Tom Hark Preston Park
Will Post For Cash
- Jul 6, 2003
- 72,330
Philip Larkin:
They f*ck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They f*ck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
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National Poetry Day....... Post your favourites.
- Thread starter vegster
- Start date
Guilty as charged.
StonehamPark
#Brighton-Nil
Jack and Jill went up the hill so he could lick her candy,
then Jack got a shock with a mouth full of c*ck,
'cause Jill's real name is Randy.
then Jack got a shock with a mouth full of c*ck,
'cause Jill's real name is Randy.
Hillian1
( . ) ( . )
Nibble
New member
- Jan 3, 2007
- 19,238
It's my favourite piece of writing. Listening to Richard Burton reading it is one of life's great pleasures.
Stato
Well-known member
- Dec 21, 2011
- 7,367
I have a tape of the radio play featuring Burton which is fantastic, but the recent BBC Wales version featuring a stellar cast of Welsh actors and singers was also excellent and is still kept on our Sky Box for repeated viewing: "Before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes"
In the same vein of poetry that's not necessarily called poetry can I suggest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXdNUJBid5s
"A pale sun poked impudent marmalade fingers through the grizzled lattice glass, and sent the shadows scurrying, like convent girls menaced by a tramp."
Stato
Well-known member
- Dec 21, 2011
- 7,367
No. No it isn't:
Mid-Term Break: Seamus Heaney
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying—
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'.
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
Biscuit Barrel
Well-known member
This was my favorite as a kid.
Algy met a bear.
The bear met Algy.
The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algy.
Algy met a bear.
The bear met Algy.
The bear was bulgy.
The bulge was Algy.
ThePompousPaladin
New member
- Apr 7, 2013
- 1,025
Second Fig by Edna ST Vincent Millay
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
Ha. I was only joshing.
Here - I even WROTE some: https://nortr3nixy.nimpr.uk/showt...tion-The-Withdean-Experience&highlight=poetry
Thanks to Simon Mayo's wireless programme.
Pop Sonnets
Pop Sonnets
goldstone68
New member
Mary had a little lamb,
she kept it in a bucket,
every time the lamb got out,
her dog tried to ---- it.
she kept it in a bucket,
every time the lamb got out,
her dog tried to ---- it.
Remember that from my dear old Dad - is it a Sussex thing? Never heard it anywhere else before or since.
Remember that and the other bear one -
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair
So Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, wuz 'ee
Last edited:
Going to Dinner
Going to dinner after many years away
I met a group of friends again today.
It should have come as no surprise to find them changed -
The girls were women now,
And though they looked as beautiful to me
Meeting in a claustrophobic, overly tidy house,
It still came as a shock to see
Imposed over all that loveliness
Another face,
One that robbed of earlier radiance seemed to say,
I made a choice, and was strong willed enough
To put a dream or two aside. Yet I did not expect
To submerge identity in this
Routine of mind-numbing ordinariness.
And the men?
Everything had seemed within their reach.
High-fliers all! I had been envious
Of their wit, their charm, their confidence
That left me feeling so naive.
But now it seems they do not have so much to say.
Ambitions are modified,
And something in them once wide awake has died.
I felt sad and at a loss-
In no way justified to find
For some the world had shrunk
To a bleak suburban house.
And I could not help but think
How in time that house itself might shrink
From a mortgage to a morticians bill.
Awkward there, on edge.
As if at some dreadful interview,
I wondered what in turn they made of me.
Single still; turning up alone in places where
Couples seemed the norm .
I wondered if they thought I’d failed somewhere,
Being , as I’ve always been,
The kind of man who finds it hard to share
Someone else’s domestic mess and small
Or grandiose and self-induced despair.
Other faces showed more easily than mirrors can
How time blitzkriegs the average man.
Anchored to routines,
Needing to believe my years away
Were wasted years, with good grace
These lovely people invited me back
Into the numbing fold.
I left. Upstairs a baby slept.
Beside the fence a child’s bike was locked
And passing through the gate, that cycle mocked
The tenuous freedom to which I’d clung
As years and friendships passed.
Yet perhaps I give that dinner too much weight.
Perhaps for them
The major drawback of the single man
Is that he buggers up the seating plan.
Brian Patten
Going to dinner after many years away
I met a group of friends again today.
It should have come as no surprise to find them changed -
The girls were women now,
And though they looked as beautiful to me
Meeting in a claustrophobic, overly tidy house,
It still came as a shock to see
Imposed over all that loveliness
Another face,
One that robbed of earlier radiance seemed to say,
I made a choice, and was strong willed enough
To put a dream or two aside. Yet I did not expect
To submerge identity in this
Routine of mind-numbing ordinariness.
And the men?
Everything had seemed within their reach.
High-fliers all! I had been envious
Of their wit, their charm, their confidence
That left me feeling so naive.
But now it seems they do not have so much to say.
Ambitions are modified,
And something in them once wide awake has died.
I felt sad and at a loss-
In no way justified to find
For some the world had shrunk
To a bleak suburban house.
And I could not help but think
How in time that house itself might shrink
From a mortgage to a morticians bill.
Awkward there, on edge.
As if at some dreadful interview,
I wondered what in turn they made of me.
Single still; turning up alone in places where
Couples seemed the norm .
I wondered if they thought I’d failed somewhere,
Being , as I’ve always been,
The kind of man who finds it hard to share
Someone else’s domestic mess and small
Or grandiose and self-induced despair.
Other faces showed more easily than mirrors can
How time blitzkriegs the average man.
Anchored to routines,
Needing to believe my years away
Were wasted years, with good grace
These lovely people invited me back
Into the numbing fold.
I left. Upstairs a baby slept.
Beside the fence a child’s bike was locked
And passing through the gate, that cycle mocked
The tenuous freedom to which I’d clung
As years and friendships passed.
Yet perhaps I give that dinner too much weight.
Perhaps for them
The major drawback of the single man
Is that he buggers up the seating plan.
Brian Patten
bernster
New member
Screaming J
He'll put a spell on you
For me, as an exiled Sussex Man, it has to be 'The South Country' by Hilaire Belloc. The last 2-3 verses in particular get me every time.
When I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Walking along with me.
The men that live in North England
I saw them for a day:
Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are fast and grey;
From their castle-walls a man may see
The mountains far away.
The men that live in West England
They see the Severn strong,
A-rolling on rough water brown
Light aspen leaves along.
They have the secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest kind of song.
But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise,
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise.
I never get between the pines
But I smell the Sussex air;
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there.
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?
I will gather and carefully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald;
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
When I am living in the Midlands
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea;
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Walking along with me.
The men that live in North England
I saw them for a day:
Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are fast and grey;
From their castle-walls a man may see
The mountains far away.
The men that live in West England
They see the Severn strong,
A-rolling on rough water brown
Light aspen leaves along.
They have the secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest kind of song.
But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise,
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise.
I never get between the pines
But I smell the Sussex air;
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there.
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend:
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me
Or who will be my friend?
I will gather and carefully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald;
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
Nibble
New member
- Jan 3, 2007
- 19,238
Brilliant. Thank you.
Yes, I still have last years production on the drive. Sat round the log burner and watched that last Boxing Day with a few whiskey a. Perfect!