A Poetry Thread

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donbosco

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Anything Goes from classical to the most modern and certainly unconventional...and though the prefix is "Off Topic" political poetry is most welcome. In fact, here's the kickoff...a poem political by Carl Sandburg...

The People, Yes​

by Carl Sandburg


The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
“I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time.”

The people is a tragic and comic two-face:
hero and hoodlum: phantom and gorilla
twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth: “They
buy me and sell me . . . it's a game . . .
sometime I'll break loose . . .”
Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.
The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.

The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise.
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:
“Where to? what next?”
 
Duke is puke.
Wake is fake.
The team I hate is NC State.
The one for you, the one for me.
The one and only, UNC
 
One bright day, in the middle of the night,
Two dead boys got up to fight.
Back to back, they faced each other,
Drew their swords and shot each other.
A deaf policeman heard the noise,
And came and shot the two dead boys.
If you don’t believe this lie is true,
Ask the blind man; he saw it, too.
 
i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his wellbelovéd colonel(trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms(first knocking on the head
him)do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toiletbowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf(being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds,without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blueeyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the firstclassprivates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skilfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf(upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president, being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellowsonofabitch
into a dungeon, where he died

Christ(of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see;and Olaf,too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me: more blond than you.
 
"Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abby" by William Wordsworth.

On the occasion of my father's 80th birthday, many years ago and as a birthday present, I wrote down every family story, tall tale, and amusing ancedote I had ever heard him tell and I actually remembered. I captioned this "collection" with a line from "Tintern Abbey" - ". . . that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts of kindness and of love."

 
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My all time favorite Sandburg: High Moments

Was not familiar with this poem. It put me in mind of this one by Ezra Pound:

Erat Hora

'Thank you, whatever comes.' And then she turned
And, as the ray of sun on hanging flowers
Fades when the wind hath lifted them aside,
Went swiftly from me. Nay, whatever comes
One hour was sunlit and the most high gods
May not make boast of any better thing
Than to have watched that hour as it passed.
 
A poem by a client of mine...

Too Late For Change

She begs on the busy corner,
her presence a fault
in a sidewalk everyone sees
but no one repairs.

Her orange and yellow vest
a badge of poverty,
a carboard sign scrawled
Need food, God Bless

Her cigarette dangles
Isn't that expensive ? I wonder
ready to begrudge
her luxury

My hand hovers
over my purse
as if my money were gold
and I a god dispensing favor

I pull out some change,
but the light turns green
and I surge ahead
to join the indifferent stream
 
As this seems like a serious thread, I post this with apprehension.
If it is inappropriate, let me know and I'll delete.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Fuck you trump, and your maga's too.

I've never been that greatly drawn to poems. Maybe reading more of them is something I should do in my old age.

I did recently listen to an interview with the current youth poet laureate from Dallas, Texas.

 
When I lived in Greensboro I passed by an NC Historical Marker that pointed to the grave of the poet Randall Jarrell (he taught at UNCG).
His poems were to their own rhythm and often rough and about war.



One of his most famous was the short “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.”

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur
froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.



Despite the grim nature of this example, he served as a navigator in the US Army Air Corps during WWII, he had a wry sense of humor. In 1956 he served in the position that would become national poet laureate.

It turns out that he died quite near the place where I once lived in Chapel Hill on Dogwood Acres Drive. As best I've been able to figure he must have been struck by a car somewhere just south of where the old Watts Motel was located, perhaps along where the lighted soccer fields are today. It was dusk. He was troubled -- it was his way of life I think. Some suggest his death was suicide. More here but not enough: Randall Jarrell, Poet, Killed by Car in Carolina
 
When I lived in Greensboro I passed by an NC Historical Marker that pointed to the grave of the poet Randall Jarrell (he taught at UNCG).
His poems were to their own rhythm and often rough and about war.



One of his most famous was the short “Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.”

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur
froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.



Despite the grim nature of this example, he served as a navigator in the US Army Air Corps during WWII, he had a wry sense of humor. In 1956 he served in the position that would become national poet laureate.

It turns out that he died quite near the place where I once lived in Chapel Hill on Dogwood Acres Drive. As best I've been able to figure he must have been struck by a car somewhere just south of where the old Watts Motel was located, perhaps along where the lighted soccer fields are today. It was dusk. He was troubled -- it was his way of life I think. Some suggest his death was suicide. More here but not enough: Randall Jarrell, Poet, Killed by Car in Carolina
That poem has always devastated me, nearly every time I've read it and that's a lot over the years.
 
Was not familiar with this poem. It put me in mind of this one by Ezra Pound:
I don't mean to be too critical, but is now the best time, historically speaking, to be quoting Ezra Pound? Put it this way: we would very much not like him if he were alive today.
 
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