Thread: Poetry? Maybe it isn't all arty farty bull?

Come all of you workers

Who toil night and day

By hand and by brain

To earn your pay

Who for centuries long past

For no more than your bread

Have bled for your country

And counted your dead.



In the factories and mills

In the shipyards and mines

You’ve often been told

Keep up with the times

Your skills are not needed

They’ve streamlined the job

With slide rule and stopwatch

Your pride they have robbed.



But when the sky darkens

And the prospect is war

Who’s given a gun

And then pushed to the fore?

And expected to die

For the land of his birth

When he’s never owned

One handful of earth.



He’s the first one to starve

He’s the first one to die

He’s the first one in line

For that “pie in the sky�

And always the last

When the cream is shared out

For the worker is working

When the fat cat’s about.



All of these things

The worker has done

From tilling a field

To carrying a gun

Yoked to the plough

Since time first began

And always expected

To “carry the can�.

Ed Pickford

Excellent, penfoldio, and so true. How it fits these times.

The Dog and Mustard Seed


There is a pub called the Dog and Mustard Seed.
It has kittens that live in the hollows of it’s front steps.
Their mother fed them from fairy cakes with cherry’s
for a pinnacle.

You can watch them all dancing together at dusk, before
they hide from the hungry beak of a Tawny Owl. Their
jiblets quiver at the whoosh of a wing. But it is a
rustling bag that should pray on tiny minds.

A servant will trap limbs for the sake of violin strings,
and carry the babies off like wailing bag pipes under a
squeezing arm. Here is to teach aristocratic dogs how
to howl at bum notes of cat gut.

War Pig




Out of the dark and into the light
All the confusion now clear in your site
Marching a line drawn by a God
Or are you the first where our fathers have trod

The want of a fight the love of a child
A fighting of choice unreconciled

Displayment of power an on going war
Or meek as a kitten with words that mean more
Twisted mind the blame of today
Humdrum speeches with nothing to say

I will go for the fight the showing of might
Written in blood is all that is right
From all that is bad comes all that is good
The last stand of the misunderstood

I need some cheering up so here's this:

In Defence of Hedgehogs
Written by Pam Ayres

I am very fond of hedgehogs
Which makes me want to say,
That I am struck with wonder,
How there's any left today,
For each mornning as I travel
And no short distance that,
All I see are hedgehogs,
Squashed. And dead. And flat.


Now, hedgehogs are not clever,
No, hedgehogs are quite dim,
And when he sees your headlamps,
Well, it dont occur to him,
That the very wisest thing to do
Is up and run away,
No! he curls up in a stupid ball,
And no doubt starts to prey.

Well, motor cars do travel
At a most alarming rate,
And by lunch time you sees him,
It is very much too late,
And thus he gets a-squasho'd,
Unrecorded but for me,
With me pen and paper,
Sittin' in a tree.

It is statistically proven,
In chapter and in verse,
That in a car and hedgehog fight,
The hedgehog comes off worse,
When whistlin' down your prop shaft,
And bouncin' down your diff,
His coat of nice brown prickles
Is not effect-iff.

A hedgehog cannot make you laugh,
Whistle, dance or sing,
And he ain't much to look at,
And he dont make anything,
and in amongst his prickles,
There's fleas and bugs and that,
But there aint no need to leave him,
Squashred. And dead. And flat.

Oh spare a thought for hedgehogs,
Spare a thought for me,
Spare a thought for heedgehogs,
As you drink your cup of tea,
Spare a thought for heedgehogs,
Hoverin' on the brinkt,
Spare a thought for hedgehogs,
Lest they become extinct.

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

Houseman

Moments of sadness, moments of guilt
Stains on the memory, stains on the quilt
Chapter of incidents, chapter and verse
Sub-heading chronic, paragraph worse

Lost in the limelight, baked in the blaze
Did it for nine pence, those were the days
Give me my acre and give me my plough
Tell me tomorrow, don't bother me now

Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada

Times at a distance, times without touch
Greed forms the habit of asking too much
Followed at bedtime by builders and bells
Wait 'til the doldrums which nothing dispels

Idly, mentally, doubtful and dread
Who runs with the beans shall not stale with the bread
Let me lie fallow in dormant dismay
Tell me tomorrow, don't bother today

Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada


Tried like a good 'un, did it all wrong
Thought that the hard way was taking to long
To late for regret or chemical change
Yesterday's targets have gone out of range

Failure infolds me with clammy green arms
Damn the excursions and blast the alarms
For the rest of what's natural I'll lay on the ground
Tell me tomorrow if I'm still around

Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada
Fcuking Ada, fcuking Ada

etc.

Ian Dury & the Blockheads

I liked it before the bloody film...

Funeral Blues - W H Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good

***
Death Hurts But Once.

What tho' my life be full of many crimes

Death hurts but once but life a thousand times

If thou shouldst come to me with threats from hell

Fate! I would go bravely and would say 'tis well'

But if thou shouldst come to me with words of love

And kiss away my years of sin and pain

Ah! then Oh God perhaps I might wish

I had been good again.

Bring on the guns ...

- "Breaker" Morant

To THe Nameless Dead Who Lie Here And In Wayside Graves ( Irish Famine)

Nerve and muscle and heart and brain
Lost to Ireland, lost in vain
Pause and you can almost hear
The sounds echo down the ages
The creak of the burial cart

Here in humilation and sorrow
Not unmixed with indignation
One is driven to exclaim
Oh God, that bread should be so dear
And human flesh so cheap

A topical(?) warning of the dangers of pacifism, if not outright appeasement, from Hilaire Belloc:

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

since feeling is first - e.e. cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
— the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Originally Posted by Democritus

A topical(?) warning of the dangers of pacifism, if not outright appeasement, from Hilaire Belloc:

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight,
But Roaring Bill (who killed him) thought it right.

Brilliant snippet of poetry - reminds me of Gandhi.

John Betjeman - Slough

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.

Originally Posted by KevinB

Brilliant snippet of poetry - reminds me of Gandhi.

So does this one

The scent of distant indian crop
Below the horizon the sun doth drop
God bless that man with go faster flip flops.

or more relevant to KevB

We killed one, we killed two
We killed thirteen more than you etc....