Who here doesn't like poetry?
Swayze
14,705 Posts
I don't. Can't stand 99.9 percent of it.I liked some of that beat poetry shit for a while back in the mid 90s, and so I guess I still dig that, but for the most part its all pretentious crap to me. I feel like if you have something to say, then say it. As soon as people start babbling words I just tune out. I can't help it.I've tried to like poetry, but I've given up. It somehow offends my sense of reason or something.Post some good poetry, though, and I will try to read it and maybe I will like a poem.Seriously. Post the best poem you know. I will try to read it with an open mind.
Comments
respect the god.
i'm not really a big fan of poetry. though i havent delved very deep into the game. i do however enjoy the hell out of reading bukowski. some lines youu just have to keep rereading. shel silverstein was cool ass a kid.
and the subnormal.
all through grammar school
junior high
high school
junior college
the unwanted would attach
themselves to
me.
guys with one arm
guys with twitches
guys with speech defects
guys with white film
over one eye,
cowards
misanthropes
killers
peep-freaks
and thieves.
and all through the
factories and on the
bum
I always drew the
unwanted. they found me
right off and attached
themselves. they
still do.
in this neighborhood now
there's one who's
found me.
he pushes around a
shopping cart
filled with trash:
broken canes, shoelaces,
empty potato chip bags,
milk cartons, newspapers, penholders . . .
"hey, buddy, how ya doin'?"
I stop and we talk a
while.
then I say goodbye
but he still follows
me
past the beer
parlours and the
love parlours . . .
"keep me informed,
buddy, keep me informed,
I want to know what's
going on."
he's my new one.
I've never seen him
talk to anybody
else.
the cart rattles
along a little bit
behind me
then something
falls out.
he stops to pick
it up.
as he does I
walk through the
front door of the
green hotel on the
corner
pass down through
the hall
come out the back
door and
there's a cat
shitting there in
absolute delight,
he grins at
me.
you've got to fuck a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.
and don't worry about age
and / or freshly-arrived talents.
just drink more beer
more and more beer
and attend the racetrack at least once a
week
and win
if possible.
learning to win is hard--
any slob can be a good loser.
and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.
don't overexcercise.
sleep until noon.
avoid credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.
remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world worth more than $50
(in 1977).
and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong--
an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.
stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient--
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery
all that dross.
stay with the beer.
beer is continuous blood.
a continuous lover.
get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window
hit that thing
hit it hard
make it a heavyweight fight
make it the bull when he first charges in
and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.
If you don't think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now
without women
without food
without hope
then you're not ready.
drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too.
I can pray
all day
& God
wont come.
But if I call
911
The Devil
Be here
in a minute!
I'm not too in to most poetry/poems/poets, but Bukowski is the man. Some other Beat shit is cool too. Obviously Langston's gotta get props..
i prefer when he's bitching about being a postal worker, drinking copius amounts of liquor and getting laid.
oh wait thats the poetry too
thats what made him so great to read. it's so simple yet says so much. he was one of the first to cut out all the crap and get to the bare bone of the shit.
the riots
I've watched this city burn twice
in my lifetime
and the most notable thing
was the arrival of the
politicians in the
aftermath
proclaiming the wrongs of
the system
and demanding new
policies toward and for the
poor.
nothing was corrected last
time.
nothing will be corrected this
time.
the poor will remain poor.
the unemployed will remain
so.
the homeless will remain
homeless
and the politicians,
fat upon the land, will live
very well.
Post Office was ill. I finished that literally two days ago.
I didn't change a single word there, but in paragraph form that is a loooot easier to read (to me). So I guess I don't get the idea of splitting up all those words when you could have just write it like this in the first place.
post some more poetry, people!
I was the last one seen at the rhyme scene
inkless pens lie on the ground like spent shells
the blue lines on the page
tilted sideways become a cage
the lines from my pen begin to stray
outside the margin, I hear the dogs barkin'
I can't see the sky, the walls are grey
I can't tell if it's night, but I'll be okay
if they take my pens, I use shards
my story will be written in my scars
I pay my penances by serving sentences
I woke from a dream last night
I had wings destined for flight
but I couldn't fly high in the sky
in a fit of rage, I thrashed around the cage
my only escape would be on the page
I plucked quills from my wings
shanked my inner demons for ink
used their skin as paper
and bound my books with their spines
chronicling my life and times in rhymes
I can't tell if I am in a prison or a zoo
are these bars here for me or you
this isn't HBO and this is not Oz
I'm not sure which words are mine
or which words are God's
my mail is read, my phone is tapped
my truth refuses to be trapped
before I slung nouns and verbs from curbs
at the corner of depression and redemption
locked up but still pushing keys
not the yayo but on a laptop
my book will come in a ziplock
I am only as free as my pen will let me be
No guards with silencers will ever silence me.
Just type it all out here so I don't have to like, do stuff.
Most of the audience thought so, and so did I, but it got me thinking about what is or isn't gay.
Discussing sex with a guy is gay.
Discussing sex with a woman is straight, even telling a woman "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to suck a cock" is straight.
Sports are gay, especially contact sports, unless you're the only guy on both teams, in which case it is straight.
Gyms are always gay, because afterwords, in the locker room, you're showering with guys, and that is gay.
Watching pornography alone is neutral, like eating a sandwich. It's neither straight nor gay.
Watching pornos with one or more other guys in the room, no matter how many other women are also in the room, is gay.
Watching porn, even gay porn, with one or more women ONLY is straight.
Here's an interesting one: kissing a gay guy on the cheek, or having him kiss YOU on the cheek is neutral, as long as the guy is out of the closet. Hugging and/or kissing a straight guy . . . is gay.
See, look, I . . . I know I'm homophobic, but not about gay guys. They don't bother me at all. It's straight guys who don't know they're gay.
They fuck my shit right up.
Like a guy calls me up and says "A bunch of us guys are gonna sit around in our underwear and watch a football game and drink beer and eat chips, and, you know, maybe wrestle with each other a little, you know, just us guys! You wanna come over?"
And I'm like "No."
OK, you've got a guy sucking your dick, even if he's dressed like a beautiful woman, even if he's got the best breast implants you've ever seen, even if you're saying "Suck it bitch, I know you like it, you slut, you whore," that's gay.
Adversely, if a woman straps on a dildo and you're dressed like a woman and you're suckin' her cock and she's sayin' "You like it, don't you, you like sucking my dick, you little fucking faggot" and she rolls you over and fucks you in the ass and says "you love it, you little pussy boy, you love getting fucked in the ass, I bet you wish I was a man, I bet you wish this was a cock, you fucking faggot" and you're getting off on this like you've never gotten off before . . .
that's still straight.
But then, when you go off to the bar, and you discuss this, or any other sexual experience with any other guys, that's gay.
Here's the most interesting one:
Sucking a guy's cock, can, under certain rare circumstances, be straight.
Let's say you've gotten into a betting game with a woman, and the bet is whoever loses has to be the other's sex slave for the night, the kind of thing that happens in Penthouse Forum all the time, and you lose, and the woman makes you have sex with another guy, that's not gay.
I don't know exactly why, but it's not.
no offense. it sounds like some bad spoken word. but like i said, im not really a fan of poetry.
wow.
Thats not a poem!
Does anybody know any poems about ninjas? I might like that.
Gary and Melissa
Loved to make love
Loved to make love
Loved to make love to each other
Over and over and over again
For the first few weeks of their relationship
They made love four or five times a night
They were really turned on for awhile
Then to enhance their passion
They bought sex books
The Joy of Sex
The Sensous Couple
The Joy of Sex Part 2
The Kama Sutra
Even Yet More Still Joy of Sex
Popular Mechanics
Betty Crocker
Anything
They tried as many positions as they were capable of
Physically
Physically
Physically
They were really turned on for awhile
Then to heighten their passion
They bought sex toys
Ben-wa balls
French ticklers
Nipple clamps
Cock rings
Whips and chains and bondage gear
Bowling balls
Dildos
Vibrators
Watermelons
Commemorative Statuettes of Liberty
Anything
They were really turned on for awhile
They set up a video camera
And taped themselves having sex
Then they watched it on the VCR
While having more sex
Then to heighten their passion
Gary taped Melissa having sex with some of his friends
And Melissa taped Gary having sex with some of her friends
Then they watched it on the VCR
While having more sex
They were really turned on
As the years went by
Gary and Melissa became fine upstanding members of their community
Although they never married
Their relationship outlasted all the marriages on their block
And they never fought
Except to heighten their passion
They had made an agreement
That when one of them died
The other would continue to live with and make love to the corpse
But as luck would have it
They were both killed in a freak accident
And died at the exact same moment
Holding hands
In the Baggage Room at Greyhound ( Top of Page )
I
In the depths of the Greyhound Terminal
sitting dumbly on a baggage truck looking at the sky
waiting for the Los Angeles Express to depart
worrying about eternity over the Post Office roof in
the night-time red downtown heaven
staring through my eyeglasses I realized shuddering
these thoughts were not eternity, nor the poverty
of our lives, irritable baggage clerks,
nor the millions of weeping relatives surrounding the
buses waving goodbye,
nor other millions of the poor rushing around from
city to city to see their loved ones,
nor an indian dead with fright talking to a huge cop
by the Coke machine,
nor this trembling old lady with a cane taking the last
trip of her life,
nor the red-capped cynical porter collecting his quar-
ters and smiling over the smashed baggage,
nor me looking around at the horrible dream,
nor mustached negro Operating Clerk named Spade,
dealing out with his marvelous long hand the
fate of thousands of express packages,
nor fairy Sam in the basement limping from leaden
trunk to trunk,
nor Joe at the counter with his nervous breakdown
smiling cowardly at the customers,
nor the grayish-green whale's stomach interior loft
where we keep the baggage in hideous racks,
hundreds of suitcases full of tragedy rocking back and
forth waiting to be opened,
nor the baggage that's lost, nor damaged handles,
nameplates vanished, busted wires and broken
ropes, whole trunks exploding on the concrete
floor,
nor seabags emptied into the night in the final
warehouse.
II
Yet Spade reminded me of Angel, unloading a bus,
dressed in blue overalls black face official Angel's work-
man cap,
pushing with his belly a huge tin horse piled high with
black baggage,
looking up as he passed the yellow light bulb of the loft
and holding high on his arm an iron shepherd's crook.
III
It was the racks, I realized, sitting myself on top of
them now as is my wont at lunchtime to rest
my tired foot,
it was the racks, great wooden shelves and stanchions
posts and beams assembled floor to roof jumbled
with baggage,
-the Japanese white metal postwar trunk gaudily
flowered and headed for Fort Bragg,
one Mexican green paper package in purple rope
adorned with names for Nogales,
hundreds of radiators all at once for Eureka,
crates of Hawaiian underwear,
rolls of posters scattered over the Peninsula, nuts to
Sacramento,
one human eye for Napa,
an aluminum box of human blood for Stockton
and a little red package of teeth for Calistoga-
it was the racks and these on the racks I saw naked
in electric light the night before I quit,
the racks were created to hang our possessions, to keep
us together, a temporary shift in space,
God's only way of building the rickety structure of
Time,
to hold the bags to send on the roads, to carry our
luggage from place to place
looking for a bus to ride us back home to Eternity
where the heart was left and farewell tears
began.
IV
A swarm of baggage sitting by the counter as the trans-
continental bus pulls in.
The clock registering 12:15 A.M., May 9, 1956, the
second hand moving forward, red.
Getting ready to load my last bus.-Farewell, Walnut
Creek Richmond Vallejo Portland Pacific
Highway
Fleet-footed Quicksilver, God of transience.
One last package sits lone at midnight sticking up out
of the Coast rack high as the dusty fluorescent
light.
The wage they pay us is too low to live on. Tragedy
reduced to numbers.
This for the poor shepherds. I am a communist.
Farewell ye Greyhound where I suffered so much,
hurt my knee and scraped my hand and built
my pectoral muscles big as a vagina.
C-
W.H. Auden
If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones,
Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly
Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath,
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle,
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain
The butterfly and the lizard; examine this region
Of short distances and definite places:
What could be more like Mother or a fitter background
For her son, the flirtatious male who lounges
Against a rock in the sunlight, never doubting
That for all his faults he is loved; whose works are but
Extensions of his power to charm? From weathered outcrop
To hill-top temple, from appearing waters to
Conspicuous fountains, from a wild to a formal vineyard,
Are ingenious but short steps that a child's wish
To receive more attention than his brothers, whether
By pleasing or teasing, can easily take.
Watch, then, the band of rivals as they climb up and down
Their steep stone gennels in twos and threes, at times
Arm in arm, but never, thank God, in step; or engaged
On the shady side of a square at midday in
Voluble discourse, knowing each other too well to think
There are any important secrets, unable
To conceive a god whose temper-tantrums are moral
And not to be pacified by a clever line
Or a good lay: for accustomed to a stone that responds,
They have never had to veil their faces in awe
Of a crater whose blazing fury could not be fixed;
Adjusted to the local needs of valleys
Where everything can be touched or reached by walking,
Their eyes have never looked into infinite space
Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb; born lucky,
Their legs have never encountered the fungi
And insects of the jungle, the monstrous forms and lives
With which we have nothing, we like to hope, in common.
So, when one of them goes to the bad, the way his mind works
Remains incomprehensible: to become a pimp
Or deal in fake jewellery or ruin a fine tenor voice
For effects that bring down the house, could happen to all
But the best and the worst of us...
That is why, I suppose,
The best and worst never stayed here long but sought
Immoderate soils where the beauty was not so external,
The light less public and the meaning of life
Something more than a mad camp. 'Come!' cried the granite wastes,
"How evasive is your humour, how accidental
Your kindest kiss, how permanent is death." (Saints-to-be
Slipped away sighing.) "Come!" purred the clays and gravels,
"On our plains there is room for armies to drill; rivers
Wait to be tamed and slaves to construct you a tomb
In the grand manner: soft as the earth is mankind and both
Need to be altered." (Intendant Caesars rose and
Left, slamming the door.) But the really reckless were fetched
By an older colder voice, the oceanic whisper:
"I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
There are only the various envies, all of them sad."
They were right, my dear, all those voices were right
And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,
Nor its peace the historical calm of a site
Where something was settled once and for all: A back ward
And dilapidated province, connected
To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain
Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:
It has a worldy duty which in spite of itself
It does not neglect, but calls into question
All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,
Admired for his earnest habit of calling
The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy
By these marble statues which so obviously doubt
His antimythological myth; and these gamins,
Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade
With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's
Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what
And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,
Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble
The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water
Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these
Are our common prayer, whose greatest comfort is music
Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,
And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward
To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if
Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,
These modifications of matter into
Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,
Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:
The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,
Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of
Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.