Got Poetry?

[Coccinelle]

"Consonants around vowels make sense"

I like a nice balance.

[Cosmo]

Another ...


First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels


Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965

Allen Ginsberg

[Tony&Cheri]

Originally Posted by Cosmo

Another ...


First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels


Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965

Allen Ginsberg

That may be the single most written about get together since the last supper. Hunter Thompson describes it in his book, "Hells Angels" and Tom Wolfe wrote at length about it in "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test". And of course AG's poem. I would suggest the possibility that civilization actually reached it's peak in that La Jolla, California ranch house and has been slowly going downhill ever since. Just a thought.

Nice to see you back Cos'. You too Louise.

Papa T

[Cosmo]

The Revolution Will Not be Televised... What a collective mindset...

Originally Posted by Tony&Cheri

That may be the single most written about get together since the last supper. Hunter Thompson describes it in his book, "Hells Angels" and Tom Wolfe wrote at length about it in "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test". And of course AG's poem. I would suggest the possibility that civilization actually reached it's peak in that La Jolla, California ranch house and has been slowly going downhill ever since. Just a thought.

Nice to see you back Cos'. You too Louise.

Papa T

[Coccinelle]

Originally Posted by Cosmo

Another ...


First Party At Ken Kesey's With Hell's Angels


Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little weed in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.

December 1965

Allen Ginsberg

I envision this scene happening in Montreal.
Gosh...haven't heard Joe Jackson being mentioned in a coons age. Cool.

[Cosmo]

New World, steppin' out now...



Bird With Two Right Wings


And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who's busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Coccinelle]

THE RETURN

He went, and he was gay to go:
And I smiled on him as he went.
My son, 'twas well he couldn't know
My darkest dread, nor what it meant-
Just what it meant to smile and smile
And let my son go cheerily-
My son... and wondering all the while
What stranger would come back to me.

-Wilfred Gibson

[Coccinelle]

GET INTO MY GROOVE

Politicians Knocking At My Door
Heads of Nations Rotten to the Core
Tell Me How Are You Gonna Change the World
When You Haven't Got the Love

I Still Remember Your Promise From the Past
And Here You Are With Another That Wont Last
You Tell Me How You're Gonna Change the World
When You Haven't Got the Love

Don't Shake Me By the Hand
Pretend to Understand
To Get Into My Mind
You Got to Get Into My Groove
Step Into My Shoes
Come and Feel My Blues
To Comprehend My Life
You Got to Get Into My Groove

You Say You're Standing For the Hungry and the Weak
But Your Words Are As Hollow As the Glory That You Seek
Tell Me How You're Gonna Change the World
When You Haven't Got the Love

You Want the World to See Your Point of View
But Your Eyes Are Closed to the Pain We Must Undo
Tell Me How You're Gonna Change the World
When You Haven't Got the Love

Before You Tell the World About the Things That They Should Do
Stop and Take a Look What's Going On Inside of You
Divisions Are the Consequences of the Games You Play
Look Inside You

-Incognito

[Cosmo]

I think we should recognise Incognito... Sweet Dreams...

[Cosmo]

Tom Waits: Diamonds on My Windshield --- Diamonds on my windshield


Tears from heaven
Pulling into town on the interstate
Pulling a steel train in the rain
The wind bites my cheek through the wing
Fast flying, freway driving
Always makes me sing

Theres a duster tryin to change my tune
Pulling up fast on the right
Rolling restlessly, twenty-four hour moon

Wisconsin hiker with a cue-ball head
Wishing he was home in a wiscosin bed
Fifteen feet of snow in the east
Colder then a welldiggers ass

Oceanside it ends the ride, san clemente coming up
Sunday desperadoes slip by, gas station closed,
Cruise with a dry back
Orange drive-in the neon billin
Theatres fillin to the brim
Slave girls and a hot spurn bucket full of sin

Metropolitan area with interchange and connections
Fly-by-nights from riverside
Black and white plates, out of state,
Running a little bit late

Sailors jockey for the fast lane
101 dont miss it
Rolling hills and concrete fields
The broken lines on your mind

Eights go east and the fives go north
The merging nexus back and forth
You see your sign, cross the line,
Signalling with a blink

The radios gone off the air
Gives you time to think
You ease it out and you creep across
Intersection light goes out
You hear the rumble
As you fumble for a cigarette
Blazing through this midnight jungle
Remember someone that you met
One more block; the engine talks
And whispers home at last
It whispers, whispers, whispers
home at last, home at last

peace

[Tony&Cheri]

DISTURBED BY FREEDOM ~ Michael McClure

MY HAND IS A GUN AND EACH FINGER
IS A BARREL
and my arm is growing searching reaching
like a DREAM and I don't know
what to shoot, surely not the robins who have flown
ALL
the way
BACK
from the mountains of Sonora over the desert
where I have driven amazed at the craggy
strangeness of raw beauty.
((THAT'S WHAT I AM about: BEAUTY.
--BEAUTY AND SENSE))
and these robins have alighted here
in these green meadows where sprinkled water
turning warm runs over the masses of pink blooms.
I CANNOT SHOOT THE SOUND OF THE TRAFFIC.
A hundred bullets
would not stop that bus and I
would not hurt the children
or the adolescents at the moving windows
with their pink mohawk haircuts
and their sexual cries
LIKE HUMAN MACAWS.
It is another day and another dollar.
I
WONDER
WHERE
I
AM
((ROAMING SO SWEETLY FROM FIELD
TO FIELD DIS-
TURBED BY MY FREEDOM!))
--AND LOOK AT THE DEEP SCRATCHES THAT MADMEN
make with their keys on the sleek red
lacquer of my car.
I taste coffee in my mouth.
MY MOUTH IS WHERE I AM LIVING TODAY
but I am lonely as a skinny
old white cat with blue eyes
and irregular jagged spots of gray and black
showing a tiger pattern.
I am a tyger, I am an owl. I am some ancient wisdom
taking its own pulse and listening:
BANG!
BANG!, goes my finger.
BANG! Lover, I wish
we had bought
the purplish polish for your
toe
nails!

[Bumper]

The Cremation of Sam McGee - Robert Service

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee,
Where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam
'Round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold
Seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way
That he'd "sooner live in hell".

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way
Over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold
It stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze
Till sometimes we couldn't see;
It wasn't much fun, but the only one
To whimper was Sam McGee.

And that very night, as we lay packed tight
In our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead
Were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and "Cap," says he,
"I'll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I'm asking that you
Won't refuse my last request."

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no;
Then he says with a sort of moan:
"It's the cursed cold, and it's got right hold
Till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet 'tain't being dead -- it's my awful dread
Of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair,
You'll cremate my last remains."

A pal's last need is a thing to heed,
So I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn;
But God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day
Of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all
That was left of Sam McGee.

There wasn't a breath in that land of death,
And I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid,
Because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say:
"You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it's up to you
To cremate those last remains."

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid,
And the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb,
In my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight,
While the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows --
O God! how I loathed the thing.

And every day that quiet clay
Seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent
And the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad,
But I swore I would not give in;
And I'd often sing to the hateful thing,
And it hearkened with a grin.

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge,
And a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice
It was called the "Alice May".
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit,
And I looked at my frozen chum;
Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry,
"Is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor,
And I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around,
And I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared --
Such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal,
And I stuffed in Sam McGee.

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like
To hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled,
And the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled
Down my cheeks, and I don't know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak
Went streaking down the sky.

I do not know how long in the snow
I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about
Ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said:
"I'll just take a peep inside.
I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; . . .
Then the door I opened wide.

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm,
In the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile,
And he said: "Please close that door.
It's fine in here, but I greatly fear
You'll let in the cold and storm --
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee,
It's the first time I've been warm."

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.

[Tony&Cheri]

At the trial of the Chicago Seven, Allan Ginsberg was called as a witness to testify of the police brutality he saw at the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention. The US Attorney in cross examining him asked if Ginsberg had not read a poem called "Love Poem on a Theme by Walt Whitman" to the assembled protesters. Yes, answered Ginsburg. He said he wanted to recite a religous poem to calm the crowd. Where asked the Prosecutor can anyone find religion in this poem? Ginnsberg replied:

"Walt Whitman said that as part of your nature we have many loves, many of which are suppressed, many of which are denied. He said becoming aware of these loves was the only way this nation could save itself and become a Democratic Nation."

Here is the poem:

I'll go into the bedroom silently and lie down between the bridgegroom and
the bride,
those bodies fallen from heaven stretched out waiting naked and restless,
arms resting over their eyes in the darkness,
bury my face in their shoulders and breasts, breathing their skin,
and stroke and kiss neck and mouth and make back be open and known,
legs raised up crook'd to recieve, cock in the darkness driven tormented and
attacking
roused up from hole to itching head,
bodies locked shuddering naked, hot hips and bottocks screwed into each
other
and eyes, eyes glinting and charming, widening into looks and abandon,
moans of movement, voices, hands in air, hands between thighs,
hands in moisture on softened hips, throbbing contraction of bellies
till the white come flow in the swirling sheets,
and the bride cry for forgiveness, and the groom be covered with tears of
passion and compassion,
and I rise up from the bed replenished with last intimate gestures and kisses
of farewell -
all before the mind wakes, behind shades and closed doors in a darkened
house
where the inhabitants roam unsatisfied in the night,
nude ghosts seeking each other out in the silence.

[Tony&Cheri]

There is one more matter I must not neglect,
But I need not bother now,
As I listen to the sound of the evening rain.

~ Dogen Zenji

[Tony&Cheri]

For my friend Melliedee.

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!

The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

~ William Wordsworth

Papa T

[melliedee]

Originally Posted by Tony&Cheri

For my friend Melliedee.

Blessings be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares!

The Poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays.

~ William Wordsworth

Papa T

Ah, thank you, T. Glad to see this thread going strong!

Introduction to Poetry

by Billy Collins


I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.