Poetry thread

[Guest [Si...]]

If you have any inspirational poetry or your own.

 

We can start poetry here.

 

Keep it clean

 

Sigma.

[[...]]

                                            Woodman, Spare that tree.......George Pope Morris

 

                                            Woodman, spare that tree!

                                              Touch not a single bough!

                                            In youth it sheltered me,

                                                And I'll protect it now.

                                            'Twas my forefather's hand

                                                That placed it near his cot;

                                              There, woodman let it stand,

                                                  Thy axe shall harm it not!

 

                                              When but an idle boy

                                                I sought its grateful shade;

                                                In all their gushing joy

                                                  Here, too, my sisters played.

 

                                                My mother kissed me here;

                                              My father pressed my hand-

                                                Forgive this foolish tear,

                                                But let that old oak stand!

 

                                              My heart-strings round thee cling,

                                                Close as thy bark, old friend!

                                              Here shall the wild bird sing,

                                                And still thy branches bend.

                                              Old tree! the storm still brave!

                                                  And, woodman, leave the spot;

                                                While I've a  hand to save,

                                                  Thy axe shall harm it not.

                                               

 

 

 

 

                                           

                                                           

[[ab...]]

cool!!!

[[tr...]]

Haven't done this in a long time. Hope you all enjoy.

 

Crown of Thorns...By travuz AD-2011

 

He sits upon his shattered throne

Upon his head, a crown of thorns

In his left hand, a staff of brittle bone

In his right worn hand, his splintered intellect

He bewails a sorrowful lament

It echoes across brimming halls,  

Oh dear God...I beseech thee

What's to become of me

Guilt and shame beset me whole

Alone I am in reverie

Manacled within this woeful plane

 

Thunder rumbles across the blighted land

Lightning flashes illuminating a pocked vale

His brain afire with considerations

His soulful wails reverberate

Cometh the dark elixir

With promises and lies abound

Dispensed to him by his Vizier

It gives the King relief

Though indeed what is proffered

Imaginary salvation...nothing more

Soon strings it pulls

Subjects wander in revolt

Shriek and wail, you are King no more

No longer did he hold a scepter

No longer did he rule the valleys

 

A lonely pawn was this King

As venom drunk tainted him

It breaketh, shattered him

And though there are a cities worth

Round to sit...commune with him

Alone he is under his thorny crown

To assume and consider and ponder

Who am I...what am I, King asks again

Nothing and no one claims the Vizier

Drink my brew and be whole again

With darkened smile a goblet thrust

Oh thirsty King, so blindly trusts

With or without me, we will always be one

Speaks the poison in his mind

With or without me...we will rule endlessly

The Vizier implies

 

A light burst through

The King wakes from bitterness' lethargy

Away he says, Oh demon spawn

Take thy malignancy to Hades

From his veins a coal pitch seeps

From deep down a fierceness weeps

As his soul valiantly decrees

I will be set perpetually unfettered

Prayer overruns him

Though this toxicant emblems him

But the spirit refuses

To ever be chained

And soon he rises

Broken

Weary

Whole

A King again

[[...]]

Travuz, We will have to give you the title of:  Official poet Laureate of BenzoBuddies.

[Guest [Si...]]

Travuz,

 

That's a good poem.

 

I have one somewhere i will write out.

 

It's called, "A box within a box within a box within a box within a box." Strange, but that's just me.

 

I have others somewhere.

[[Ni...]]

That was an awesome poem Travuz.

[[tr...]]

Thank You pj, Sigma0123, Nicolette 

 

Sigma0123 please do post...I always did like poetry.

[[tr...]]

Needed something to do. Enjoy.

 

In Dreams...AD 2011

 

There was a split second

Within my youhthful days

When I laboured to imagine

Of things to come and places to be

Of happiness and festivities

I had divine intendment

A fantasy well desired

A hope, a thought...a fancy

That came from yesteryear

Though only in a dream

 

I conceieved of things forthcoming

It never was so challenging

As I was a blissful child

With belief and faiths and happenings

So a life laid out

A plan thought through

A happy time to be

I prayed to God

To give life's blood

To my every dream

 

There she was, my bride to be

A bewitching Lily waif

I danced with her

'Til night grew old

And then laid us down to sleep

There she stayed

There she remained

My lovely beauty queen

Forevermore

Eternally

Within my constant dream

 

I had a child, he was a boy

Then right after, a little girl

The morning shone this bright lit day

And round we went in fleeting twirls

I held them in my arms so tight

I would not let them go

But a light burst on

The tears flowed down

My children were no more

All that was left

All I could cherish

Was nothing less

Was nothing more

Still one more coveted dream

 

Now I am tired old and grey

With nothing left to say

My body mangled...bent with age

Sitting nearby a tiny door

That I heed and watch all day

There I patiently wait

But no rap rap is ever heard

Within this empty expanse

I can take no more

That is when I finally despair

I assumed I had a dream

 

My Lily waif...is disappeared

My children not ever birthed

All quashed from my perception

And with that lifes greatest sentiments

Every ambition ever held

They are sundered...torn apart

And in this world

There comes no good from that

For one who dared to dream

 

So I give you hearty advice

Heed it well...or lose all sight

Should you ever misrecollect

Never to aspire

Think of me

Who lived in dreams

With my life now done

That is all...I am no more

Died and gone and swept away

Nothing left to say

I dared

I hoped

But nothing gained

Not even within a dream

[Guest [my...]]

Deep..  neat.  Thanks Travuz!!!!!!!!!!!

[[Ni...]]

[Guest [Si...]]

 

Edgar Allan Poe

 

 

Evening Star

 

'Twas noontide of summer,

  And mid-time of night;

And stars, in their orbits,

  Shone pale, thro' the light

Of the brighter, cold moon,

  'Mid planets her slaves,

Herself in the Heavens,

  Her beam on the waves.

    I gazed awhile

    On her cold smile;

Too cold- too cold for me-

  There pass'd, as a shroud,

  A fleecy cloud,

And I turned away to thee,

  Proud Evening Star,

  In thy glory afar,

And dearer thy beam shall be;

  For joy to my heart

  Is the proud part

Thou bearest in Heaven at night,

  And more I admire

  Thy distant fire,

Than that colder, lowly light.

 

[[tr...]]

Not only are you a great mathematician Sigma0123...you are also a very gifted writer. I salute you.

 

You've inspired me now. Gonna have to pull out some of Poe's works, once this damnable taper is over. He was a favourite of mine...a very long time ago.

 

 

[Guest [Si...]]

One of my favourites, too.

 

 

[[Ni...]]

 

This is kind of a dark poem about how I felt for a time on Xanax.

Now that I think about it, it must be when I have felt depersonalization and/or derealization.

I no longer feel this way,

since finding travelers on the recovery road from benzos,

that's why it's inspirational to me.

 

 

It's a Gaelic poem.

 

 

 

 

Eilean Phabail                                          Bayble Island

 

A' crochadh bhon t-slabhraidh                 Like you, I am

nam dhà leth;                                         divided.

a' seòladh air cuan                                 Floating on sea

ach ceangailte ri creagan m' àraich;         but made fast

uaine agus flùran                                          to my ground rock;

a' sreap gu grian                                         green and flowers

agus nèamh;                                         climbing to the sun and heaven;

creagan donn a' bàthadh                         brown rocks drowning under

fo mhuir agus feamainn                           brine and tangle

agus dorchadas                                         in darkness.

Faisg air daoine:                                         Near people,

gan coimhead,                                         watching them,

gan cluinntinn,                                         hearing them,

ach cha ruig iad orm -                                 but they cannot reach me -

tha mi ro fhad' air falbh.                         distance is maintained.

Chan urrainn dhomh fàgaiI,                         I can't leave.

chan urra inn dhomh tilleadh,                         There's no way back.

's cha tig an dà leth ri chèile.                   Halves remain separate.

Anna Frater                                         Anna Frater

[[am...]]

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

"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 tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped 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 I 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.

 

 

 

 

[[am...]]

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

"Anthem for a Doomed Youth"

 

    What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

    --Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

    Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

    Can patter out their hasty orisons.

    No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,

    Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-

    The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

    And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

 

    What candles may be held to speed them all?

    Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

    Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

    The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

    Their flowers the tenderness of silent minds,

    And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

[[am...]]

Slyvia Plath

 

Insomniac

 

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,

Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars

Letting in the light, peephole after peephole ---

A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.

Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus

He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness

Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

 

Over and over the old, granular movie

Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days

Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,

Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,

A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.

His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.

Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

 

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue ---

How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!

Those sugary planets whose influence won for him

A life baptized in no-life for a while,

And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.

Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.

Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

 

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.

Each gesture flees immediately down an alley

Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance

Drains like water out the hole at the far end.

He lives without privacy in a lidless room,

The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open

On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

 

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats

Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.

Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,

Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.

The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,

And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,

Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

[[am...]]

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

 

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

 

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

 

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

[[am...]]

Shakespeare

 

Sonnet 18

 

 

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

[[...]]

amano,

 

Thanks for the poem by William Wordsworth. It is one of my favorites.

 

 

[[Ni...]]

 

Bob Dylan's

 

Chimes Of Freedom

 

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll

We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing

As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the sounds

Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing

Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight

Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight

An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

 

In the city's melted furnace, unexpectedly we watched

With faces hidden as the walls were tightening

As the echo of the wedding bells before the blowin' rain

Dissolved into the bells of the lightning

Tolling for the rebel, tolling for the rake

Tolling for the luckless, the abandoned an' forsaked

Tolling for the outcast, burnin' constantly at stake

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

 

Through the mad mystic hammering of the wild ripping hail

The sky cracked its poems in naked wonder

That the clinging of the church bells blew far into the breeze

Leaving only bells of lightning and its thunder

Striking for the gentle, striking for the kind

Striking for the guardians and protectors of the mind

An' the poet an the painter far behind his rightful time

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

 

In the wild cathedral evening the rain unraveled tales

For the disrobed faceless forms of no position

Tolling for the tongues with no place to bring their thoughts

All down in taken-for granted situations

Tolling for the deaf an' blind, tolling for the mute

For the mistreated, mateless mother, the mistitled prostitute

For the misdemeanor outlaw, chased an' cheated by pursuit

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

 

Even though a clouds's white curtain in a far-off corner flashed

An' the hypnotic splattered mist was slowly lifting

Electric light still struck like arrows, fired but for the ones

Condemned to drift or else be kept from drifting

Tolling for the searching ones, on their speechless, seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

An' for each unharmfull, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

 

Starry-eyed an' laughing as I recall when we were caught

Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended

As we listened one last time an' we watched with one last look

Spellbound an' swallowed 'til the tolling ended

Tolling for the aching whose wounds cannot be nursed

For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an' worse

An' for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe

An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

 

 

 

 

[[...]]

                                        Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening         

                                       

                                        Robert Frost

 

                                                    Whose woods these are I think I know.

                                                    His house is in the village though;

                                                    He will not see me stopping here

                                                    To watch his woods fill up with snow.

 

                                                    The little horse must think it's queer

                                                      To stop without a farmhouse near

                                                    Between the woods and frozen lake

                                                    The darkest evening of the year.

 

                                                    He gives his harness bells a shake

                                                    To ask if there is some mistake.

                                                    The only other sound's the sweep

                                                    Of easy wind and downy flake.

 

                                                    The woods are lovely and dark and deep.

                                                      But I have promises to keep,

                                                    And miles to go before I sleep.

                                                    And miles to go before I sleep.

                                                         

 

 

 

[Guest [Si...]]

Edgar Allan Poe

 

 

Spirits of the Dead

 

      Thy soul shall find itself alone

      'Mid dark thoughts of the grey tomb-stone;

      Not one, of all the crowd, to pry

      Into thine hour of secrecy.

 

      Be silent in that solitude,

        Which is not loneliness- for then

      The spirits of the dead, who stood

        In life before thee, are again

      In death around thee, and their will

      Shall overshadow thee; be still.

 

      The night, though clear, shall frown,

      And the stars shall not look down

      From their high thrones in the Heaven

      With light like hope to mortals given,

      But their red orbs, without beam,

      To thy weariness shall seem

      As a burning and a fever

      Which would cling to thee for ever.

 

      Now are thoughts thou shalt not banish,

      Now are visions ne'er to vanish;

      From thy spirit shall they pass

      No more, like dew-drop from the grass.

 

      The breeze, the breath of God, is still,

      And the mist upon the hill

      Shadowy, shadowy, yet unbroken,

      Is a symbol and a token.

      How it hangs upon the trees,

      A mystery of mysteries!

 

[[Ta...]]

So cool, what a great thread.  I was an English Minor in college (communications major) so this is up my alley.  I love Edgar Allen Poe and Shakespeare.  Travuz, you are a gifted writer indeed.  Thanks for starting this Sig!