ASF Poetry Thread

[weird]

AD Hope, Australia,

A Nation of trees, drab green and desolate grey
In the field uniform of modern wars,
Darkens her hills, those endless, outstretched paws
Of Sphinx demolished or stone lion worn away.

They call her a young country, but they lie:
She is the last of lands, the emptiest,
A woman beyond her change of life, a breast
Still tender but within the womb is dry.

Without songs, architecture, history:
The emotions and superstitions of younger lands,
Her rivers of water drown among inland sands,
The river of her immense stupidity

Floods her monotonous tribes from Cairns to Perth.
In them at last the ultimate men arrive
Whose boast is not: "we live" but "we survive",
A type who will inhabit the dying earth.

And her five cities, like five teeming sores,
Each drains her: a vast parasite robber-state
Where second hand Europeans pullulate
Timidly on the edge of alien shores.

Yet there are some like me turn gladly home
From the lush jungle of modern thought, to find
The Arabian desert of the human mind,
Hoping, if still from the deserts the prophets come,

Such savage and scarlet as no green hills dare
Springs in that waste, some spirit which escapes
The learned doubt, the chatter of cultured apes
Which is called civilization over there.

 

[2020hindsight]

brilliant poem there weird -

This one dedicated to Nick Xenophon, who shares the balance of power in the Senate (after 30 June 2008)

THE NICK OF TIME

There’s a bloke down there near Adelaide
they call him Nick the Greek,
In another life he’d probly sell you nectarines or leek
and he knocked around with pollies
and the knack of pollie-speak
when you knock on doors , some open -
Nick you’ve won a Senate seat!

The folks down there say Nick, he could’ve
won it in his nickers,
with one arm fighting bandits
and the other punching nackers, -
Now the question Nick, where stand you
not just pokies - there’s the nexus -
are you powered by wind and solar
or just wind from some solar plexus?.

 

[2020hindsight]

PS
You never knock a trier
and you never knock a Nick
he might be vergin' on virgin
and he may not take a trick -
He's "green" perhaps? more ways that one?
is he "left", "right", "out"? or just reckless?

My guess is that Nick will we swamped with nickels
and his wife will be swamped in "necklace".

PS think I've exhausted this one

 

[2020hindsight]

Sometimes the lyrics of a song really "resonate" - and they probably qualify for poetry as much as just lyrics (IMO anyway) ...

John Denver - Eagles And Horses

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=john+denver+eagles&search=Search

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=eagles+and+horses+lyrics&meta=

Horses are creatures who worship the earth as they gallop on feet of ivory.
Constrained by the wonder of dying and birth, the horses still run, they are free.
My body is merely the shell of my soul but the flesh must be given its due.
Like a pony that carries its rider back home, like an old friend that's tried and been true.
I had a vision of eagles and horses high on a ridge in a race with the wind.
Going higher and higher and faster and faster, on eagles and horses, I'm flying again.

Eagles inhabit the heavenly heights, they know neither limit nor bound.
They're the guardian angels of darkness and light, they see all and hear every sound.
My spirit will never be broken or caught for the soul is a free-flying thing.
Like an eagle that needs neither comfort nor thought to rise up on glorious wings.
I had a vision of eagles and horses high on a ridge in a race with the wind.

My body is merely the shell of my soul, but the flesh must be given its due.
Like a pony that carries its master back home, like an old friend that's tried and been true.
My spirit will never be broken or caught for the soul is a free-flying thing.
Like an eagle that needs neither comfort nor thought to rise up on glorious wings.
I had a vision of eagles and horses high on a ridge in a race with the wind.

 

[2020hindsight]

High Flight John Gillespie Jnr (plus some excerpts put to music)
In Memory -10th Anniversary Of The Passing of John Denver

 

[2020hindsight]

Just noticed this quote by WC Fields - re Proof, Belief, and Fishing Stories etc.

http://louisville.edu/~kprayb01/WCQuote.html#A6
RELIGION and POLITICS

(NOTE: Fields' view of Christianity is best revealed in his devastating critique of the Bible, which comprises the whole of chapter five of Carlotta Monti's book W.C. Fields & Me.)
"To me, these biblical stories are just so many fish stories, and I'm not specifically referring to Jonah and the whale. I need indisputable proof of anything I'm asked to believe."

WHAT I BELIEVE “BELIEF” MEANS

The word “belief”’s a riddle, different meanings me and you,
some find talk of God a “fiddle”, and some find it “tried and true”,
some say Man is at the “centre”, some say “middle road” is truth.
some ask “why invent inventor, true belief begins with PROOF?”

Are beliefs just dreams or granite, we explore them passing through
one short stay upon this planet, some “believe” they’re “born anew”,
are we talking “feel-good” symptoms?, that you catch much like the flue?
are they measurable codes of conduct, that we KNOW avoid a “blue”?

A Buddhist KNOWS that meditation leaves him feeling strong
a mental thing, at one with earth, a MEASURED heart rate song,
true Christians KNOW forgiveness is where virtue should belong,
- no need to judge the others, - casting first stones is all WRONG.

BUT as for God Apollo, and/or planets, thunder, rain,
those that science proved as hollow, they’ll be never Gods again -
except to jungled tribes of men, where the rainbow’s worshipped “for good”
like the other missing vibes of men?, praps they’re “rainbow gods-till-understood”?

As for tales of Jonah, Noah’s Ark, that give young kids a thrill,
let’s assume they teach them for a lark, or to feed young minds with krill,
lets assume that science will light the dark, and replace all that’s scary with skill,
and the rest? any missing question mark? can be gods to that time until.

There are levels of belief and stuff, and levels of conjecture
and half-thought theories in the rough, and theorems from some lecture
some chewing gum for mind and soul, or passions that direct ya
and these parts make you, “yourself, the whole”, …
……………………. BELIEVE it! they affect ya.

 

[2020hindsight]

CAROLS IN THE PARK - that ignored the weather forecast.

the deckchairs were all set up and the picnic blankets laid
at first the angels joined in - then they pissed on our parade !!
I know we sang hail mary but we didn’t need the hail !!
that’s it folks - no blaspheming, or praps God denies us bail.

next year we’ll start our evensong (let’s assume it’s even song)
much earlier folks before these storms and I’ll let God prove me wrong
I’m sure that’s what he’s telling me – yes – I’m sure that I am right
mid afternoon when there’s still de light ( stead of afternoon delight). !

it’s really hard to sing here lord, with the puddles all knee deep
you did it last year too lord, does the singing make you weep?
If you are so omnipotent then give us folks a break
maybe close your divine ears to our bad notes – and FORGIVE!! - for Jesus' sake.

 

[2020hindsight]

FIFTY PERCENT REDUCTION by THIRTY YEARS AFTER I’M DEAD

When we told you we wanted something achieved that was more than a 10 minute stroll
on a Bali beach , or a 10 minute speech, to your mates on “planet patrol”,
we were all more inclined to a concept designed to achieve than to simply console,
and a bolder decision, and a much bolder vision, than some nebulous 50 year goal.

So it’s up to our grandkids to see (when they’re grey) whether WE have obtained our objective,
For mine that’s too far in the distance to say, and beyond any logic’s perspective,
Is it crystal ball gazing, or just window glazing, to destroy the momentum collective?
We must act now, today, and must MILESTONE the way - we must hear in a year we’re effective. !!

PS I promise we'll all have teachers galore, and public health and wealth and more
but there's only one catch - it's a promise non-core!
it'll happen in 2200!!



PS I sure hope we will know before too much longer that we can do better than offer a promise for a goal measureable in 50 years time (i.e. 50% reduction by 2060 for crysake)

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/11/2116137.htm
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has met with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to discuss climate change and the relationship between the two countries.

Mr Rudd is in Bali as part of Australia's delegation at the UN climate change conference.

He is under pressure to back an interim greenhouse gas reduction target of up to 40 per cent for developed countries and he has come under fire from green groups for resisting the moves.

After the meeting, Mr Rudd said he would set binding emissions targets after he received the results of Government-commissioned research, which is due to be finalised in July next year.

"I understand a lot of things are still being negotiated," he said.

"The first starting point, of course, is that we respect and accept the work of the scientists."

In contrast, Mr Yudhoyono says Indonesia accepts the greenhouse gas reduction target of up to 40 per cent by 2020.

 

[2020hindsight]

IF BUDDHA HAD TO DRIVE IN SYDNEY TRAFFIC

I was driving quite close at the end of a queue
when a P plate pulled up beside,
and he stuck in his nose in the foot or two
twixt the bloke in front and I,
and to my surprise his blinker blinked
and he forced in -…. his win and my loss-
and I braked as required but my subconscious winked
“you’ll get yours or I’m not Stirling Moss”.

By the time I’d passed him, I’d upset a truck
and three semis, or was it four,
and the whole bludy queue had run amuck
with a dozen fights dripping in gore;
so the next time I’ll probably just pretend
what insult! .. what P plate! ... ignore!
and I’ll drive in my own cacoon and “transcend”
without risk of another war.

Now the Dalai Lama and I are soul mates
I smile at young pr1cks who cut in,
I listen to songs on 2CH
about love and why neighbours are kin,
But just for some fun, every now and then,
I let those mad backwheels spin,
and I watch their eyes light to the turbocharged might
of the company’s car – and I grin.

 

[2020hindsight]

PS we have a turbo-charged ute at work -
very easy to spin the wheels (in fact difficult not to) when you have an empty load )

 

[2020hindsight]

Originally Posted by 2020hindsight
Cardinal Pell says in the past, pagans sacrificed animals and even humans in vain attempts to placate the gods but today they demand a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

MANY AN IGNORANT WORD SPOKEN IN BLESSED

My granpa was the cautious type, he drilled the bore real deep
If now he saw that dried up pipe, I'm sure that he would weep
It's fifty metres deeper than it needed then be drilled
It now needs fifty metres just to see the trough half filled

Some bishop jokes that animals were sacrificed of old
Upon a pagan altar that would make your blood run cold
The sad thing is this egghead doesn't know how close he is
To the truth of what is happening. or how much the blame is his.

 

[2020hindsight]

THANK YOU BALI - FROM THE GENERATION AFTER THE NEXT

Bali finished, ................seeds of promise,
Oz at least at last on board,
no soul-diminished-.........doubting-Thomas-
yankee- umbil-ical-chord,
liked the bit .........when the votes came in
how the rest of the world fairly roared,
and particularly too.......... that final cave in -
and the nay-sayers being ignored.

The two-faced stuff grew heated,
two tears from a world two-tiered,
some dinosaurs unseated,
by the breakthroughs as Penny steered,
A penny for your thoughts, lass,
white and Wongly you were cheered,
we particularly liked how the towering U-S
were shown up, and conning-tower-jeered.

How kind of Mister Howard
to step down as an old has-been,
we've moved on from those cowardly days
to a world of a wiser green,
the old world's now "Decembered"
may these good guys ring a new bell,
and may Bali long be remembered
- as the first Penny in the Wishing Well.

"Give me Barley we can build on
may it's message yield full well,
give the grain to future children,
give the chaff to Cardinal Pell."

 

[2020hindsight]

posted on "tunes" - but qualifies here ... what a song -sheesh!

Linda Eder - I Never Knew His Name

This is Linda Eder singing the hauntingly beautiful "I Never Knew His Name" from the musical by her husband, Frank Wildhorn, called "The Civil War".

Linda Eder - I Never Knew His Name

I never knew his nam
As he called to me
Pleading with his eyes
Suddenly so wise
Trying not to cry
Now he's gone and I
Never knew his name

I've seen his kind before
Rising to his fall
God, he was so young
Like a song half sung
Interrupted by
Someone just as shy,
Who never knew his name

The true cost of honor is suddenly too clear
It measures too full and dear

He always looks the same
Dressed in blue or gray
All the life he'll miss
Girls he'll never kiss
Things he'll never try
Unaware that I
Never knew his name

I never knew his name
Guess it's just as well
So I do my part
Hiding from my heart
Whispering goodbye
Thanking God that I
Never knew his name

 

[2020hindsight]

THE IRISH PUB DISCUSSION ON GLOBAL WARMING

Some arguments are seconds long
and some a bloody hour
some power on for generations
(generating power)
It’s rare I guess to change direction,
then again, - perhaps
if “uniformed” or isle marooned, we’d be
ill inform-ed chaps.

Let English have their arguments
where “for” can argue white
“against” can argue ebony black
and maybe they’ll find “right”
but whether truth is grey or blue
or colours yet unseen
They’ll come on board to Irish ways
and future’s that are “green”.

Then there’s “Bloody Murphy” pubscenes
that are more like muddy blurr,
telescopic stellar topics
that are bigger than Ben Hur-
where we charge along in chariots
and we splash mud at each other
though we share the same road, same direction,
and same fate , my brother.

 

[$20shoes]

Thought I had better contribute some poems I've penned over time, as 2020 puts in some hard yards to keep this thread going... Hope you enjoy...be merciful with your critique

Season


Shocking aim she had that year,
Landing well short. Blanketing
in a Melbourne melancholy, days
that promise romance, And
deliver nought but a gin-soaked sky,

Fat, Slow and Grey; soaking up
The vast horizon. With
her blathering sentiment
shrouding from a tram load of
damp, black overcoats,

The park’s decree – Better to burn out
than to fade away. The encore
singing in its own decay.
With a chill, bastard wind,
To leave stark those limbs,

Imploring Like a Child its Mother,
with knotted eyes, For
hugs against such Southerly blows.
To await with body exposed,
the first caress of the summer sun.

 

[$20shoes]

Take This Poem for instance

Although I want to be,
I’m not much of a writer.
More a rejected try-hard –
Take this poem for instance.
That’s it! Be Abstract!
Tell them all
They’re guilty of misinterpretation;
Lose them in the confusion;
Write with awkward evasion.

And though armed with pen,
I’m as pissweak as can be,
Not one that you should read,
Take this poem for instance.
Be Warned! This Desire!
It can thieve
from the poetry of living,
With lips kissing, and
feeble thoughts a’stirring..

And though I be no wordsmith,
All Words seem resolute
To be but chewy on my boot.
Take this poem for instance.
And While This! Poor Shot!
Employs licenses Erratic
And so desperately ungrammatic,
There remains poetry in my breathing,
In my flowing rhythmic breathing.

 

[$20shoes]

Melinda’s Eyes



They are not like yours. And they are unlike mine.
Life abundant. Love Swollen: Such eyes has the girl I love-
a satellite snapshot of the Amazon basin.
And as though an object from space,
I have hurtled under her gravity toward my resting place.
The canopy: a fertile, lucent foliage,
Variegated with radial streams.
Where pliant, lays an April morning,
Through a poor man’s smudge of mist.
Where rips a course of rivulets, basin bound:
The final unction for sun-blest Vapour’s birth.
To be lost within; to be but lured.
To perforate the panoply of vines
And traverse the canopy
For her teeming echolalia.


Sustenance. Indefatigable sustenance.


These eyes would pull you in.
These eyes will draw your free falling whole
and make you wonder where you’ve been all your life
make you wonder if your heart’s been beating all this time.
No use a ticker that just pumps blood.
You could be alive…and dead too.
I know it well - I have drained through her basin,
Where pooled in peaceful dichotomy,
Lies melded, the blessed End; the wondrous Spring.


They are not like yours. And they are unlike mine.
Life abundant. Love Swollen: Such eyes, has the girl I love.
An eco-plenitude of love sensation.
These tannin stained streams invigorate.
Leeched from the heart, they rush these beds,
pushing the atom smashed heads
Of her heart,
To the burgeoning lowland waters.
(Such perturbations seek their own level).
The blood-let waltz downstream.
The refugee seeks emancipation,
And claims rebirth in the meandering melody;
Such a blessed orchestration.


Re-oxygenated. Rejuvenated. Re-elevated.




She’ll show you this world and half the next.
Make you remember; make you understand a little more.
You’ll swim until your heart should fail;
Until you doubt you’ve earned the right.

The flit across the eyes:
Who can say how long the journey?
Who can know the labyrinth of her life…even thus exposed?
This unbridled charity extols an eeking price:-
the cost of her provision – a selfless soul agape.
In but a glance for those who see:
See brimming banks, ready to revive.
Such is the wife’s true love; such must be the mother’s.

At day’s end I lay beside her,
With the forest growth complete,
Like Max’s room.
That I might sail, In and out of days,
to seek the most wild thing of all:
the sure grace of this God-grazing land,
Forever young.

Her defences are but chameleon.
There is no castle where man would be undone.
Why tilt at a love so pure? A perfect concentrate –
She richly gives and richly links – me to her, her to me.
Do you finally see, where Love’s let in?
Where it is echoed back?

It is why I love her and why I fall.

It is true, which I tell you – Her eyes.
They are not like yours. And they are unlike mine.

 

[$20shoes]

30 Montagu Road

Light streaming in through the sunroom windows,
With that particular air as much a part of the scene
As the warmth that remains from when I was a boy.
Not the musty smell from closed windows and damp rooms,
But a lifetime of living inhabits the home;
An imprint of memories that binds the decor.

That belongs to me only; that can’t be stipulated in a will,
But is all I want – to live a sentimental life now,
With Pop dozing in the sunlight and Nan dishing up garden vegetables,
As part of a sit down meal at the family table with no T.V.
And then to retire to the larger-than-life lounge room chairs.
With the arms wrapping around me like a mother’s hug.

To steal some lollies from the jars on the sideboard.
To know not how long they had been there…and not care.
And to stare out of the windows above the bookshelves
Where plovers hog the school grounds across the gravel way.
And to expect nothing more but that the roar of a logging truck
cement the scene, that now leaves me not.

We watched Border bat it out on a hot summer day.
(Later we would take that oval with bat in hand, and dream some more).
With Mum and Nan’s chatter filtering from the kitchen like a lullaby.
And the drawn out squeak and thwack of the back door
As Pop went out to toil in his vegetable patch.
To do whatever it is he did out there.

This was his domain. We often wandered past the fibro garage
Leaving a civilised path to take mule tracks through the
Garden beds. It was magical this place. It made me feel strong to eat its produce,
Not only for its taste but that it was picked by Pop tilling his garden.
That he did this for me while I played like a child and cared not a care,
(To know a peace I would not find again outside of childhood).

Each year to sift through the bookshelves in the sunroom,
Like I had done the year before and the years before that.
To not always read but to ache for their smell.
(My love of reading stemming from here as much as anywhere).
With Pop in his chair reading the daily paper in silence,
And the Boy blowing bubbles for us on the wall

 

[$20shoes]

Thought I had better contribute some poems I've penned over time, as 2020 puts in some hard yards to keep this thread going... Hope you enjoy...be merciful....

 

[2020hindsight]

20shoes - thanks , Montagu Rd is a beauty (as are the others - fan bludy tastic )

Earlier today I was thinking to myself about the great dogs I've had - in fact (funniest thing) I showed a photo of one of my favourite dogs ( from about 15 years ago) to my current dog - they are so so similar in character - both absolutely beautiful dogs (well, she's a bitch), and lol - she reached out with her nose and kissed the photo of him with a lick of her tongue lol

Big dogs sadly don't seem to live as long - how sad it is to lose a dog !! - when the vet told me that that first beautiful dog was only gonna live a few months (due to leukemia), I couldn't bring myself to tell the family - but I made him ring the missus to explain it)

Anyway here's a poem that came to mind - based on 10 dogs being about the same as 1 human life. ... (might be erring on the high side :2 twocents )


TEN DOGS TO ONE MASTER

A dog will age much faster
but ten dogs outlast one master
until finally you pass on
- praps a howl from your last hound;
Since the buried former nine
have been cause for you to pine
is that final whimpered whine or two -
your final smiling sound.?

When I push off from the world
I want kennels with me hurled
into Heaven where I’m heading
since my dogs are surely there,
and I’ll lie across their tops
and then, when the tenth dog flops,
then we’ll take some dogsled Santa-like
and bark beyond compare.

some brotherly dogsled fantasy
exploring Heaven's air. :2 twocents