ASF Poetry Thread

[2020hindsight]

My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose - Izzy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TOtrwBErU&mode=related&search=
http://www.robertburns.org/works/444.shtml
A Red Red Rose ,, by Robbie Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

 

[new girl]

PRESSURE FIRE AND DIAMONDS

The best steel ever made, has been tempered as a blade
and then plunged into a quenching bath of oil
Yet the fire that makes the steel is the same fire that you feel
when you see the problem through with honest toil.

With forging hammer blows, (any village blacksmith knows)
you make steel respond to iron will of men
so too carbon locked in space, with pressure in its face
will morph into a better morph again.

Things arent always going well, buying when you outta sell
putting out lifes little fires like a fireman
but I think that's how God meant it, or why else has he invented
the rule that under pressure,
..........you get diamond.

2020

Thank you for a beautiful poem yet again

NG

 

[new girl]

My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose - Izzy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52TOtrwBErU&mode=related&search=
http://www.robertburns.org/works/444.shtml
A Red Red Rose ,, by Robbie Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

My God!!! The words....the melody.....the video............THERE HAS TO BE A GOD!!!!

 

[2020hindsight]

pleased you enjoyed em, ng
Robbie Burns was great - and his birthday (25 Jan) has been responsible for many a Scottish hangover
Probably why the Scots often seem ambivalent about Australia day lol.

one of the kids heard a quote this morning about "enjoy the pressure, you need it to make diamonds" so I took the concept and ran with it. As usual, totally amateur, but you get the idea.

 

[2020hindsight]

PS THIS is the one I like - as we've both already commented on

the mans the gold for all that
.......
for all that and all that ,
the tinsel show and all that,
the honest man though ever to poor,
is king of men for all that
......
for all that and all that
his riband star and all that
the man of independent mind
he looks and laughs at all that

all the words already posted on :-
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=160213&highlight=man's#post160213

 

[arminius]

Apathetic Betrayal.
by me.

I’d rather muse on the wonders of life
While holding the hand of one’s beautiful wife
I prefer to be inspired by a neighbour’s wisdom
A stranger’s warm heart and their altruism

But at six every evening or in the daily review
It’s all turning pear-shaped and a deep shade of blue
Our ‘National Interest’ they solemnly decree
Those with the most powerful artillery

‘Where is the love?’ the ’Peas do enquire
Bought in a fire sale, to some bargain buyer
Paid for in ways even wheat farmers resent
At the request of the bloke with the Texan accent

Will our kids safely walk a non-NATO street?
Reflect without fear in the Gallipoli heat?
Will they work Christmas Day for ten bucks an hour?
And wonder what happened to the ozone layer

Share price lords over system repair
Lanes closed quicker than that hospital there
Privatisation, rationalisation
There’s hardly a damn phone box left in the nation

My greatest fear is not terrorism
Or sedition that lands me seven years in prison
It’s the shame I will face, when my kids one day say,
‘Why didn’t you stop them. Why is it this way’

 

[2020hindsight]

PUNTING ON DE-NILE

Early or late, comes the hand of Fate, toppling years in rank and file,
Fate sank the punts of the Pharoahs-of-late, those who punted upon deNile,
Many race past "go", in their quest for dough, but there's some belong "in Jail",
"Monopoly-ising" the world scene so - A Pathetic bloody tale.
......
Fate watches our bombs and our bulding-of-forts, as we hope the drawbridge holds
Fate watches as delicate peace aborts, and undelicate war unfolds
As we tell the kids, between yawns and rorts, "now we've messed up - YOU mustn't fail!" - ....
please ignore (kids) our mass destructive thoughts - and our Apathetic betrayal.

(PS needless to say, Arminius, I loved that poem of yours )

 

[arminius]

tell you what 2020, that is a beauty.
it moved me.
i think we are reading off the same sheet of music.

 

[2020hindsight]

i think we are reading off the same sheet of music.

hey it was your idea m8 lol - I'm just the kid with the banjo (perhaps a bit more polite at the end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esl2NNOtHQE 'Deliverance' - 'Dueling banjos' scene

 

[2020hindsight]

A CHECKLIST FOR A NOTE TO A FREIEND

how long to send someone an email (or poem)?
lets say it’s a line a minute,
unless its a technical tirade or tome
there’s a hundred ways to skin it,
a word to a friend across the foam ?
that the world’s still here and you’re in it ?
can you answer the charge that you didn’t write home
cos your quill and your heart weren’ tin it ?

were your travels of gold or silver or chrome ?
when trouble came by, did you grin it ?
did you meet some Jack or Jill or Jerome ?
did you cry over some or thick skin it ?
did you meet some concept in Paris or Rome ?
was its soul without or within it ?
is the world pure or just polystyrene foam ?
do they doctor that world and spin it ?

did you get some insult from peasant or throne ?
did you fight back or take on the chin it ?
did you moralise long over lover or loan ?
(did you knock back a beer and just sin it) ?
did you lose all your fun so you just couldn’t phone ?
forget to write numbers and pin it ?
did you wake up with headaches and memories unknown ?
did you stop at first draft and just bin it.?

Is your friend that you’re writing a friend outgrown ?
do the two of you no more “Huck Finn” it ?
do you simply repeat some old love always shown ?
does it sound like you violin it ?
did you fear some glass “writing skill”’s only half blown?
ahh to hell – let’s firing pin it!
well - the first thing to writing that note to that gnome
is to sit for a bit – and begin it .

PS Here's another in the same vein -
(and hopefully without being too vain)
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=86968&highlight=indies#post86968

 

[arminius]

as of last week i'm a dad again.

Aura

What price a smile
On the face of a baby
In the world a short while
Settled at home…maybe

They don’t know any real funny folk
nor familiar with colours like red, or yellow
They’ve not been a party to fine tales or good jokes
Or cringed at Howard, Abbott or Costello

When their day is divided into eating and sleeping
And the parents do ponder their parental failings
And bubs only concern is the dinner date it’s keeping
The rest of the time is an incessant wailing

The price, the price, is always around us
This smile is a potion infusing a full dose
For our love wells inside and flows out to surround us
It may be coincidence but they smile when they’re close.

 

[arminius]

i havent seen that clip for ages.
reminds me of the time some mates and i went to Victoria.

 

[2020hindsight]

I havent seen that clip for ages.
reminds me of the time some mates and i went to Victoria.

Lol, personally I used to go to family reunions to pick up chicks

 

[2020hindsight]

FATHERS AND SHOES

I remember my Dad teaching threading of laces, and tying the damned things in bows,
And the first and foremost of fatherly graces, where kindness and caring flows,
and patience with things that a child will recall, for longer than anyone knows,
- "Remember that moment" (I say to myself) "when in time my own child grows".

I remember my Dad resoling HIS shoes, so cracked and so sadly worn,
When his own soul was fading - about to lose - as the links to his life became torn
And he joked about hiding some shoemaker's elves and his "new" pair of shoes so "reborn"
Confiding to Mum that you don't buy new shoes, when your next life's about to dawn.

These days I get up, and I put on my boots, steel capped and elastic sided,
Not strictly the tricks from my infant roots, while my Father smiled and confided,
Yet I smile for a sec, feel my old Man's touch, and I grin at the future decided,
That I owe my old Man, more than so much, that evolved from the skills he provided. ......

And I thank him for guidance and patience and such, and those footprints o'er which he presided.

Based on the same emotions as the final line of this one ... :-
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=83551&highlight=mustard#post83551

 

[2020hindsight]

on the Ab question..

CYCLICAL ARGUMENTS around MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES

they have oh so many badguys, 'mongst their colour and their kin
and their youth are just a mob of sleezy louts
but there’s surely mitigation in their circumstantial sin
ah don’t come at me with wimpish easy outs

would you have YOUR daughter stolen, Mr Black or Mr White
taking some fool's word that she was living well
never knowing till your Heaven, whether she turned out all right
(when so many fought through institutes from Hell)

look here I’m a perfect father, and it doesn’t (hence) apply
but it does you see , they took them irrespective
well the kids were all too backward, and a few of them too shy
but they had a black child's purest brown perspective

well of course they did, but damned if I’m say sorry, shame or cry,
but this thing has been a boil which needs a lance
crist man mop that bleeding heart of yours, and here’s the reason why..
they had this mitigating circumstance ..

THE FREEDOM BUS / BIKE / ROLLER SKATES

WE don’t have to say that “sorry”, it’s government, not us
but we’ll Need a hint of sorrow to be on that freedom bus
there are Nuts and bolts to work-out, coalface issues and the rest
and the Flavours back of Bourke-out in the seriously west

let’s Not forget they “owned” this land way back in dreamtime daze
or Rather we’ve all loaned this land , give Rainbow Serpent praise
ackNowledge future hope and smile, acknowledge past mistakes
one Word of sorry “Canberra-style” , the tuppence that it takes.

and its Not like bad old US - rednecks, whitecaps, lynching parties
nor Palestine or Suez (where the only chop’s karates)
its More about a trip around this piebald land of ours
with a Lunching stop in sunshine and admire those wild wild flowers.

and aMongst those sacred acorn seeds are kids there one month old
who Don’t know there’s no hope for them (they haven’t yet been told)
no Water there to christen them unless it’s carted in
( I’m Betting that you’ll better me - I hope - young Gunga Din. )

This bus might be a mad proposal , get the future sorted - sheesh
have miles of hope at my disposal, convoy cars escorted - sheesh
but…
…….even just a freedom bike, or just some roller skates
but pointing THERE, into that LIGHT – and treating them as mates.

 

[2020hindsight]

further to previous Kipling posted here
https://www.aussiestockforums.com/forums/showthread.php?p=85547&highlight=kipling#post85547 posts #76 and #77

thought I'd slip in Kipling's Gunga Din

"knock knock : who's there
Gunga : gunga who
- gunga DIN!!!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunga_Din
Gunga Din (1892) is one of Rudyard Kipling's most famous poems, perhaps best known for its often-quoted last line, "You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"[1]

The poem is a rhyming narrative from the point of view of a British soldier, about a native water-bearer who saves his life. Like several other Kipling poems, it celebrates the virtues of a non-European while portraying a colonial infantryman's view of such people as being of a "lower order".

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets.html

Rudyard Kipling. 1865– 1936

48. Gunga Din

YOU may talk o' gin an' beer
When you're quartered safe out 'ere,
An' you're sent to penny-fights an' Aldershot it;
But if it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water, 5
An' you'll lick the bloomin' boots of 'im that's got it.
Now in Injia's sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin' of 'Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them black-faced crew 10
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din.

It was "Din! Din! Din!
You limping lump o' brick-dust, Gunga Din!
Hi! slippy hitherao! 15
Water, get it! Panee lao!
You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din!"

The uniform 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
An' rather less than 'arf o' that be'ind, 20
For a twisty piece o' rag
An' a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment 'e could find.
When the sweatin' troop-train lay
In a sidin' through the day, 25
Where the 'eat would make your bloomin' eyebrows crawl,
We shouted "Harry By!"
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped 'im 'cause 'e couldn't serve us all.

It was "Din! Din! Din! 30
You 'eathen, where the mischief 'ave you been?
You put some juldee in it,
Or I'll marrow you this minute,
If you don't fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!"

'E would dot an' carry one 35
Till the longest day was done,
An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear. 40
With 'is mussick on 'is back,
'E would skip with our attack,
An' watch us till the bugles made "Retire."
An' for all 'is dirty 'ide,
'E was white, clear white, inside 45
When 'e went to tend the wounded under fire!

It was "Din! Din! Din!"
With the bullets kickin' dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could 'ear the front-files shout: 50
"Hi! ammunition-mules an' Gunga Din!"

I sha'n't forgit the night
When I dropped be'ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should 'a' been.
I was chokin' mad with thirst, 55
An' the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin', gruntin' Gunga Din.

'E lifted up my 'ead,
An' 'e plugged me where I bled,
An' 'e guv me 'arf-a-pint o' water—green; 60
It was crawlin' an' it stunk,
But of all the drinks I've drunk,
I'm gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.

It was "Din! Din! Din!
'Ere's a beggar with a bullet through 'is spleen; 65
'E's chawin' up the ground an' 'e's kickin' all around:
For Gawd's sake, git the water, Gunga Din!"

'E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An' a bullet come an' drilled the beggar clean. 70
'E put me safe inside,
An' just before 'e died:
"I 'ope you liked your drink," sez Gunga Din.
So I'll meet 'im later on
In the place where 'e is gone— 75
Where it's always double drill and no canteen;
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to pore damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in Hell from Gunga Din!

Din! Din! Din! 80
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Tho' I've belted you an' flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

 

[2020hindsight]

I repost that epitath that Kipling wrote for someone

A SON
My son was killed while laughing at some jest. I would I knew
What it was, and it might serve me in a time when jests are few.

 

[legs]

Miss Hilton went to Jail,
But a few days later,
Turned very pail,
They said it was just skin infections,
But maybe it was her missed injections!!

 

[2020hindsight]

Further to the Ab question, #375 below :-

FRIENDS OR STEALING MOTHERS

whats the best way then of treating them
as dark skinned foes or brothers
some thoughtful way or beating them
as friends or stealing mothers
do you have to make selection praps
the rough way or the carrot
(and after this election praps
the Brough way or the Garrett.?)

or maybe there's a third way brewing
food for thought and hope
and the black men give up glueing
and the white give up dope
and we look upon each other
with a clearer point of view
and we each boil piles of carrots
in a mutual positive stew.

 

[2020hindsight]

The Words of Patrick Pearse

The History of Patrick Pearse, One of Irelands Greatest And Most Influential Political Figures and Leaders. A Poet, A Master of the Gaelic Language, And a Nationalist. Pearse was it all. And Died for his Land

I am come of the seed of the people, the people that sorrow,
That have no treasure but hope,
No riches laid up but a memory
Of an Ancient glory.
My mother bore me in bondage, in bondage my mother was born,
I am of the blood of serfs;
The children with whom I have played,
the men and women with whom I have eaten
Have had masters over them, have been under the lash of masters,
And, though gentle, have served churls;
Their hands that have touched mine,
the dear hands whose touch is familiar to me,
Have worn shameful manacles,
have been bitten at the wriest by manacles
Have grown hard with the manacles and the task-work of strangers.
I am flesh of the flesh of these lowly, I am bone of their bone,
I that have never submitted;
I that have a soul greater than the souls of my people's masters
I that have vision and prophecy and the gift of fiery speech,
I that have spoken with God on the top of His holy hill.

And because I am of the people, I understand the people,
I am sorrowful with their sorrow, I am hungry with their desire:
My heart has been heavy with the grief of mothers,
My eyes have been wet with the tears of children,
I have yearned with old wistful men,
And laughed or cursed with young men,

Their shame is my shame, and I have reddened for it,
Reddened for that they have served, they who should be free,
Reddened for that they have gone in want,
while others have been full,
Reddened for that they have walked in fear of lawyers and of their jailors
With their writs of summons and their handcuffs,
Men mean and cruel!
I could have borne stripes on my body
rather than this shame of my people.

And now I speak, being full of vision;
I speak to my people,
and I speak in my people's name to the masters of my people.
I say to my people that they are holy, that they are august,
despite their chains,
That they are greater than those that hold them, and stronger and purer,
That they have but need of courage,
and to call on the name of their God,
God the unforgetting, the dear God that loves the peoples
For whom He died naked, suffering shame.
And I say to my people's masters: Beware,
Beware of the thing that is coming,
beware of the risen people,
Who shall take what ye would not give.
Did ye think to conquer the people,
Or that Law is stronger than life and than men's desire to be free?
We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,
Ye that have bullied and bribed,
tyrants, hypocrites, liars!