Fat Fuck Thrown Over as Ballast

Oh, he’s caved before. Ass-zit. That is all.

The bidding syndicate should have invited him to meet the team to, you know, patch things up and left Fuckbaugh in the locker room alone to be kicked to death by the players.

Well he certainly has a lot of flesh for those arrows. Even those of us who aren’t an archer like IanJ or a bow hunter like RML could probably hit that fat fuck no problemo.

@SanFranLefty: Make that a “Rushbo hunter”. Heh.

Did he do the voiceover on that Levi’s commercial?

@JNOV:

I don’t care what anybody says (I’m looking at you, Benedick). I love Walt Whitman.

I want some of whatever he’s taking. That must be good shit.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: We gotta bridge here that bears his name.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Whitman be the best poet of amurrica ever. Went to law school a block from his tomb, in Camden, NJ.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: Good for you. I don’t really respond to that exalted style but it’s very well done of its kind. My lack not his. I find it all a bit wildly biblical and declamatory. Maybe that expressed the country then. He may well have intended his poetry to be declaimed, Tennyson certainly did. And as for his poem as list idea, I like it better in the hands of someone like George Crabbe in For I will consider my cat Geoffry. But as I say, it’s a matter of temperament.

@Promnight: Frost. One two and three. Though some would say Pound. Does Auden count as American?

@Promnight: Crossing Brooklyn Ferry is one of only a few poems that make me weep. That, and of course this:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

@Benedick: Frost. Although I am also partial to Gary Snyder, his early stuff.

@Benedick: Frost, beautiful poetry, but somehow, to me, it seems to speak to those who, well, have Frost’s life, a rural life of contemplation. New England college professors walking the woods in elbow-patched tweed. Auden, if he is amurrican, he is up there, OK, and Dylan Thomas died in amurrica, him also I like.

But Whitman, he spoke as an enormous soul, naked to the world, speaking of the quests and pains of the soul, of everyone’s soul, the most perfectly democratic, egalitarian poet, all was about the quest of the soul for justice, for beauty, for meaning, with no identifiable social intellectual or political viewpoint, he was simply enormous, bigger than anything that divides people.

I am for those who believe in loose delights, I share the midnight orgies of young men, I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.

I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God – I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.

These quotes are not merely enough to establish a great poet, they are enough to establish a religion. He is our Buddha. If The Rubaiyat, translated by whatsisname, was enough to establish a quasi-religion, then Whitman, 10 times more so.

Definitely Whitman, but you can keep the pompous mid-century readings.

And this is certainly one of the more bizarre thread twists. Usually we go from high to low.

I will make the true poem of riches,
To earn for the body and the mind whatever adheres and goes forward
and is not dropt by death;
I will effuse egotism and show it underlying all, and I will be the
bard of personality,
And I will show of male and female that either is but the equal of
the other,
And sexual organs and acts! do you concentrate in me, for I am determin’d
to tell you with courageous clear voice to prove you illustrious,
And I will show that there is no imperfection in the present, and
can be none in the future,
And I will show that whatever happens to anybody it may be turn’d to
beautiful results,
And I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death,
And I will thread a thread through my poems that time and events are
compact,
And that all the things of the universe are perfect miracles, each
as profound as any.

I will not make poems with reference to parts,
But I will make poems, songs, thoughts, with reference to ensemble,
And I will not sing with reference to a day, but with reference to
all days,
And I will not make a poem nor the least part of a poem but has
reference to the soul,
Because having look’d at the objects of the universe, I find there
is no one nor any particle of one but has reference to the soul.

13
Was somebody asking to see the soul?
See, your own shape and countenance, persons, substances, beasts,
the trees, the running rivers, the rocks and sands.

All hold spiritual joys and afterwards loosen them;
How can the real body ever die and be buried?

Of your real body and any man’s or woman’s real body,
Item for item it will elude the hands of the corpse-cleaners and
pass to fitting spheres,
Carrying what has accrued to it from the moment of birth to the
moment of death.

Not the types set up by the printer return their impression, the
meaning, the main concern,
Any more than a man’s substance and life or a woman’s substance and
life return in the body and the soul,
Indifferently before death and after death.

Behold, the body includes and is the meaning, the main concern and
includes and is the soul;
Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body, or any part
of it!

@nojo: Nojo, we in our cynicism seek to be above the human condition, maybe its not so bad, sometimes, briefly, to see something sincere, which acknowledges all that we despise, but rather than seeking to be above it, finds a place where it is irrelevant?

I only know ever liked two poems:

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

And

Well, I can’t find it, but it goes a little something like this:

Listen here, Joe
Don’t you know
That tomorrow you got to go
Out yonder where the steel winds blow?

Listen here, kid
It’s been said
that tomorrow
??? You’ll be dead

Don’t ask why
Just go ahead and die
A ?? medal in exchange for a guy

Momma, don’t cry

Poetry? Y’all are way too elitist for me. Give me Grisham or give me death.

But, I kind of like JNOV’s.

(I kid of course, never read a Grisham but I do read lots of stuff consummately unworthy of the classification “literature”. Holding the book iPhone in one hand, so to speak.)

@JNOV: I like Gwendolyn Brooks. On the rare occasions I read poetry, I like Donne (especially the early erotic stuff) and Auden. And @Benedick, I adore “Geoffry.” I prefer sonnets, primarily because I lack the attention span to read canto after canto and because I like the rhythm and rhyme (which in many circles is as bad as admitting you read Grisham.)

@Mistress Cynica: I think my taste is closer to yours. I am very puritanical by temperament and am unnerved by Whitman’s ‘unformed’ seething manner. I just don’t respond to it. As I say, my lack. I’m the same way about Melville; though I did like Omoo and Typee when I read them, but that’s mostly for their homo-erotic undertones. Whitman’s ragged rhythms make me uneasy and his philosophies keep distracting me from the poem. And I know that his content was radical I just don’t respond to the haranguing. Maybe I should re-read him. Maybe I was too young when I read him before. I’ve read a lot about him, of course. But somewhere I need to have the sense that the poet has some kind of sense of humor. I don’t respond to grandeur. It makes me want to throw things.

@Promnight: I don’t find Frost contained. I do like his order and I find his language is very tactile and seductive.

Reading poetry out loud is very hard to do effectively. The words must sound fresh and real yet one must honor the structure and rhythms and not merely intone as does poor Garrison Keillor. Like drama, poetry is written to be spoken not merely read. Best I ever heard was Alan Bennet.

@JNOV: Nice. reminds me of a fave of mine:

See the happy moron,
He doesn’t give a damn.
I wish I was a moron.
My God! Perhaps I am.

Randall Jarrell
The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

Gary Snyder
Hay for the Horses

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at eight a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
—The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds—
“I’m sixty-eight” he said,
“I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that’s just what
I’ve gone and done.”

a post enititled “Fat Fuck Thrown Over as Ballast”
has turned into this lovely poetry thread.

I like it.

@Capt Howdy:
There once was a girl from Nantucket….

Wow…I am stunned. I thought I was the only closet poetry geek here.

I love all that stuff- the Whitman particularly- but I have to say my very favorite is Frank O’Hara, who wrote my favorite poem of all time upon learning of Billie Holliday’s (“Lady Day”) death:

THE DAY THE LADY DIED

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille Day, yes
it is 1959, and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in East Hampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega, and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatere and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing.

It gives me the chills, every time.

@Promnight:

My favorite Whitman is from the preface to Leaves of Grass:

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body……..

I know, I know, people put that on greeting cards, for Jeebus’ sake, but still, such majesty, such a noble way to live a life. And the way he links true morality to the physical body…brilliant.

@Benedick:

“For he can spraggle upon waggle”

Love it, too.

I Like

I like them in the rain
I like them in sunshine
I like them after whisky
I like them after wine
I like them when they ignore me
And I like them when they pine
I like them narrow
I like them wide
I like them from the front
I like them from the side
I like them button nosed
And I like them almond eyed
I like them in the dark
I like them in the light
I like them in the day
I like them in the night
I like them from the left
And I like them from the right
I like them in the winter
I like them in the spring
I like them if they’re dowdy
I like them if they’re bling
I like them if they’re distant
And I like them if they cling
I like them fragrant
I like them farty
I like them demure
I like them tarty
I like them homespun
And I like them at a party
I like them blonde
I like them red
I like them single
I like them wed
I like them common
And I like them well bred
I like them black
I like them brown
I like them in a dress
I like them in a gown
I like them with a smile
And I like them with a frown
I like them straight
I like them round
I like them free
I like them bound
I like them by the inch
And I like them by the pound
I like them small
I like them pert
I like them in shorts
I like them in a skirt
I like them coy
And I like them when they flirt
I like them big
I like them small
I like them short
I like them tall
But I like them willing
Most of all

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6eCuxOMpNk

Oh, and before I leave him out, let’s not forget this guy:

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,–and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings’.

Pretty good for a minor mid-Renaissance poet.

as is the case with other things William Burroughs is my favorite:

Thanksgiving Poem

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin’ lawmen,
feelin’ their notches.

For decent church-goin’ women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.

Thanks for “Kill a Queer for
Christ” stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where
nobody’s allowed to mind the
own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the
memories– all right let’s see
your arms!

You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.

@Dodgerblue:

“she whispered a song along the keyboard…”

Wow.

/Off to search I-tune for everything-absolutely everything- Billie Holliday ever recorded.

@Benedick: The first edition of Leaves of Grass is much shorter than the much-expanded (bloated?) final edition and beautifully spare lyrically. Maybe you’d like it better. (It’s Christopher Smart who wrote about Jeoffry.)

Speaking of paeans to cats, have you ever run across “Hodge, the Cat”? It was written by a 19th-century American poet named Sarah Chauncy Woolsey (Susan Coolidge) [which is her pseudonym and which her real name I can no longer remember for sure. I also can’t remember where I found it, but I copied it into my journal].

Burly and big, his books among,
Good Samuel Johnson sat,
With frowning brows and wig askew,
His snuff-strewn waistcoat far from new;
So stern and meancing his air,
That neither Black Sam, nor the maid
To knock or interrupt him dare;
Yet close beside him, unafraid,
Sat Hodge, the cat.

“This participle,” the Doctor wrote,
“The modern scholar cavils at,
But,” – even as he penned the word,
A soft, protesting note was heard;
The Doctor fumbled with his pen,
The dawning thought took wings and flew,
The sound repeated, come again,
It was a faint, reminding “Mew!”
From Hodge, the cat.

“Poor Pussy!” said the learned man,
Giving the glossy fur a pat,
“It is your dinner time, I know,
And – well, perhaps I ought to go
For if Sam every day were sent
Off from his work your fish to buy,
Why, men are men, he might resent,
And starve or kick you on the sly;
Eh! Hodge, my cat?”

The Dictionary was laid down,
The Doctor tied his vast cravat,
And down the buzzing street he strode,
Taking an often-trodden road,
And halted at a well-known stall;
“Fishmonger,” spoke the Doctor gruff,
“Give me six oysters, that is all;
Hodge knows when he has had enough,
Hodge is my cat.”

Then home; puss dined, and while in sleep
He chased a visionary rat,
His master sat him down again,
Rewrote his page, renibbed his pen;
Each “i” was dotted, each “t” was crossed,
He labored on for all to read,
Nor deemed that time was waste or lost
Spent in supplying the small need
Of Hodge, the cat.

The dear old doctor! fierce of mien,
Untidy, arbitrary, fat,
What gentle thought his name enfold!
So generous of his scanty gold,
So quick to love, so hot to scorn,
Kind to all sufferers under heaven,
A tenderer despot ne’er was born;
His big heart held a corner, even
For Hodge, the cat.

As I typed this, I carefully preserved the line indents that began the second, sixth, eighth, and ninth lines of each stanza. But when I clicked Preview, they have all vanished from the Comment as it will appear. That’s too bad, because this poem is so carefully crafted. Oh well, sigh.

@Capt Howdy:

Whenever I read poets of that period it makes me think of a comic book series –The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. It is worth a read. I won’t go into too much of it, except to say that he has one character, “Delirium”, who is the personification of madness and ecstasy who was at one time “Delight” – the personification of joy and wonder. He never reveals what happened to make her change.

Those poets, those original beat poets always make me think of that character, for some reason.

@Capt Howdy: This might be the best example yet of one of our proudest traditions. Sites that insist you stay “on topic” are missing all the fun.

I love all you guys, you poetry-loving Stinquers, you.

I hadn’t read very far in the thread before I stopped to copy in the Hodge poem. Now that I’ve read the rest of the thread, I want to say how much I love Gary Snyder and also to mention that it’s hard to say which line in the Jeoffry poem I like best, but it might be “For he counteracts the Devil, who is death, by brisking about the life.”

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I like Neil Gaiman a lot but IMO he is a pale shadow of WB. who was the original.

I am stuck in the past:

XLI

His classic studies made a little puzzle,
Because of filthy loves of gods and goddesses,
Who in the earlier ages raised a bustle,
But never put on pantaloons or bodices;
His reverend tutors had at times a tussle,
And for their AEneids, Iliads, and Odysseys,
Were forced to make an odd sort of apology,
For Donna Inez dreaded the Mythology.
XLII

Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,
I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn
Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample:
But Virgil’s songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with “Formosum Pastor Corydon.”[12]
XLIII

Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong,
For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much indeed as to be downright rude;
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?
XLIV

Juan was taught from out the best edition,
Expurgated by learnéd men, who place
Judiciously, from out the schoolboy’s vision,
The grosser parts; but, fearful to deface
Too much their modest bard by this omission,
And pitying sore his mutilated case,
They only add them all in an appendix,[*]
Which saves, in fact, the trouble of an index;
XLV

For there we have them all “at one fell swoop,”
Instead of being scatter’d through the Pages;
They stand forth marshall’d in a handsome troop,
To meet the ingenuous youth of future ages,
Till some less rigid editor shall stoop
To call them back into their separate cages,
Instead of standing staring all together,
Like garden gods — and not so decent either.

@Prommie:

He was a bit of a plagiarist, though, stealing from Shakespeare, sometimes verbatim. Plus, closet drama. Bleh.

I don’t know how I forgot this one. Made my school-girl knees weak (thanks, Sisters of Saint Joseph!):

C. Marlowe

V. The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

COME live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks 5
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

There will I make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies, 10
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold, 15
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love. 20

Thy silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 25
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.

@Capt Howdy: I like!

@Dodgerblue: Yeah.

@Dodgerblue: Again, yeah.

I’ve always been an Emily Dickinson fan, from the first time I read her stuff in 8th or 9th grade. Maybe it’s my anal-retentiveness preferring rhymes. Even when all the girls in 10th grade went through their Sylvia Plath phases at the high school drama/poetry/prose/theatre competitions, I stuck with good old Emily. I applied to Mount Holyoke for college for no other reason than she went there (father put the kibosh on that when he saw what tuition would be – and that was 20 years ago!) And of course her classic and probably most well-known poem…

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

Another favorite:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Up to his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

@JNOV sing sin:

LOVE THAT.

Oh, my favorite non-Shakespeare poem of that era is the sly and sexy John Donne (bearing in mind that Elizabethans/Jacobeans believed that when you perstork you exchange blood) :

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck’d me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we’re met,
And cloister’d in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck’d from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say’st that thou
Find’st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
‘Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

What a cool way to say “Baby, let’s get down”….

And maybe I like Pablo Neruda some:

“If You Forget Me”

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

@SanFranLefty:

Silvia Plath. Wow. Talk about depressing. This is a woman who could make a poem about a frog into a nihilist screed. Still, she is a guilty pleasure.

Dickenson was always a bit too mannered for me, though at times her spirit breaks through all that form- refreshing when it happens, sometimes very liberating. It makes you wonder what kind of poet she would have been in a different era.

@JNOV sing sin:

I have a feeling you like more than two poems in your life, closet poetry geek. :)

@nojo: @Capt Howdy:
Getting back to the FatFuck I am reminded of Karl Shapiro:

The Glutton

The jowls of his belly crawl and swell like the sea
When his mandibles oily with lust champ and go wide;
Eternal, the springs of his spittle leak at the lips
Suspending the tongue like a whale that rolls on the tide,

His hands are as rotten fruit. His teeth are as corn.
Deep are the wells of his eyes and like navels, blind,
Dough is the brain that supplies his passion with bread,
Dough is the loose slung sack of his great behind,

Will his paps become woman’s?He dreams of the yielding milk,
Despising the waste of his stool that recalls him to bread;
More than the passion of sex and transverse pains of disease
He thinks of starvation, the locked-up mouth of the dead.

I am glad that his stomach will eat him away in revenge,
Digesting itself when his blubber is lain in earth.
Let the juice of his gluttony swallow him inward like lime
And leave of his volume only the mould of his girth.

@texrednface: Way to tie it all together.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I dunno. I guess I’m more into song lyrics, but that’s poetry, right? Maybe I like haiku a little.

@SanFranLefty: Plath. I read “The Bell Jar” when I was probably too young to read it (I used to cat sit and water plants for grad students in my apt building — I listened to their music and read their books.) I had a crush on the guy who owned “Thick as a Brick.” :-D I also got my hands on The Story of O when I was waaaay to young to read it. Anyway, yeah. Plath. I must’ve been like ten when I read her book and learned that she killed herself. I was shocked to find that artists could be depressed. Now, not so much.

@JNOV sing sin:

Poets became lyricists at a certian point, I think. Or at least they used to be. Not much poetry in “Sexy Back” for example, though I would argue that

Now put your hands up
Up in the club, we just broke up
I’m doing my own little thing
you Decided to dip but now you wanna trip
Cuz another brother noticed me
I’m up on him, he up on me
dont pay him any attention
cuz i cried my tears, GAVE three good years
Ya can’t be mad at me

‘Cuz if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it

Works very, very well as a kind of spoken-word poetry, and could really stand up to any of the above, when read aloud. It depends, really, on the artist.

The songs of the sixties and seventies, though… a style more identifiable as poetry. They don’t really do it like that anymore, I don’t think.

@lynnlightfoot: Christopher Smart! Of course. I always think it’s him then think I’ve got it wrong. I will look for the earlier edition.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: The Day the Lady Died. Very fine.

But all the poems are good to read. Good to know what people value here.

@JNOV sing sin: You ever come across this? C.Day Lewis (Daniel’s father)

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
Of peace and plenty, bed and board,
That chance employment might afford.

Hunger shall make thy modest zone
And cheat fond death of all but bone-
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

I just finished reading Les Miserables. I am taking to my bed and not sure when, if ever, I will rise again.

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I would not be just a nuffin’,
My head all full a stuffin’,
My heart all full a pain.
And perhaps I’d deserve ya
And be even worthy erve ya-
If I only had a brain.

@Benedick:

Of course! Or Sondheim (generally better when poking fun, IMHO):

TALL AND SLENDER, MOVES LIKE A DANCER,
BUT I NEVER SEEM TO GET ANY ANSWER
FROM THE BOY FROM TACAREMBO LA TUMBE DEL FUEGO SANTA MALIPAS ZATATECAS LA JUNTA DEL SOL Y CRUZ.
I GOT THE BLUETH.

WHY ARE HIS TROUSERS VERMILLION?
HIS TROUSERS ARE VERMILLION.
WHY DOES HE CLAIM HE’S CASTILIAN?
HE THAYTH THAT HE’TH CATHTILIAN.
WHY DO HIS FRIENDS CALL HIM LILLIAN?
AND I HEAR AT THE END OF THE WEEK
HE’S LEAVING TO START A BOUTIQUE.

THOUGHT I SMILE, I’M ONLY PRETENDING
‘CAUSE I KNOW TODAY’S THE LAST I’LL BE SPENDING
WITH THE BOY FROM TACAREMBO LA TUMBE DEL FUEGO SANTA MALIPAS ZATATECAS LA JUNTA DEL SOL Y CRUZ. (“crooth”)

TOMORROW HE SAILS.
HE’S MOVING TO WALES,
TO LIVE IN LLANFAIRPWLLGWYNGYLLGOGERYCHWYR NDROBULLLLANDYSILIOGOGOGOCH

But again, works only when sung or spoken.

My add:

“I’d rather be thin
than fat.”

J. Kerouac

@Benedick: Oh, I love it!

@Tommmcatt is hunkered down in the trenches: I love that damn song.