Favourite Poems & Poems that moved you

[The Cat]

The Charge of the Light Brigade
By Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

 

[senza tema]

How to Be a Poet
BY WENDELL BERRY

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

 

[Wunjo]

Hymns to the Night, IV.
Novalis.

Over I journey
And for each pain
A pleasant sting only
Shall one day remain.
Yet in a few moments
Then free am I,
And intoxicated
In Love's lap lie.
Life everlasting
Lifts, wave-like, at me,
I gaze from its summit
Down after thee.
Your lustre must vanish
Yon mound underneath --
A shadow will bring thee
Thy cooling wreath.
Oh draw at my heart, love,
Draw till I'm gone,
That, fallen asleep, I
Still may love on.
I feel the flow of
Death's youth-giving flood
To balsam and ether
Transform my blood --
I live all the daytime
In faith and in might
And in holy rapture
I die every night.

 

[Lady Lazarus]

Fragment 56

not one girl I think
who looks on the light of the sun
will ever
have wisdom
like this

 

[❀༺♥༻ℭ𝔞𝔢𝔩𝔦𝔞_𝔄𝔦𝔰𝔩𝔦𝔫𝔤༺♥༻❀༺]

On Pain by Khalil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquillity:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by
the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears.

 

[Kanra Jest]

Too lazy to read it, I'd rather just listen to it

 

[Wunjo]

Not a poem, but still, quite poetic.

"And I myself met once with a young man in the Burren Hills who remembered an old poet who made his poems in Irish and had met when he was young, the young man said, one who called herself Maive, and said she was a queen “among them,” and asked him if he would have money or pleasure. He said he would have pleasure, and she gave him her love for a time, and then went from him, and ever after he was very mournful. The young man had often heard him sing the poem of lamentation that he made, but could only remember that it was “very mournful,” and that he called her “beauty of all beauties.”

— W.B. Yeats, "And Fair, Fierce Women", The Celtic Twilight.

 

[Tengri]

If I could put my woods in song
And tell what's there enjoyed,
All men would to my gardens throng,
And leave the cities void.

In my plot no tulips blow,--
Snow-loving pines and oaks instead;
And rank the savage maples grow
From Spring's faint flush to Autumn red.

My garden is a forest ledge
Which older forests bound;
The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
Then plunge to depths profound.

Here once the Deluge ploughed,
Laid the terraces, one by one;
Ebbing later whence it flowed,
They bleach and dry in the sun.

The sowers made haste to depart,--
The wind and the birds which sowed it;
Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
Planted these, and tempests flowed it.

Waters that wash my garden-side
Play not in Nature's lawful web,
They heed not moon or solar tide,--
Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
And every god,--none did refuse;
And be sure at last came Love,
And after Love, the Muse.

Keen ears can catch a syllable,
As if one spake to another,
In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
And what the whispering grasses smother.

Æolian harps in the pine
Ring with the song of the Fates;
Infant Bacchus in the vine,--
Far distant yet his chorus waits.

Canst thou copy in verse one chime
Of the wood-bell's peal and cry,
Write in a book the morning's prime,
Or match with words that tender sky?

Wonderful verse of the gods,
Of one import, of varied tone;
They chant the bliss of their abodes
To man imprisoned in his own.

Ever the words of the gods resound;
But the porches of man's ear
Seldom in this low life's round
Are unsealed, that he may hear.

Wandering voices in the air
And murmurs in the wold
Speak what I cannot declare,
Yet cannot all withhold.

When the shadow fell on the lake,
The whirlwind in ripples wrote
Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
And omens above thought.

But the meanings cleave to the lake,
Cannot be carried in book or urn;
Go thy ways now, come later back,
On waves and hedges still they burn.

These the fates of men forecast,
Of better men than live to-day;
If who can read them comes at last
He will spell in the sculpture, 'Stay.'

Emerson

 

[Wunjo]

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

William Wordsworth, The World is Too Much With Us.

 

[anticlimatic]

I cannot go to school today
said little Peggy Anne McKay

 

[Peter Deadpan]

I don't like poetry. It tries too hard.

 

[Tengri]

 

[The Cat]

Cicadas in the trees.

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

Keaton Henson 'Grow Up With Me', audio.

Grow up with me.

Let’s run in fields and fear the dark together.
Fall of swings, and burn special things,
and both play outside in bad weather.

Let’s eat badly.
Let’s watch adults drink wine and laugh at their idiocy.
Let’s sit in the back of the car,
making eye contact with strangers driving past,
making them uncomfortable.

Not caring.
Not swearing.
Don’t fuck.

Let’s both reclaim our superpowers;
the ones we all have and lose with our milk teeth.
The ability not to fear social awkwardness.
To panic when locked in the cellar;
still sure there’s something down there.
And while picking from pillows each feather,
let’s both stay away from the edge of the bed,
forcing us closer together.

Let’s sit in public, with ice cream all over both our faces;
sticking our tongues out at passers by.
Let’s cry.
Let’s swim.
Let’s everything.

Let’s not find it funny lest someone falls over.
Classical music is boring.
Poetry baffles us both;
there’s nothing that’s said is what’s meant.
Plays are long, tiresom, sullend, and filled;
with hours that could be spent rolling down hills,
and grazing our knees on cement.

Let’s hear stories and both lose our inocence.
Learn about parents and forgiveness,
death and morality,
kindness and art,
thus losing both of our innocent hearts,
but at least we won’t do it apart.

Grow up with me.

"Some days I want to sit in my sadness
like a parked car, engine still

hot but breathing, waiting for
a song to end. But some never

do."
- Emilia Phillips

Last one for today, my absolute fave.

"i am young and invincible
you line up the end of your burning cigarette with the sun dipping low on the horizon
exhale smoke like a river and tell me,
“Darling, we are immortal.”

except we aren’t.

except your mother gets angry again
and takes your door off its hinges
she yells and i know you don’t like the noise
i know you’ve been struggling with diagnoses you’ve had to give yourself
because she’s got a sister with a brain that likes to scream
and it’s genetic

your mother always gets angry in the end
and mine stops caring

somewhere along the way we picked up the roles our families failed to fill
slung them over our shoulders and did our best as substitutes
mother, brother, lover
sister
father

lover.

i hush you into bed and you make me breakfast the next day
when i don’t touch it you know that the absence of a remark from you will buy you a respite when you work yourself into a frenzy of disassociation again

we are trying our best to fill shoes too big
to try and just be
in the empty spaces our parents left behind

we have to be young, my love
because our souls are too old and our minds too aged
this skin is all we have left of a lost childhood
and even that is slipping

and we must be invincible if only because we are not:
we have learned to exist not because of but in spite of
and this is a talent we will take to the grave

my love,
we have survived too much to not indulge ourselves in this:
a half hour on the balcony watching the sun set
your breath reeking of smoke but your hand warm on my waist

my love,
we have survived too much to not indulge ourselves in this:
you, saying things you know are not truth but instead pretty falsities
me, willing to believe because it is better than denying

darling,
we are immortal."

The slam poems are coming soon, be prepared!

 

[The Cat]

This was me growing up.

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

Handwritten text over Andrew Wyeth
•
“The face of the heart has been
Beaten bloody
No one dares to speak [of] who
Caused the horror
People carry on as they once were
Silent like snow
There was a coldness but it was beautiful
Sometimes you still dream of light
And of laughter
But maybe that was an
Echo.”

"I survived by
telling myself


‘I’ll kill myself tomorrow
but not today.’


I kept putting it off
for days and days and days
with the hope that the darkness
will leave my body one of these days.


and some days,
it leaves and some days,
it stays.


I’m still surviving
and that’s the sad truth
and maybe I’ll kill myself tomorrow
but not today."

-Juansen Dizon, Magic Mantra

"Swallowing glass, calling it
healing //

sharp edges ripping apart what is left
of the heart until there is nothing but
empty space & we can swallow
light, we will swallow
the light, we will (try to)
swallow the light,

(if only the blood would
stop pouring.)"

- excerpt from pragmatic. by han hyland

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

When I heard slam poetry/spoken word for the first time, I really didn't like it AT ALL. But I've really learnt to appreciate this particular song (and a few others). It sounded like shit at first, but because the lyrics was so good I forced myself to keep listening to it. And now I can say that I genuinely like this song.

Anyway, enough said. Since it's a pretty long song I will put my favorite parts of it in a spoiler. (Or just Google the lyrics, it's good, I promise. )

I felt your sickness brush against my arm as I walked by you -
heard your voice but couldn't tell that it was you.
And, slowly, watched your sickness slip away into a place
that I'd once feared but I was not afraid this time
So I gave chase and found it, finally, slowly feeding from your head,
And from my friends, and from my family, so I grabbed it by the neck.
"For every lover you have ruined..." I dug my nails into its flesh.
"...and every life that you have taken..."
Slammed its head against the brick.
Its blood poured out onto the pavement,
I stirred it in with dirt and spit,
"I will take a part of you."
I made mortar from the mix.
Tore every organ from its body,
broke its bone and fashioned bricks,
I laid the mortar in between,
I made a throne for hope to sit.
"Too long you've torn us into pieces,
firmly held onto our wrists. Today I bury you in me."
I swallowed every inch of it.

...

But I still see him dead in the parking lot at the gas station just down the street.
And I still hear my friend say,
"You know, you wouldn't believe the things I saw when I was stationed overseas."
But he somehow keeps smiling in spite all of that,
while I keep finding ways to push the good out for the bad
Oh, how selfish of myself to always say that it was more than I could take,
like it was pain I could not shake,
like it could break me with its fingers, throw my body in the lake,
and I would slowly sink away
but the Truth is it was sorrow that I made and would not face.
See, I keep falling for the future after tripping on the past.
And I am always tearing sutures out to make the anguish last like it defines me.
Or reminds me I've found comfort in my suffering
and uncertainty in happiness and death,
because what's next is such a mystery to me.
I am terrified of all the things I feel but cannot see.
Friends and family, put your hand into my hand and lay your head into my chest.
You are all that I have left here
We are all that we have left.

....

Keep your head up. we're fine. Just keep your head up. I swear we'll be alright.
Keep your head up. Oh, my friends, keep your head up. and I swear we'll never die.
I swear we'll get home safe and sound, we'll live on underground
I will give your heart a place to rest when everything you had has turned and left.
I'll weave your names into my ribcage; lock your hearts inside my chest.
Regain the passion I once carried; do away with all the rest.
I tore the sickness from your bodies; smashed its head against the bricks.
I made a castle from its bones that you may always dwell in it.
So sing for every buried moment that you'd thought would never end.
And sing your fears about the future; and a dirge for faded friends.
For all the love that you had held to, why it somehow failed to keep.
And sing each minute you've been frightened; every hour that you've lost sleep
And sing for all your friends and family; sing for those who didn't survive.
But sing not for their final outcome; sing a song of how they tried.
We live amidst a violent storm; leaves us unsatisfied at best,
So fill your heart with what's important, and be done with all the rest.
We are what's left of what we once were
We are falling far behind.
There's so much stacking up against us and we're running out of time.

We are but hopeful children, and we're the last of our kind.
But if we let our hearts move outward, I know we will never-
We are but friends and family, we are the last of our kind.
So hold my hand, I'll lift your head up, and I promise we'll be fine.
We are but hopeful lovers, and we are running out of time.
There's so much stacking up against us, and we're falling far behind.
We are but hopeful lovers, we are the last of our kind,
But if we let our hearts move outward, I know we will never-
We are but lovers, we are the last of our kind.
And if we let our hearts move outward, I know we will never-
We are but lovers, we are the last of our kind.
And if we let our hearts move outward, we will never die.
​

Especially the part where he talks about having found comfort in his suffering, that he keeps tearing sutures out to make the anguish last like it defines him.. My 16y/o ass finally felt understood.

 

[Earl Grey]

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

Dying is an art.
Like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.

Sylvia Plath, Ariel

 

[Schrödinger's Name]

"Some days
I want something to rip through me like that,
to leave me as nothing but blood and bone.
Some days it’s so beautiful, the way broken glass
glitters and throws back the sun."

— Jennifer Saunders, from “Wait a Second, Let Me Write It Down,” published in Glass

---

"I am nothing to you but a risk you chanced and lost –

a broken little girl who exists on a diet of solitude and nihilism, whose therapists all gave up after five sessions of my deflection of the pointlessness of their neuro-scientific cognitive-behavioural training.

So fix me, puma –

or start locking my cage."

— Melissa Lee-Houghton, from Sunshine

"One day,
I’ll confess to the moon
that I envy her company,
that I am not happy
staring lonely up at her
while she is hugged close
by the night sky
and sung to sleep by the stars.

One night,
I’ll confess to the sun
that I have tried to steal
her warmth more than once,
that I have set myself on fire
in order to curb the cold
that lingers in my bed.


And maybe someday,
I’ll lay in the grass under the sky
and I’ll confess to the stars
that after all this time
I still dream of falling."

- things I won’t say out loud || O.L.