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Poems that make your heart explode.

Started by tookish, March 25, 2014, 11:59:05 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

kidsick5000

Who then devised the torment? Love
Love is the unfamiliar name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire

from Little Gidding (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets') by TS Eliot

Consignia

Atatatatatatatatatatata,
You are already dead.
-Kenshiro

tookish

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought   
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   
(Still the dead one lay moaning)   
I was much too far out all my life   
And not waving but drowning.

~ Stevie Smith.

Artemis

Going to dad's
Better act natural
Last time I'll see him
Need money for petrol.

(it's a prequel to my earlier contribution)

Theremin

Richard Brautigan is my jam for this.

Love Poem:

It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
anymore.

Twit 2

Some WCW:

in this strong light
the leafless beechtree
shines like a cloud

it seems to glow
of itself
with a soft stript light
of love
over the brittle
grass

But there are
on second look
a few yellow leaves
still shaking

far apart

just one here one there
trembling vividly

Twit 2

Tall Nettles, Edward Thomas:

Tall nettles cover up, as they have done   
These many springs, the rusty harrow, the plough   
Long worn out, and the roller made of stone:   
Only the elm butt tops the nettles now.   
 
This corner of the farmyard I like most:            
As well as any bloom upon a flower   
I like the dust on the nettles, never lost   
Except to prove the sweetness of a shower.   

Mr Brightside

The German Guns

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,

Boom, Boom, Boom,

Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom,

Boom, Boom, Boom

popcorn

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss—we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.


- What the Living Do, Marie Howe.

Catalogue Trousers

Warning To Children by Robert Graves.


Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel -
Children, leave the string alone!
For who dares undo the parcel
Finds himself at once inside it,
On the island, in the fruit,
Blocks of slate about his head,
Finds himself enclosed by dappled
Green and red, enclosed by yellow
Tawny nets, enclosed by black
And white acres of dominoes,
With the same brown paper parcel
Still untied upon his knee.
And, if he then should dare to think
Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,
Greatness of this endless only
Precious world in which he says
he lives - he then unties the string.

By Samuel Beckett

What would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where ebery instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

græskar

Quote from: kidsick5000 on April 06, 2014, 06:14:51 PM
Who then devised the torment? Love
Love is the unfamiliar name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire

from Little Gidding (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets') by TS Eliot

I love this. Made me check out TS Eliot, I'll try to read the Four Quartets.

Dannyhood91

alright partner keep on rollin' baby you know what time
it is chocolate starfish keep on rollin' baby move in,
now move out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now breathe in,
now breathe out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now keep rollin',
rollin', rollin', rollin' (what)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (come on)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (yeah)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin'
now i know y'all be lov'in this shit right here
l.i.m.p bizkit is right here people in the house put them hands in the air
cause if you don't care, then we don't care 1, 2, 3,
times two to the six jonesin' for your fix of that limp bizkit mix so
where the fuck you at punk, shut the fuck up and back the fuck up,
while we fuck this track up now move in,
now move out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now breathe in,
now breathe out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now keep rollin',
rollin', rollin', rollin' (what)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (come on)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (yeah)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin'
you wanna mess with limp bizkit (yeah)
you can't mess with limp bizkit (why)
because we get it on every day, and every night (oh)
and this platinum thing right here (uh, huh)
yo we're doin' it all the time (what) so you better get some beats
and a some better rhymes (dough) we got the gang set so
don't complain yet twenty four seven never beggin'
for a rain check old school soldiers blastin' out the hot shit
that rock shit puttin' bounce in the mosh pit now move in,
now move out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now breathe in,
now breathe out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now keep rollin',
rollin', rollin', rollin' (come on)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (what)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (yeah)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' hey ladies,
hey fellas and the people that don't give a fuck all the lovers,
all the haters and all the people that call themselves play-ers hot mamas,
pimp daddies and the people rollin' up in caddies hey rockers,
hip hoppers and everybody all around the world now move in,
now move out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now breathe in,
now breathe out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now keep rollin',
rollin', rollin', rollin' (yeah)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (what)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (come on)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' now move in,
now move out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now breathe in,
now breathe out hands up or hands down back up,
back up tell me what ya gonna do now keep rollin',
rollin', rollin', rollin' (come on)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (what)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' (yeah)
keep rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin

Twit 2

The new Michael Longley collection 'Angel Hill' is seriously worth getting, full of stonkers. Very simple to read, but bursting with craft, humanity and beauty. Lots of meditations on time and people, including many gorgeous poems about his grandchildren, like this one:


The Unspoken by Edwin Morgan

When the troopship was pitching round the Cape
in '41, and there was a lull in the night uproar of
    seas and winds, and a sudden full moon
swung huge out of the darkness like the world it is,
and we all crowded into the wet deck, leaning on
    the rail, our arms on each other's shoulders,
    gazing at the savage outcrop of great Africa.
and Tommy Cosh started singing 'Mandalay' and
    we joined in with our raucous chorus of the
    unforgettable song,
and the dawn came up like thunder like that
    moon drawing the water of our yearning
though we were going to war, and left us exalted,
that was happiness,
but it is not like that.

When the television newscaster said
the second sputnik was up, not empty,
but with a small dog on board,
a half-ton treasury of life orbiting a thousand
    miles above the thin television masts and mists
    of November,
in clear space, heard, observed,
the faint far heartbeat sending back its message
steady and delicate,
and I was stirred by a deep confusion of feelings,
got up, stood with my back to the wall and my
    palms pressed hard against it, my arms held
    wide
as if I could spring from the earth ---
not loath myself to go out that very day where
    Laika had shown man, felt
my cheeks burning with old Promethean warmth
rekindled --- ready ---
covered my face with my hands, seeing only an
    animal
strapped in a doomed capsule, but the future
    was still there, cool and whole like the moon,
waiting to be taken, smiling even
as the dog's bones and the elaborate casket of
    aluminium
glow white and fuse in the arc of re-entry
and I knew what I felt was history,
its thrilling brilliance came down,
came down,
comes down on us all, bringing pride and pity,
but it is not like that.

But Glasgow days and grey weathers, when the
    rain
beat on the bus shelter and you leaned slightly
    against me, and the back of your hand touched
    my hand in the shadows, and nothing was
    said
when your hair grazed mine accidentally as we
    talked in a cafe, yet not quite accidentally,
when I stole a glance at your face as we stood in a
    doorway and found I was afraid
of what might happen if I should never see it again,
when we met, and met, in spite of such differences
    in our lives,
and did the common things that in our feeling
became extraordinary, so that our first kiss
was like the winter morning moon, and as you
    shifted in my arms
it was the sea changing the shingle that changes
    it
as if for ever (but we are bound by nothing, but
    like smoke
to mist or light in water we move, and mix) ---
O then it was a story as old as war or man
and although we have not said it we know it,
and although we have not claimed it we do it,
and although we have not vowed it we keep it,
without a name to the end

notjosh

This made me cry the first time I read it in someone's toilet. I think partly because I grew up in a house called The Firs, and used to look out of my bedroom window to two fir trees that stretched right up to the sky.

I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday, -
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,
Where I was used to swing,
And thought the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then,
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow!

I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from heaven
Than when I was a boy.

- Thomas Hood

notjosh

And I might as well share this video of my Granpop reading a poem on Dales Diary. This really tore me up when I finally got hold of the video a few years ago, but it's about as lovely a memory of a grandparent as you could ever hope to have.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-jVYiQjRXU

samadriel

Allen Ginsberg - Sphincter

I hope my good old asshole holds out
60 years it's been mostly OK
Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation
survived the altiplano hospital--
a little blood, no polyps, occasionally
a small hemorrhoid
active, eager, receptive to phallus
coke bottle, candle, carrot
banana & fingers--
Now AIDS makes it shy, but still
eager to serve--
out with the dumps, in with the condom'd
orgasmic friend--
still rubbery muscular,
unashamed wide open for joy
But another 20 years who knows,
old folks got troubles everywhere--
necks, prostates, stomachs, joints--
Hope the old hole stays young
till death, relax

Sherman Krank


Sebastian Cobb

[tag]W.B. Yeats leaves thread in an ambulance[/tag]

newbridge

Quote from: thecuriousorange on June 24, 2017, 08:36:39 PM
By Samuel Beckett

What would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where ebery instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness

+1

mothman

Sassoon.

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.


No poems make my heart explode.

Robert Browning's "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister"

Gr-r-r--there go, my heart's abhorrence!
   Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
   God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
   Oh, that rose has prior claims--
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
   Hell dry you up with its flames!

At the meal we sit together;
   Salve tibi! I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
   Sort of season, time of year:
Not a plenteous cork crop: scarcely
   Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt;
What's the Latin name for "parsley"?
   What's the Greek name for "swine's snout"?

Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
   Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
   And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
   Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps--
Marked with L. for our initial!
   (He-he! There his lily snaps!)

Saint, forsooth! While Brown Dolores
   Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
   Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
   --Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
   (That is, if he'd let it show!)

When he finishes refection,
   Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
   As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
   Drinking watered orange pulp--
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
   While he drains his at one gulp!

Oh, those melons! if he's able
   We're to have a feast; so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
   All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double?
   Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!--And I, too, at such trouble,
   Keep them close-nipped on the sly!

There's a great text in Galatians,
   Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine district damnations,
   One sure, if another fails;
If I trip him just a-dying,
   Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
   Off to hell, a Manichee?

Or, my scrofulous French novel
   On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
   Hand and foot in Belial's gripe;
If I double down its pages
   At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
   Ope a sieve and slip it in't?

Or, there's Satan!--one might venture
   Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
   As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
   We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine...
'St, there's Vespers! Plena gratia
  Ave, Virgo! Gr-r-r--you swine!


I really enjoyed Mr Brightside's "The Wanker" a while a go too.

Twit 2

Another of Michael Longley's beautiful poems for a grandchild.

Fetlocks

I had thought of wind-chimes
To accompany your sleep
But they are too airy, so
I imagine the fetlocks
Of a neighbour's Clydesdale,
Icicles in harsh weather
Tinkling at each earthy stride.

mrpupkin

Larkin:

Love Songs in Age
Home is so Sad
Talking in Bed

What a ledge

Ferris

Betjeman, Larkin, D Thomas a bit. Allan Ahlberg's one about the sausage is also good.

This is my favourite for when I can't sleep - I think I could recite without the text at this point. About death, and fear of mortality, and being an insomniac - all are things I relate to.

Aubade by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.   
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.   
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.   
Till then I see what's really always there:   
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,   
Making all thought impossible but how   
And where and when I shall myself die.   
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse   
—The good not done, the love not given, time   
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because   
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;   
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,   
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,   
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,   
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,   
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill   
That slows each impulse down to indecision.   
Most things may never happen: this one will,   
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without   
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave   
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.   
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,   
Have always known, know that we can't escape,   
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring   
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Ferris


Dannyhood91

your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

by Charles Bukowski

Ferris

Quote from: Dannyhood91 on September 04, 2017, 04:47:44 PM
your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

by Charles Bukowski

There is a lovely version by Tom awaits on YouTube that I really recommend