We're foot-slog-slog-slog-sloggin' over Africa -Foot-foot-foot-foot-sloggin' over Africa -(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!)There's no discharge in the war!
Seven-six-eleven-five-nine-an'-twenty mile to-day -Four-eleven-seventeen-thirty-two the day before -(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!)There's no discharge in the war!
Don't-don't-don't-don't-look at what's in front of you.(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again)Men-men-men-men-men go mad with watchin' em,An' there's no discharge in the war!
Try-try-try-try-to think o' something different -Oh-my-God-keep-me from goin' lunatic!(Boots-boots-boots-boots-movin' up an' down again!)There's no discharge in the war![...]
-Rudyard Kipling
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 4 August 2004 20:50 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 5 August 2004 01:11 (twenty years ago) link
Meanwhilelet us cast one shadowin air or water
our mouths wide as saucersour tongues at work in their tunnelsour shut eyes unimportant as freckles.
Let us turn to, untilthe giant flashlightcomes down on us
and we are rammed home on the corkscrew gigone at a timeand lugged off belly to belly.
TURNING TO, Maxine Kumin
(Whatever your particular political persuasions may be, watch out for those giant flashlights, corkscrew gigs, and keep your shut eyes open....)
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 5 August 2004 14:42 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Thursday, 5 August 2004 20:19 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Thursday, 5 August 2004 23:14 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 6 August 2004 08:02 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 6 August 2004 08:29 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 11:05 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:36 (twenty years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Friday, 6 August 2004 15:56 (twenty years ago) link
I worked for a woman, She wasn't mean--But she had a twelve-roomHouse to clean.
Had to get breakfast, Dinner, and Supper, too--Then take care of her children When I got through.
Wash, iron, and scrub, Walk the dog around--It was too much, Nearly broke me down.
I said, Madam, Can it beYou trying to make aPack-horse out of me?
She opened her mouth. She cried, Oh, no! You know, Alberta, I love you so!
I said, Madam, That may be true--But I'll be dogged If I love you!
― Begs2Differ (Begs2Differ), Friday, 6 August 2004 17:37 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 19:39 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Friday, 6 August 2004 21:11 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Friday, 6 August 2004 22:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 7 August 2004 00:28 (twenty years ago) link
― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 7 August 2004 03:17 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Saturday, 7 August 2004 20:13 (twenty years ago) link
Prince Rupert's Drop
It's brilliant. It's a tear you can stand a car on, the hard eye of a chandelier ready to break down and cry like a baby, a rare birth, cooled before its time. It's an ear of glass accidentally sown in the coldest of water, that sheer drop, rock solid except for the tailor neck which will snap like sugar, kick like a mortar under the surefire touch of your fingernail.
It's the pearl in a will-o'-the-wisp, the lantern asleep in the ice, the light of St Elmo's fire in your eyes. It's the roulette burst of a necklace, the snap of bones in an icicle's finger, the snip of your pliers at the neck of my heart, the fingertip working the spot which says 'you are here' until you are suddenly not.
― Archel (Archel), Tuesday, 24 August 2004 09:35 (twenty years ago) link
I wrote them down.
I looked up at the sunand I looked down.
The words formed a sunin their own fragile sky.
I wrote it down.
I was blinded twiceback into sight.
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 25 August 2004 16:45 (twenty years ago) link
Yes, I write verse now and then, But blunt and flaccid is my pen,No longer talked of by young men As rather clever.
In the last quarter are my eyes,You see it by their form and size;Is it not time then to be wise? Or now or never.
-- Walter Landor
I hope y'all are out there writing wonderful stuff, since you're not here. Now or never?
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Tuesday, 31 August 2004 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
I stand in the ticking room. My dear, I takeA moth kiss from your breath. The shore gulls cry.I leave this at your ear for when you wake.
- WS Graham
― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 13:21 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 18:16 (twenty years ago) link
-joyce
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 18:40 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 1 September 2004 21:16 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Thursday, 2 September 2004 07:10 (twenty years ago) link
Brown from the sun's mid-afternoon caress,And where not brown, white as a bridal dress,And where not white, pink as an opened plum.
And where not pink, darkly mysterious,And when observed, openly furious,And then obscured, while the red blushes come.
--William Dickey
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 2 September 2004 18:25 (twenty years ago) link
...And down the other air and the blue altered skyStreamed again a wonder of summerWith applesPears and red currantsAnd I saw in the turning so clearly a child'sForgotten mornings when he walked with his motherThrough the parables Of sunlightAnd the legends of green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancyThat his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.These were the woods the river and seaWhere a boyIn the listeningSummertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joyTo the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.And the mysterySang aliveStill in the water and singingbirds.
...POEM IN OCTOBER--Dylan Thomas
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 2 September 2004 18:32 (twenty years ago) link
― yesabibliophile (yesabibliophile), Thursday, 2 September 2004 20:02 (twenty years ago) link
(...)So we must be careful, those of us who were born with the wrong number of fingers or the giftof loving; we must do our best to behavelike normal members of society and not make nuisancesof ourselves; otherwise it could go hard with us. It is better to bite back your tears, swallow your laughter,and learn to fake the mildly self-depreciating titterfavoured by the bourgeoisiethan to be left entirely alone, as you will be,if your disconformity embarrassesyour neighbours; I wish I didn't keep forgetting that.
- Alden Nowlan, from "He Attempts to Love His Neighbours"
― rrrobyn (rrrobyn), Thursday, 9 September 2004 05:23 (twenty years ago) link
― equinox, Thursday, 9 September 2004 13:15 (twenty years ago) link
― 57 7th (calstars), Thursday, 9 September 2004 13:26 (twenty years ago) link
― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Thursday, 9 September 2004 13:36 (twenty years ago) link
― pepektheassassin (pepektheassassin), Thursday, 9 September 2004 14:51 (twenty years ago) link
I return to the house. From a window, a woman shouts for the boy to come in.
I feel sorry for her like the fool that I am, like the man I will never be.
-Pier Giorgio Di Cicco
― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 9 September 2004 20:02 (twenty years ago) link
-To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough
― Fred (Fred), Saturday, 11 September 2004 12:34 (twenty years ago) link
I have poems to be writin' after my camping trip (head is full of sheep mainly) but in the meantime:
We, too, had known golden hoursWhen body and soul were in tune,Had danced with our true lovesBy the light of a full moon,And sat with the wise and goodAs tongues grew witty and gayOver some noble dishOut of Escoffier;Had felt the intrusive gloryWhich tears reserve apart,And would in the old grand mannerHave sung from a resonant heart.
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 13 September 2004 11:46 (twenty years ago) link
{The first lines of a new Mark Halliday poem.
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:30 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:10 (twenty years ago) link
― lauren (laurenp), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:41 (twenty years ago) link
― Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 13 September 2004 15:09 (twenty years ago) link
-Evan Jones
― Fred (Fred), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 15:53 (twenty years ago) link
― Archel (Archel), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 09:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Fred (Fred), Wednesday, 15 September 2004 18:29 (twenty years ago) link
Are you happy? It's the onlyway to be, kid.Yes, be happy, it's a good niceway to be.But not happy-happy, kid, don'tbe too doubled-up doggone happy.It's the doubled-up doggone happy-happy people... bust hard... theydo bust hard... when they bust.Be happy, kid, go to it, but not toodoggone happy.
-Carl Sandburg
― j c (j c), Sunday, 19 September 2004 20:39 (twenty years ago) link
I want to get out of the train and go backTo see what they were beside the track.
I name all the flowers I am sure they weren't;Not fireweed loving where woods have burnt--
Not bluebells gracing a tunnel mouth--Not lupine living on sand and drouth.
Was something brushed across my mindThat no one on earth will ever find?
Heaven gives its glimpses only to thoseNot in position to look too close.
-Robert Frost
― Fred (Fred), Thursday, 7 October 2004 11:00 (nineteen years ago) link
― cºzen (Cozen), Saturday, 9 October 2004 21:37 (nineteen years ago) link
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 11 October 2004 19:56 (nineteen years ago) link
Westren wind when wilt thou blowThe small rain down can rainChrist that my love were in my armsAnd I in my bed again
― Jordan (Jordan), Monday, 11 October 2004 20:33 (nineteen years ago) link
Work from the original towardthe beautiful,unless the latter comes firstin which casereverse your efforts to finda model worthy of suchinane desire.
Even the mouth's beingdivided into two lips isnot enough to make wordsequal themselves.
Eavesdroppers fearthe hermit's soliloquy.
Wake up, wound, the knife said.
--Bill Knott
― bnw (bnw), Saturday, 23 October 2004 04:39 (nineteen years ago) link