I posted this after last year's Trog Alf. Small world. Hope you're racing again soon! I'm not sure if Stef has been there, but I'll point it out to her in case she hasn'tOriginally Posted by Derby Tup
I posted this after last year's Trog Alf. Small world. Hope you're racing again soon! I'm not sure if Stef has been there, but I'll point it out to her in case she hasn't
Last edited by Derby Tup; 09-02-2011 at 10:05 AM.
Poacher turned game-keeper
Freckle and Alf...two lovely choices! I haven't read the Constantine before and its great. I wish I was doing Wadsworth Trog but I am running a 'pant printing' workshop...don't ask...it seemed like a good idea at the time and its amazing how you can get carried away when egged on by pr savvie art centre managers.
HHH, I'll check that article out. I think madness, eccentricity or at least off-centre thinking is often a prerequisite to being a poet or an artist.
Spooky
Maybe we are all acquiring a "collective consciousness"
This is from one of the "beat poets" where even the physical structure of the poem adds meaning to it
Two Scavengers
At the stoplight waiting for the light
nine am downtown San Francisco
a bright yellow garbage truck
with two garbagemen in red plastic blazers
standing on the back stoop
one on each side hanging on
and looking down into
an elegant open Mercedes
with an elegant couple in it
The man
in a hip three-piece linen suit
with shoulder-length blond hair & sunglasses
The young blond woman so casually coifed
with a short skirt and colored stockings
on the way to his architect's office
And the two scavengers up since four am
grungy from their route
on the way home
The older of the two with grey iron hair
and hunched back
looking down like some
gargoyle Quasimodo
And the younger of the two
also with sunglasses & long hair
about the same age as the Mercedes driver
And both scavengers gazing down
as from a great distance
at the cool couple
as if they were watching some odorless TV ad
in which everything is always possible
And the very red light for an instant
holding all four close together
as if anything at all were possible
between them
across that small gulf
in the high seas
of this democracy
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The Tree of Life
Oh beautiful branches
So stunning I see
Standing tall your endless reach
Leaves of shimmering hope
Reach down to me
A great willing to teach
Bark of eternal standing
No weakness just strength showing
Oh give to me your wisdom
And shed to me your knowing
MG
Last edited by Mountain Goatess; 09-02-2011 at 11:13 PM.
Love this MG, especially Bark of eternal standing
Poacher turned game-keeper
Lovely imagery MG, I like "shed me your knowing" very enigmatic x
Smashing poem that MG
To act as a sort of counterpoint to MGs lovely poem a bit of "Mr doom and gloom". However there's probably not many poets who would include "cycle-clips" in a verse
Church Going
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches will fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Philp Larkin
Arracombe Wood
Some said, because he wud'n spaik
Any words to women but Yes and No,
Nor put out his hand for Parson to shake
He mun be bird-witted. But I do go
By the lie of the barley that he did sow,
And I wish no better thing than to hold a rake
Like Dave, in his time, or to see him mow.
Put up in churchyard a month ago,
'A bitter old soul', they said, but it wadn't so.
His heart were in Arracombe Wood where he'd used to go
To sit and talk wi' his shadder till sun went low,
Though what it was all about us'll never know.
And there baint no mem'ry in the place
Of th' old man's footmark, nor his face;
Arracombe Wood do think more of a crow -
'Will be violets there in the Spring; in Summer time the spider's lace;
And come the Fall, the whizzle and race
Of the dry, dead leaves when the wind gives chase;
And on the Eve of Christmas, fallin' snow.
Charlotte Mew
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