Poetry

[TxTwisterGl]

I love to write poetry as well as read it. Does anyone else write and would like to share their creations with the rest of the forum? If so, Id love to post some of mine if that's ok. Perhaps the 'powers that be" could create a thread called Creativity where we can post poetry or other writings and/or pictures of crafts we've done or heck anything that you are inspired to create. Personally I believe everyone has a talent that can and should be shared. People have touched my life more by sharing something like this vs. going out to a movie or out to dinner with them. It lets you see the inner person and lets you get to know a side that very few may ever see. So, whats the concensus?

 

[SeaBreeze]

I would love to read some of your poetry, and other members as well. You should just start a "Creativity" thread on your own with some of your work, and I'm sure others will add to it with time.

 

[Bill.K]

I love to read poetry, I don't write it, but my wife used to, I don't have the creative mind for it.

 

[Elsie]

A short one...amateur
Elsie J Doll
New Dawn
In a land of pain and struggles
Exists a home of love and courage.
It resides in the hearts of those whose song
Sings of healed affliction in a joyous new dawn.

 

[ohioboy]

Innocence

I have a little question.
One of such delight,
Can you lend me fifty cents,
I wish to buy a kite.

I'm only five years old I am
And have never worked for pay.
I follow mom around the house,
While she cooks and cleans, I play.

I promise to pay back every cent,
I wish to buy a kite for Jesus
To fly on down to bless us all--
Before the Devil ever sees us!

 

[Ceege]

I don't write poetry, but my favorite poem is by Longfellow.....

The Arrow and the Song - Longfellow

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

 

[Capt Lightning]

Slough is a town in England near Windsor. Now largely inhabited by immigrants.

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!
Come, bombs and blow to smithereens
Those air -conditioned, bright canteens,
Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans,
Tinned minds, tinned breath.

Mess up the mess they call a town-
A house for ninety-seven down
And once a week a half a crown
For twenty years.

And get that man with double chin
Who'll always cheat and always win,
Who washes his repulsive skin
In women's tears:

And smash his desk of polished oak
And smash his hands so used to stroke
And stop his boring dirty joke
And make him yell.

But spare the bald young clerks who add
The profits of the stinking cad;
It's not their fault that they are mad,
They've tasted Hell.

It's not their fault they do not know
The birdsong from the radio,
It's not their fault they often go
To Maidenhead

And talk of sport and makes of cars
In various bogus-Tudor bars
And daren't look up and see the stars
But belch instead.

In labour-saving homes, with care
Their wives frizz out peroxide hair
And dry it in synthetic air
And paint their nails.

Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough
To get it ready for the plough.
The cabbages are coming now;
The earth exhales.

 

[Capt Lightning]

Another one of Betjeman's poems. This one is about Capt. Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the English Channel.
He was born in the town of Dawley and after a life performing feats of swimming, drowned attempting so swim across the rapids at the base of the Niagara falls. The poem imagines his ghost swimming a final time in the Dawley canal.
The towns mentioned are in area of Webb's birth and were instrumental in the Industrial revolution. Ironbridge was the site of the world's first bridge made from cast iron..

A Shropshire Lad.....

The gas was on in the Institute,
The flare was up in the gym,
A man was running a mineral line,
A lass was singing a hymn,
When Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Came swimming along the old canal
That carried the bricks to Lawley.
Swimming along -
Swimming along -
Swimming along from Severn,
And paying a call at Dawley Bank while swimming along to Heaven.

The sun shone low on the railway line
And over the bricks and stacks
And in at the upstairs windows
Of the Dawley houses' backs
When we saw the ghost of Captain Webb,
Webb in a water sheeting,
Come dripping along in a bathing dress
To the Saturday evening meeting.
Dripping along -
Dripping along -
To the Congregational Hall;
Dripping and still he rose over the sill and faded away in a wall.

There wasn't a man in Oakengates
That hadn't got hold of the tale,
And over the valley in Ironbridge,
And round by Coalbrookdale,
How Captain Webb the Dawley man,
Captain Webb from Dawley,
Rose rigid and dead from the old canal
That carries the bricks to Lawley.
Rigid and dead -
Rigid and dead -
To the Saturday congregation,
Paying a call at Dawley Bank on the way to his destination.