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OT: well versed

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  1. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    @urchaidh

    That horror reminds me of my favourite short story, Kelman's 'Acid';

    In this factory in the north of England acid was essential. It was contained in large vats. Gangways were laid above them. Before these gangways were completely safe a young man fell into a vat feet first. His screams of agony were heard all over the department. Except for one old fellow the large body of men was so horrified that for a time not one of them could move. In an instant this old fellow who was also the young man’s father had clambered up and along the gangway carrying a big pole. Sorry Hughie, he said. And then he ducked the young man below the surface. Obviously the old fellow had had to do this because only the head and shoulders – in fact, that which had been seen above the acid – was all that remained of the young man.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  2. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    This thread is wonderfully OT I know but here's a poem that might bring it back on topic for those who get about a bit by bike.

    Edwin Morgan – Canedolia (An Off-Concrete Scotch Fantasia)

    Posted 7 years ago #
  3. unhurt
    Member

    @cyclingmollie - I love that, and I have wondered if you could build an actual (rather zig-zag) tour around it - with side excursions, probably.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  4. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    I had actually considered a couple of the places in the Edwin Morgan piece as character names for a children's book.

    Fantastic poem.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  5. unhurt
    Member

    Even more OT - I don't want to write a book but I do like thinking up (well, appropriating) character names. My never-to-be-written heroines are called Adverse Camber and Igneous Dyke...

    Posted 7 years ago #
  6. I were right about that saddle
    Member

    I don't want to write a book

    Nobody wants to write a book. Sometimes you just have to.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  7. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    @unhurt Igneous Dyke certainly has me wanting to know more.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  8. PS
    Member

    I do like Simon Armitage.

    The Shout

    We went out
    into the school yard together, me and the boy
    whose name and face

    I don't remember. We were testing the range
    of the human voice:
    he had to shout for all he was worth

    I had to raise an arm
    from across the divide to signal back
    that the sound had carried.

    He called from over the park - I lifted an arm.
    Out of bounds,
    he yelled from the end of the road,

    from the foot of the hill,
    from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell's Farm -
    I lifted an arm.

    He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
    with a gunshot hole
    in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.

    Boy with the name and face I don't remember,
    you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  9. gembo
    Member

    @cyclingmollie Ca the yowes tae the knowes is refrain when I wish my children sat at table for their tea.

    @iwrats, check out Kelman/s In Wi the Doctor

    By he way I was out on the terrace of the poetry library this lunch time eating my pieces. Iam a member but anyone can do this but not wit my pieces

    @ps James Joyce defined love as a shout in the street. I jink he means rthe feeling that rises in your heart if yu are cycling along and you hear your name called unexpectedly by your beloved.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  10. minus six
    Member

    there's a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I'm too tough for him,
    I say, stay in there, I'm not going
    to let anybody see
    you.
    there's a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
    cigarette smoke
    and the whores and the bartenders
    and the grocery clerks
    never know that
    he's
    in there.

    there's a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I'm too tough for him,
    I say,
    stay down, do you want to mess
    me up?
    you want to screw up the
    works?
    you want to blow my book sales in
    Europe?
    there's a bluebird in my heart that
    wants to get out
    but I'm too clever, I only let him out
    at night sometimes
    when everybody's asleep.
    I say, I know that you're there,
    so don't be
    sad.
    then I put him back,
    but he's singing a little
    in there, I haven't quite let him
    die
    and we sleep together like
    that
    with our
    secret pact
    and it's nice enough to
    make a man
    weep, but I don't
    weep, do
    you ?

    - Charles Bukowski. Bluebird.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  11. minus six
    Member

    a fondness for the brevity of japanese monks zen death poems which may or may not find some resonance here

    seventy years
    tasting life’s flavors
    my bones stench of urine
    what matters?
    look! where do I return? moon light above the peak
    wind blows clear

    - Tosui, 1693

    Further we go
    And older we grow
    The more we know
    The less we show

    - Robert Smith, 1981

    Posted 7 years ago #
  12. Greenroofer
    Member

    I think the book Ten Poems about Bicycles has been mentioned on here before. Some of the ten I like, particularly this one

    My Bike
    The wind behind me
    Water bottle is my friend
    Watch that taxi door

    by Coney

    Posted 7 years ago #
  13. minus six
    Member

    i like it, greenroofer

    brevity of life, and then death by taxi door

    chapeau

    Posted 7 years ago #
  14. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    @Greenroofer I have that book too. I like the one that ends:

    But I have a carrot poultice put on
    my eye and I shall soon be fit enough
    to ride again.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  15. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    I once saw a Dennis Potter play on TV with adults playing children. It ended with these lines that still give me the shivers:

    Into my heart an air that kills
    From yon far country blows:
    What are those blue remembered hills,
    What spires, what farms are those?

    That is the land of lost content,
    I see it shining plain,
    The happy highways where I went
    And cannot come again.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  16. minus six
    Member

    No one lifts their hands
    No one lifts their eyes
    Justified with empty words
    The party just gets better and better

    Posted 7 years ago #
  17. unhurt
    Member

    UMIARISSAAT / THE SEAL PEOPLE

    I watch four shadows pass the sun.
    They are not men, these bearded ones
    with fat, stooped heads and shining skin
    aboard a boat with no beginning.

    What brings such beasts? I do not know
    their stooping forms; their short, fat arms that row
    the endless boat; their long, white claws;
    their round, black eyes that look to shore.

    They row so close I see still more.
    The round black eyes that look to shore
    have seen me watch. They are not men.
    The boat will disappear again.

    Nancy Campbell (Disko Bay, 2015)

    Posted 7 years ago #
  18. minus six
    Member

    @unhurt

    you are the seeer of sooth

    i was based in disko bay this past july for a week

    queqertarsuaq / ilulissat

    the whales remain strong

    Posted 7 years ago #
  19. unhurt
    Member

    Wow - I would love to go there one day!

    Posted 7 years ago #
  20. JELBERENCE
    Member

    Go trickle gently through the gaps
    Between the larger rocks, jammed tight
    Yet even sand will pool
    And pebbles may be crushed
    So be not rushed
    Lest greater might
    Leaves your gentle ticking hushed.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  21. unhurt
    Member

    Random late night internetting a wee while back found me W.S. Merwin - I was unhappily ignorant of his stuff until then. This is - OOF.

    For a Coming Extinction

    Gray whale
    Now that we are sending you to The End
    That great god
    Tell him
    That we who follow you invented forgiveness
    And forgive nothing

    I write as though you could understand
    And I could say it
    One must always pretend something
    Among the dying
    When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
    Empty of you
    Tell him that we were made
    On another day

    The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
    Winding along your inner mountains
    Unheard by us
    And find its way out
    Leaving behind it the future
    Dead
    And ours

    When you will not see again
    The whale calves trying the light
    Consider what you will find in the black garden
    And its court
    The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
    The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
    And fore-ordaining as stars
    Our sacrifices

    Join your word to theirs
    Tell him
    That it is we who are important

    - from The Lice, 1967

    Posted 7 years ago #
  22. gembo
    Member

    @cyclingmollie, the poem is by AE Houseman

    Posted 7 years ago #
  23. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    From A Shropshire Lad, yes. The most popular book of poeetry in our house when I was growing up was probably Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes which, reading it now, is a bit depressing to think about.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  24. unhurt
    Member

    Bushed

    He invented a rainbow but lightning struck it
    shattered it into the lake-lap of a mountain
    so big his mind slowed when he looked at it

    Yet he built a shack on the shore
    learned to roast porcupine belly and
    wore the quills on his hatband

    At first he was out with the dawn
    whether it yellowed bright as wood-columbine
    or was only a fuzzed moth in a flannel of storm
    But he found the mountain was clearly alive
    sent messages whizzing down every hot morning
    boomed proclamations at noon and spread out
    a white guard of goat
    before falling asleep on its feet at sundown

    When he tried his eyes on the lake ospreys
    would fall like valkyries
    choosing the cut-throat
    He took then to waiting
    till the night smoke rose from the boil of the sunset

    But the moon carved unknown totems
    out of the lakeshore
    owls in the beardusky woods derided him
    moosehorned cedars circled his swamps and tossed
    their antlers up to the stars
    then he knew though the mountain slept the winds
    were shaping its peak to an arrowhead
    poised

    And now he could only
    bar himself in and wait
    for the great flint to come singing into his heart

    - Earle Birney (1952)

    Posted 7 years ago #
  25. gembo
    Member

    @cycligmollie, the title is not hiding anything

    We has Burns Recitation in the house but no books of poetry. We had some Grimm's fairy tales I remember were scary.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  26. Cyclingmollie
    Member

    We had a Grimm's Fairy Tales. The pictures were pretty scary. One in particular I remembered was a man with an enchanted toe that wouldn't stop growing. I Googled it a few years ago and found - the horror - it wasn't his toe it was his nose.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  27. JELBERENCE
    Member

    By gusts, we are pushed
    With gusto, we push back
    Exuberant, unworried
    On paths now cleared of rails
    Gingerly, where they lie anew
    Angry engines snapping at our tails

    Posted 7 years ago #
  28. SRD
    Moderator

    We had reasonable amounts of poetry for kids (several books of which I have enjoyed with my kids as well), but what I really remember is my Dad reading me the Ramayana and Mahabarata (it was the 70s...). The Buck translations, with grogeous pencil drawings, especially the one of Hanuman.

    I googled that and found this blogpost, although unlike the author, I always loved the Ramayana best http://www.litkicks.com/WilliamBuck

    Posted 7 years ago #
  29. unhurt
    Member

    Oh - thanks for that link.

    The very day I was born I made my first mistake, and by that path I have sought wisdom ever since.

    Posted 7 years ago #
  30. minus six
    Member

    Paul Reekie RIP

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    Posted 7 years ago #

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