in the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground Held his heart in his hands And ate of it. I said "is it good, friend?" "It is bitter-bitter" he answered. "but i like it, Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart"

it's stephen crane, if you need to know that. i think it's cyst's favorite poem.

From 1900, yes I know, thanks!

Stephen Crane = Red Badge of Courage? *unsure aura*

Yes, Stephen Crane wrote Red badge of courage. I once read that poem on an open-mike/variety show thingy on our school campus. I had them turn down the lights, and I held a light under my chin for maximum, spooky effect. After I read the last line, I paused, then screamed. Noone reacted. So I read a goofy, happy poem that I'd written. And noone reacted. So I never read poetry to them again, the bastards. We did get a positive reception to a musical rendition of "Beautiful Soup" - which is from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I look for butterflies that sleep amongst the wheat I make them into mutton pies and sell them on the street. I sell them unto men, he says who sail on stormy seas and that's the way I make my bread a trifle, if you please.

I liked it. The first poem, that is. I very very rarely like poetry. I dunno, making some sort of art with words to me is like sculpture with bottle caps. You could do it, but why? But this one's good.

How do I love poetry? Lemme count the ways. Good poetry goes right to my soul and I have so many poems that are like old friends. Some talk to me when I'm miserable, others find the words that describe my new love. Damn Tired, I want to convert you. If you think I have any hope, gimme your email addy so I can send you some of my favourite word sculptures

here it is

Hm? So as to avoid any confusion, Trace is not Tired. Maybe "here's mine" would have been a better wording. PS I sent mine and thanks for the poem but it wasn't quite the same but please send more, Cat.

Cat can you send me some poems too?

I wouldn't want to overstep my bounds by asking for poetry... but what sort of poets do you people like?

arg.. somewhere, there's a poem about the ruins of a statue of a dictator, in the middle of the desert, buried and eroded, with a plaque at the base of the statue that says something like "ruler of all he sees" or something. I think it started with an "X"? ARG. I HATE getting dumber.

Oh Anti never could you step over the bounds cause there's too few of your ilk around. So I'm sending right now some pages of verse. Don't ask me how but it could worse! I'm mainly into totally classical romantic sloppy stuff. But I have been known to wander around in Sylvia Plath, W H Auden, Dylan Thomas...basically you name it, I'll soak it up. But I really should experiment more and break out of the 18th century. I'm going to try and get hold of some Crane and see if I can be modernised.

*blushes* I love Yeats. absolutely love. And T.S. Eliot... as far as "modern-ish" stuff goes, I recommend the beat poets. Especially Ginsberg. HOWL! Ought to be required reading, everywhere.

everyone should call my house and listen to my latest song. it's about my new cat, who i named Hot Carl. He's a fucking retard. I like to call him 'Tardo cause he's so fucking retarded. I had a dream last night that i killed him. I love the little dickhead though. the song is called "stupid cat". "Got me a cat, he's so stupid" "Have you ever seen, a cat as dumb as mine?" "got me a cat, drives me crazy" "lord that cat, drives me up the wall." "I got a stupid cat ya'll" "got a stupid cat ya'aaaaaoooohhaaaa'll" "got a stupid cat ya'aaaaaooooohhhhoohhhaaaaaaohhaa'llll" "dumbass"

Nobody asked me, but: Yeats used to be my idol. Then I started finding him too overwrought. I still like his fiction/essays -- "The Crucifixion of the Outcast" is awesome. Late '60s/early '70s-era W.S. Merwin, of course, is my favorite and I can't stop reading his works or talking about him. My apologies. I love Margaret Atwood's poetry, especially the snotty stuff from "Power Politics." Rilke. Mark Strand. A.R. Ammons (esp. the really short poetry). Charles Wright. Robert Creeley (some). Wallace Stevens (some). Leonard Cohen. Gjertrude Schnackenberg. Marianne Moore. Others I forget.

Here is a classic by Percy Bysshe Shelley (yes, I did spell that correctly). I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed: And on the pedestal these words appear: 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away." I had to memorize that stinker in the 9th grade of the christian academy i gradeated from

More Shelley: Art thou pale for weariness Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth, Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth,-- And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy?

W.S. Merwin prose and poetry. Peruse at your leisure.

http://www.humorspace.com/humor/quotes/qmother.htm

Trace, Dammit, it's getting harder to dislike you. Did you realize that Ozymandias was the poem I was referring to earlier? damn. damndamndamn. Well, I just sent Cat a whole nasty bunch of my favorite "bad mood" poetry. Maybe I'll put it up on the web, instead. hrm.

Indeed, that was also nifty, Trace. The first Shelley, that is. The second sorta fell flat. There was another one called "A Song to the Men of England" or something like that about the inequalities and repression and the violence inherent in the system. My brother presented it in english class alongside Mis-shapes by Pulp. Also part of his presentation was a low-budget video biography of Shelley's life, with the girl down the street playing Mary Shelley and every time they got back together symbolized by her pulling him down to the couch on top of her. Nostalgia. Now we're in different schools and majors and of course college profs expect serious work, so I'm never going to see his particular brand of intellectual kick-ass coolness in class again.

that "mother" linked reminded me of an article about england's queen mother that was in vanity fair. she had been telling the novelist a.n. wilson about a poetry reading she had gone to at the house of edith and osbert sitwell: - Such and embarrassment. Osbert was wonderful, as you would expect, and Edith, of course, but then we had this rather lugubrious man in a suit, and he read a poem...I think it was called 'The Desert.' And first the girls [her daughters, including the future queen] got the giggles, and then I did and then even the King wilson: 'The Desert,' ma'am? Are you sure it wasn't called 'The Waste Land'? queen mum: That's it. I'm afraid we all giggled. Such a gloomy man, looked as though he worked at a bank, and we didn't understand a word. - to her credit, t.s. eliot did actually work at a bank. and i don't much like eliot either. i think the first poet i ever found myself liking was edgar lee masters. when i was 11 i was at a friend's house, waiting for him in the living room for some reason or another, and i pulled "spoon river anthology" off the shelf and started reading. i loved it - all those terse sketches of the lives of different people. when i read j.'s story and nate's editing job, i thought of bukowski, but i also thought of edgar lee masters.

Anti..thank you, I loved em all. Can't wait to get home tonight and read them aloud to my trees. (Yeats - "When You Are Old"...one of my all-time top of the pops favourites). Rhiannon, thank you...I'm going to go there as soon as possible. (I love this thread sooo much...poetry, poetry...bring it on)

Ozymandias is one of my favorites. However, I realize this is probably very common and maybe ho-hum, but I have to say my favorite poet ever is E. A. Poe.

Okay, then. bad poetry, come and get it. http://www.sparkykicksass.com/badpoems.html plenty of bukowski. and damnit, I LOVE T.S. Eliot. c'mon. The love song of J. Alfred Prufrock is brilliant. as is "Hollow Men". I used to love Poe. Now I can't really handle the poetry; I still love the fiction, though... "The Angel of the Odd" is one of my favorites. I'll have to dig through my books when I get home and just put up a massive, totally copyright infringing load of poetry. Yum. ooh. do any of you read "Friend Bear?" it's an online comic strip? for the most part, I hate P.B. Shelley. He tried really hard not to be immasculated (emasculated? spelling? anyone?) by the genius that was his wife, and ended up sounding bitter and flowery most of the time, which combination I am allergic to. erm. bring on the Plath! yes. We used to play this game wherein we would sort of write a group poem, but only with lines of previously published poetry.... someone would start out with, a line of Plath, say, and then someone else would follow with a line of Ezra Pound, or whatever, until they'd built a totally "ransom note" style poem. fun. mmm... I could talk poetry forever, I think. Sometimes, I love my job. Any of you ever heard of Luke Breit? **** Her blacks crackle and drag

hey, i used to have t.s. eliot's collected works. the magic just died for me. no critical ex-jesus, just my thing. looking back, i still like "preludes", from the prufrock years. probably because it's the most enigmatic. or pointless, depending on your point of view. i gots me a dinner date.

From: archy mehitabel by don marquis expression is the need of my soul i was once a vers libre bard but i died and my soul went into the body of a cockroach it has given me a new outlook upon life i see things from the underside now than you for the apple peelings in the wastepaper backet but your paste is getting so stale i can t eat it there is a cat here called mehitabel i wish you would have removed she nearly ate me the other night why don t she catch rats that is what she is supposed to be for there is a rat here she could get without delay most of these rats here are just rats but this rat is like me he has a human soul in him he used to be a poet himself night after night i have written my poetry for you on your typewriter and this big brute of a rat who used to be a poet comes out of his hole when it is done and reads it and sniffs at it he is jealous of my poetry he used to make fun of it when we were both human he was a punk poet himself and after he has read it he sneers and then he eats it

I'm not a big poetry fan, but when somebody very close to me died, I found solace in this poem by Pablo Neruda: If I die, survive me with such sheer force that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold, from south to south, lift your indelible eyes from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth, I don't want your laughter or your steps to waver, I don't want my heritage of joy to die, Don't call up my person, I am absent, Live in my absence as if in a house, Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air, Absence is a house so transparent that I, lifeless, will see you, living, and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

Also one of my favs, Shel Silvertien: There is a place where the sidewalk ends And before the street begins, And there the grass grows soft and white, And there the sun burns crimson bright, And there the moon-bird rests from his flight To cool in the peppermint wind. Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black And the dark street winds and bends. Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And watch where the chalk-white arrows go To the place where the sidewalk ends. Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow, And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go, For the children, they mark, and the children, they know The place where the sidewalk ends.

flight of the space monkey strapping furry friend ass-reak furry, fuzzy, frightened friend going the distance no one said no when you ...........stepped ........................forward space monkey braver than marsupial bolder than feline you space monkey in your rocketship propel me, and the human race styro foam banana hang in there space monkey my hero space monkey

"Bolder than feline"? Don't make me scratch you, Patrick! Someone, who shall remain nameless to save my block, sent me this one. I couldn't remember where I'd heard it, but it occurred to me at 2.00am this morning that it was in "The Girl's Guide To Hunting and Fishing" (mighty fine little paperback): One Art by Elizabeth Bishop: The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

At Melville's Tomb Hart Crane -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Often beneath the wave, wide from this ledge The dice of drowned men's bones he saw bequeath An embassy. Their numbers as he watched, Beat on the dusty shore and were obscured. And wrecks passed without sound of bells, The calyx of death's bounty giving back A scattered chapter, livid hieroglyph, The portent wound in corridors of shells. Then in the circuit calm of one vast coil, Its lashings charmed and malice reconciled, Frosted eyes there were that lifted altars; And silent answers crept across the stars. Compass, quadrant and sextant contrive No farther tides . . . High in the azure steeps Monody shall not wake the mariner. This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

I studied "One Art" in my poetry class. It is a very good example of an elegant villanelle. It also served as an inspiration when I had to write a sonnet (my couplet was something to the effect of: "Instead, you write when you find your voice gone / You press on paper this dot, here, this one.") Do check out the Merwin. It would make me so happy. *big puppydog eyes*

PS. Tell me you like it.

Will I get a treat afterwards Rhi? Something chewy? I am away to do it now. Should have last night when I had a cool bottle of vino standing by to lubricate my senses.

This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless, Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done, Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes thou lovest best, Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Rhi, not just being polite (since I don't do that well anyways)...freakin awesome. I'm converted. "When You Go Away" is going to make it into my bedside drawer of treasures. And "The Owl" spoke to me as well. That's good shit, worth drawing back on.

a few of my favs..... Anne Sexton...... The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator The end of the affair is always death. She's my workshop. Slippery eye, out of the tribe of myself my breath finds you gone. I horrify those who stand by. I am fed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Finger to finger, now she's mine. She's not too far. She's my encounter. I beat her like a bell. I recline in the bower where you used to mount her. You borrowed me on the flowered spread. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Take for instance this night, my love, that every single couple puts together with a joint overturning, beneath, above, the abundant two on sponge and feather, kneeling and pushing, head to head. At night, alone, I marry the bed. I break out of my body this way, an annoying miracle. Could I put the dream market on display? I am spread out. I crucify. My little plum is what you said. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Then my black-eyed rival came. The lady of water, rising on the beach, a piano at her fingertips, shame on her lips and a flute's speech. And I was the knock-kneed broom instead. At night, alone, I marry the bed. She took you the way a women takes a bargain dress off the rack and I broke the way a stone breaks. I give back your books and fishing tack. Today's paper says that you are wed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. Anne Sexton When Man Enters Woman When man, enters woman, like the surf biting the shore, again and again, and the woman opens her mouth with pleasure and her teeth gleam like the alphabet, Logos appears milking a star, and the man inside of woman ties a knot so that they will never again be separate and the woman climbs into a flower and swallows its stem and Logos appears and unleashes their rivers. This man, this woman with their double hunger, have tried to reach through the curtain of God and briefly they have, though God in His perversity unties the knot. ee cummings why must itself up every of a park anus stick some quote statue unquote to prove that a hero equals any jerk who was afraid to dare to answer "no"? quote citizens unquote might otherwise forget(to err is human;to forgive divine)that if the quote state unquote says "kill" killing is an act of christian love. "Nothing" in 1944 AD "can stand against the argument of mil itary necessity"(generalissimo e) and echo answers "there is no appeal from reason"(freud)--you pays your money and you doesn't take your choice. Ain't freedom grand

Thread suns above the grey-black wilderness. A tree- high thought tunes in to light's pitch: there are still songs to be sung on the other side of mankind.

I liked the second one posted by patrick. the art of losing was also good, but I'm still missing out on the poetry thing. I mean, I liked the ideas, but I don't see why they're written in that particular meter with the master/disaster pairing and whatnot. I have a friend who felt the same way about music, he just didn't understand what the big deal was. About two years ago he got into the beastie boys and rahzel, but that's still about all he listens to. I dunno, maybe I'll never understand it.

Yay, Cat!! (Your reward is the millions of happy beams I am emitting in your general direction. ;) ) If you are interested, the best book of his to get is "The Second Four Books of Poems," which is his "The Moving Target," "The Lice," "The Carrier of Ladders," and "Writings to an Unfinished Accompaniment" all bound in one volume. It's still in print (ISBN: 1-55659-054-7) and is only US$15.00 -- cheap for a book this size. "When You Go Away" just might be my favorite of his poems. The last line does it for me. And "Presidents" is the only poem I've ever read that made me wish with my whole heart that I had written it.

Oaky doaky: here's a little odd one, called: "Tango" He dreamt it snowed slow falling, pondering oranges, freshcut blue iris with heather, many silver picolos, and unnamed and unknown sandy places late at night, likely between her toes, all last night, and dreaming it helped the emptiness, the self-absorption, the g#diwishiwereinfloridaorhawaii feeling of stepping out all pink and rosy from a warm shower onto a cold bathroom tile, then a room emptying of its human sound, a house echoing of never heard voices standing at the kitchen cupboard wearing nothing but his long tailed pinstripe shirt, that old vision long buried in the previous delight's sweet feather downed purchase. Yes. and of loss, great loss, almost too great loss, of being old in the next moment, too tired to peel the orange, too cynical to savor the tall flowers wilted and dried on the mirrored vanity, too deaf to hear the music, and too afraid to walk on this beach -- again, trying to recall the flush of midnights taken not alone, the salmon colored marks on her all too white skin, soft and smelling of talc and juniper. All a dream too hungry for strong scotch and scratchy tango music: she, stretched partly naked in her sitting room, and he, some memory that danced one truthful windy night. ## -- DLSmith Well, hell, I couldn't resist. I've been known to take risks.

she is young and dreams of giving up the burden of her wings giving herself over to him allowing herself to be light enough to be carried only for a while, to rest as if floating away entirely on the shoulders of his dreams, to relinquish her purpose and be bound to his desires, which willingly become her own how she longs to be an instrument of sacred and easy pleasures.

So many beautiful words...I just want to roll around in them like a puppy in a field full of newly smelly cow pats.

*smiles* my favorite short poem may be by Pablo Neruda. I can't remember. Your absence is like a colored thread: Everything I do is stitched with it's presence. THE BLACK ART (Anne Sexton) A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl. A man who writes knows too much, such spells and fetiches! As if erections and congresses and products weren't enough; as if machines and galleons and wars were never enough. With used furniture he makes a tree. A writer is essentially a crook. Dear love, you are that man. Never loving ourselves, hating even our shoes and our hats, we love each other, precious, precious. Our hands are light blue and gentle. Our eyes are full of terrible confessions. But when we marry, the children leave in disgust. There is too much food and no one left over to eat up all the weird abundance.

A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING (John Donne) AS virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, "Now his breath goes," and some say, "No." So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move ; 'Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity our love. Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears ; Men reckon what it did, and meant ; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. Dull sublunary lovers' love —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit Of absence, 'cause it doth remove The thing which elemented it. But we by a love so much refined, That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assurèd of the mind, Care less, eyes, lips and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to aery thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two ; Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th' other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th' other foot, obliquely run ; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

"Your absence is like a colored thread: Everything I do is stitched with it's presence." No, my dear! That is by W.S. Merwin! Separation Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle Everything I do is stitched with its color

blech, all of it. everything. puny words. bah.

Thanks, Spider. My memory is not what it used to be. All this raisin bran is turning my brains to mush.

"God, I hate Poetry. "No! Art! No! Art! No! Art!" The Dead Milkmen, "Blood Orgy of the Atomic Fern"

"Okay, well, the important part here is that you ask me how I'm gonna get down to the shore." "Hey, how're you gonna get down to the shore?" "I've got a car now. My parents drove it up from the bahamas." "You're kidding!" "I must be kidding. The bahamas are islands. right, well, the important part here is that you ask me what type of car I have." "um... what kind of car do you have?" "A BITCHIN' CAMARO!"

Click-click-click-click! saw them on their farewell tour. RODNey prefaced that song with an excerpt from the Suzanne Somers autobiography, discussing her sex life. What a treasure. I just missed seeing Burn Witch Burn!, his new band (is that the right name?), when I was in Philly.

I don't know... I don't really keep track of them at all. I just know what I like: Bitchin' Camaro and Punk Rock Girl are staples of my playlist.

One of my favorite, in my eyes, "poem" it the opening to Moody Blues "Nights in White Satin" Breathe deep, gathering gloom..... ...Which is a dream, and which is an illusion? I wish I knew the rest by heart

If there is a God in Heaven, I'm sure that band will burn in hell

Here is a good one for you all living in the boroughs! A race of angels Bound with one another A dish of dollars Laid out for all to see A tower room at Eden Rock His golf at noon for free Brooklyn owes the charmer Under me His lady's aching To bring a body down She daily preaches On where she wants to be An evening with a movie queen A face we all have seen Brooklyn owes the charmer Under me A case of aces Done up loose for dealing A piece of island cooling in the sea The whole of time we gain or lose And power enough to choose Brooklyn owes the charmer Under me

W.H. Auden is god. that is all.

blech. wank wank wank wank.