that time began.

    It wept by the waters of Babylon,
    And when all men were a loss,
    It screeched in writhing agony,
    And it hung bleeding from the Cross.

    It died in Rome by lion and sword,
    And in defiant cruel array,
    When the deathly word was ‘Spartacus’
    Along the Appian Way.

    It marched with Wat the Tyler’s poor,
    And frightened lord and king,
    And it was emblazoned in their deathly stare,
    As e’er a living thing.

    It smiled in holy innocence,
    Before conquistadors of old,
    So meek and tame and unaware,
    Of the deathly power of gold.

    It burst forth through pitiful Paris streets,
    And stormed the old Bastille,
    And marched upon the serpent’s head,
    And crushed it ‘neath its heel.

    It died in blood on Buffalo Plains,
    And starved by moons of rain,
    Its heart was buried in Wounded Knee,
    But it will come to rise again.

    It screamed aloud by Kerry lakes,
    As it was knelt upon the ground,
    And it died in great defiance,
    As they coldly shot it down.

    It is found in every light of hope,
    It knows no bounds nor space
    It has risen in red and black and white,
    It is there in every race.
    It lies in the hearts of heroes dead,
    It screams in tyrants’ eyes,
    It has reached the peak of mountains high,
    It comes searing ‘cross the skies.
    It lights the dark of this prison cell,
    It thunders forth its might,
    It is ‘the undauntable thought’, my friend,
    That thought that says ‘I’m right!’


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,800 ✭✭✭Lingua Franca


    I'm a fan of the simplistic style of e.e. cummings as well.

    maggie and milly and molly and may
    went down to the beach (to play one day)

    and maggie discovered a shell that sang
    so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

    milly befriended a stranded star
    whose rays five languid fingers were;

    and molly was chased by a horrible thing
    which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

    may came home with a smooth round stone
    as small as a world and as large as alone.

    For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
    it’s always ourselves we find in the sea


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,622 ✭✭✭Ruu


    My favourite by far. Lake Isle of Innisfree by WB Yeats.

    I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
    And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
    Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
    And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

    And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
    Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
    There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
    And evening full of the linnet's wings.

    I will arise and go now, for always night and day
    I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
    While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
    I hear it in the deep heart's core.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,971 ✭✭✭_Whimsical_


    I've always liked this one. I love that he searches for the mystical/magical in the simple places, prizes awe of innocence over experience and knowledge.

    Advent by Patrick Kavanagh

    We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
    Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
    But here in the Advent-darkened room
    Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
    Of penance will charm back the luxury
    Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
    The knowledge we stole but could not use.

    And the newness that was in every stale thing
    When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
    Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
    Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
    Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
    You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
    And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

    O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
    For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
    We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
    Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
    And we'll hear it among decent men too
    Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
    Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
    Won't we be rich, my love and I, and
    God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
    The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
    Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
    We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
    Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
    And Christ comes with a January flower.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,939 ✭✭✭ballsymchugh


    favourite poem is always Oíche Nollaig na mBan


    Bhí fuinneamh sa stoirm a éalaigh aréir.
    Aréir oíche Nollaig na mBan,
    As gealt-teach iargúlta ‘tá laistiar den ré
    Is do scréach tríd an spéir chughainn ‘na gealt
    Gur ghíosc geataí comharsan mar ghogallach gé,
    Gur bhúir abhainn slaghdánach mar tharbh,
    Gur mhúchadh mo choinneal mar bhuille ar mo bhéal
    A las ‘na splanc obann an fhearg.

    Ba mhaith liom go dtiocfadh an stoirm sin féin
    An oíche go mbeadsa go lag
    Ag filleadh abhaile ó rince an tsaoil
    Is solas an pheaca ag dul as,
    Go líonfaí gach neomat le liúirigh ón spéir,
    Go ndéanfaí den domhan scuaine scread,
    Is ná cloisfinn an ciúnas ag gluaiseacht fám dhéin,
    Ná inneall an ghluaisteáin ag stad.


    basically it's about s big storm on little Christmas, and the poet wants the same kind of storm on the last night of his life to drown out the silence of death.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,165 ✭✭✭Savage Tyrant


    Zippy and Bungle
    went to the jungle
    To have themselves some fun.
    Zippy got silly
    and whipped out his willy
    And shoved it up Bungles bum!

    A classic, I'm sure you'll all agree.


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