I'd been looking for that!
Harry Howgill
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Jo Jo's Nativity
Shuffling in,
tinsel skew wiff
little eyes awestruck
each one a different tale
laila knows every word
charlie wants his mum
jo jo pulls at her ear
harry is a fidget bum
an unexpected cast member
crawls onto the stage
mums and grannies dab their eyes
the spectre of time
an unwanted sage
not long before
they are out on the town
"you know it doesn't get any easier"
cautions grandma
but for now
"we wish you a merry xmas"
(even if it ain't)
and sing of a wandering star.
I don't know if this poem has been on the thread before
I know people have submitted S. Armitage in the past, but now he's my new best friend an all;)
The tyre
Just how it came to rest where it rested,
miles out, miles from the last farmhouse even,
was a fair question. Dropped by hurricane
or aeroplane perhaps for some reason,
put down as a cairn or marker, then lost.
Tractor-size, six or seven feet across,
it was sloughed, unconscious, warm to the touch,
its gashed, rhinoceros, sea-lion skin
nursing a gallon of rain in its gut.
Lashed to the planet with grasses and roots,
it had to be cut. Stood up it was drunk
or slugged, wanted nothing more than to slump,
to spiral back to its circle of sleep,
dream another year in its nest of peat.
We bullied it over the moor, drove it,
pushed from the back or turned it from the side,
unspooling a thread in the shape and form
of its tread, in its length, and in its line,
rolled its weight through broken walls, felt the shock
when it met with stones, guided its sleepwalk
down to meadows, fields, onto level ground.
There and then we were one connected thing,
five of us, all hands steering a tall ship
or one hand fingering a coin or ring.
Once on the road it picked up pace, free-wheeled,
then moved up through the gears, and wouldn't give
to shoulder-charges, kicks; resisted force
until to tangle with it would have been
to test bone against engine or machine,
to be dragged in, broken, thrown out again
minus a limb. So we let the thing go,
leaning into the bends and corners,
balanced and centred, riding the camber,
carried away with its own momentum.
We pictured an incident up ahead:
life carved open, gardens in half, parted,
a man on a motorbike taken down,
a phone-box upended, children erased,
police and an ambulance in attendance,
scuff-marks and the smell of broken rubber,
the tyre itself embedded in a house
or lying in a gutter, playing dead.
But down in the village the tyre was gone,
and not just gone but unseen and unheard of,
not curled like a cat in the graveyard, not
cornered in the playground like a reptile,
or found and kept like a giant fossil.
Not there or anywhere. No trace. Thin air.
Being more in tune with the feel of things
than science and facts, we knew that the tyre
had travelled too fast for its size and mass,
and broken through some barrier of speed,
outrun the act of being driven, steered,
and at that moment gone beyond itself
towards some other sphere, and disappeared.
This is my new favourite and best poem ever in the whole wide world
I'm wondering if this has already been posted - ah well it's worth another 'reading'...
Love
Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.
P Neruda.
Good evening all
Excellent choices neil and mossy, neil i can see why that has become your fave poem and i personally can never get enough of pablo neruda mossy....
I particularly like these lines...
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window....and....
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.
loss is a painful process is it not....
Metamorphosis
I’m not running away man!
I am running toward!
At the beginning, granted
I was running from
confusion, n-e-b-u-l-o-u-s despair
But now..eureka!
I realise...
I am defined not just
by the past
or a shared history
Now I am running to-ward
step PING!
into the looking glass
with hope, excitement
and a little f.e.a.r
to the
f
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