Poetry appreciation thread

Worldly and otherworldly topics
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Yesterday
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Joined: Fri Dec 24, 2021 3:09 am

Poetry appreciation thread

Post by Yesterday » Sat Dec 25, 2021 3:12 am

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling

He'd be tickled to learn he has a hoard of prison fanboys or so I recently discovered.

**

Now it's your turn.
ENTP

"Our truest selves exist within the observational incongruencies among general first impressions and further analyses of the finer details."
- from my Ph.D. thesis in psychobabble

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Madrigal
Posts: 619
Joined: Fri Nov 22, 2019 8:59 am

Re: Poetry appreciation thread

Post by Madrigal » Sat Dec 25, 2021 5:21 pm


Theory and Practice

Ladies and gentlemen
Today we'll be discussing imperialism
A difficult topic, if there is one
Sometimes difficult to seize
In just half an hour of dreadful news

I will therefore attempt to approach it
As pirate ships were approached
In a happy and mysterious past
That is

    In an irregular fashion

Let's say, for example
That a bell were tolling in the distance, meekly
Cleansing speech and hanging
Over the treetops like the sun

Despite the heat on the horizon
It dons its scarf
As birds, free and agile
Fly around it

    And they aren't swallows

None of that is imperialism.

Let's say, for example
That a young woman were to break the dawn
With her moving hips
Her imperative gaze
Her harvesting lips
Her silent step
While a young man waits, invincible and modest
Including her in his destiny, studying her pore by pore
Watching, as a sentry

    Daring or not daring

That's not imperialism either.

Let's say, for example
That a boy were listening to the world and wondering
Breathing his candor at it
Learning what his feet are like, biting them
Arguing with the ceiling and convincing it
Crying, for a change, and because he knows
That his wail will summon the breast
With its milky promise and that skin
That he likes to feel against his eyelids
And he knows he's happy though he doesn't know
The price he'll pay or the rejection

That's not imperialism either.

Let's say, for example
That an old man were learning the alphabet
Committing its dipthongs to memory
Stressing the third to last syllables with ease
Because their accent is indisputable
He has a quaker's face
But a nimble spirit
And he spells RAIN because he never saw
Little rain on his field

That's not imperialism either.

Let's say, for example
That a machine whirred in its delerium
Noisily announcing its product
And hands help it and straighten it
Clean it and arrange it and package it
Hands that have known each other for years
And have wet and dried themselves for years
Saying hello and bidding farewell
They ask and call and answer each other
They rest on the maternal machine
That announces its product and clears its throat
And upon seeing the old hands together
It sheds two or three tears of oil

That's not imperialism either.

Let's say, for example
That on their serene wedding night a couple
Made a child because they felt like it
And they felt like it because they know
That a child is a daily prophet
That will announce them from sunrise to sunrise
He'd tell everyone he is a son
And feed an insolent
Appetite and taste his motherland
As if it were freshly baked bread

That's not imperialism either.

Let's say, for example
That the borders lost their customs offices
And we invaded each other
And lent each other volcanoes and streams
And copper and anthropologists and sugar
And wool and proteins and rainbows
And educators and railways
And poets and prosists and oil
And left the wind and migrating lovers
To contraband

That's not imperialism either.

Let's say, for example
That the sun and the rain belonged to us
And the sky and the earth too
The provinces of our hearts
And the land of our labor

Being equals among equals
In a world of peers and no others
A pretty folly of the sane
And a certain strategem of justice
Adding accents to the omens
That come true or begin to
Having once been mere islands
Becoming urgent archipelagos

That's not imperialism either.

Lastly, let's say
That we owned the night, and a house
And a clock that wasn't ticking towards death
While science advanced to the point
Of isolating the xenophobic virus
Our country, a salty baptism
Stretching from sea to sea
And an abyss, still existing
Though none threw themselves into its silence

It's always hard to live, but you could live
Within the floodgates of life

And once again I'll state
That none of this is imperialism

I trust I haven't been too sectarian
In the theoretical focus of this topic

Ladies and gentlemen
A comrade has just informed me
That some gentlemen, gendarmes, are waiting outside
Perhaps to give us a practical lesson

I wish us courage
And good luck

That is all

    Thank you.


- Mario Benedetti

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elfsprin
Posts: 300
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:11 pm
Location: Minneapolis, MN

Re: Poetry appreciation thread

Post by elfsprin » Sat Dec 25, 2021 8:30 pm

along the brittle treacherous bright streets

of memory comes my heart singing like
an idiot whispering like drunken man

who(at a certain corner suddenly)meets
the tall policeman of my mind.

awake
being not asleep elsewhere our dreams began
which now are folded:but the year completes
his life as a forgotten prisoner

-"Ici?"-"Ah non mon chéri;il fait trop froid"-
they are gone:along these gardens moves a wind br
inging
rain and leaves filling the air with fear
and sweetness....pauses. (Halfwhispering....half
singing

stirs the always smiling chevaux de bois)

when you were in Paris we met here

-eec
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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elfsprin
Posts: 300
Joined: Thu Feb 25, 2021 10:11 pm
Location: Minneapolis, MN

Re: Poetry appreciation thread

Post by elfsprin » Sat Dec 25, 2021 8:52 pm

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

-eec
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity - Simone Weil

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JohnClay
Posts: 313
Joined: Mon Mar 01, 2021 7:55 am
Location: Australia
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Re: Poetry appreciation thread

Post by JohnClay » Sun Dec 26, 2021 12:19 am

From 2008 in my course for people with mental illnesses:
Stolen toys confession

Starting school,
I stole a Lego ladder.
A year or two later,
I stole a Lego man’s hairpiece.
From an acquaintance,
I stole two Lego pipes.
From a friend,
I stole a Transformer,
But got caught.
Another time, from that friend,
I stole some coloured paper clips,
But got caught.
At school,
I stole four Lego gears,
With the encouragement of a friend.
I treasure my stolen toys.
I also read it out to a crowd of about 20 people - the families of people with mental illnesses and intellectual/physical disabilities.... they thought it was funny...

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