My Poems: anti-war, light verse, and about poetry.

[SteveH]

In Memory of Wilfred Owen

Glory's the lie wars cancer feed upon,
You said. You told the truth: that war is hell,
But now the guns are still. Your task is done.

The tales of glory that the old men spun
You showed as lies - you broke their hateful spell.
Glory's the lie war's cancer feeds upon.

For all the dead, destroyed by gas or gun,
Yours was the voice that questioned why they fell -
but now the guns are still. Your task is done.

War was the enemy, and not the Hun.
No glorious combat: gangrene, gas and shell.
Glory's the lie war's cancer feeds upon.

The gun that spat your hasty orison
Could never kill the bitter truth you tell,
But now the guns are still. Your task is done:

And when the final war on death is won,
The unnumbered dead will have their passing-bell.
Glory remains the lie war feeds upon,
And other guns boom still: our task goes on.


Qui Desiderat Pacem, Praeparat Bellum

Safeguard virginity through fornication,
Guarantee chastity by being a whore:
Stockpile your weapons, bring peace to the nation:
"If you want peace, you must prepare for war".


Combat Training

Remember, he is something less than man:
He is a kraut, a terrorist, a jew.
He'll try to rape your sister if he can:
Remember, he is different from you.

It isn't really murder, after all:
It's best to think of it as just a kind
Of cleansing operation: pest control.
That makes it easier, I think you'll find.

When duty calls, will you shrink back, afraid,
Or stand up with your comrades, firm and strong?
Go out and show the stuff of which you're made,
And make your pledge "my country, right or wrong!"

Ignore your conscience - soon you'll find you're willing
To do what normally you would abhore.
Demean the victim, euphemise the killing,
Follow the crowd - remember, this is war!

[SteveH]

Types of Poem I Don't Like

Poems by Christians of the hand-waving tendency that are sentimental and theologically dubious.
Poems that uncritically retail every fashionable idea and new bias.
Poems whose rhyme and metre are a bit hit-and-miss.
Poems I can't make head or tail of (quite a large category, this).
Poems that could make perfect sense if only the poet tried a little harder.
Poems that list the contents of the poet's larder.
Poems about domestic life that casually let me know the poet's an intellectual.
Poems about domestic life that complain that the poet's husband's ineffectual.
Poems about writers I'm never likely to read a word of.
Poems dedicated to people I've never heard of.
Poems dedicated to people everybody's heard of, to show what important friends the poet's got.
Poems that are furiously passionate on subjects about which sensible people care not one jot.
Poems with a chip on their shoulder.
Poems about getting older.
Poems that are technically faultless but twee.
All poems in magazines that never accept poems from me.


Alexander Pope Rewrites 'Baa Baa Black Sheep'

Stay, ebon scion of the wooly race,
And prithee turn to me thy swarthy face;
Exchange thy customary bleats for words
(Though rhetorician's gifts in beastly herds
Are very rarely found), and indicate
Thy sable fleece's volume, and its fate.
"Three bags of dusky filaments, quite full -
One's Master Horsfall's,* which he means to pull
Over the critics' visionary spheres,
In hope t'avoid the censure which he fears
(Just censure, vain attempt!) One's for the Dame
(Though monarch's dubbings now bestow such fame
On daughters of the merest artizan:
All whom the democratick zephyrs fan).
Behold: a youth, with gay career, has gone
Down yonder rustic highway - he gets one:
Which means, dear sir, I much regret to say,
I haven't any left for you. Good day!"

*i.e. me - Steve Horsfall.


Robbie Burns Rewrites 'Hickory Dickory Dock'

Waur art thou gangin, wee bit mousie?
Thou ken'st a clock is nae a housie.
I wad be laith to rin and bruise thee
Wi' murderous broom,
So off awa thou gangst and choose thee
Some ither room.

I ken I wrecked thy former hame
Wi' my great pleuch: but a' the same
I canna feel I was tae blame -
I didna see thee;
And after a', my grief and shame
Led me to free thee.

When yonder clock is striking ane
The din will cause thee muckle pain,
And then thou'lt rin back doun again
Wi' bickering brattle.
If noise can mak a mouse insane,
Why, surely that'll!


Gerard Manley Hopkins Rewrites 'Ding Dong Bell'

As tumbled over rim in roundy well
Cat mews: each hung bell's bow swung goes ding dong:
Who tumbled kitty all the well's depth along?
Young Johnny Green, the boy-next-door from hell.
Stout lad, Tom Stout, hearing the warning bell,
Rushed then. What then? Reached the green ferns among
And dripping stones, and, with a merry song
Upon his lips, pulled pussy out, pell-mell.

Clipped round the ear for a nuisance he's to mend,
Has Johnny learnt his lesson? Wild or tame,
Cats don't go well in wells: instead, befriend
A fleet-foot feline. All good folk exclaim
When cats fall, gall themselves, at a well's end,
Crying "What obnoxious flaming brat's to blame?"


After Chesterton

After the English drunkards made the rolling roads that they rode,
The stupid English planners made the ghastly English A-road:
But I gave thanks for bike paths built by those whose values differed
The day I rode to Watlington by way of Crowmarsh Gifford.

[SteveH]

The Definition of Poetry

"The music of what happens" is what Seamus
Heaney thinks poetry is all about,
Which is as much help - none - as the more famous
Wordsworthian definition - which, no doubt,
You don't need me to quote. I've never found
One that I thought was really satisfactory.
Poetry is mercurial - won't be bound
By dusty definitions. It's refractory.
Its indefinability is what
Defines it - and if that's a paradox,
The muses, one and all, care not one jot,
Delighting as they do in jolts and shocks.
No lexicographer has yet come near it.
The truth is this - you know it when you hear it.


John Clare

From the asylum, poor insane John Clare
Looked back upon his life and wrote 'I am'.
The unmeant blasphemy's ironic, for
He felt cast down, not god-like, at the time.
He wrote it twice - three stanzas, and one sonnet.
The stanzas are more famous - but for me
The other poem has such thoughts within it
As make me start to understand just why
He felt the cold, dead hand of time upon him
Crushing his sense of who he was, and where.
The fashionable types began to shun him -
All but a few - and earth put out his fire.
A heart of stone would melt at the sad, small
Two words with which the sonnet ends: "that's all".


For John Keats on his 200th birthday, 31st October 1995

In 1820 you arrived in Rome
Knowing within a year you would be dead.
You could not look on letters sent from home:
With you were buried Fanny Brawne's, unread.
Your name was "writ in water", you believed:
Those words, inscribed on your Italian grave
Prove that your dying gloom had you deceived -
For, John, your name grew to a tidal wave.

Your fame's assured. Your name's writ in the heart
Of all who love your "demon poesy";
Your day, and all its sweets, are far from gone.
This poor pastiche I'm writing is my part
In thanking you. You've meant a lot to me,
So, with my love, accept this sonnet, John.

[Pendragon]

Nice sonnets! You need to enter the current form poetry contest! The current form is a sonnet of sorts, I won't ruin the surprise! Good sonnets doesn't even begin to describe yours though, and I write a lot of sonnets! http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/ThumbsUp.gif

[lewis allan]

not entirely on topic, but it made me think of this, and its interesting nonetheless. its by delmore schwartz:

The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry
His power is his left hand
It is idle weak and precious
His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him
like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience
And this he may be destroyed by the gold of the light
which never was
On land or sea.
He may be drunken to death, draining the casks of excess
That extreme form of success.
He may suffer Narcissus' destiny
Unable to live except with the image which is infatuation
Love, blind, adoring, overflowing
Unable to respond to anything which does not bring love
quickly or immediately.

...The poet must be innocent and ignorant
But he cannot be innocent since stupidity is not his strong
point
Therefore Cocteau said, "What would I not give
To have the poems of my youth withdrawn from
existence?
I would give to Satan my immortal soul."
This metaphor is wrong, for it is his immortal soul which
he wished to redeem,
Lifting it and sifting it, free and white, from the actuality of
youth's banality, vulgarity,
pomp and affectation of his early
works of poetry.

So too in the same way a Famous American Poet
When fame at last had come to him sought out the fifty copies
of his first book of poems which had been privately printed
by himself at his own expense.
He succeeded in securing 48 of the 50 copies, burned them
And learned then how the last copies were extant,
As the law of the land required, stashed away in the national capital,
at the Library of Congress.
Therefore he went to Washington, therefore he took out the last two
copies
Placed them in his pocket, planned to depart
Only to be halted and apprehended. Since he was the author,
Since they were his books and his property he was reproached
But forgiven. But the two copies were taken away from him
Thus setting a national precedent.

For neither amnesty nor forgiveness is bestowed upon poets, poetry and poems,
For William James, the lovable genius of Harvard
spoke the terrifying truth: "Your friends may forget, God
may forgive you, But the brain cells record
your acts for the rest of eternity."
What a terrifying thing to say!
This is the endless doom, without remedy, of poetry.
This is also the joy everlasting of poetry.

[Pendragon]

I think these two lines say it all, and I laughed, and had to agree, as I have a drawer full of rejection slips myself!



Poems that are technically faultless but twee.
All poems in magazines that never accept poems from me.


http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/ThumbsUp.gif

You rock! http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/Grin.gif

[Pendragon]

I really liked the villanelle. Very good. http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l108/AbsalomKane/Smilies/ThumbsUp.gif

The others, I agree with the sediments, but they could be taken as "chip on the shoulder" or "preachey".

[Logos]

Sorry, topics merged, please see this topic:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21394

[SteveH]

Oops - sorry, Logos! Maybe I should've read the guidelines before posting.

Thanks for the comments, Pendragon and Lewis, esp. Pen's very complimentary ones! Point taken about the preachiness of some of the anti-war ones.