...sitting in front of a fire, reading Yeats

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Postby Mikethehack » Sun Oct 14, 2007 11:36 am

From Ireland's greatest modern day poet, Shane McGowan:

The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn

McCormack and Richard Tauber are singing by the bed
There's a glass of punch below your feet and an angel at your head
There's devils on each side of you with bottles in their hands
You need one more drop of poison and you'll dream of foreign lands

When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in cologne
And you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone
Frank Ryan brought you whiskey in a brothel in Madrid
And you decked some fucking Blackshirt who was cursing all the yids
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devils in the chair

And in the Euston tavern you screamed it was your shout
But they wouldn't give you service so you kicked the windows out
They took you out into the street and kicked you in the brains
So you walked back in through a bolted door and did it all again
At the sick bed of Cuchulainn we'll kneel and say a prayer
And the ghosts are rattling at the door and the devils in the chair

You remember that foul evening when you heard the banshees howl
There was lousy drunken bastards singing billy is in the bowl
They took you up to midnight mass and left you in the lurch
So you dropped a button in the plate and spewed up in the church

Now you'll sing a song of liberty for blacks and paks and jocks
And they'll take you from this dump you're in and stick you in a box
Then they'll take you to Cloughprior and shove you in the ground
But you'll stick your head back out and shout we'll have another round
At the graveside of Cuchulainn well kneel around and pray
And God is in his heaven, and billys down by the bay
I'm not really a proper reporter, due to the chronic lack of discipline, negligible attention span, and a certain juvenile difficulty taking serious things seriously.
Andrew Mueller.
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Poem

Postby cbychoice » Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:36 am

for the upcoming Halloween
THE DANCE OF THE DEAD

by: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

THE warder he gazes o' the night
On the graveyards under him lying,
The moon into clearness throws all by her light,
The night with the daylight is vying.
There's a stir in the graves, and forth from their tombs
The form of a man, then a woman next looms
In garments long trailing and snowy.

They stretch themselves out, and with eager delight
Join the bones for the revel and dancing --
Young and old, rich and poor, the lady and the knight,
Their trains are a hindrance to dancing.
And since here by shame they no longer are bound,
They shuffle them off, and lo, strewn lie around
Their garments on each little hillock.

Here rises a shank, and a leg wobbles there
With lewd diabolical gesture;
And clatter and rattle of bones you might hear,
As of one beating sticks to a measure.
This seems to the warder a laughable game:
Then the tempter, low whispering, up to him came:
"In one of their shrouds go and wrap thee."

'Twas done soon as said; then he gained in wild flight
Concealment behind the church portal,
The moon all the while throws her bright beams of light
On the dance where they revel and sport all.
First one, then another, dispersed all are they,
And donning their shrouds steal the spectres away,
And under the graves all is quiet.

But one of them stumbles and fumbles along,
'Midst the tombstones groping intently;
But none of his comrades have done him this wrong,
His shroud in the breeze 'gins to scent he.
He rattles the door of the tower, but can find
No entrance -- good luck to the warder behind! --
'Tis barred with blest crosses of metal.

His shroud must he have, or rest can he ne'er;
And so, without further preambles,
The old Gothic carving he grips then and there,
From turret to pinnacle scrambles.
Alas for the warder! all's over, I fear;
From buttress to buttress in dev'lish career
He climbs like a long-legged spider.

The warder he trembles, and pale doth he look,
That shroud he would gladly be giving,
When piercing transfixed it a sharp-pointed hook!
He thought his last hour he was living.
Clouds cover already the vanishing moon,
With thunderous clang beats the clock a loud One --
Below lies the skeleton, shattered.
A little bit of inconsistancy saves a lot of explanation later
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Poem

Postby cbychoice » Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:56 am

WAR
by: James Russell Lowell (1819-1891)

EZ fer war, I call it murder,--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that....
They may talk o' Freedom's airy
Tell they'er pupple in the face,--
It's a grand gret cemetary
Fer the barthrights of our race;
They jest want this Californy
So's to lug new slave-states in
To abuse ye, an' scorn ye,
An' to plunder ye like sin.

"War" is reprinted from The Early Poems Including the Biglow Papers. James Russell Lowell. New York: A.L. Burt, 1900.
A little bit of inconsistancy saves a lot of explanation later
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Postby redharen » Tue Oct 16, 2007 4:30 pm

redharen, the first thing that came to my mind was a soldier being used by the state.....
beautiful and interesting poem.


Well, that is what it's about, but you know, he's being born, he's enclosed in that ball, and then he's completely obliterated inside it, like an aborted baby in a womb, rinsed out with a hose. So it adds another layer to how he's being used by the State. His life is gone when it's hardly begun.
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Postby michelle in alaska » Thu Apr 10, 2008 5:04 am

it snowed a foot yesterday. i called in sick to work and have made another fire.
i came upon this in erica jong's memoirs. (of all people-she's not been a fave. but i may be changing my opinion).


"I was always besotted by books and anyone who made them. Remember the story of Paolo and Francesca in Dante's Inferno?

Galeotto fu il libro e chi lo scrisse

That book was our panderer
and him that made it...


Beware of books. They are more than innocent assemblages of paper and ink and string and glue. If they are any good , they have the spirit of the author within. Authors are rogues and ruffians and easy lays. They are gluttons for sweets and savories. They devour life and always want more. They have sap, spirit, sex. Books are panderers. The Jews are not wrong to worship books. A real book has pheromones and sprouts grass through its cover. Whitman knew that."

...and she goes on to a quote from Whitman's Leaves of Grass he sent to Emerson.


Is the written word that bewitching? Can you fall in love with someone, through their words to you?
I'm not necessarily referring only to authors. just written communication between two people...
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Postby Sri Lanky » Thu Apr 10, 2008 2:08 pm

I'm sorry....but you really do need to get laid.
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Postby Stiv » Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:47 pm

Sri Lanky wrote:I'm sorry....but you really do need to get laid.


First we need to get her sober so she remembers it!

I'm kidding.........it's a joke.....or is it?

Best,
Stiv
Her eyes like sparks, my heart like gasoline
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Postby Mikethehack » Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:43 pm

I am a huge fan of Yeats. The eternal romantic.

This is one of my favourites. He compares Maud Gonne to Helen of Troy.
Amazing stuff.

NO SECOND TROY

by: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done, being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?

I'm not really a proper reporter, due to the chronic lack of discipline, negligible attention span, and a certain juvenile difficulty taking serious things seriously.
Andrew Mueller.
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Postby michelle in alaska » Thu Apr 10, 2008 4:50 pm

sri--
I'm sorry....but you really do need to get laid.
:)
Last edited by michelle in alaska on Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby svizzerams » Thu Apr 10, 2008 11:19 pm

Can I play - even if its ISN'T supposed to snow this weekend here (like it has the last two...)

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tense, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke
Joan of Arc went to battle with nothing
but the voices in her head
and a well-sharpened sword ~ Charlotte

...those without swords can still die upon them...

Illegitami non carborundum est
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Postby Sri Lanky » Fri Apr 11, 2008 12:45 pm

Does that coy smile indicate that you finally did get laid?
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Postby michelle in alaska » Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:51 pm

oh sri--stuff like that will never be divulged. :)
No Apologies.
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Postby Sri Lanky » Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:28 pm

There is something sexual about the word 'divulged'....so I'll assume you did.

Well done.
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Postby nowonmai » Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:08 am

Well done? A woman getting laid is hardly deserving of a well done. Women spend most of their lives trying not to get laid. The minute they lower the drawbridge there isn't usually a shortage of blokes willing to divulge. Very few women really understand this. Those that do get a reputation but wield tremendous power, except around bromide drinking misogynists like me.
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Postby michelle in alaska » Sat Apr 12, 2008 4:11 am

Well said, mr. n.
i am in total agreement.

sri, you are not a good guesser. :) ...and neither are you, stiv. :))
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