Put Your favourite poem here

[action man]

i often enjoy reading through poems when im playing online it helps me chill out and concentrate and at the same time keep poker in perspective. My grandad used to read me this when i was very young its a classic by Alfred Noyes.



THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,
    The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    And the highwayman came riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

                                                 II

    He'd a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch of lace at his chin,
    A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown doe-skin;
    They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!
    And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
                      His pistol butts a-twinkle,
    His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

                                                 III

    Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the dark inn-yard,
    And he tapped with his whip on the shuters, but all was locked and barred;
    He whistled a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
                      Bess, the landlord's daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

                                                 IV

    And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket creaked
    Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white and peaked;
    His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like mouldy hay,
    But he loved the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's red-lipped daughter,
    Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber say—

                                                 V

    "One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I'm after a prize to-night,
    But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the morning light;
    Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me through the day,
    Then look for me by moonlight,
                      Watch for me by moonlight,
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way."

                                                 VI

    He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could reach her hand,
    But she loosened her hair i' the casement! His face burnt like a brand
    As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling over his breast;
    And he kissed its waves in the moonlight,
                      (Oh, sweet, black waves in the moonlight!)
    Then he tugged at his rein in the moonliglt, and galloped away to the West.

 

                                        PART TWO

                                                 I

    He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at noon;
    And out o' the tawny sunset, before the rise o' the moon,
    When the road was a gypsy's ribbon, looping the purple moor,
    A red-coat troop came marching—
                      Marching—marching—
    King George's men came matching, up to the old inn-door.

                                                 II

    They said no word to the landlord, they drank his ale instead,
    But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the foot of her narrow bed;
    Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets at their side!
    There was death at every window;
                      And hell at one dark window;
    For Bess could see, through her casement, the road that he would ride.

                                                 III

    They had tied her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest;
    They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast!
    "Now, keep good watch!" and they kissed her.
                      She heard the dead man say—
    Look for me by moonlight;
                      Watch for me by moonlight;
    I'll come to thee by moonlight, though hell should bar the way!

                                                 IV

    She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots held good!
    She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with sweat or blood!
    They stretched and strained in the darkness, and the hours crawled by like years,
    Till, now, on the stroke of midnight,
                      Cold, on the stroke of midnight,
    The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at least was hers!

                                                 V

    The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more for the rest!
    Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel beneath her breast,
    She would not risk their hearing; she would not strive again;
    For the road lay bare in the moonlight;
                      Blank and bare in the moonlight;
    And the blood of her veins in the moonlight throbbed to her love's refrain .

                                                 VI

        Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The horse-hoofs ringing clear;
    Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they deaf that they did not hear?
    Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the hill,
    The highwayman came riding,
                      Riding, riding!
    The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood up, straight and still!

                                                 VII

    Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the echoing night!
    Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a light!
    Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one last deep breath,
    Then her finger moved in the moonlight,
                      Her musket shattered the moonlight,
    Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned him—with her death.

                                                 VIII

    He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not know who stood
    Bowed, with her head o'er the musket, drenched with her own red blood!
    Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to hear
    How Bess, the landlord's daughter,
                      The landlord's black-eyed daughter,
    Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and died in the darkness there.

                                                 IX

    Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
    With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
    Blood-red were his spurs i' the golden noon; wine-red was his velvet coat,
    When they shot him down on the highway,
                      Down like a dog on the highway,
    And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

                  *           *           *           *           *           *

                                                 X

    And still of a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
    When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,
    When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,
    A highwayman comes riding—
                      Riding—riding—
    A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door.

                                                 XI

    Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard;
    He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred;
    He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there
    But the landlord's black-eyed daughter,
                      Bess, the landlord's daughter,
    Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

 

[Wardonkey]

Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.


"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
  The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
  The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
  Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
  And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
  The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
  And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.


`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
  Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
  And the mome raths outgrabe.

[ariston]

Can't beat Spike Milligan

Can a parrott,
Eat a carrott,
Standing on its head.
If I did that,
My mum would send me,
Straight upstairs to bed.

Class

[Colchester Kev]

There was a young lady from ealing
who had a particular feeling
.....................................

[thetank]

Ted Hughes' February 17th.
The only place I could find it was in a blog, copied and pasted form there, but I'm unsure as to how the spacing works. Can't remeber if it's all supposed to be one big long stanza or not.
Have split it into 3 anyway, just to make it slightly easier on the eye.


February 17th


A lamb could not get born. Ice wind
Out of a downpour dishclout sunrise. The mother
Lay on the muddied slope. Harried, she got up
And the blackish lump bobbed at her back-end
Under her tail. After some hard galloping,
Some manoeuvering, much flapping of the backward
Lump head of the lamb looking out,
I caught her with a rope. Laid her, head uphill
And examined the lamb. A blood-ball swollen
Tight in its black felt, its mouth gap
Squashed crooked, tongue stuck out, black-purple,
Strangled by its mother. I felt inside,
Past the noose of mother-flesh, into the slippery
Muscled tunnel, fingering for a hoof,
Right back to the port-hole of the pelvis.

But there was no hoof. He had stuck his head out too early
And his feet could not follow. He should have
Felt his way, tip-toe, his toes
Tucked up under his nose
For a safe landing. So I kneeled wrestling
With her groans. No hand could squeeze past
The lamb's neck into her interior
To hook a knee. I roped that baby head
And hauled till she cried out and tried
To get up and I saw it was useless. I went
Two miles for the injection and a razor.

Sliced the lamb's throat-strings, levered with a knife
Between the vertebrae and brought the head off
To stare at its mother, its pipes sitting in the mud
With all earth for a body. Then pushed
The neck-stump right back in, and as I pushed
She pushed. She pushed crying and I pushed gasping.
And the strength
Of the birth push and the push of my thumb
Against that wobbly vertebrae were deadlock,
A to-fro futility. Till I forced
A hand past and got a knee. Then like
Pulling myself to the ceiling with one finger
Hooked in a loop, timing my effort
To her birth push groans, I pulled against
The corpse that would not come. Till it came,
And after it the long, sudden, yolk-yellow
Parcel of life
In a smothering slither of oils and soups and syrups -
And the body lay born, beside the hacked-off head.

[Colchester Kev]

The boy stood on the burning deck
Picking his nose like mad
he rolled them into little balls
and flicked them at his dad


The boy stood on the burning deck
having a game of cricket
the ball shot up his trouser leg
and hit his middle wicket


She stood on the bridge at midnight
her legs were all a quiver
she gave a cough, her head fell off
and floated down the river

[thetank]

Anyone got some good spoof angry lesbian/divorced woman/frumpy spinster man hating poetry we can have a lookie at?

On second thoughts, doesn't even have to be spoof.

[BrumBilly]

Try the black feminist 'Sonia Sanchez'....Lost my copy of the anthology I saw it in 'News for Babylon' but she sounds like the stuff you're after....


I like 'The Aristocrats' and 'The Stud' by Fred Voss. Other than that, gritty urban stuff from the likes of Roger MacGough and Benjamin Zephaniah and Larkin. On a lighter note 'Palm Tree King' by John Agard and 'Ode to Knickers' by the same author

[Trace]

I Am No Good At Love

I am no good at love
My heart should be wise and free
I kill the unfortunate golden goose
Whoever it may be
With over-articulate tenderness
And too much intensity.

I am no good at love
I batter it out of shape
Suspicion tears at my sleepless mind
And gibbering like an ape,
I lie alone in the endless dark
Knowing there's no escape.

I am no good at love
When my easy heart I yield
Wild words come tumbling from my mouth
Which should have stayed concealed;
And my jealousy turns a bed of bliss
Into a battlefield.

I am no good at love
I betray it with little sins
For I feel the misery of the end
In the moment that it begins
And the bitterness of the last good-bye
Is the bitterness that wins.


Once given to me by some bloke.  It were true as well!

[smithy69]

Finally a poem by Sir Paul McCartney:

I lay upon a grassy bank

My hands were all a quiver
I slowly removed her suspender belt
and her leg fell in the river

[tantrum]

Anyone got some good spoof angry lesbian/divorced woman/frumpy spinster man hating poetry we can have a lookie at?

   

I hope you don't use those terms as synonyms in everyday usage?

but this is something for you Tank, and written by a man:

'A Man in the Valley of Women'
Chris Greenhalgh

He was captured in the Valley of Women.
The manacled his ankles and chained his wrists.
His captors pinioned him.  One held his head.
Another picked up a needle and thread.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
She played the needle over a candle flame.
‘Sew your lips together!’ she laughed,
trailing a finger between his shoulder-blades.

She teased the needle through his upper lip,
And drew the flesh together with silk-twine.
He felt the pressure of her fingertips
as he nails dug deep into his spine.

Slowly they broke all the bones in his feet.
The blood was used to rouge his cheeks.
He testes made an executive toy,
his glans a novelty cork for the wine.

Seized by the throes of change, he was aware
of a contending self, radically other;
an abrupt warping, a cruel deflection
of his sex from masculine to feminine.

[....]'

[tantrum]

Bloody Men

Bloody men are like bloody buses –
You wait for about year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.

You look at them flashing their indicators,
Offering you are ride.
You’re trying to read the destinations,
You haven’t much time to decide.

If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you’ll stand there and gaze
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days.

Wendy Cope

And Another Bloody Thing…
(after Wendy Cope)

Bloody men are like bloody cigarettes –
A habit you swear to crack,
Then you find you’ve snuck out of the office
To suck one off round the back.


Clare Pollard

[RED-DOG]

The wind it whistled through the trees
and whipped to foam the once calm seas
the breakers thundered on the reef
where Sovereign Lady came to grief

She struck with a resounding crash
and boiling seas poured through the gash
the crew all ran to lower the boat
but in that sea it could not float

Long before the night had fled
Sovereign Lady's crew were dead.

T McCready Snr.


I like this poem by my dad because it has a story attached.

School was a very hit and miss affair for my dad, if my grandparents managed to stay in one place for long enough, he would go to the local school for a few weeks. When he was about 9 yrs old, his class were asked to submit a poem, my dad submitted this one.

His teacher refused to believe that he had written it and hauled him out in front of the class to berate him for submitting a poem that he had stolen from someone else, my dad insisted he had written it himself. The teacher then asked, "What would you say if I told you I had seen that poem in a book this morning?"  "I would say that you are a liar." dad replied.

The teacher put the ruler across his knuckles and told him he would have to stay in after school until he showed her where he had stolen the poem from. Of course, he could not.

Eventually the teacher had to let him go home. He never returned to that school, and he wished he had never written the poem.

[Claw75]

Bloody men are like bloody cigarettes –
A habit you swear to crack,
Then you find you’ve snuck out of the office
To suck one off round the back.

 

[thetank]

Cheers Tantrum