Why Not Poetry?

[M. Demetrius]

Well, I wrote this a few years ago, and I guess that it proves that not only do some straight men read poetry, some of us even write it. Anyway, since others are not quoting just one stanza, here goes:

 

Signatures

David Wills

 

When we're huddled 'round the fire in December's stormy blow

And the snow is dancing jigs around our knees,

And the naked branches rattle in the field all night and day

With no scrap of tattered leaf towards wind or lee

And the morning shows no shadows and the grey sky rubs our caps,

And we wonder how much colder could it be--

Just remember there's good purpose for this shivering that we feel,

And the Planner's put it there for you and me.

 

Like a novel has its chapters, and a poem has its verse,

And a concert's movements measure short or long,

So each season has a purpose with a meaning all its own

Like each songbird offers up a different song.

Using starshine for its pigment on the frozen window glass,

The Winter scrawls its signature along.

Our mortal way of viewing life is like that shining frost:

Though we thinke we're made of power, we are wrong.

 

Let the chilly blast of winter jab its fingers at our ears,

And we bow our heads no matter where we stand.

Yes, the Plan has made us humble, and we tremble with its power,

and we whisper, "What a feeble thing is Man."

Yet, a masterpiece are we, and no finer could be found

Whether searching out the sky or sea or land

For the signatures our windows bear is authored by the Lord,

And is written in His blood, by His own hand.

Edited January 26, 2008 by M. Demetrius

[Nephele]

And every evening (or am I imagining?)

Exactly at the appointed time

A girl

[Faustus]

And, because I've insomnia tonight, I'll do one more by anagramming your Muse, too, Faustus:

 

Petula Yearwoode (anagram of "you were a tadpole").

 

-- Nephele

Thanks Nephele. I've always wanted a Muse. I like it. It fits, it really does! And I've always had a fondness for Petula Clark; and Yearwoode? What could be more fitting! See the following:

 

Evolution ~ (Langdon Smith)

 

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish

In the Paleozoic time,

And side by side on the ebbing tide

We sprawled through the ooze and slime,

 

Or skittered with many a caudal flip

Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,

My heart was rife with the joy of life,

For I loved you even then.

 

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved

And mindless at last we died;

And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift

We slumbered side by side.

 

The world turned on in the lathe of time,

The hot lands heaved amain,

Till we caught our breath from the womb of death

And crept into light again.

 

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,

And drab as a dead man's hand;

We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees

Or trailed through the mud and sand.

 

Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet

Writing a language dumb,

With never a spark in the empty dark

To hint at a life to come.

 

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,

And happy we died once more;

Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold

Of a Neocomian shore.

 

The eons came and the eons fled

And the sleep that wrapped us fast

Was riven away in the newer day

And the night of death was past.

 

Then light and swift through the jungle trees

We swung in our airy flights,

Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms

In the hush of the moonless nights;

 

And oh! what beautiful years were there

When our hearts clung each to each;

When life was filled and our senses thrilled

In the first faint dawn of speech.

 

Thus life by life and love by love

We passed through the cycles strange,

And breath by breath and death by death

We followed the chain of change.

 

Till there came a time in the law of life

When over the nursing side

The shadows broke and the soul awoke

In a strange, dim dream of God.

 

I was thewed like an Auroch bull

And tusked like the great cave bear;

And you, my sweet, from head to feet

Were gowned in your glorious hair.

 

Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,

When the night fell o'er the plain

And the moon hung red o'er the river bed

We mumbled the bones of the slain.

 

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge

And shaped it with brutish craft;

I broke a shank from the woodland lank

And fitted it, head and haft;

 

Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,

Where the mammoth came to drink;

Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone

And slew him upon the brink.

 

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,

Loud answered our kith and kin;

From west to east to the crimson feast

The clan came tramping in.

 

O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof

We fought and clawed and tore,

And cheek by jowl with many a growl

We talked the marvel o'er.

 

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone

With rude and hairy hand;

I pictured his fall on the cavern wall

That men might understand.

 

For we lived by blood and the right of might

Ere human laws were drawn,

And the age of sin did not begin

Till our brutal tush was gone.

 

And that was a million years ago

In a time that no man knows;

Yet here tonight in the mellow light

We sit at Delmonico's.

 

Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,

Your hair is dark as jet,

Your years are few, your life is new,

Your soul untried, and yet --

 

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay

And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;

We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones

And deep in the Coralline crags;

 

Our love is old, our lives are old,

And death shall come amain;

Should it come today, what man may say

We shall not live again?

 

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds

And furnished them wings to fly;

He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,

And I know that I shall not die,

 

Though cities have sprung above the graves

Where the crook-bone men make war

And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves

Where the mummied mammoths are.

 

Then as we linger at luncheon here

O'er many a dainty dish,

Let us drink anew to the time when you

Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

 

 

Faustus

---------------

Edited January 26, 2008 by Faustus

[spittle]

Yes. Straight men read, write and even enjoy poetry!

 

I just don't 'get it'. It leaves me cold. Abstract art also fails to reach me. I think I'm just too grounded for it.

Maybe its a left/right brain thing?

 

Millions of people can't all be wrong so I accept the problem is on my side of the fence.

[Faustus]

[Gaius Octavius]

Just for spittle.

 

Thomas R. Lounsbury, ed. (1838

[Gaius Octavius]

One more for spittle.

 

 

Sir Walter Scott

 

Lochinvar

 

O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,

Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;

And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,

He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.

 

He staid not for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone,

He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;

But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,

The bride had consented, the gallant came late:

For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,

Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

 

So boldly he enter'd the Netherby Hall,

Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all:

Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,

(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)

"O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,

Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"

 

"I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied; --

Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide --

And now I am come, with this lost love of mine,

To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.

There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,

That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."

 

The bride kiss'd the goblet: the knight took it up,

He quaff'd off the wine, and he threw down the cup.

She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh,

With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.

He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, --

"Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

 

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,

That never a hall such a gailiard did grace;

While her mother did fret, and her father did fume

And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;

And the bride-maidens whisper'd, "'twere better by far

To have match'd our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."

 

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,

When they reach'd the hall-door, and the charger stood near;

So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,

So light to the saddle before her he sprung!

"She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;

They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

 

There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;

Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:

There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,

But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.

So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,

Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?

 

1808

[Horatius]

I just don't 'get it'. It leaves me cold. Abstract art also fails to reach me. I think I'm just too grounded for it.

Maybe its a left/right brain thing?

 

Millions of people can't all be wrong so I accept the problem is on my side of the fence.

Here you go Spittle

[Gaius Paulinus Maximus]

Horatius by Thomas Babbington Macaulay

 

Lars Porsena of Closium

By the Nine Gods he swore

That the great house of Tarquin

Should suffer wrong no more.

By the Nine Gods he swore it,

And named a trysting day,

And bade his messengers ride forth,

East and west and south and north,

To summon his array.

 

East and west and south and north

The messengers ride fast,

And tower and town and cottage

Have heard the trumpet's blast.

Shame on the false Etruscan

Who lingers in his home,

When Porsena of Clusium

Is on the march for Rome.

 

The horsemen and the footmen

Are pouring in amain

From many a stately market-place,

From many a fruitful plain,

From many a lonely hamlet,

Which, hid by beech and pine,

Like an eagle's nest,

hangs on the crest Of purple Apennine;

 

From lordly Volaterr

Edited January 26, 2008 by Gaius Paulinus Maximus

[Gaius Octavius]

For my friend, Pertinax, who lately languished in the Pokey of Peter of Perth*.

 

 

 

Ellen McJones Aberdeen

 

MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN

Was the son of an elderly labouring man;

You've guessed him a Scotchman, shrewd reader, at sight,

And p'r'aps altogether, shrewd reader, you're right.

 

From the bonnie blue Forth to the lovely Deeside,

Round by Dingwall and Wrath to the mouth of the Clyde,

There wasn't a child or a woman or man

Who could pipe with CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN.

 

No other could wake such detestable groans,

With reed and with chaunter - with bag and with drones:

All day and ill night he delighted the chiels

With sniggering pibrochs and jiggety reels.

 

He'd clamber a mountain and squat on the ground,

And the neighbouring maidens would gather around

To list to the pipes and to gaze in his een,

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.

 

All loved their McCLAN, save a Sassenach brute,

Who came to the Highlands to fish and to shoot;

He dressed himself up in a Highlander way,

Tho' his name it was PATTISON CORBY TORBAY.

 

TORBAY had incurred a good deal of expense

To make him a Scotchman in every sense;

But this is a matter, you'll readily own,

That isn't a question of tailors alone.

 

A Sassenach chief may be bonily built,

He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt;

Stick a skein in his hose - wear an acre of stripes -

But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.

 

CLONGLOCKETY'S pipings all night and all day

Quite frenzied poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY;

The girls were amused at his singular spleen,

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN,

 

"MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS, my lad,

With pibrochs and reels you are driving me mad.

If you really must play on that cursed affair,

My goodness! play something resembling an air."

 

Boiled over the blood of MACPHAIRSON McCLAN -

The Clan of Clonglocketty rose as one man;

For all were enraged at the insult, I ween -

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.

 

"Let's show," said McCLAN, "to this Sassenach loon

That the bagpipes CAN play him a regular tune.

Let's see," said McCLAN, as he thoughtfully sat,

"'IN MY COTTAGE' is easy - I'll practise at that."

 

He blew at his "Cottage," and blew with a will,

For a year, seven months, and a fortnight, until

(You'll hardly believe it) McCLAN, I declare,

Elicited something resembling an air.

 

It was wild - it was fitful - as wild as the breeze -

It wandered about into several keys;

It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh, I'm aware;

But still it distinctly suggested an air.

 

The Sassenach screamed, and the Sassenach danced;

He shrieked in his agony - bellowed and pranced;

And the maidens who gathered rejoiced at the scene -

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.

 

"Hech gather, hech gather, hech gather around;

And fill a' ye lugs wi' the exquisite sound.

An air fra' the bagpipes - beat that if ye can!

Hurrah for CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS McCLAN!"

 

The fame of his piping spread over the land:

Respectable widows proposed for his hand,

And maidens came flocking to sit on the green -

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.

 

One morning the fidgety Sassenach swore

He'd stand it no longer - he drew his claymore,

And (this was, I think, in extremely bad taste)

Divided CLONGLOCKETTY close to the waist.

 

Oh! loud were the wailings for ANGUS McCLAN,

Oh! deep was the grief for that excellent man;

The maids stood aghast at the horrible scene -

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.

 

It sorrowed poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY

To find them "take on" in this serious way;

He pitied the poor little fluttering birds,

And solaced their souls with the following words:

 

"Oh, maidens," said PATTISON, touching his hat,

"Don't blubber, my dears, for a fellow like that;

Observe, I'm a very superior man,

A much better fellow than ANGUS McCLAN."

 

They smiled when he winked and addressed them as "dears,"

And they all of them vowed, as they dried up their tears,

A pleasanter gentleman never was seen -

Especially ELLEN McJONES ABERDEEN.

 

William S Gilbert

 

---------------------------------

 

* http://www.unrv.com/forum/index.php?automo...p;showentry=467

Edited January 26, 2008 by Gaius Octavius

[Gaius Octavius]

Just in case anyone is interested:

 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/

[Faustus]

(Hammer ~ Mark Turpin)

 

Before Groundbreak

 

Off work and going upslope for a look

I left the plans, to see the view

their money bought, weighted with a rock,

 

and trampled a path of parted weeds

past pampas, nettles,

poison oak bristling in the breeze,

 

a weathered 2x4 nailed high up in a cedar

[Gladius Hispaniensis]

I simply have no words to describe the effect Tennyson's poetry has on me, and has had on me since adolescence. I truly think he was the greatest poet that ever lived. Here is just one of my favourite parts of "Morte d'Arthur" which is one of my favourite Tennyson poems:

 

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge:

'The old order changeth, yielding place to new,

And God fulfils Himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me?

I have lived my life, and that which I have done

May He within Himself make pure! but thou,

If thou shouldst never see my face again,

Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer

Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice

Rise like a fountain for me night and day.

For what are men better than sheep and goats

That nourish a blind life within the brain,

If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer

Both for themselves and those who call them friend?

For so the whole round earth is every way

Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.

But now farewell. I am going a long way

With these thou seest - if indeed I go -

(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt)

To the island-valley of Avilion;

Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,

Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies

Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard-lawns

And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea,

Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.'

 

Don't laugh - but I have cried myself to sleep reading this poem!

[Faustus]

I simply have no words to describe the effect Tennyson's poetry has on me, and has had on me Don't laugh - but I have cried myself to sleep reading this poem!

I think it

Edited January 27, 2008 by Faustus

[spittle]

I have spent more than my fair share within institutions (Youth Offending, Rehab, Prison....) and in every single place we were encouraged to write poetry.

 

To me this was a way of providing a kind of emotional outlet for the guys who had so little education they couldn't articulate their feelings and frequently exploded into aggressive displays.

 

It never ceased to amaze me how many convicts used the opening line

"No bail,

Just jail....."

 

I feel depressed just remembering them all.