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Happy birthday to Animist and Alan's mum!INFORMATION
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Favourite poems
Re: Favourite poems
Alan Henness
There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:
1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?
There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:
1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?
Re: Favourite poems
Birthday greetings to both indeed. I have met Alan's Mum and I find it hard to believe she is 83!Alan H wrote:Happy birthday to Animist and Alan's mum!
Carpe diem. Savour every moment.
Re: Favourite poems
Happy birthday, animist and Alan's mother! It's my son-in-law's birthday,too. He's 39 today.
Here's another Wendy Cope. I hope the poets of the forum aren't too upset by this one!
The Reading
In crumpled, bardic corduroy,
The poet took the stage
And read aloud his deathless verse,
Page by deathless page.
I gazed at him as though intent
On every word he said.
From time to time I'd close my eyes
And smile and nod my head.
He may have thought his every phrase
Sent shivers down my spine,
Perhaps I helped encourage him
To read till half past nine.
Don't ask what it was all about -
I haven't got a clue.
I spent a blissful evening, lost
In carnal thoughts of you.
Here's another Wendy Cope. I hope the poets of the forum aren't too upset by this one!
The Reading
In crumpled, bardic corduroy,
The poet took the stage
And read aloud his deathless verse,
Page by deathless page.
I gazed at him as though intent
On every word he said.
From time to time I'd close my eyes
And smile and nod my head.
He may have thought his every phrase
Sent shivers down my spine,
Perhaps I helped encourage him
To read till half past nine.
Don't ask what it was all about -
I haven't got a clue.
I spent a blissful evening, lost
In carnal thoughts of you.
Re: Favourite poems
Birthdays in the poem thread.
I guess whatever must be said
must be said in rhyme
pleasing length of line
I'll try - but writing poetry
is not exactly my cup of tea.
Animist is 64
and Alan's Mum a few years more
Their Mums knew the exquisite pain and pleasure
of bringing new life in is beyond measure.
What would they make of such longevity?
Better do this with brevity
The poem's got worse
and you'll all curse
so suffice it to say
A Very Happy Birthday.
Crossposted to see another one too
to Vicky's son in law
Happy Birthday to you
if any more are posted
make your own poem up - I'm toasted
hey - I haven't written a poem since 1972. Now you know why
I guess whatever must be said
must be said in rhyme
pleasing length of line
I'll try - but writing poetry
is not exactly my cup of tea.
Animist is 64
and Alan's Mum a few years more
Their Mums knew the exquisite pain and pleasure
of bringing new life in is beyond measure.
What would they make of such longevity?
Better do this with brevity
The poem's got worse
and you'll all curse
so suffice it to say
A Very Happy Birthday.
Crossposted to see another one too
to Vicky's son in law
Happy Birthday to you
if any more are posted
make your own poem up - I'm toasted
hey - I haven't written a poem since 1972. Now you know why
Re: Favourite poems
And I'm enjoying the Wendy Cope, thank you
Re: Favourite poems
here for Fia is a Wendy Cope for Valentine's Day
My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.
Whatever you've got lined up,
My heart has made its mind up
And if you can't be signed up
This year, next year will do.
My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.
My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.
Whatever you've got lined up,
My heart has made its mind up
And if you can't be signed up
This year, next year will do.
My heart has made its mind up
And I'm afraid it's you.
Re: Favourite poems
Our day's almost gone, there's not much time;
And unlike lovely Fia, I am simply crap at rhyme.
So thanks to all who wished us three well;
Nice that on this day our birthdays fell!
And unlike lovely Fia, I am simply crap at rhyme.
So thanks to all who wished us three well;
Nice that on this day our birthdays fell!
Re: Favourite poems
Alan Henness
There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:
1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?
There are three fundamental questions for anyone advocating Brexit:
1. What, precisely, are the significant and tangible benefits of leaving the EU?
2. What damage to the UK and its citizens is an acceptable price to pay for those benefits?
3. Which ruling of the ECJ is most persuasive of the need to leave its jurisdiction?
Re: Favourite poems
I'll translate the whole thing into English when I have timeanimist wrote:as I don't speak German I am only getting a general idea that this is about the Black Death - I listened and laughed at the video. Suppose plague is one way of reducing the population, if that's your main goal in life, Rad
Re: Favourite poems
see what you atheists think of this Stevie Smith poem; sounds the right sort of God, imo!
My Heart Goes Out
My heart goes out to my Creator in love
Who gave me Death, as end and remedy.
All living creatures come to quiet Death
For him to eat up their activity
And give them nothing, which is what they want although
When they are living they do not think so.
My Heart Goes Out
My heart goes out to my Creator in love
Who gave me Death, as end and remedy.
All living creatures come to quiet Death
For him to eat up their activity
And give them nothing, which is what they want although
When they are living they do not think so.
-
- Posts: 27
- Joined: February 8th, 2011, 6:47 am
Re: Favourite poems
You Can't Win With Original Sin
You can't win
You can't win with Original Sin.
It doesn't even matter how intelligent of kind you may have been.
You just can't win.
It was all over before it began-
You just can't win.
I was dead-
I was dead before my life had begun.
I was dead,
Because of something my great-great-great grandparents had done.
Adam and Eve didn't do any wrong-
They were set up by God all along.
They couldn't win.
I've been told
I must believe on Jesus Christ to be saved;
But first,
I must admit that I am totally depraved.
Before you go pointing that finger of blame,
Just remember that Eve Was Framed!
She couldn't win.
The kind of God
Who's so insecure that he needs to send me to hell
Is the kind of God
Who'd probably get a kick out of damning all the Christians as well!
It was all over before it began-
I was doomed in the fall of man.
But as a skeptic I must insist,
Adam and Eve didn't really exist,
And neither does God, then, for that matter,
And until the day that old myth is shattered,
We can't win.
No, we just can't win.
by Dan Brown
You can't win
You can't win with Original Sin.
It doesn't even matter how intelligent of kind you may have been.
You just can't win.
It was all over before it began-
You just can't win.
I was dead-
I was dead before my life had begun.
I was dead,
Because of something my great-great-great grandparents had done.
Adam and Eve didn't do any wrong-
They were set up by God all along.
They couldn't win.
I've been told
I must believe on Jesus Christ to be saved;
But first,
I must admit that I am totally depraved.
Before you go pointing that finger of blame,
Just remember that Eve Was Framed!
She couldn't win.
The kind of God
Who's so insecure that he needs to send me to hell
Is the kind of God
Who'd probably get a kick out of damning all the Christians as well!
It was all over before it began-
I was doomed in the fall of man.
But as a skeptic I must insist,
Adam and Eve didn't really exist,
And neither does God, then, for that matter,
And until the day that old myth is shattered,
We can't win.
No, we just can't win.
by Dan Brown
Re: Favourite poems
Nice one LosingFaith but two glaring typo's (I assume it's a copy paste, so not blaming you You will find there are quite a few pedants on here (for better or for worse)
Abstinence Makes the Church Grow Fondlers.
-
- Posts: 27
- Joined: February 8th, 2011, 6:47 am
Re: Favourite poems
You Can't Win With Original Sin by Dan Barker.
Re: Favourite poems
Just seen this one by Geoffrey Taylor: "Cruel, Clever Cat". It uses the confusion over the word "bated" (short for "abated"), versus "baited", to good comic effect:
Sally, having swallowed cheese
Directs down holes the scented breeze
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
Sally, having swallowed cheese
Directs down holes the scented breeze
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
Re: Favourite poems
Man is fool
When it's hot,
he wants it cool.
When it's cool,
he wants it hot.
Always wanting what is not.
When it's hot,
he wants it cool.
When it's cool,
he wants it hot.
Always wanting what is not.
Transformative fire...
Re: Favourite poems
This would lose something if the words were just printed here. Better read by the poet himself
"It's hard to put a leash on a dog once you've put a crown on his head"-Tyrion Lannister.
Re: Favourite poems
I haven't listened to this for about 25 years. Found it today and it still sends shivers dowm my spine.
Beasley Street by John Cooper-Clarke. Utterly chilling indictement of Thatcher's 80s. Is history about to repeat itself?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZymVWuM ... re=related
Beasley Street by John Cooper-Clarke. Utterly chilling indictement of Thatcher's 80s. Is history about to repeat itself?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZymVWuM ... re=related
"It's hard to put a leash on a dog once you've put a crown on his head"-Tyrion Lannister.
Re: Favourite poems
In the context of dictators, human and divine, I like this poem by Kingsley Amis; it is called "The Voice of Authority: a Language Game".
Do this. Don't move. O'Grady says do this,
You get a move on, see, do what I say.
Look lively when I say O'Grady says.
Say this. Shut up. O'Grady says say this,
You talk fast without thinking what to say.
What goes is what I say O'Grady says.
Or rather let me put the point like this:
O'Grady says what goes is what I say
O'Grady says; that's what O'Grady says.
By substituting you can shorten this,
Since any god you like will do to say
The things you like, that's what O'Grady says.
The harm lies not in that, but in that this
Progression's first and last terms are I say
O'Grady says, not just O'Grady says.
Yet it's O'Grady must be out of this
Before what we say goes, not what we say
O'Grady says. Or so O'Grady says.
Do this. Don't move. O'Grady says do this,
You get a move on, see, do what I say.
Look lively when I say O'Grady says.
Say this. Shut up. O'Grady says say this,
You talk fast without thinking what to say.
What goes is what I say O'Grady says.
Or rather let me put the point like this:
O'Grady says what goes is what I say
O'Grady says; that's what O'Grady says.
By substituting you can shorten this,
Since any god you like will do to say
The things you like, that's what O'Grady says.
The harm lies not in that, but in that this
Progression's first and last terms are I say
O'Grady says, not just O'Grady says.
Yet it's O'Grady must be out of this
Before what we say goes, not what we say
O'Grady says. Or so O'Grady says.
Re: Favourite poems
Yes. Kingsley Amis. A reactionary old curmudgeon, but I've always had a certain fondness for this one;
Something Nasty in the Bookshop; Kingsley Amis.
Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.
Critical, and with nothing else to do,
I scan the Contents page,
Relieved to find the names are mostly new;
No one my age.
Like all strangers, they divide by sex:
Landscape Near Parma
Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex,
So does Rilke and Buddha.
“I travel, you see”, “I think” and “I can read"
These titles seem to say;
But I Remember You, Love is my Creed,
Poem for J.,
The ladies’ choice, discountenance my patter
For several seconds;
From somewhere in this (as in any) matter
A moral beckons.
Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart
Or squash it flat?
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;
Girls aren’t like that.
We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff
Can get by without it.
Women don’t seem to think that’s good enough;
They write about it.
And the awful way their poems lay them open
Just doesn’t strike them.
Women are really much nicer than men:
No wonder we like them.
Deciding this, we can forget those times
We stayed up half the night
Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,
And couldn’t write.
Something Nasty in the Bookshop; Kingsley Amis.
Between the Gardening and the Cookery
Comes the brief Poetry shelf;
By the Nonesuch Donne, a thin anthology
Offers itself.
Critical, and with nothing else to do,
I scan the Contents page,
Relieved to find the names are mostly new;
No one my age.
Like all strangers, they divide by sex:
Landscape Near Parma
Interests a man, so does The Double Vortex,
So does Rilke and Buddha.
“I travel, you see”, “I think” and “I can read"
These titles seem to say;
But I Remember You, Love is my Creed,
Poem for J.,
The ladies’ choice, discountenance my patter
For several seconds;
From somewhere in this (as in any) matter
A moral beckons.
Should poets bicycle-pump the human heart
Or squash it flat?
Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart;
Girls aren’t like that.
We men have got love well weighed up; our stuff
Can get by without it.
Women don’t seem to think that’s good enough;
They write about it.
And the awful way their poems lay them open
Just doesn’t strike them.
Women are really much nicer than men:
No wonder we like them.
Deciding this, we can forget those times
We stayed up half the night
Chock-full of love, crammed with bright thoughts, names, rhymes,
And couldn’t write.
Re: Favourite poems
great, Thundril, that's one of the few poems posted by someone else here that I've known. Interesting what you say about Amis in relation to this very pro-female poem (early one, I think). He went thru a Communist stage before going the other way, and on women too he seemed to go in a negative direction - his novel "Stanley and the Women" was incredibly misogynist
Re: Favourite poems
great poems gathered together here