Poetry Slam.

[Daikaiju]

My father was among many things, a poet.
As a small contribution to his memory, I thought we could use a thread for sharing the love of writing verse.
I've always had a tin ear for the stuff myself, but it's widely agreed among family and friends this is one of his best.

The Leaf Rider 8/5/85

(after the manner of the Eorlingas)

~
Where now are chopper and rider?
Cartridge belt gold gleaming,
Sunshower spray glistening,
A circlet of rainbow
Below the blades sweeping;
~
Out over the wire leaping,
Like leaves before the tempest reeling,
The greening blades of the paddies mirroring,
Bathed in the tropic heat, yet
In their ruffled blue fields shivering;
~
With the winds of war forward,
And childhood past remembering,
Is gone, as fast as the wind furrows
In the green-blue carpet
At first burst banished by bullets and blood.

Whither the windhover,
Above tangled green gliding,
The riders' glance sees not
The hurricane, the land
Their metal steeds' clacking racket

So on down to the great grass
To tree line on tree line
And always some never more
And some bodies for a time
While many minds and hearts hurt worse than

Yet new faces old places ever
Steady as the monsoon rain's
As regular as its
The long hot months into years
Till they all were
* * * * * * * * * *
So say men over a shot and beer
No knights in armor
Who once were lads in the summer
And did their job of
Someone else sometimes scathed becoming.

- Gerald Alan Ney

 

[Daikaiju]

Well it's been a year since his passing. In an attempt to spark some life in this thread, here's another poem from my late father.

Watching Windmills in the Rain:
Vietnam Monsoon Movie Memories - 11/21-22/2006



[Thanks to Jean Debelle Lamensdorf
for triggering the memories

of watching The Thomas Crown Affair

With it's main theme "The Windmills of Your Mind"

outdoors during a monsoon deluge

in Write Home For Me]

The main theme mingles with
The sibilant shurrsh from
The silvery pinpoints
Of earthrushing raindrops
Muting the images
And music of the night’s
Feature, a transparent
Ever falling curtain.
~
I watch the windmills
Internal; stroke, counter.
Crown and the lady fair
Matching motives and wits;
As I quiet my own
Constant comment clockwork,
Time out from work and war;
Warm and halfway dry
Under the poncho. Only
My eyes, nose and boots
Elementally exposed.

- Gerald A. Ney

 

[Kirin]

I think I missed this the first time around and I really like that one from last year.

 

[Teaspoon]

I don't know if you wanted printed poetry, but I'm mourning and in need of poetry and this appears to be the right thread for that.

(warm and halfway dry under the poncho is such a cosy, comforting phrase)

*****

Why East Wind Chills

Why east wind chills and south wind cools
Shall not be known till windwell dries
And west's no longer drowned
In winds that bring the fruit and rind
Of many a hundred falls;
Why silk is soft and the stone wounds
The child shall question all his days,
Why night-time rain and the breast's blood
Both quench his thirst he'll have a black reply.

When cometh Jack Frost? the children ask.
Shall they clasp a comet in their fists?
Not till, from high and low, their dust
Sprinkles in children's eyes a long-last sleep
And dust is crowded with the children's ghosts,
Shall a white answer echo from the rooftops.

All things are known: the stars' advice
Calls some content to travel with the winds,
Though what the stars ask as they round
Time upon time the towers of the skies
Is heard but little till the stars go out.
I hear content, and 'Be content'
Ring like a handbell through the corridors,
And 'Know no answer,' and I know
No answer to the children's cry
Of echo's answer and the man of frost
And ghostly comets over the raised fists.

- Dylan Thomas

 

[Daikaiju]

IT LIVES.

 

[Teaspoon]

compelled to more poetry again

*****

Wasted

That cold winter evening
The fire would not draw,
And the whole family hung
Over the dismal grate
Where rain-soaked logs
Bubbled, hissed and steamed.
Then, when the others had gone
Up to their chilly beds,
And I was ready to go,
The wood began to flame
In clear rose and violet,
Heating the small hearth.
Why should that memory cling
Now the children are all grown up,
And the house - a different house -
Is warm at any season?

- Kingsley Amis

 

[Daikaiju]

Noice.

 

[Teaspoon]

irresistible poetry craving

*****

The Dancers: (During a Great Battle, 1916)

The floors are slippery with blood:
The world gyrates too. God is good
That while His wind blows out the light
For those who hourly die for is –
We still can dance each night.

The music has grown numb with death –
But we will suck their dying breath,
The whispered name they breathed to chance,
To swell our music, make it loud
That we may dance, - may dance.

We are the dull blind carrion-fly
That dance and batten. Though God die
Mad from the horror of the light –
The light is mad, too, flecked with blood, -
We dance, we dance, each night.

- Edith Sitwell

 

[Teaspoon]

the poetry invoked me, or the other way around

*****

Three Harps

Ambitions playing:
The first, inseparable
From gold-edged printing
On Daedalus’ table.

Desire for flight:
Chariot-usurping skill.
The god of light
Torn from the godlike will.

What tears of amber,
What pre-natal force
From dawn’s dark chamber
Fired me on my course?

Three harps: one
From emulation drew its strength.
The rising sun:
A harp at arm’s length.

The second word of day;
The second word:
A harp a hand away
Held by a human cord.

By cypress taught and yew,
My soul I made
Write old ambition new
And qualify the laurel’s shade.

I set one grave apart,
Gave speech to stone:
“Come back to my sad heart
And play this harp of bone.”

Little for the sun I cared,
Little for renown.
I saw the unknown, unshared,
True grave. So I lay down;

Lay down, and closed my eyes
To the end of all time,
The end of birth’s enterprise
And death’s small crime.

Then at once the shrouded harp
Was manifest. I began
To touch, though pain is sharp,
The ribs of the man.

- Vernon Watkins

 

[Daikaiju]

the poetry invoked me, or the other way around

Yeah, that's how it was for my dad. Deny not thy muse.

 

[Teaspoon]

Yeah, that's how it was for my dad. Deny not thy muse.

Ugly crying now.

I am having a difficult time of things at present and I think that was exactly what I needed to hear at this moment, in this place.

 

[Daikaiju]

 

[Teaspoon]

thank you Daikaiju

got a Rilke translation for two bits. typing it up from the book by hand.

*****

Lovesong

How shall I withhold my soul so that
it does not touch on yours? How shall I
uplift it over you to other things?
Ah willingly would I by some
lost thing in the dark give it harbor
in an unfamiliar silent place
that does not vibrate on when your depths vibrate.
Yet everything that touches us, you and me,
takes us together as a bow's stroke does,
that out of two strings draws a single voice.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what player has us in his hand?
O sweet song.

 

[Teaspoon]

thinking about poet laureates today

*****

The Ship and Her Makers

THE ORE

Before Man’s labouring wisdom gave me birth
I had not even seen the light of day;
Down in the central darkness of the earth,
Crushed by the weight of continents I lay,
Ground by the weight to heat, not knowing then
The air, the light, the noise, the world of men.

THE TREES
We grew on mountains where the glaciers cry,
Infinite sombre armies of us stood
Below the snow-peaks which defy the sky;
A song like the gods moaning filled our wood;
We knew no men—our life was to stand staunch,
Singing our song, against the avalanche.

THE HEMP AND FLAX

We were a million grasses on the hill,
A million herbs which bowed as the wind blew,
Trembling in every fibre, never still;
Out of the summer earth sweet life we drew.
Little blue-flowered grasses up the glen,
Glad of the sun, what did we know of men?

THE WORKERS

We tore the iron from the mountain’s hold,
By blasting fires we smithied it to steel;
Out of the shapeless stone we learned to mould
The sweeping bow, the rectilinear keel;
We hewed the pine to plank, we split the fir,
We pulled the myriad flax to fashion her.

Out of a million lives our knowledge came,
A million subtle craftsmen forged the means;
Steam was our handmaid and our servant flame,
Water our strength, all bowed to our machines.
Out of the rock, the tree, the springing herb
We built this wandering beauty so superb.

THE SAILORS

We, who were born on earth and live by air,
Make this thing pass across the fatal floor,
The speechless sea; alone we commune there
Jesting with death, that ever open door.
Sun, moon and stars are signs by which we drive
This wind-blown iron like a thing alive.

THE SHIP

I march across great waters like a queen,
I whom so many wisdoms helped to make;
Over the uncruddled billows of seas green
I blanch the bubbled highway of my wake.
By me my wandering tenants clasp the hands,
And know the thoughts of men in other lands.

- John Masefield

 

[Teaspoon]

in the mood for some bathos today. Found it.

*****

Fair Delia while each sighing swain

Whose heart your charms adores,
Fills with his tender vows the plain,
And favoring smiles implores:
My Wishes varying from the rest
Demand a different boon,
And only ask this one request,
The mercy of a frown.
Ah! far from me those witching smiles
Those languid eyes remove,
Whose charms my senses might surprise,
And tempt my heart to Love;
The chilling frowns of cold disdain
I'll patiently endure,
Content to bear a transient pain
My freedom to secure.

- Mr Pye

 

[Falselogic]

 

[Teaspoon]

That last line is a killer.

 

[Falselogic]

I love this poem and I hate the subject of this poem.

 

[Teaspoon]

this is just a fragment from a longer poem, maybe by famed medieval Welsh poet, maybe not

*****

Ar Niwl Maith

...I will call you the cloak in the grey, dark air,
A sheet without hem or limit you are,
A close weft woven everywhere,
A blanket of rain dropping afar.
Is it rising you are from hell's deep fires,
The smoke risen on putrid airs?
And is this habit, the whole world's gown,
From the fires of Annwn by devils blown?
Or is it a spider is working on high,
With gossamer glutting great spaces of sky?

- Dafydd ap Gwilym (H. Idris Bell and David Bell translation)

 

[Teaspoon]

saved from the vagaries of the raw Internet

*****

I wish to die on

A Summer Solstice night with a fish and chip sky,
death kissing me slow and taking me quick
under salty stars speckling the seaside malty dome.
Fuck winter when nothing more can be said
to make saccharine of what’s gone before,
I’ll quit while I’m ahead,
not washed out, wasted,
wistful for lost wishes, words and cadaverous dreams.

Let the tolling bells be
drop dead gorgeous midsummer night dead-ringer brunettes
or doppelganger blondes, light-headed in rosy oblivion.
May my life be lost in space, and earth’s other worlds,
let all meaning be beeps and dots and dashes and x and o’s.
I’ll check cheques and balances on the tightrope
of unequal parallels like comet tails in midnight flight
flashing listless lights bright across the beauty of barren skies.

Shooting words like fish in a barrel
sending messages of blood shaped craft
in drunken elevation of life and quantum delight,
as heady giddy twirling unborn space-age masses might
shift the warm succulent truculent air
in the shifting drifting shape of yourself,
as you are, as you were, as you will be,
in a world without end or beginning.

You who are not alone, are all alone.
You who know well that
those who are dead are gone, and not gone.
All that is, was.

The ghosts are the breeze that push you,
through the darkness they guide you,
their warm voices cannot forget you,
shouting loud while the lost world sleeps.
Tonight the cosmos ponders large
on everything in nothing
‘til the yawning chasm claims life,
in sweet embrace, leaving death alone,
soft surrendering as day to night in the
licentious vicissitudes of inexorable desire.

- Peadar O’Donaghue

 

[Teaspoon]

you know, I've been looking for this poem for a year and then I thought 'what if you just check Google' and lo there it was

it's not very good, but that's besides the point

*****

For Death Is Not The End

For death is not the end!
Though soul turns sour
And faith dry-rots.
Let maggots feed on flesh
That once was blossom pink
And memory sink
Beneath the dust of falling years,
Yet death is not the end!
For death is not the end!

For death is not the end!
Lungs chewed by poison gas
Attempt to sing.
Or woman ript with child
Comfort the smiling flower,
And good deeds done
Bring forth dead fruit,
Hold fast to hope
For death is not the end!

For death is not the end!
Moves a soul in some dark cranny
Like a fluttering bird
In upward sweep ascends
To some high altitude,
Where breathes a living God,
Then death is not the end!
For death is not the end!

- Bert Trick

 

[Teaspoon]

trying some Auden again.

once again reminded that I'm not really into Auden. Nevertheless...

*****

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

- W. H. Auden

 

[Falselogic]

Allowables

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened

- Nikki Giovanni

 

[Teaspoon]

I have seen that one on social media with appropriate cartoon backdrop drawings and, you know, OUCH

 

[Teaspoon]

Fun fact: Roethke was one of the first poets to get a computer-made concordance in the 70s.

*****

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

- Theodore Roethke

 

[Teaspoon]

in honour of today being a particularly grape-laden day, so to speak

*****

Ears In The Turrets Hear

Ears in the turrets hear
Hands grumble on the door,
Eyes in the gables see
The fingers at the locks.
Shall I unbolt or stay
Alone till the day I die
Unseen by stranger-eyes
In this white house?
Hands, hold you poison or grapes?

Beyond this island bound
By a thin sea of flesh
And a bone coast,
The land lies out of sound
And the hills out of mind.
No birds or flying fish
Disturbs this island's rest.

Ears in this island hear
The wind pass like a fire,
Eyes in this island see
Ships anchor off the bay.
Shall I run to the ships
With the wind in my hair,
Or stay till the day I die
And welcome no sailor?
Ships, hold you poison or grapes?

Hands grumble on the door,
Ships anchor off the bay,
Rain beats the sand and slates.
Shall I let in the stranger,
Shall I welcome the sailor,
Or stay till the day I die?

Hands of the stranger and holds of the ships,
Hold you poison or grapes?

- Dylan Thomas

 

[FelixSH]

Wow, The Waking is great. I just love these two lines, they are beautiful:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

I also have repeatedly now read this here:

And I love it. Hate the topic, love the poem.

I generally started to read poems, two months or so ago. Just on the side, when I have time. Reading them out loud, and just let me feel the flow, the musicality of it. It feels a bit like the, to me, most essential part of a song, the lyrics, as if you reduce it to its core. Again, that's me, lyrics are the most essential part of a song, to me. And poems really show the musicality of language. Well, that's what I get out of them.

Thanks for posting poems here. I enjoy reading them.

 

[Teaspoon]

thank you for telling me you read them! that means a lot to me.

I always read aloud these poems when I post them here, because that's how they live to me. Mind-voice is never quite the same as feeling out the sounds with your tongue and voice box, you know?

 

[Daikaiju]

Damn, Teaspoon. Bless your bardic spirit for reviving this thread. I should see if I can find any more off my dad's stuff to add.

 

[Teaspoon]

Damn, Teaspoon. Bless your bardic spirit for reviving this thread. I should see if I can find any more off my dad's stuff to add.

And my thanks to you for starting it! It's a practice that helps centre me, and that's always good.

I would love to read aloud more of your dad's poems, if you're lucky enough to find any.