[Pool Boy]

All right, so yeah, I love poetry - I love the way it flows and how clever and short it can be. I collect them on my tumblr, and this gem right here is probably my favorite poem ever. I'd really love to read all the poems everyone else loves as well, so this can by a new awesome shit sharing thread |D

My Poems by Isaac Oliver

I hate my poems.

I used to love them, back when they knew their place.
Poems are like dogs you walk in the park
to attract off-duty firemen who love them and in turn love you.
Not my poems.

My poems used to be shy, they used to stand in front of the
mirror
and complain about their bloated syntax and pimpled thematic
structure.
But now they leave the house in couplets I don’t remember
rhyming,
and when I ask where they’re going and with whom they’re going
out,
they say, “He’s not your style. He writes think pieces, political
pieces.”

Oh god, not think pieces, not political pieces.

My poems see a guy across a crowded room,
start talking pretty saying things like “Your eyes are like moons,”
and before I know it, I’m left standing alone at a punch bowl.
I’ll grab a stanza’s arm and say, “Just let me have this one, please.”
“You snooze, you lose,” it responds, rolling its eyes.
“You think you’re so hot with your semicolons,” I shout after it,
“but I wrote you for a class assignment! You weren’t even
inspired by anything!”

My poems make better theatre dates than me.
They make jokes, they offer multilayered compliments,
they know someone in the chorus.
My poems spend money without thinking twice.

They hold hands with men on the subway no matter who’s
looking.
“How’d you get so fearless?” I ask a particularly savvy poem that
insists
on all lowercase letter and refuses every title but “untitled”.
“I don’t know. Are you jealous?” it replies,
its thumb making circles on the palm of a modern dancer/social
activist.
My poems are bitches.
So they’ve been to some festivals, that doesn’t mean they know me.
“You’re much less grateful than my earlier work, when I used to
title poems,” I snap.
“You mean the ones you wrote with Tori Amos playing in the
background
and without the sense of humour?” “untitled” retorts.

My poems also come knocking in the very early morning,
and I let them sleep on my couch, and they cry about cruel men
and betrayal and Karl Rove,
and I hold them and remember why I wrote them.
I’ve needed to be fearless, to not capitalize words,
to laugh, to spend money, and to leave something untitled.
I’ve needed them to be my spies,
to have their hearts broken and their spirits tattered,
and to come back to me for punctuation.

[GARDEN]

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

[rune]

i have a few short ones that are so hauntingly beautiful i couldn't pick which one to share. so here's the lot of them:

boiled sweets
He's on the landing sucking boiled sweets
that bleed their coloured syrups

into a language
he doesn't know he doesn't understand.

passion-fruit
The passion-fruit resembles
coloured bruises

rolled into a ball you can suck.

lips
She carried them discreetly
past the lodger

who crams them down her throat
like broken glass.

these are all written by a british contemporary poet named selima hill and they are featured in her book called "bunny". i urge anyone who likes poetry to check it out.

[Pool Boy]

THE BALLAD OF G.W. by MDC

Come and listen to my story ‘bout a boy named Bush.
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he drove a car about.
But that didn’t matter ‘cuz his daddy bailed him out.
DUI, that is. Criminal record. Cover-up.

Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can’t spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin’ out with student folk.
And that’s when he learns how to snort a line of coke.
Blow, that is. White gold. Nose candy.

The next thing you know there’s a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, “George, stay at home with Mom.”
Let the common people get maimed and scarred.
We’ll buy you up a spot in the Texas National Guard.
Cush, that is. Country clubs. Nose candy.

Twenty years later George gets a little bored.
He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord.
He said, “Now the White House is the place I wanna’ be.
” So he called his daddy’s friends and they called the GOP.
Gun owners, that is. Falwell. Jesse Helms.

Come November 7, the election ran late.
Kin folks said “Jeb, give the boy your state!”
“Don’t let those colored folks get anywhere near polls.”
So they put up barricades so they couldn’t punch their holes.
Chads, that is. Duval County. Miami-Dade.

Before the votes were counted all the five Supremes stepped in.
Told all the voters “Hey, we want our George to win.”
“Stop counting votes!” was their solemn invocation.
And that’s how little Georgie finally got his coronation.

Rigged, that is. Illegitimate. No moral authority. Y’all come vote now. Ya hear?

[phosphorus]

To D-, Dead by Her Own Hand

My dear, I wonder if before the end
You ever thought about a children’s game—
I’m sure you must have played it too—in which
You ran along a narrow garden wall
Pretending it to be a mountain ledge
So steep a snowy darkness fell away
On either side to deeps invisible;
And when you felt your balance being lost
You jumped because you feared to fall, and thought
For only an instant: That was when I died.

That was a life ago. And now you’ve gone,
Who would no longer play the grown-ups’ game
Where, balanced on the ledge above the dark,
You go on running and you don’t look down,
Nor ever jump because you fear to fall.

-Howard Nemerov

[gimmick]

Not that big a poetry person, but came across this one in seventh grade and I've always found it amusing

Baby - Langston Hughes

Albert!
Hey Albert
Don't you play in dat road.
You see dem trucks
A goin by.
One run ovah you
An' you die.
Albert, don't you play in that road.

[katya]

Bajillion versions of this song. The one everyone's most familiar with is probably the Jimi Hendrix version, but my favorite's by far Bear McCreary's BSG arrangement.

All Along The Watchtower by Bob Dylan

"There must be some kind of way out of here,"
Said the joker to the thief,
"There's too much confusion,
I can't get no relief.
Businessman they drink my wine,
Plowman dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth."

"No reason to get excited,"
The thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

All along the watchtower,
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went,
Barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching,
And the wind began to howl.