/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.1325411]

What's your favorite poem?

[Anonymous No.1325413]

The tay bridge disaster

[Anonymous No.1325415]

Charles Bukowski
Riots

I've watched this city burn twice 

in my lifetime

and the most notable thing

was the arrival of the

politicians in the

aftermath

proclaiming the wrongs of

the system

and demanding new

policies toward and for the

poor.

nothing was corrected last 

time.

nothing will be corrected this 

time.

the poor will remain poor.

the unemployed will remain

so.

the homeless will remain

homeless

and the politicians,

fat upon the land, will live

forever.

[Anonymous No.1325418]

"Ceremony after a fire raid" by Dylan Thomas

[Anonymous No.1325420]

>>1325413
I must now conclude my lay
By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay,
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say,
Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses do build,
The less chance we have of being killed.

[Anonymous No.1325422]

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

or

This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

[God Waitings !!bA4v/Y12VxC No.1325438]

I Speak of the City by Octavio Paz

there is none better.

[Ziggy Stardust !LrtpfUHOC. No.1325451]

>>1325415
wow, that's a good one...i thought bukowski sucked at poems.

Here's my fav, so popular that it's my eternal favourite.

Pablo Neruda
Love poem number 20

Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Escribir, por ejemplo: "La noche está estrellada,
y tiritan, azules, los astros, a los lejos"
El viento de la noche gira en el cielo y canta.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Yo la quise, y a veces ella también me quiso.
En las noches como esta la tuve entre mis brazos.
La besé tantas veces bajo el cielo infinito.
Ella me quiso, a veces yo también la quería.
Cómo no haber amado sus grandes ojos fijos.
Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche.
Pensar que no la tengo. Sentir que la he perdido.
Oír la noche inmensa, más inmensa sin ella.
Y el verso cae al alma como al pasto el rocío.
Que importa que mi amor no pudiera guardarla.
La noche está estrellada y ella no está conmigo.
Eso es todo. A lo lejos alguien canta. A lo lejos.
Mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Como para acercarla mi mirada la busca.
Mi corazón la busca y ella no está conmigo.
La misma noche que hace blanquear los mismos árboles,
Nosotros, los de entonces, ya no somos los mismos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero cuanto la quise.
Mi voz buscaba el viento para tocar su oído.
De otro. Será de otro. Como antes de mis besos.
Su voz, su cuerpo claro. Sus ojos infinitos.
Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido.
Porque en noches como ésta la tuve entre mis brazos,
mi alma no se contenta con haberla perdido.
Aunque éste sea el último dolor que ella me causa,
y éstos sean los últimos versos que yo le escribo.

[Anonymous No.1325465]

>>1325451
>i thought bukowski sucked at poems.
>his main claim to fame is his poetry

[Deep&Edgy !0cFCxEEM86 No.1325482]

>>1325422

I really like Larkin. Here's another of his [heroically braved poemhunter.com!]:

I Say I Say I Say

Anyone here had a go at themselves
for a laugh? Anyone opened their wrists
with a blade in the bath? Those in the dark
at the back, listen hard. Those at the front
in the know, those of us who have, hands up,
let's show that inch of lacerated skin
between the forearm and the fist. Let's tell it
like it is: strong drink, a crimson tidemark
round the tub, a yard of lint, white towels
washed a dozen times, still pink. Tough luck.
A passion then for watches, bangles, cuffs.
A likely story: you were lashed by brambles
picking berries from the woods. Come clean, come good,
repeat with me the punch line 'Just like blood'
when those at the back rush forward to say
how a little love goes a long long long way.

Simon Armitage

[Anonymous No.1325497]

I know everyone likes Eliot, well mostly, still I love it.

WEBSTER was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

[Anonymous No.1325512]

>>1325497
If you like Eliot, I want to ask do you know the Law?

[Anonymous No.1325516]

>>1325512
can't say that I do.

[Anonymous No.1325513]

I have many favorites but for the sake of this thread I'll only pick one.

William Butler Yeats
When You Are Old

WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled
And paced among the mountains overhead
And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

[Anonymous No.1325595]

The Conqueror Worm
Edgar Allan Poe (1843)

LO! 't is a gala night
Within the lonesome latter years.
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre to see
A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly;
Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their condor wings
Invisible Woe.

That motley drama—oh, be sure
It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore
By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
To the self-same spot;
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude:
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And over each quivering form
In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And over each quivering form
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
While the angels, all pallid and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

[Anonymous No.1325762]

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

[Anonymous No.1325799]

'Alone With Everybody'

the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.

there's no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.

nobody ever finds
the one.

the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill

nothing else
fills.

by Charles Bukowski

[Anonymous No.1325816]

>>1325415
>One of the shittiest poems I've ever read.

[Anonymous No.1326002]

Obligatory:

THE FLEA.
by John Donne


MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

[Anonymous No.1326025]

>>1325411

Oh, cruel fate, to be thusly boned. Ask not for whom the bone bones - it bones for thee.

OP pic related.

[John !rAOwMGYtnY No.1326238]

Stevie Smith - Not Waving But Drowning

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

[Anonymous No.1326242]

>>1326002
Fuck John Donne

[Anonymous No.1326245]

I've tried my hardest to like poetry, but in general, I just don't care for it. Lyrics, I can swoon over, but it's with the accompaniment of music.

However, William Blake's "Poison Tree" for some reason, I absolutely love. It's not like I have any kind of personal relation to it, I don't really have any frienemies, but I just love its wording.

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.
And I water'd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil'd the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree

[Anonymous No.1326300]

Aiyo, my wiz play the flute, I stroll through the forest like
Peace, bushes, trees, hello, how was your day? Have you seen the prince?
Haven't seen him since he pushed Humpty Da-Dumpty fell off the fence
The smurfs fell out laughin', Heckle toe Jeckle at min,
They took my medicade card, he's a good friend
Bugs still sniffin', Daffy Duck snitchin'
And heard that crazy Bird took the stand on the Simpsons
Bet you "my golly, oh glory" with a story to tell
Droopy got knocked, now he Muslim in jail
His name is Abdrul, Colorful, Snow White tattoo
She used to send him mad flicks in Cash Rule
And the cat too, old girl who's clackin' her shoes
And that wicked witch broke her broom, clappin' at school
It happens every night, I seen it, shoot outs in Jellystone Park
Kermit had the whip, he did from the Narks
They bagged Woody, Shaggy shot dead in his hoodie
Tweety did the Bird, "I thaw, I thought I thaw a putty"
Ghost, please you don't even want to know
Droopy Long wrote a song, like to hear it, here it go...
Ricochet Rabbit had a habit, he was savage
Bruto slapped, Magoto slapped out his glasses backwards
Magelity used to come to class wit rachets
He was known in the hood, plus good for his classics
Slashes, blast four-fifths, diamond cut, hollow point tips
Big Boy bustin' out his corderoy fix
Eleven, way beyond his little boy fit
Magoo, he gon' catch him at the teachers' conference
So later that week durin' open school night
Everybody there, saw open school fight
Blows is big, Olive Oil was pissed
The wolf was too, they murdered one of the pigs
He said, "What great big heat you have"
He replied, "Fuck my gun I'll eat you fast"
He said, "What great big teeth you have"
"Mothafucker you better look at all the beef you have"

[Anonymous No.1326306]

Dickinson

I never saw a Moor --
I never saw the Sea --
Yet know I how the Heather looks
And what a Billow be.

I never spoke with God
Nor visited in Heaven --
Yet certain am I of the spot
As if the Chart were given --

[Anonymous No.1326307]

>>1326306

Actually Ballad of Reading Gaol by Wilde, but that's too long to post here.