is there any good poetry

[Necrometer]

i'd thoughtlessly written "lingering qualm" in a sciencey email to colleague and realized that the phrase might come across as terminally eggheaded

so I googled it - 376 hits - definitely danger zone

anyway top hit was this absolutely terrible poem:

Oh young lady!
what a mockery?

There is barely a trace of our meaningless busyness, now.
I can make you clinch it right away.
Straight cut through the heart of my communiqué.
Isn't that something long way away?

You weeding,
I'm feeling,
And I also could use some healing.

You're leaving,
I am receiving.
Just to care those careless intentions.

Everything was profound,
in a way or two.
You're settling,
and I am repeating.

Oh young lady!
what a mockery?

I felt hers scent.
It is tantalizing.
So much, that I can't stand my thoughts.
No more.

I don't want to see;
The real me
and the you.

Stop fussing with my thoughts of sky.
Old skies, I say.

A love toxicologist.
Seems that we could care to chime some more cuddles.
A knee-buckling sensation.

They've a strong self-destructive streak along with
unreasoning temper that can be triggered at a slightest provocation.

Aw, it's just unconvincingly feeble.
One could enjoy trouble when there's nothing else left.
Let me be on my own and address myself scrupulously.

which reminds me that I've been meaning to make this thread forever - please post a good poem if you have ever encountered one. I know this involves a certain vulnerability since it's easy for people to say "THAT IS NOT A GOOD POEM" either because it's too smart or it's too dumb, too blatant or too subtle, and then you might feel bad inside

I remember reading something apocalyptic I liked that was ostensibly about a "yawning chasm" or a behemoth or something... it was by a poet I'd heard of, something quasi-famous

[Necrometer]

a ghost of zerohero troll account would probably be a decent idea right now

ode to a piss pot

[the awesome Assassin]

Have you ever witnessed an overdose
My best friend died this last Saturday.
I woke up and he was sitting dead in my chair.
I knew a girl in Portland

[elephants gerald]

was it yeats? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems- ... tail/43290

[FVBTVS]

robert desnos

[Necrometer]

febtus does not disappoint

was it yeats? https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems- ... tail/43290

yes absolutely that's it - thanks! the reign in blood of poetry, maybe? pretty satisfying that my stupid keywords were basically all in there (widening gyre ≈ yawning chasm)

[FVBTVS]

The man-brained and man-handed ground-ape, physically
The most repulsive of all hot-blooded animals
Up to that time of the world: they had dug a pitfall
And caught a mammoth, but how could their sticks and stones
Reach the life in that hide? They danced around the pit, shrieking
With ape excitement, flinging sharp flints in vain, and the stench of their bodies
Stained the white air of dawn; but presently one of them
Remembered the yellow dancer, wood-eating fire
That guards the cave-mouth: he ran and fetched him, and others
Gathered sticks at the wood’s edge; they made a blaze
And pushed it into the pit, and they fed it high, around the mired sides
Of their huge prey. They watched the long hairy trunk
Waver over the stifle trumpeting pain,
And they were happy.

Meanwhile the intense color and nobility of sunrise,
Rose and gold and amber, flowed up the sky. Wet rocks were shining, a little wind
Stirred the leaves of the forest and the marsh flag-flowers; the soft valley between the low hills
Became as beautiful as the sky; while in its midst, hour after hour, the happy hunters
Roasted their living meat slowly to death.

These are the people.
This is the human dawn. As for me, I would rather

Be a worm in a wild apple than a son of man.
But we are what we are, and we might remember
Not to hate any person, for all are vicious;
And not be astonished at any evil, all are deserved;
And not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.


Robinson Jeffers

[FVBTVS]

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves, but worse.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

[hipster holocaust]

There was that time when that poem Hitler wrote was better than Maya Angelou's.

[MeatGrease]

Robinson Jeffers

A Carcass

My love, do you recall the object which we saw,
That fair, sweet, summer morn!
At a turn in the path a foul carcass
On a gravel strewn bed,


Its legs raised in the air, like a lustful woman,
Burning and dripping with poisons,
Displayed in a shameless, nonchalant way
Its belly, swollen with gases.


The sun shone down upon that putrescence,
As if to roast it to a turn,
And to give back a hundredfold to great Nature
The elements she had combined;


And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.


The blow-flies were buzzing round that putrid belly,
From which came forth black battalions
Of maggots, which oozed out like a heavy liquid
All along those living tatters.


All this was descending and rising like a wave,
Or poured out with a crackling sound;
One would have said the body, swollen with a vague breath,
Lived by multiplication.


And this world gave forth singular music,
Like running water or the wind,
Or the grain that winnowers with a rhythmic motion
Shake in their winnowing baskets.


The forms disappeared and were no more than a dream,
A sketch that slowly falls
Upon the forgotten canvas, that the artist
Completes from memory alone.


Crouched behind the boulders, an anxious dog
Watched us with angry eye,
Waiting for the moment to take back from the carcass
The morsel he had left.


— And yet you will be like this corruption,
Like this horrible infection,
Star of my eyes, sunlight of my being,
You, my angel and my passion!


Yes! thus will you be, queen of the Graces,
After the last sacraments,
When you go beneath grass and luxuriant flowers,
To molder among the bones of the dead.


Then, O my beauty! say to the worms who will
Devour you with kisses,
That I have kept the form and the divine essence
Of my decomposed love!

[TheMooretician]

Oh man, I could go on and on. I'm a high school literature teacher so the whole sub-canon of "greatest poems of all time" is like...a daily part of my life. Of all the really obvious, well-known, popular choices, "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot is pretty much it for me. Keats, Blake, Milton, Tennyson...I'll have to come up with a couple of lists. Poetry rules.

Oh also, hey y'all. Been a minute. Hope everyone is doing well. I'll try and post more often. This place still rules.

[TheMooretician]

Also Robert Frost fucking sucks and Maya Angelou is a talentless piece of shit, just so we're clear

[Joe Buck]

You're eating too much bread - Erik 13

[Necrometer]

mooretician: if this thread doesn't lure you back, the release of covenant will

[Spooky Apparition]

Oh also, hey y'all. Been a minute. Hope everyone is doing well. I'll try and post more often. This place still rules.

you're an all-time great here and i got instantly excited when i saw your name. don't leave

not sure if this is an accurate translation/representation (can't find my hard copy). [edit: better version here: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/death-fugue] some of the line breaks and punctuation seem unfamiliar to me and definitely sloppy, but I think the gist is there. I read this as an undergrad and still think about it every now and then. iirc, this guy's family was killed in the holocaust, and he later killed himself

Deathfugue by Paul Celan

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he orders us strike up and play for the dance
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in smoke to the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too cramped
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams
der Tod is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith

[Cascade Whore]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=I1j3UmjEOVQ

[FVBTVS]

stephen crane

[featherboa]

I like some. Has any of you literary folks read the changing light at sandover? I wanted to at some point but I forgot about it.

[FVBTVS]

I like some. Has any of you literary folks read the changing light at sandover? I wanted to at some point but I forgot about it.

i own a copy of that but have never once looked at it

[featherboa]

guys, rappin

[Whiffleball Ace]

A shitload of good poetry came out of WWI.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori

Wilfred Owen

[Necrometer]

this has some nuanced zingers in it:
https://www.thecut.com/2017/10/profile- ... honey.html

for context, this chick has tons of fluffy poems about women being worth so much beyond their appearance, but she doesn't seem to subscribe to this philosophy as she's a carefully-crafted social media model

I guess she got famous when instagram deleted her period blood photo

[David Draiman's Chin pipes]

Summer broke on the backs of children
even though swings performed miracles
and breezes sang psalms

For that summer, from the outskirts
of some far off even whimsical place
came the low resolute moo of a dragon

A child, of course, could not recognize that fabled moo
or the serpentine tail close to her feet,
Wound up among the thistle and milkweed
like a hose.

Nor for that matter could she recognize
the starry white bone left upright in the sandbox
like some remarkable claw
or shovel.

Not when the sun was out and games continued,
Certainly not when there was summer love
and rootbeer.

But at dusk when the fog crept in,
thick and sweating,
suggesting some kind of burning far off,
down over there,

(where someone once saw two eyes

--pale as October moons--

blink)

a child could know the meaning
of fall.

And that August, two weeks before school began,
some children went down to that place

and they never came back.


The Panther paces

Waiting reminds him that clarity is painful
but his pain is unreadable,
obscure, chiaroscuro to their human senses,

In time they will misread his gait,
his moon mad eyes,
the almost gentle way his tail caresses the bars.

In time they will mistake him
for something else--
without history,
without the shadow of being,
a creature without the penance of living.

They will read only his name.

They will be unable to percieve
what strangeness
lies beneath his patience,

patience is the darkest side of power.

He is dark
He is black.
He is exquisitely powerful.

he has made pain his lover
and hidden her completely.

Now he will never forget.

She will give birth to memories
they believe he has been broken of.

He smells the new rain,
tastes its change.

His claw skates along
the cold floor.

Love curled up and died
on such a floor.

He blinks.
Clarity improves.

He hears other creatures scream and fade.
But silence is his.

He knows.

In time the gates will open.
In time his heart will open.

Then the shadows will bleed
and the locks will break.


Little solace comes
to those who grieve
when thoughts keep drifting
as walls keep shifting
and this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves

moments before the wind.

[Eight Bit Alien]

Mos Def, most ancient Chinese sayings, the Bible...

[Eight Bit Alien]

The beauty of a womans grace

Newborn babies coming home from the war

Winters first snow whispering to trees on early spring mornings

Some people wouldn't understand.