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Favorite Poetry

Contemporary or classic? Sonnet or free verse? What is it about poetry that strikes the imagination -- or turns some people away? To post poems in a single-space format, type (BR) at the end of each line but substitute < > for ( ). This is a "break line" indicator. It will allow the next line to appear right under the previous one, making the poem easier to read.

flyingvprod - 02:26am Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6229 of 6739)
If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.- Kubrick

Here is one that is a little on the optimistic side. It isn't Maya Angelou, but it isn't too bad:

So Many Roads


Ninety-seven ways to get to the same place
More really
If one bombs, I find another, and another
Overcoming one obstacle after another
Like a hurdler
Every word of wisdom bounces through my brain
If I scatter enough seeds
Something will grow
Gotta get anyplace from here
Step by step by step
Everyday is one less that I have
The clock ticks louder and louder
One door after another closes
I get a peek and it slams
I wait and wait and wait
Working for a carrot that I never get
Next week, next month, next year,
But I aint done yet
Not I
Still believe in the American dream
In good in life
In love and happiness
In rewards for the good
I have learned and will learn
With each passing day
Every night I kneel and pray

T.L. Verley

flyingvprod - 02:45am Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6230 of 6739)
If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.- Kubrick

by the way, I think that one was published in like 1992, in an anthology titled Journey of the Mind.

rmdig - 04:01pm Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6231 of 6739)
"Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding." Samuel Johnson

rshowalt - I stumbled upon this rather curious reflection not long ago. You might find it interesting.

"Reflections on the Atom Bomb"

They asked me what I thought of the atomic bomb. I said I had not been able to take any interest in it.

I like to read detective and mystery stories. I never get enough of them but whenever one of them is or was about death rays and atomic bombs I never could read them. What is the use, if they are really as destructive as all that there is nothing left and if there is nothing there nobody to be interested and nothing to be interested about. If they are not as destructive as all that then they are just a little more or less destructive than other things and that means that in spite of all destruction there are always lots left on this earth to be interested or to be willing and the thing that destroys is just one of the things that concerns the people inventing it or the people starting it off, but really nobody else can do anything about it so you have to just live along like always, so you see the atomic [bomb] is not at all interesting, not any more interesting than any other machine, and machines are only interesting in being invented or in what they do, so why be interested. I never could take any interest in the atomic bomb, I just couldn't any more than in everybody's secret weapon. That it has to be secret makes it dull and meaningless. Sure it will destroy a lot and kill a lot, but it's the living that are interesting not the way of killing them, because if there were not a lot left living how could there be any interest in destruction. Alright, that is the way I feel about it. They think they are interested about the atomic bomb but they really are not not any more than I am. Really not. They may be a little scared, I am not so scared, there is so much to be scared of so what is the use of bothering to be scared, and if you are not scared the atomic bomb is not interesting. Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. They listen so much that they forget to be natural. This is a nice story.

Gertrude Stein, 1946

wolverine137 - 06:07pm Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6232 of 6739)
Disco before death.

featherstone2:

Guernica is the ultimate antiwar statement! The fascists bombing a simple people for the heck of it. As Kurtz said, "The horror." Also, Lord Jim.

bdhpoet1 - 06:26pm Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6233 of 6739)
...

Wolverine, we look at a lot of the same stuff.

I suggest "The Bomb and the General" by Umberto Eco & Eugenio Carmi, a children's book of poetry and pictures.

flyingvprod - 07:56pm Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6234 of 6739)
If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.- Kubrick

The Scorpions put out a song a few years back, about the Russians loving their children too. I think it helped clear up a lot of confusion, and helped to put some things into perspective a little at the end of the cold war.

bdhpoet1 - 08:19pm Sep 22, 2000 EST (#6235 of 6739)
...

"And so
the atoms decided to rebel against the general.

One night,
without making a sound,
they stole silently out of the bombs
and hid in the cellar.

-from "The Bomb and the General" Harcourt Brace Jonanovich

rshowalt - 05:20am Sep 23, 2000 EST (#6236 of 6739)

You guys are giving me hope, and making me wish I could know, and feel, some of the wonderful things you know and feel.

All it will take is a clear perception of what these weapons are, what they do, how unstable the controls are, and how ordinarily human the controllers are. Maybe MTV videos, poetry, sharp questions to pols:

Like:

"Sir, what is your position on the practicality and morality of first strikes with nuclear weapons?"

If the pols had to answer, and concerned people listened to the answer, a lot of good might come.

The technical means to get rid of nuclear weapons, worldwide, forever, are within reach, and not even difficult. It is minds and hearts that have to change, in the United States most of all. If the "glory" and "neatness" of our nuclear weapons system was fully, clearly understood (including the social system behind it, complete with the people) then disarmament would be not only possible, but quick and certain. Artists, who touch emotion and perception, have the decisive power here, if they get interested and choose to use it. I'm hopeful. Could the Pentagon and the CIA stand up to the full fury of poets, MTV, and the big parts of the whole artistic community, coming at them, in good order, from many directions, jiving them, making the "nuclear certainties" clear? Not a chance !

They'd go down in order. And the nuclear weapons would, too. It would be a beautification of the world, and make sex a more hopeful enterprise.

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