Poems

What do you reckon to them? In to em? Load of *****? Quite partial to a bit of Rilke or a bit of Bukowski myself. What are you saying? Got any good uns to share?

 

The boy stood on the burning deck,
His pocket full of crackers,
A spark flew up his trouser leg,

It's a bit long for a haiku but I like it.

 

Welcome back Mr. Reev!

 

My wife's favourite poem/story she often tells me is-


Once upon a time
there was a c u n t
it was you
the end.

 

I remember him but, alas, I am not him.

 

Archaic Torso of Apollo
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875 - 1926

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.




(One of my favourite poems.)

 

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
Some poems rhyme.
This one doesn't.

 

René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke is one of the poets that I have written articles on in the last few years. I do five every week, but at the beginning it was ten per week. They are between 500 and 1000 words and I send them to someone in Cheshire who sources writing work from around the world. My contributions go to a website called My Poetic Side.

As at this week I have written nearly 900, all different, all original words with an example or two of their work in each. Some of them I have even heard of, but there are some pretty obscure ones in there, going right back to Ancient Greeks and Romans.

 

Won a prize at work for limerick writing on st paddy’s day the other year. I only really like rhyming and amusing poems, not so much the ‘proper’ stuff banded about as superior by literary snobs.

Once also wrote the Mrs a poem in a card one time. Can’t remember it all but:

My love for you is never ending

Even though you’re always spending

Despite the fact you call me fat

And talk to me like I’m a ****

Our marriage is strong

It’s like no other

But please don’t turn into your mother

You’re bad enough

Your temper rages

You moods come in two distinctive stages

1. You’re calm 2.You’re screaming

I’d wish you’d change

But I’d be dreaming

I jest of course

You shouldn’t alter

As a mum

I couldn’t fault ya

So enjoy your day

I’ll do the chores

Cos for now and for good

I’m staying yours

 

Brilliant I'll have to have a look. Impressive work rate: )

 

Rilke was one of my earlier ones

Here's a link to the site. I have nothing to do with the site itself - I just contribute the articles via the third party I mentioned above. If you click on the Blog menu the most recent appear first but there is an alphabetical search. The Rilke one is still there but it is one of my earlier ones. I use a different format now.
Annoys me a bit that they are "published by Joanne Jeffries", as if she has written them. This is not true - the articles headed just by the poet's name are all my own work.
https://mypoeticside.com/

 

One from the miners strike can't remember all of it but first verse goes .
Who am I to reason why,
A pit must live or a pit must die,
It's nothing but biased economics
Juggled about by a bunch of comics.

 

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom
....

Baldrick

 

Here I stand broken hearted,
Paid a penny and only fared.

From the anals of Peel Square bogs.

 

See the vicar
Titty licker

Green hut in Darton rec years ago

 

From our wedding service, read by one of the wife's friends. By W H Auden

Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go round,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.

Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.

I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't even there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.

Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories vulgar but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.

When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

 

Footsteps in the sand...

In fact I like it that much I've had some of it tattooed on my foot (but that's just me )

 

It's a pity you don't live a bit closer, Mexborough is a real hub of poetry these days, our club has a poetry group called 'Read to write' that meets every Tuesday evening, and the last Sunday in the month a group called ' Voices ' meets . A pub in the town hosts 'Pitmen Poets' once a month , and there is now an annual Ted Hughes Festival that takes place mainly in Ted's old Grammar school...people associate Ted mostly with Mytholmroyd but actually his formative years were spent in Mexborough and the Festival group have organised a trail that takes you to the places he actually wrote or conceived much of his work.
The various groups also have been raising awareness of less well known but equally brilliant writers from the town, William Wall who wrote under the pseudonym 'Sarban' and Harold Massingham .
I never really considered poetry much before the last two or three years ( purely being a ' half a league onward' type ) but I'm now buying books from the local writers and loving it.
I've even written a couple of things myself...who'd have thought it!!
As an aside..I've been doing some family history and it looks like I could well be related to the Victorian authoress Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury, Endsor being a name from my mother's tree and Jewsbury being my paternal Grandmother's maiden name .

 

Sounds good and I never knew about that activity. I lived in Bircotes for a couple of years and that wasn’t too far from Mexborough.
None of the names you mention above ring any bells with me but, as you can imagine, I tend to write them and forget them as the next ones are waiting to be done.
The best part of it though is reading some of the history going on around these people. Sometimes what should take me about an hour or so to write stretches into all morning because I have spent too long reading stuff just for interest.