Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 03:04:01 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Poems that make your heart explode.

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Oops! Wrong Planet

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on September 04, 2017, 03:51:52 AM
Good, innit?

A definite improvement on:

Prison for strikers,
Bring back the cat,
Kick out the n*****s,
How about that?

Oops! Wrong Planet

Here's New Approach Needed, a message to Jesus from Larkin's pal Kingsley Amis, my current avatar.

Should you revisit us,
Stay a little longer,
And get to know the place.
Experience hunger,
Madness, disease and war.
You heard about them, true,
The last time you came here;
It's different having them.
And what about a go
At love, marriage, children?
All good, but bringing some
Risk of remorse and pain
And fear of an odd sort:
A sort one should, again,
Feel, not just hear about,
To be qualified as
A human-race expert.
On local life, we trust
The resident witness,
Not the royal tourist.

People have suffered worse
And more durable wrongs
Than you did on that cross
(I know — you won't get me
Up on one of those things),
Without sure prospect of
Ascending good as new
On the third day, without
"I die, but man shall live"
As a nice cheering thought.

So, next time, come off it,
And get some service in,
Jack, long before you start
Laying down the old law:
If you still want to then.
Tell your dad that from me.

Dannyhood91

Quote from: FerriswheelBueller on September 04, 2017, 05:03:48 PM
There is a lovely version by Tom awaits on YouTube that I really recommend

That's how I originally came across it actually. I love how much he enjoys reading it out and you can tell the work means a lot to him. He covers Nirvana by Bukowski on one of his albums too.

Quote from: Dannyhood91 on September 04, 2017, 05:18:01 PM
That's how I originally came across it actually. I love how much he enjoys reading it out and you can tell the work means a lot to him. He covers Nirvana by Bukowski on one of his albums too.

Yeah, on the Orphans box set, the disc called Bastards. It's lovely! I find with Bukowski's poetry, if it's not utter dogshit, then it's absolutely wonderful.

NattyDread 2

Quote from: Twit 2 on September 02, 2017, 03:00:41 PM

Nativity and Fetlocks


Those two certainly make my heart explode, but then I may be biased as they're about my daughters. Glad you like the book. It's lovely to see it mentioned on here.

Twit 2

I absolutely love his last two collections; they are everything I want poetry to be and they are as beautiful as they are masterful. He is an astonishingly good poet, a treasure.

Phil_A

"Poem To Shout In The Ruins" by Louis Aragon

Let's spit the two of us let's spit
On what we loved
On what we loved the two of us
Yes because this poem the two of us
Is a waltz tune and I imagine
What is dark and incomparable passing between us
Like a dialogue of mirrors abandoned
In a baggage-claim somewhere say Foligno
Or Bourboule in the Auvergne
Certain names are charged with a distant thunder
Yes let's spit the two of us on these immense landscapes
Where little rented cars cruise by
Yes because something must still
Some thing
Reconcile us yes let's spit
The two of us it's a waltz
A kind of convenient sob
Let's spit let's spit tiny automobiles
Let's spit that's an order
A waltz of mirrors
A dialogue in a void
Listen to these immense landscapes where the wind
Cries over what we loved
One of them is a horse leaning its elbow on the earth
The other a deadman shaking out linen the other
The trail of your footprints I remember a deserted village
On the shoulder of a scorched mountain
I remember your shoulder
I remember your elbow your linen your footprints
I remember a town where there was no horse
I remember your look which scorched
My deserted heart a dead Mazeppa whom a horse
Carries away like that day on the mountain
Drunkenness sped my run through the martyred oaks
Which bled prophetically while day
Light fell mute over the blue trucks
I remember so many things
So many evenings rooms walks rages
So many stops in worthless places
Where in spite of everything the spirit of mystery rose up
Like the cry of a blind child in a remote train depot

So I am speaking to the past Go ahead and laugh
At the sound of my words if you feel that way
He loved and Was and Came and Caressed
And Waited and Kept watch on the stairs which creaked
Oh violence violence I am a haunted man
And waited and waited bottomless wells
I thought I would die waiting
Silence sharpened pencils in the street
A coughing taxi drove off to die in the dark
And waited and waited smothered voices
In front of the door the language of doors
Hiccup of houses and waited
One after another familiar objects took on
And waited the ghostlike look And waited
Of convicts And waited
And waited God Damn
Escaped from a prison of half-light and suddenly
No Stupid No
Idiot
The shoe crushed the nap of the rug
I barely return
And loved loved loved but you cannot know how much
And loved it's in the past
Loved loved loved loved loved
Oh violence
It's nothing but a joke to those
Who talk as if love were the story of a fling
Shit on all that pretence
Do you know when it truly becomes a story
Love
You know
When every breath turns into a tragedy
When even the day's colors are laughable
Air a shadow in shade a name thrown out
That everything burns and you know deep down
That everything burns and you know deep down
That everything burns
And you say Let everything burn
And the sky is the taste of scattered sand
Love you bastards love for you
Is when you manage to sleep together
Manage to
And afterwards Ha ha all of love is in that
And afterwards
We manage to speak of what it is
To sleep together for years
Do you understand
For years
Just like a boat's sails toppling
Onto the deck of a ship loaded with lepers
In a film I saw recently
One by one
The white rose dies like the red rose
What is it then that stirs me up to such a pitch
In these last words
The word last perhaps a word in which
Everything is cruel cruelly irreparable
And torn to shreds Word panther Word electric
Chair
The last word of love imagine that
And the last kiss and the last
Nonchalance
And the last step No kidding it's comic
Thinking simply of the last night
Ah everything takes on this abominable meaning
I meant the last moment
The last goodbye the last gasp
Last look
Horror horror horror
For years now horror

Yes let's spit
On what we loved together
Let's spit on love
On our unmade beds
On our silence and on our mumbled words
On the stars even if they are
Your eyes
On the sun even if it is
Your teeth
On eternity even if it is
Your mouth
And on our love
Even if it is
Your love
Yes let's spit

The nightingale passage from John Clare's "The Progress of Rhyme" made slightly amusing by the now existing footballer Will Grigg:

The more I listened and the more
Each note seemed sweeter than before,
And aye so different was the strain
She'd scarce repeat the note again:
'Chew-chew chew-chew,' and higher still:
'Cheer-cheer cheer-cheer,' more loud and shrill
'Cheer-up cheer-up cheer-up,' and dropt
Low: 'tweet tweet jug jug jug,' and stopt
One moment just to drink the sound
Her music made, and then a round
Of stranger witching notes was heard:
'Wew-wew wew-wew, chur-chur chur-chur,
Woo-it woo-it ': could this be her?
'Tee-rew tee-rew tee-rew tee-rew,
Chew-rit chew-rit,' and ever new,
'Will-will will-will, grig-grig grig-grig.'
The boy stopt sudden on the brig
To hear the 'tweet tweet tweet' so shrill,
The 'jug jug jug,' and all was still
A minute, when a wilder strain
Made boys and woods to pause again;
Words were not left to hum the spell.
Could they be birds that sung so well?

ASFTSN

girlfriend in a coma
with a face like hana mandlikova
whenever she served to stay in the match
o yeah

RedRevolver

Chinua Achebe's "Vultures" is my definite favourite poem (didn't need to think about it, at all!).

I think it means so much because I read it when I was much younger and, to quote the kids, it was fucking WOKE (someone, please shoot the kids?!).

Anyway:

In the greyness
and drizzle of one despondent
dawn unstirred by harbingers
of sunbreak a vulture
perching high on broken
bones of a dead tree
nestled close to his
mate his smooth
bashed-in head, a pebble
on a stem rooted in
a dump of gross
feathers, inclined affectionately
to hers. Yesterday they picked
the eyes of a swollen
corpse in a water-logged
trench and ate the
things in its bowel. Full
gorged they chose their roost
keeping the hollowed remnant
in easy range of cold
telescopic eyes...

Strange
indeed how love in other
ways so particular
will pick a corner
in that charnel-house
tidy it and coil up there, perhaps
even fall asleep - her face
turned to the wall!

...Thus the Commandant at Belsen
Camp going home for
the day with fumes of
human roast clinging
rebelliously to his hairy
nostrils will stop
at the wayside sweet-shop
and pick up a chocolate
for his tender offspring
waiting at home for Daddy's
return...

Praise bounteous
providence if you will
that grants even an ogre
a tiny glow-worm
tenderness encapsulated
in icy caverns of a cruel
heart or else despair
for in the very germ
of that kindred love is
lodged the perpetuity
of evil.

Or you can have it read to you by some random guy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxTUico43qQ (he does a lovely job, might I add).

QDRPHNC

John Donne, The Good-Morrow. I wrote this in a card for my now-wife.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

Twit 2


tookish

Seamus Heaney has a wonderful turn of phrase, said tookish, subversively.

I know everyone loves Heaney, but I studied North last year, and this one leapt out at me and wouldn't unhook itself from my psyche.

~ Punishment ~

I can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape
of her neck, the wind
on her naked front.

It blows her nipples
to amber beads,
it shakes the frail rigging
of her ribs.

I can see her drowned
body in the bog,
the weighing stone,
the floating rods and boughs.

Under which at first
she was a barked sapling
that is dug up
oak-bone, brain-firkin:

her shaved head
like a stubble of black corn,
her blindfold a soiled bandage,
her noose a ring

to store
the memories of love.
Little adulteress,
before they punished you

you were flaxen-haired,
undernourished, and your
tar-black face was beautiful.
My poor scapegoat,

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeuur

of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:

I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,

who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.