Poem thread- Post your favourites.

[RedSunRising]

Georg Trakl is easily my favourite poet of all time.

Here are some of his...


Afra.

A child with brown hair. Prayer and amen
Darken silently the coolness of evening
And Afra's smile, red in yellow frame
Of sunflowers, fear and grey sultriness.



Wrapped in blue coat, the monk saw her
In former times devoutly painted in church windows;
This should still be friendly escort through pain
When her stars haunt through his blood.


Autumn decline; and the elder-trees' silence.
The water's blue moving stirs the forehead,
A hairy cloth is laid upon a bier.



Rotten fruits fall from the branches;
Unspeakable is the flight of birds, encounter
With the dying; after this dark years follow.








Grodek.



At evening the autumn woodlands ring
With deadly weapons. Over the golden plains
And lakes of blue, the sun
More darkly rolls. The night surrounds
Warriors dying and the wild lament
Of their fragmented mouths.
Yet silently there gather in the willow combe
Red clouds inhabited by an angry god,
Shed blood, and the chill of the moon.
All roads lead to black decay.
Under golden branching of the night and stars
A sister's shadow sways through the still grove
To greet the heroes' spirits, the bloodied heads.
And softly in the reeds Autumn's dark flutes resound.
O prouder mourning! - You brazen altars,
The spirit's hot flame is fed now by a tremendous pain:
The grandsons, unborn.

[RedSunRising]

August Stramm I also like a lot....



0500

The night exhales kisses
around dozing foreheads.
The thud of equipment dulls.
Aggression grasps
and slurs dreams through ruts.
Rumbles grind.
Houses skewer shadows.
Stars well
into eyes
and drown.




Area of operation

Steel crushes dustily to sleep.
Crimsons frisk the sprawled stains.
Rusts run to soil
tissue sheds its membrane
and amputations wink to the worms.
In adolescent eyes
the squint
of killing beyond killing.

[caramelpence]

MY BAD

Homogeneous rulers with monotonous rulings,
Can we really think of any other kind?
Incorrigible dissidents shooting out pestilence
Against doctor killers who believe in intelligent design.
Vultures with sadistic contentment, the white doves are packing heat,
A war between whores, for resources galore
And a bastard child with no shelter, water or meat.
Hobo's gone wild!
Intransient dwellings, with only one feeling of harpaxophobia.
The walls are alive!
And so am I, sane waging warriors with agateophobia.
A culture of rape, war and plunder,
Resources gone under, for they are all that we have never had.
Bastions of mad men, bashing at sad men
Blasting out semen, with only two words....
My bad

[RedSunRising]

Ode to Stalin by Paublo Neruda.

To be men! That is the Stalinist law! . . .
We must learn from Stalin
his sincere intensity
his concrete clarity. . . .
Stalin is the noon,
the maturity of man and the peoples.
Stalinists, Let us bear this title with pride. . . .
Stalinist workers, clerks, women take care of this day!
The light has not vanished.
The fire has not disappeared,
There is only the growth of
Light, bread, fire and hope
In Stalin's invincible time! . . .
In recent years the dove,
Peace, the wandering persecuted rose,
Found herself on his shoulders
And Stalin, the giant,
Carried her at the heights of his forehead. . . .
A wave beats against the stones of the shore.
But Malenkov will continue his work.

[thesadmafioso]

Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Call to Account!

The drum of war thunders and thunders.
It calls: thrust iron into the living.
From every country
slave after slave
are thrown onto bayonet steel.
For the sake of what?
The earth shivers
hungry
and stripped.
Mankind is vapourised in a blood bath
only so
someone
somewhere
can get hold of Albania.
Human gangs bound in malice,
blow after blow strikes the world
only for
someone’s vessels
to pass without charge
through the Bosporus.
Soon
the world
won’t have a rib intact.
And its soul will be pulled out.
And trampled down
only for someone,
to lay
their hands on
Mesopotamia.
Why does
a boot
crush the Earth — fissured and rough?
What is above the battles’ sky -
Freedom?
God?
Money!
When will you stand to your full height,
you,
giving them your life?
When will you hurl a question to their faces:
Why are we fighting?

[Minima]

have a heart caramelpence, =)

edit: actually, if you didn't know who wrote it, and you take out the bit about the phobias... it's actually quite sublime, it's own, weird and hilarious way.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

This Garcia Lorca poem (http://boppin.com/lorca/lament.html) is one of my favorites.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I'm a big fan of literature, but never was much for poetry even though half the people I knew when I lived in LA did slam poetry:blushing:

Here's one for the lefties:





The Leisure Class



Anonymous





THERE was a little beggar maid

Who wed a king long, long ago;

Of course the taste that he displayed

Was criticized by folks who know

Just what formalities and things


5
Are due to beggar maids and kings.



But straight the monarch made reply:

“There is small difference, as I live,

Between our stations! She and I

Subsist on what the people give.


10
We do not toil with strength and skill,

And, pleasing Heaven, never will.”

[black magick hustla]

mass

cesar vallejo

At the end of the battle,
with the combatant dead, a man came up
and told him: ‘don’t die, I love you so much!’
But the corpse, alas! Went on dying.

Two others came up and said to him again:
‘don’t leave us! Courage! Come Back to Life!’
But the corpse, alas! Went on dying.

Twenty, a hundred, a thousand, five hundred thousand ran up to him,
crying out: ‘so much love and no way of countering death!’
But the corpse, alas! Went on dying.

Millions of individuals stood around him,
with a common plea: ‘stay here brother!’
But the corpse, alas! Went on dying.

Then all the men on earth
stood round him; the sad corpse saw them, with emotion;
he got up slowly,
embraced the first man; began to walk…