[Misc] National poetry day.

[Jack Straw]

A Policeman from near Clapham Junction,
had a sexual organ that long-ceased to function.
For most of his life,
he deceived his poor wife,
with some wallpaper paste on his truncheon.

 

[Lush]

A Little Tooth - Thomas Lux

Your baby grows a tooth, then two,
and four, and five, then she wants some meat
directly from the bone. It’s all

over: she’ll learn some words, she’ll fall
in love with cretins, dolts, a sweet
talker on his way to jail. And you,

your wife, get old, flyblown, and rue
nothing. You did, you loved, your feet
are sore. It’s dusk. Your daughter’s tall.

 

[The Clamp]

I have been exploring poetry quite a lot this last six or seven months. Stevie Smith and Philip Larkin have become firm favourites.

Alfred The Great
by Stevie Smith

Honour and magnify this man of men
Who keeps a wife and seven children on £2 10
Paid weekly in an envelope
And yet he never has abandoned hope



If you're looking for a start on Larkin, you could do no better than The Whitsun Weddings.

Lovely stuff.

I have also been catching up on Frank Skinner's poetry podcast which is very accessible and covers both these poets.

For me, I like to listen to or read Under Milk Wood at least once a year.Described by Dylan as a play for words rather than a poem, it's great isn't it!

 

[happypig]

We go off to the football
My only son and me
We've never left it early
And always home for tea

 

[withdeanwombat]

I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date,
No time to say hello, goodbye, I’m late,I’m late,I’m late.......

 

[Frutos]

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

 

[Is it PotG?]

How clear, how lovely bright,
How beautiful to sight
Those beams of morning play;
How heaven laughs out with glee
Where, like a bird set free,
Up from the eastern sea
Soars the delightful day.

To-day I shall be strong,
No more shall yield to wrong,
Shall squander life no more;
Days lost, I know not how,
I shall retrieve them now;
Now I shall keep the vow
I never kept before.

Ensanguining the skies
How heavily it dies
Into the west away;
Past touch and sight and sound
Not further to be found,
How hopeless under ground
Falls the remorseful day.

A.E.Housman

Beautiful.