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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.

bdhpoet1 - 08:39pm Sep 23, 2000 EST (#6250 of 6739)
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What is being written here is not poetry. Take it somewhere else...please!

Whitman wrote two great books of essays, some dealing with war, but he did not call them poetry.

Philosphers like Hegel, Spinoza, and the creator of The Superman, and etc..........don't get assasinated or put in jail. That's reserved for poets for one reason: they engage the emotions, suspend disbelief, challenge the philosphies masquerading as truths, and cause disruptions in the thought processes being showcased here. I could go on by I will not.

Take it to the philosophy forum, please!

bdhpoet1 - 08:41pm Sep 23, 2000 EST (#6251 of 6739)
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This has been a great forum for a long time. Don't fill the vacum created by the absence of Ayohn, Golem/Leo, DCuddy and others with this STUFF, please.

I'd rather see the place closed down.

featherstone2 - 09:23pm Sep 23, 2000 EST (#6252 of 6739)

This forum has become unrecognizable. May I second bdhpoet by asking you all to either submit poetry, talk about poetry, or leave!

featherstone2 - 09:42pm Sep 23, 2000 EST (#6253 of 6739)

I'll be away for a few days. A parting poem.

Polar bear

Snow-born, snow-bound, tied
to the snow by the hoary
generations that whitened
the fur, furred
the footpads for sure-footing
on ice, fattened
the flesh, called
you to the pack ice
with the promise of seals,
taught you to ride
the ice floes breaking
from the pack, ferried
you solitary on the frigid
ocean, white among the icebergs,
tiny on the sea,
large under the moon,
the harbour lights flickering
in the white
of your eye.

Beware the lights.
They are beating
back the glaciers,
warming
the dormant spores
of ferns and palms
a mile below the ice,
twitching
the stiff mastodon,
crazing the confines
of the paleolithic hunter.

You will be a white target,
snow-blind among the foliage,
surviving by minutes
the perishing lamplighters.

bdhpoet1 - 10:30pm Sep 23, 2000 EST (#6254 of 6739)
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Featherstone, your poem has good pace, relentless, white...and, widening like the ozone cover that will leave us all naked.

Now folks, that's the way to bring about consciousness of a danger, but it is so very much more difficult than what's been going on here.

By the way, Mark, I am moved by your work though I'm often not as appreciative as I should be. Thank you!

flyingvprod - 04:50am Sep 24, 2000 EST (#6255 of 6739)
If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.- Kubrick

Okay, here is one, it has a little EE Cummings flavor to it.

The Shelter

A hundred snores
Recycled breath
The torture of exposure to the unprivate human animal
I did not need to know
I did not need to hear
But there was no escape
Humans reduced to primal survival
Doing what is natural in the dark
Some food, a warm bed, a safety net
Locked in to protect the abused women
Who slept along side the abandoned
The exploited, the damaged, the hurting, the addicts
The children
The snores, the moans, the squeaks of the beds
The quiet greeting of one voice to another
The spitting into hands
The shaking of one bed connected to another
The moist air, filled with evaporated sweat
A fart from one direction, and then another
A sleep talker, someone cums, a panic sound
Someone awakens from a nightmare and sits in silence
Another person cums, a child gurgles
And talks in its sleep
Oh, for an open window and a loud radio!
I ask myself why it bothered me so
I put a finger in each ear and went to sleep
In the morning I went, and would keep on going

T.L. Verley

lunarchick - 06:05am Sep 24, 2000 EST (#6256 of 6739)
lunarchick@www.com

"What is being written here is not poetry. Take it somewhere else...please!" bdhpoet1

Having become aware of the instability of the nuclear issue, to work for disarmament is a reasoned ART form that does justifiy it's place on this board .... for the stability of disarmament will ensure the board.

POEMon ...!

flyingvprod - 06:27am Sep 24, 2000 EST (#6257 of 6739)
If a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.- Kubrick

here is another, a real short one. Winter isn't here yet, but it seems a little snow word action is happening, so this'll work.

A Flake in a Blizzard

No poems for me
does this lady write
No thoughts of me in the dark
does she invite

Chasing one drop of water
in the pouring rain
I, a flake
in a blizzard

T.L. Verley

whitney110 - 07:45am Sep 24, 2000 EST (#6258 of 6739)
'Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply."--Flannery O'Connor

Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengroven unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! As the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manly Hopkins

Long a favorite poem, I can not do the magic of inserting the correct accent marks....

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