Posted: 6/16/2017 9:22:16 PM EDT
| Go ahead and share your best poem. I'll start. |
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This is my favorite:
Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year. He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. |
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I'm just trying to resonate what's deep inside of me
The types of things I ponder, things that steal me from my sleep The types of things that are deep down in the pit of me Add it all up and it's just my self perceived epitome I am my own worst enemy as I constantly battle for air Words stick together like cotton candy from the hometown fair I just want to get out what I have known was always there Pad and a pen are my therapy for what my heart can't seem to bare I couldn't really express myself, not even to you. Thoughts are captive, words seamlessly vapid, who am I even speaking to? At a loss for words but what does it really matter Simple thoughts lost in translation, disrupted by the chatter 
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To be rich in spirit
And free from envy To rejoice greatly in the good of others And to Love with such generosity of heart That it is still a dear possession in times of absence or unkindness These are the fortunes money can not buy And without which, money can buy nothing He who has such a treasury of riches, being valiant in himself Shall enjoy the universe as if it were his own estate And heaven help the man to whom he lends a hand To help share it with him. |
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This takes a bit of back story.
In Iraq in 2008, my roommate didn't want to be bothered by walking 200 feet to the portajohns, so he'd just pee into empty water bottles and toss them over the fence into the mostly empty and gigantic motor pool. There were many bottles out there, and no one seemed to notice. I was annoyed, so I wrote a poem sung to the National Anthem and left it on his side of the 'chu. O say can you see, it is really a blight. All those bottles out there, It is really retarded. When one looks through the fence with adequate light, One thinks to one's self, "when will they be discarded?" And the bottles turn brown after they've been around For weeks upon weeks with the sun beating down. O say, will those nasty brown bottles disappear, 'Ere the next unit arrives and we pack up our gear? |
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Self-Pity
I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself. D.H. Lawrence On the plains of hesitation lie the blackened bones of countless millions who at the dawn of victory lay down to rest, and in resting died. Adlai E. Stevenson |
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Prologue, 18 lines Chaucer - The only thing our 10th grade English teacher made us memorize and recite (we did it like a mixture of French and German). I can still do it.
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote, The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licóur Of which vertú engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye, So priketh hem Natúre in hir corages, Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages, And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes, To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes; And specially, from every shires ende Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende, The hooly blisful martir for to seke, That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke. |
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What horrors have I seen
As I pursued these human dreams And how far have I slipped From the heavens where I once roamed freely What have I become? No better than those once beneath me Can I be whole again Since I’ve destroyed my meaning? I know I must banish the evil things to purge my heart and make it clean but it’s the subtle things that keep tempting me it’s the hidden things that my eyes can see that I crave to take and reward to me And now I see I cannot be healed It’s because of them That my fate is sealed Their wicked ways That drew me in And changed my soul From within So I’ll unleash my wrath Upon their souls So none of us Can be whole I’m going down But not alone We’ll all call hell Our eternal home One day they’ll stop And gaze at me And realize exactly what I was meant to be A God above them A judge, a king “We brought you low” They’ll scream Filled with sorrow And great weeping |
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Anything by Robert Service.
"...Oh, it was wild and weird and wan, and ever in camp o' nights We would watch and watch the silver dance of the mystic Northern Lights. And soft they danced from the Polar sky and swept in primrose haze; And swift they pranced with their silver feet, and pierced with a blinding blaze. They danced a cotillion in the sky; they were rose and silver shod; It was not good for the eyes of man--'twas a sight for the eyes of God. It made us mad and strange and sad, and the gold whereof we dreamed Was all forgot, and our only thought was of the lights that gleamed. Oh, the tundra sponge it was golden brown, and some was a bright blood-red; And the reindeer moss gleamed here and there like the tombstones of the dead. And in and out and around about the little trail ran clear, And we hated it with a deadly hate and we feared with a deadly fear. And the skies of night were alive with light, with a throbbing, thrilling flame; Amber and rose and violet, opal and gold it came. It swept the sky like a giant scythe, it quivered back to a wedge; Argently bright, it cleft the night with a wavy golden edge. Pennants of silver waved and streamed, lazy banners unfurled; Sudden splendors of sabres gleamed, lightning javelins were hurled. There in our awe we crouched and saw with our wild, uplifted eyes Charge and retire the hosts of fire in the battlefield of the skies..." The Ballad of the Northern Lights |
 2017/02/14: A Picture of Mohamed |
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High Flight
By John Gillespie Magee, Jr. "Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence. Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air. "Up, up the long delirious burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace, where never lark, or even eagle, flew; and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand and touched the face of God." |
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The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk-- I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth, But not the soul behind. The men of my own stock, They may do ill or well, But they tell the lies I am wanted to, They are used to the lies I tell; And we do not need interpreters When we go to buy or sell. The Stranger within my gates, He may be evil or good, But I cannot tell what powers control-- What reasons sway his mood; Nor when the Gods of his far-off land Shall repossess his blood. The men of my own stock, Bitter bad they may be, But, at least, they hear the things I hear, And see the things I see; And whatever I think of them and their likes They think of the likes of me. This was my father's belief And this is also mine: Let the corn be all one sheaf-- And the grapes be all one vine, Ere our children's teeth are set on edge By bitter bread and wine. |
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“Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me As plurdled gabbleblotchits On a lurgid bee. Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes And hooptiously drangle me With crinkly bindlewurdles, Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don’t!” |
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At first glance, I read "Porn thread."
Got all kinds of excited. 
Oddly enough, while I'm not a fan of Emily Dickinson's other works, this may be my favorite poem of all. There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul – |
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At first glance, I read “Porn thread;”
And it got me all aroused. So I grabbed the Breakfree, some mayo, and a sock And whipped little 9-Line out. Imagine my surprise when I opened the thread And got a better look, So I had to put away the Fap Kit And posted “There Is No Frigate Like A Book.” 
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I was asked by a teacher in the fifth grade to memorize a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson entitled "My Shadow" (I think...) and I'm going to see just how much I recall before I resort to Google.
It went something like this: I have a little shadow who goes in and out with me And what can be the use of him is more than I can see. He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way He sometimes grows up taller like an India rubber ball And he sometimes gets so small that there's none of him at all Uhhh, yeah, that's all I can remember. Off to Google... ETA: Yeah, fifth grade was a LONG time ago. Like 1970-something, to be exact... 
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I like Frost.
A Drumlin Woodchuck One thing has a shelving bank, Another a rotting plank, To give it cozier skies And make up for its lack of size. My own strategic retreat Is where two rocks almost meet, And still more secure and snug, A two-door burrow I dug. With those in mind at my back I can sit forth exposed to attack As one who shrewdly pretends That he and the world are friends. All we who prefer to live Have a little whistle we give, And flash, at the least alram We dive down under the farm. We allow some time for guile And don't come out for a while Either to eat or drink. We take occasion to think. And if after the hunt goes past And the double-barreled blast (Like war and pestilence And the loss of common sense), If I can with confidence say That still for another day, Or even another year, I will be there for you, my dear, It will be because, though small As measured against the All, I have been so instinctively thorough About my crevice and burrow. |
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Quoted:
<snip> The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. |
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The 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. Randall Jarrell, 1914 - 1965 |
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My favorite!
The Bridge Builder By Will Allen Dromgoole An old man going a lone highway, Came, at the evening cold and gray, To a chasm vast and deep and wide. Through which was flowing a sullen tide The old man crossed in the twilight dim, The sullen stream had no fear for him; But he turned when safe on the other side And built a bridge to span the tide. “Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near, “You are wasting your strength with building here; Your journey will end with the ending day, You never again will pass this way; You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide, Why build this bridge at evening tide?” The builder lifted his old gray head; “Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said, “There followed after me to-day A youth whose feet must pass this way. This chasm that has been as naught to me To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be; He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!” |
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Our budding entanglement started off tender,
But as our hearts opened it fell in the blender. Fireside snuggling turned spring golden showers, Sprinkling excitement that soon, too, went sour. So when the last passion had faded with timeAnd the blush on your cheeks cost me my last dime, Yet I knew it was worn for an outsider's gazeBy the bouquet you kept in your cubical space, You came home to find that I'd shredded your clothesAnd your cat in the flowerbed feeding a rose. --VMole, brah. From an ooold thread.
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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand; A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? |