Today's poet

[freckle]

It is

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...ile_15_04_2012

many thanks for posting this steve I enjoyed hearing a bit of the armitage's voice (from 3:07 onwards) brought back I lot of good memories! looking forward to the book coming out :-)

[freckle]

I really enjoyed the plath choice mossy, she really is a cheerful lass!

been looking for poems about strength and endurance and curiously this one came up on the search by an old favourite bukowski, perhaps this will give some of us a little more ooompf on the hills this weekend....

Roll the Dice
by Charles Bukowski


if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way. this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or
4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the
worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
it’s the only good fight
there is.

[Hes]

Fantastic choice Freckle...just what I needed to read and very apt for your challenge tomorrow and mine next weekend. Good luck...may you run like the wind! :-)

I really enjoyed the plath choice mossy, she really is a cheerful lass!

been looking for poems about strength and endurance and curiously this one came up on the search by an old favourite bukowski, perhaps this will give some of us a little more ooompf on the hills this weekend....

Roll the Dice
by Charles Bukowski


if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way. this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or
4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the
worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
it’s the only good fight
there is.

[Alf]

I really enjoyed the plath choice mossy, she really is a cheerful lass!

been looking for poems about strength and endurance and curiously this one came up on the search by an old favourite bukowski, perhaps this will give some of us a little more ooompf on the hills this weekend....

Roll the Dice
by Charles Bukowski


if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way. this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or
4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the
worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
it’s the only good fight
there is.

Great choice freckle and I hope it inspired you at the Anni Waltz yesterday.

[Alf]

SOUNDS OF THE DAY

When a clatter came,
it was horses crossing the ford.
When the air creaked, it was
a lapwing seeing us off the premises
of its private marsh. A snuffling puff
ten yards from the boat was the tide blocking and
unblocking a hole in a rock.
When the black drums rolled, it was water
falling sixty feet into itself.

When the door
scraped shut, it was the end
of all the sounds there are.

You left me
beside the quietest fire in the world.

I thought I was hurt in my pride only,
forgetting that,
when you plunge your hand in freezing water,
you feel
a bangle of ice around your wrist
before the whole hand goes numb.

Norman Maccaig

[stevefoster]

I really enjoyed the plath choice mossy, she really is a cheerful lass!

been looking for poems about strength and endurance and curiously this one came up on the search by an old favourite bukowski, perhaps this will give some of us a little more ooompf on the hills this weekend....

Roll the Dice
by Charles Bukowski


if you’re going to try, go all the
way.
otherwise, don’t even start.

if you’re going to try, go all the
way. this could mean losing girlfriends,
wives, relatives, jobs and
maybe your mind.

go all the way.
it could mean not eating for 3 or
4 days.
it could mean freezing on a
park bench.
it could mean jail,
it could mean derision,
mockery,
isolation.
isolation is the gift,
all the others are a test of your
endurance, of
how much you really want to
do it.
and you’ll do it
despite rejection and the
worst odds
and it will be better than
anything else
you can imagine.

if you’re going to try,
go all the way.
there is no other feeling like
that.
you will be alone with the
gods
and the nights will flame with
fire.

do it, do it, do it.
do it.

all the way
all the way.
you will ride life straight to
perfect laughter,
it’s the only good fight
there is.

Like it freckle, life is for living, hope you had a good Waltz:thumbup:

[Alf]

I Have Longed to Move Away

I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.

I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.


Dylan Thomas

[freckle]

SOUNDS OF THE DAY

When a clatter came,
it was horses crossing the ford.
When the air creaked, it was
a lapwing seeing us off the premises
of its private marsh. A snuffling puff
ten yards from the boat was the tide blocking and
unblocking a hole in a rock.
When the black drums rolled, it was water
falling sixty feet into itself.

When the door
scraped shut, it was the end
of all the sounds there are.

You left me
beside the quietest fire in the world.

I thought I was hurt in my pride only,
forgetting that,
when you plunge your hand in freezing water,
you feel
a bangle of ice around your wrist
before the whole hand goes numb.

Norman Maccaig

Oooo a slick choice there alf...the delayed reaction of loss so succintly described in the last two lines...lush imagery!

[freckle]

"I AM IN AGONY!"......following staurdays anniversary waltz, every inch of me is sore...sore feet, knacky calves and even a sore arm (how?)....but i "improved" somewhat (largely by turning left), drank free beer and even saw the mighty Joss at the end!...what more can a gal want?

here is a poem....

"I Am"
by John Clare


I am: yet what I am no one cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied, stifled throes—
And yet I am, and live—like vapors tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best,
Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes, where man has never trod,
A place where woman never smiled or wept—
There to abide with my Creator God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.


John Clare wrote “I Am” late in life, after release from a mental institution, apparently during his time there he claimed to be Shakespeare and Lord Byron, with volumes of their work re-written to prove his case. I think this poem eloquently described the disorientating experience of suffering from acute mental distress and I find his longing for the days before he was ill (as a child) very touching.

[Alf]

For the Kinder Trespassers

Taken from ‘A Man in Assynt '


Who owns this landscape?
Has owning anything to do with love?
For it and I have a love-affair, so nearly human
we even have quarrels. –
When I intrude too confidently
it rebuffs me with a wind like a hand
or puts in my way
a quaking bog or a loch
where no loch should be. Or I turn stonily
away, refusing to notice
the rouged rocks, the mascara
under a dripping ledge, even
the tossed, the stony limbs waiting.

I can’t pretend
it gets sick for me in my absence,
though I get
sick for it. Yet I love it
with special gratitude, since
it sends me no letters, is never
jealous and, expecting nothing
from me, gets nothing but
cigarette packets and footprints.


Norman MacCaig