Great Poetry

[Mr.Obvious]

Feed
-------

Bare bone torn from the hands that beseech;
their skin ripped by the bloody mouth of the leech.
They are but pounds of flesh, red and raw meat,
a feast offered to the obese beast to feed it’s greed.

It’s flesh is weak and temptation runs within;
pumping through its veins like the original sin
whispering in its ears its self-centred narration
so it might save itself from its own salvation.

Continue to dine on the body of fellow man:
a meagre carcass provides like no god can.
For out there lie no heavens, except in the lies
of how humanity is born, lives and never dies.

Yet when the last one sits on a throne o’ bones,
hungering for more than everything that it owns;
shall it finally learn it can never grow whole?
For feasts of flesh and blood empty the soul.

[J a c k]

I really liked your rainbow poem, Cod.

Thank you, it took time and great effort on my part

Wait. You’re cod? How dare you change your name!?

---

Feed
-------

Bare bone torn from the hands that beseech;
their skin ripped by the bloody mouth of the leech.
They are but pounds of flesh, red and raw meat,
a feast offered to the obese beast to feed it’s greed.

It’s flesh is weak and temptation runs within;
pumping through its veins like the original sin
whispering in its ears its self-centred narration
so it might save itself from its own salvation.

Continue to dine on the body of fellow man:
a meagre carcass provides like no god can.
For out there lie no heavens, except in the lies
of how humanity is born, lives and never dies.

Yet when the last one sits on a throne o’ bones,
hungering for more than everything that it owns;
shall it finally learn it can never grow whole?
For feasts of flesh and blood empty the soul.

[The Industrial Atheist]

This is really the only poem I've been familiar with. why I like it, I have no idea. I really shouldn't be able to relate it to it. Maybe I relate to it kind of the same way factory workers that lost their jobs related to Trump's angry, whiny, rich ass!?

Lochinvar - Poem by Sir Walter Scott
O young Lochinvar is come out of the west,
Through all the wide Border his steed was the best;
And save his good broadsword he weapons had none,
He rode all unarm'd, and he rode all alone.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war,
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.
He staid not for brake, and he stopp'd not for stone,
He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;
But ere he alighted at Netherby gate,
The bride had consented, the gallant came late:
For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war,
Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar.

So boldly he enter'd the Netherby Hall,
Among bride's-men, and kinsmen, and brothers and all:
Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword,
(For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word,)
"O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,
Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"

"I long woo'd your daughter, my suit you denied; --
Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide --
And now I am come, with this lost love of mine,
To lead but one measure, drink one cup of wine.
There are maidens in Scotland more lovely by far,
That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar."

The bride kiss'd the goblet: the knight took it up,
He quaff'd off the wine, and he threw down the cup.
She look'd down to blush, and she look'd up to sigh,
With a smile on her lips and a tear in her eye.
He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar, --
"Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lovely her face,
That never a hall such a gailiard did grace;
While her mother did fret, and her father did fume
And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume;
And the bride-maidens whisper'd, "'twere better by far
To have match'd our fair cousin with young Lochinvar."

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear,
When they reach'd the hall-door, and the charger stood near;
So light to the croupe the fair lady he swung,
So light to the saddle before her he sprung!
"She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur;
They'll have fleet steeds that follow," quoth young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Graemes of the Netherby clan;
Forsters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran:
There was racing and chasing on Cannobie Lee,
But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see.
So daring in love, and so dauntless in war,
Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar?
Sir Walter Scott

[Angrboda]

Epistemology

I.
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, 'You are not true.'

~ Richard Wilbur

[LadyForCamus]

Here are a few of my favorites from over the years:

A Noiseless Patient Spider
By Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

The Lull
by Molly Peacock

The possum lay on the tracks fully dead.
I’m the kind of person who stops to look.
It was big and white with flies on its head,
a thick healthy hairless tail, and strong, hooked
nails on its racoon-like feet. It was a full
grown possum. It was sturdy and adult.
Only its head was smashed. In the lull
that it took to look, you took the time to insult
the corpse, the flies, the world, the fact that we were
traipsing in our dress shoes down the railroad tracks.
“That’s disgusting.” You said that. Dreams, brains, fur
and guts: what we are. That’s my bargain, the Pax
Peacock, with the world. Look hard, life’s soft. Life’s cache
is flesh, flesh, and flesh.

A Green Crab’s Shell
By Mark Doty

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.

[LadyForCamus]

Whoa, I didn’t know IWNK was Cod! Mind blow.

[vulcanlogician]

“Knowledge”

Die, body, die.
Go, spirit, go.
Away from the lie,
into your home.

Look at the sky.
Perceive what is known.
See, brother, see
the slaves and the stone.

Be alien to them.
Fly to the light.
Wisdom of the moth;
it’s fiery flight.

Slaves of the stone
toil as they do.
How will they know?
The true, what is true?

Moth in the fire.
Burn, baby, burn.
Turn from the lie.
Learn, baby, learn.

[Mr.Obvious]

Alchemy

I wonder when I see the square painted with bloodshed;
if a mason and a rebel could share a common word
like you and I do with wine and unleavened bread?
Layaway bricks for the new to build and the old to hurt.
Leave behind the palace of the Tsaar of stone and gold,
and the bruise where the crown was knocked to the ground.
Step away from the guillotine made of metal and cold,
and the ropes that cut into your hands which were bound.
Both destruction and reconstruction belong to a snake
which consumes it’s own tail in a cycle without end.
The ouroboros of nature puts humanity itself at stake,
unless our very ideals instead we can learn to bend.

[LadyForCamus]

Alchemy

I wonder when I see the square painted with bloodshed;
if a mason and a rebel could share a common word
like you and I do with wine and unleavened bread?
Layaway bricks for the new to build and the old to hurt.
Leave behind the palace of the Tsaar of stone and gold,
and the bruise where the crown was knocked to the ground.
Step away from the guillotine made of metal and cold,
and the ropes that cut into your hands which were bound.
Both destruction and reconstruction belong to a snake
which consumes it’s own tail in a cycle without end.
The ouroboros of nature puts humanity itself at stake,
unless our very ideals instead we can learn to bend.

You write that, Obvs?

[Mr.Obvious]

Alchemy

I wonder when I see the square painted with bloodshed;
if a mason and a rebel could share a common word
like you and I do with wine and unleavened bread?
Layaway bricks for the new to build and the old to hurt.
Leave behind the palace of the Tsaar of stone and gold,
and the bruise where the crown was knocked to the ground.
Step away from the guillotine made of metal and cold,
and the ropes that cut into your hands which were bound.
Both destruction and reconstruction belong to a snake
which consumes it’s own tail in a cycle without end.
The ouroboros of nature puts humanity itself at stake,
unless our very ideals instead we can learn to bend.

You write that, Obvs?

Yeah.

Don't worry. I'm not high on myself, posting it in 'great poetry'. I think other post their own writing here too. Couldn't find another thread for it, and so i've posted a few in here.