Off season Poetry appreciation.

[mightyrooster]

There was a man named PC
who thought he was an oracle on poetry
he sat there with a smirk
as he critiqued others work
But deep inside he thought I want that to be me

Haha..one of your best.

[Paddo Colt 61]

Brilliant! Oozes the mean streets of Paddo back in the day - the self doubt, the envy, the longing. I've been blind but now I see and I think we' may be onto something here - a new Dylan maybe?

[Andrew Walker]

I have had many many people pm me here who have also compared my talents to Dylan

[Andrew Walker]

The meagre mention of the name Dylan has inspired me to share one of his works. This is Love is just a four letter word

Seems like only yesterday
I left my mind behind
Down in the Gypsy Cafe
With a friend of a friend of mine -
She sat with a baby heavy on her knee
Yet spoke of life most free from slavery
With eyes that showed no trace of misery -
A phrase in connection first with she I heard
That love is just a four-letter word.

Outside a rambling store-front window
Cats meowed to the break of day -
Me, I kept my mouth shut,
To you I had no words to say -
My experience was limited and underfed -
You were talking, while I hid,
To the one who was the father of your kid:
You probably didn't think I did, but I heard
You say that love is just a four-letter word.

I said goodbye unnoticed,
Pushed towards things in my own games,
Drifting in and out of lifetimes
Unmentionable by name,
Searching for my double, looking for
Complete evaporation to the core -
Though I tried and failed at finding any door,
I must have thought that there was nothing more absurd
Than that love is just a four-letter word.

Though I never knew just what you meant
When you were speaking to your man,
I could only think in terms of me
And now I understand -
After waking enough times to think I see
The Holy Kiss that's s'posed to last eternity
Blow up in smoke, its destiny
Falls on strangers, travels free -
Yes, I know now, traps are only set by me
And I do not really need to be assured
That love is just a four-letter word.

Strange it is to be beside you
Many years, the tables turned -
You'd probably not believe me
If I told you all I've learned -
And it is very, very weird indeed
To hear words like "forever" plead,
So ships run through my mind, I cannot cheat -
It's like looking in a teacher's face complete:
I can say nothing to you but repeat what I heard -
That love is just a four-letter word.

Copyright ©:
1967, Bob Dylan

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[Paddo Colt 61]

Never recorded by Dylan but the Joan Baez version is a great country sound. Actually Walks I meant Dylan Thomas. Was your marriage breakup shattering? Most are.

[A Country Member]

The Hollow Men
T.S. Eliot


Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy


I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

[mightyrooster]

Hope” is the thing with feathers


BY EMILY DICKINSON
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -


And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -


I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

[eddie]

Factory - Stan Ridgway

Now I know I had something to say but the problem is to say something
Uhh...you gotta say it
And I still don't remember a thing since that funny gas
Came out of that pipe next to me / I guess they didn't ok it
Now I remember--did I tell ya?
Cut my thumb off at the knuckle on a broken band saw
Didn't see the belt buckle or the blade slip
And I remember when the doctor did it up with a stitch
Funny thing...still got a scratch that I can't itch where my thumb was
Now I've brought the same piece of chicken in a bag to work everyday
For the last twenty years or so
And I really don't mind, work assembly line
Got an intercom blasting the news and the latest on the baseball scores
Come around every Friday, well I get a paycheck
Take the same road home that I come to work on, heck, it's a living
And I got another factory at home
Got a barbeque, pink mustang, fenders chrome
And at nine o'clock I sit there in my chair
And I don't know why I lose my hair
And then I go to / and then I go to / and then I go to sleep
Well I like to know what I'm doing when I do it
And I do what I'm doing 'cause I don't know what to do when I'm not doing it
Sometimes I remember as a boy my father told me I could grow up
To be anything I really wanted to be / anything
And everyday at lunch I still look for my lost digit
Still got that funny scratch, so maybe when I find it I can itch it
And I got a little rubber pool in the backyard for the kids to wade in
And i....i...i...i...i...i?
I got another factory back home
Got a little backyard, pink mustang, fenders chrome
At nine o'clock I'm in my chair sat down
Just lately now when my wife talks back to me I slap her around
And then I go to / and then I go to / and then I go to sleep

[Paddo Colt 61]

The American Dream Eddie.

Unskilled small town America provides its armies. Either slave in the chicken processing plant or it's the army. Economic conscription, and the working class does all the fighting. Always was, always will be.

[eddie]

The American Dream Eddie.

Unskilled small town America provides its armies. Either slave in the chicken processing plant or it's the army. Economic conscription, and the working class does all the fighting. Always was, always will be.

I was hoping you'd appreciate that piece.
I wonder if it's a similar theme to that book you recommended?

[Paddo Colt 61]

Somewhat similar. The book is a little grimmer.

I often think of the young Australian girls who married Americans during the war and went off to some whistle stop in the mid west unlike anything they'd seen in the movies.

Actually, that generation enjoyed the best life ever got for the American working class. The New Deal strenuously promoted Unions and with that protection and the post war boom, an American dream was plausible. Reagan finally put that to bed.

[ism22]

A masterpiece that I wrote in another thread...

There was an old rambler named Paddo
Who loved to debate like a commo
His reasoning obtuse
'Twas far from the truth
But he stuck to his guns backin' Vlado'

[Hears the tingling of a glass in the corner and a soft 'hmmmmm' from a gentleman wearing a beret + scarf, who is enjoying a quiet toke]

---

Side note, I went to a poetry night on Monday where one of my cousins gave a reading from her newly published book of poetry. Was pretty cool and told a lot of stories about our family (plus love... she did one about her husband, a quirky IT dude who many write off, which I found awesome as it was such a cute love poem that summed up how you simply know somebody's the right person for you!)

I'll try to find a link to the publisher as there were two other poets as well... both top notch. All up it was a solid night out. Started at 7 when I grabbed a house-sized shiraz and ended at ~9:00 (by which time I was sipping chai lattes and starting to understand the poetic etiquette of the whole thing... whereby you don't clap until the end... instead you quietly shuffle your glass around or let out a a knowing/insightful 'hmmmmm!!!').

Next time ai'll remember to bring a beret and scarf rather than my 'after work lawyering kit', comprising a blue suit and Italian business shoes. However, there was no elitist vibe and I felt very welcome (with a few other cousins who attended).

[Paddo Colt 61]

[QUOTE=ism22;n967721]A masterpiece that I wrote in another thread...etc...etc...etc

Yeah the beret/scarf combo sounds good but anyone who describes a poem as being "cool" has no place in my poetry class.

That disparaging Commo tag is wearing a little thin but let's look at your own ideological preferences - China bad enemy but Japan good. Shinzo Abe a beacon of democracy.

The late unlamented Shinzo, assassinated because of his devotion to the right wing Moonies, was a militant Sinophobe from way back. His grandfather was a fascist politician during the war who was convicted of war crimes in Manchuria but was still later elected Prime Minister (a measure of Japanese racism or just another case of Sheeple/MSM power?)

These are the sorts of people the US would have us fawning over with our gutless "leftist" Albanese leading the way or more correctly, just behind you and Mr. Murdoch.

[Andrew Walker]

A masterpiece that I wrote in another thread...

There was an old rambler named Pad
Who loved to debate like a commo
His reasoning obtuse
'Twas far from the truth
But he stuck to his guns backin' Vlado'

[Hears the tingling of a glass in the corner and a soft 'hmmmmm' from a gentleman wearing a beret + scarf, who is enjoying a quiet toke]

---

Side note, I went to a poetry night on Monday where one of my cousins gave a reading from her newly published book of poetry. Was pretty cool and told a lot of stories about our family (plus love... she did one about her husband, a quirky IT dude who many write off, which I found awesome as it was such a cute love poem that summed up how you simply know somebody's the right person for you!)

I'll try to find a link to the publisher as there were two other poets as well... both top notch. All up it was a solid night out. Started at 7 when I grabbed a house-sized shiraz and ended at ~9:00 (by which time I was sipping chai lattes and starting to understand the poetic etiquette of the whole thing... whereby you don't clap until the end... instead you quietly shuffle your glass around or let out a a knowing/insightful 'hmmmmm!!!').

Next time ai'll remember to bring a beret and scarf rather than my 'after work lawyering kit', comprising a blue suit and Italian business shoes. However, there was no elitist vibe and I felt very welcome (with a few other cousins who attended).

Perha[ps you could let us know of the next poetry night. We could make a chookpen night of it Im sure PC would love to come and see the poetic talent we have on display

[Paddo Colt 61]

Hey MR. I haven't gone away, I've been busy with building matters but keeping a watchful eye on the class as a good teacher should. Your behaviour has been exemplary and I'm thinking that, maybe, you could be class monitor and take down the names of miscreants. Walker is one who comes to mind but Izzie has been expelled due to implacable ignorance and lack of any talent - "cool" poetry fgs!

Your Dickenson contribution is a cute little thing but probably more appealing to females who are far more sanguine than men who are, mostly, glass half fullers. Nevertheless an enjoyable little offering.

Count gave us a T S Elliot which I was anticipating - always good for those who wander in gloom and hopelessness and this one by Peter Skrzynecki (pronounced Shin-eski) is a similar exercise in which he ponders the sort of people that his ancestors might have been. Does anyone else contemplate the thousands of generations that came before us and who shared the same blood?

Ancestors

Who are these shadows
that hang over you in a dream—
the bearded, faceless men
standing shoulder to shoulder?

What secrets
do they whisper into the darkness—
why do their eyes
never close?

Where do they point to
from the circle around you—
to what star
do their footprints lead?

Behind them are
mountains, the sounds of a river,
a moonlit plain
of grasses and sand.

Why do they
never speak—how long
is their wait to be?

Why do you wake
as their faces become clearer—
your tongue dry
as caked mud?

From across the plain
where sand and grasses never stir
the wind tastes of blood.
© 1975, Peter Skyzynecki