Today's poet

[Hes]

Love it Steve!:thumbup: Good for you.

I really enjoyed reading the Dylan Thomas OW, such a great poem. I also liked Alf's, Mossdog's and Freckle's choices. I agree with Freckle, you really appreciate the good stuff when you've experienced the bad but, I agree with Carolyn Kizer, happiness has ruined my poetry writing skills (if I ever had any!). Interestingly, it has had a good effect on my printmaking. I've made lots of new things and they tend to be more colourful. When I was in my last relationship, even during the good parts, I was making monochrome images that were quite sombre (totally subconscious decisions) and had a feeling of claustrophobia.

I will not go quietly into the night
I want sun, I will stamp and scream and fight
Cos this summer's been sh!te

[Alf]

I will not go quietly into the night
I want sun, I will stamp and scream and fight
Cos this summer's been sh!te

:thumbup:

You always were a noisy blighter

[Alf]

Now that's poetry!

And because old age beckons....

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieve it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

I hear you brother

[Alf]

As I Grew Older

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!


Langston Hughes

Cracking choice that freckle and I enjoyed Mossy's as well :thumbup:

[Alf]

The Old Year

The Old Year's gone away
To nothingness and night:
We cannot find him all the day
Nor hear him in the night:
He left no footstep, mark or place
In either shade or sun:
The last year he'd a neighbour's face,
In this he's known by none.

All nothing everywhere:
Mists we on mornings see
Have more of substance when they're here
And more of form than he.
He was a friend by every fire,
In every cot and hall--
A guest to every heart's desire,
And now he's nought at all.

Old papers thrown away,
Old garments cast aside,
The talk of yesterday,
Are things identified;
But time once torn away
No voices can recall:
The eve of New Year's Day
Left the Old Year lost to all.

John Clare

[freckle]

Love it Steve!:thumbup: Good for you.

I really enjoyed reading the Dylan Thomas OW, such a great poem. I also liked Alf's, Mossdog's and Freckle's choices. I agree with Freckle, you really appreciate the good stuff when you've experienced the bad but, I agree with Carolyn Kizer, happiness has ruined my poetry writing skills (if I ever had any!). Interestingly, it has had a good effect on my printmaking. I've made lots of new things and they tend to be more colourful. When I was in my last relationship, even during the good parts, I was making monochrome images that were quite sombre (totally subconscious decisions) and had a feeling of claustrophobia.

That's a lovely insight and reflection Hes and Steve loved your verse!

[freckle]

Nice new year poem choice Alf...not to let the side down I have found a very saucy news year poem by DH Lawrence, reads a bit like carry on poetry me thinks made me giggle ... all the best for 2013 one and all!

"New Year’s Eve" by D.H. Lawrence
(from Look! We Have Come Through!, 1917)

"There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.

This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.

Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.

Your shoulders, your bruised throat!
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!

As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the firelight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!"

[freckle]

and now for something completely different...

In Flight by Jennifer K. Sweeney

The Himalayan legend says
there are beautiful white birds
that live completely in flight.
They are born in the air,

must learn to fly before falling
and die also in their flying.
Maybe you have been born
into such a life

with the bottom dropping out.
Maybe gravity is claiming you
and you feel
ghost-scripted.

For the one who lives inside the fall,
the sky beneath the sky of all.

[XRunner]

Freckle's signature and the recent wet weather during the festive season reminded me about this poem.
(and the title is correct!). Here is an interesting article to read at your leisure.

Sorley’s Weather
(by Robert Graves)

When outside the icy rain
Comes leaping helter-skelter,
Shall I tie my restive brain
Snugly under shelter?

Shall I make a gentle song
Here in my firelit study,
When outside the winds blow strong
And the lanes are muddy?

With old wine and drowsy meats
Am I to fill my belly?
Shall I glutton here with Keats?
Shall I drink with Shelley?

Running’s* pleasant, firelight’s good:
Poetry makes both better.
Clay is wet and so is mud,
Winter rains are wetter.

Yet rest here, Freckle*, on the sill,
For though the winds come frorely,
I’m away to the rain-blown hill
And the ghost of Sorley.

*with a few minor alterations for our fell running poets.:thumbup:
I had to look-up the definition of "frorely" which is a wonderfully apt choice of word in this poem

[Mossdog]

Armada

Long, long ago
when everything I was told was believable
and the little I knew was less limited than now,
I stretched belly down on the grass beside a pond
and to the far bank launched a child’s armada.
A broken fortress of twigs,
the paper-tissue sails of galleons,
the waterlogged branches of submarines -
all came to ruin and were on flame
in that dusk-red pond.
And you, mother, stood behind me,
impatient to be going,
old at twenty-three, alone,
thin overcoat flapping.

How closely the past shadows us.
In a hospital a mile or so from that pond
I kneel beside your bed and, closing my eyes,
reach out across forty years to touch once more
that pond’s cool surface,
and it is your cool skin I’m touching;
for as on a pond a child’s paper boat
was blown out of reach
by the smallest gust of wind,
so too have you been blown out of reach
by the smallest whisper of death,
and a childhood memory is sharpened,
and the heart burns as that armada burnt,
long, long ago

Brian Patten.