Poetry

jmpoet said:
I do remember them from my Goth listening days.  I didn't really seem to get into them then but I should revisit their music.  I found myself later on understanding her voice a lot better.  If you have any recommendations from their work, Foro, I'd appreciate it.

To be honest, I haven't checked those albums myself that well yet, I only saw a live performance in (I believe) 2005. Very intriguing. Atmospheric, rhythmic, enchanting music. But my wife has heard most of their albums.

They are quite different. The first is more gothic / new wave. The ones that followed were influenced by music from various world parts but also contain ambient, more atmospheric songs.

Within the Realm of a Dying Sun is a very famous album, considered by many a masterpiece. 
Definitely worth checking, especially the songs with Lisa on vocals, the second half of the album.

Spiritchaser has more African influences (cool rhythms). What's also nice is that, in one and the same song, both singers interact, which was a novelty, because before that it was one singer per song.
This album contains two of their best songs, namely "Nierika" & "Indus".

The Serpent's Egg (more sombre) & Aion (more medieval atmosphere) are also strong albums.

But remember, Dead Can Dance is at least as much Brendan Perry's band (who also sings) as Gerard's.
So if you mainly go for Gerard's voice it might be better to check out her own discography. Her first album (The Mirror Pool) would be the best recommendation. It is orchestral, has classical influences, but is also very sombre. It contains Gerard's probably most famous song "Sanvean: I am your shadow".

jmpoet said:
This poet, Michael Earl Craig, is an oddball American from Montana.  Rather than working in academia where so many American poets make their living nowadays, this guy works as a farrier.

I thought he makes a nice contrast with the ancient poet from the above post because his voice is not in command or leadership, but a lost and alienated voice not at all bitter but more in wonder at such an overwhelming, twisted, yet still oddly beautiful world. ...

That is pretty different stuff indeed!
 
William Blake's : For Children, The Gates Of Paradise

http://www.blakearchive.org/exist/blake ... 01&java=no

I was incredibly touched by this one, the night I've first read it, in November 1994
Without the images it's not the same thus I posted this link

013151arf011n.jpg
 
Thanks Foro for the recommendations re: Gerrard and dead can dance.  I think I will check it out, although I'm immersed in Maiden so much now I haven't been listening to much else. 

Yes, that poet is completely different.  I thought that some of his work is like a ghazal, and other parts of his work more like a conversation dreaming. 

Ah, William Blake. I love William Blake.  :)  I haven't read his stuff in ages, thanks Quetz, for reminding me of him.
 
Hello everyone, This is my first post ever here :)
I registered only to thank you for the beautiful poetry you share. I'm a poetry addict myself and I write too.
You guys should close the forum for your own safety and copyrights because this is amazing!

I don't know if you know the poet Louis MacNeice, but he's definitely one of my favorite poets.
I would like to share my all-time favorite poem for him and in my history of poetry reading, I've never read a poem that much.

"Prayer before Birth"


I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.

I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
 
SilentLucidity said:
Walter de la Mare
The Window

Behind the blinds I sit and watch
The people passing - passing by;
And not a single one can see
My tiny watching eye.

They cannot see my little room,
All yellowed with the shaded sun;
They do not even know I'm here;
Nor'll guess when I am gone.

The Window of Walter de la Mare is a nice piece of poems. The simple and humble approach of the poet touches me. He is just like a tiny flower of the forests which appears and is not noticed by most of us although the flower has colors and smells and everything to draw attention of the rest of the world.

EDIT: Whoever said emo was a new phenomenon...
 
ISRAFEL, by POE

In Heaven a spirit doth dwell
"Whose heart-strings are a lute";
None sing so wildly well
As the angel Israfel,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell),
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamored moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven,)
Pauses in Heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That Israfeli's fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings-
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty-
Where Love's a grown-up God-
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore thou art not wrong,
Israfeli, who despisest
An unimpassioned song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit-
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute-
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, Heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely–flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
 
This is my first formal foray into poetry. I hope it is at least unique. Auburn is mainly coincidental.

Cerity Insighed

A burning as if blushing slipping
Unheeded between my flesh and blood,
Burns fleeting between every sensation.
Untimely insight blinding my judgement,
Reality pries its way into my eyes.
No pain beyond burning alights to mind.

New ecstasies of discovery emerge through
Windows lightly fog-blessed.
Ice floes lightly weave the meshed
Sunderings of my mind embodied
In my body with the slightest touch.

Eyes ask for floor and favor out of desperation,
Knowing that they have but this moment to
Snare my mind in its throne.
Masterful strokes of masturbatory brush
Paint Apollo and Dionysus in their perfect harmony.
The first and former takes his cue to dance in the light
Which his companion casts.

Enantiodromic euphoria soars out of the blackest depths
Of the Sun's heart;
O contrast!
Counterpoint to the point of absolute purity
Spins the bind while his companion casts himself in the light.

Color, splendid color, blushes out of the scene.
Silence takes the harmony as its own,
Relentless rhythms striking out against
What monarchy had ensnared it.
The wild menagerie swells to and fro,
And if they themselves do not know it,
They dance the most lush of the rebalancing acts to perfection.

O, if only I might know that they know it!
The pairs humble themselves and give no credit
To their performance.
They merely take joy in the spontaneity of their
Bursts about the scene, tantalizing and stimulating beyond measure.

The eyes suspend their trapping and
Allow me to return to my awareness of
That gentle fire which had so serenely lay
Dormant.
The floes too flow among the teasing and
Fleeting flames which again seduce me
Into their elemental instants.

Break your spell, sprites!
I have been prepared by
The sage teachers Balance and Moment.
The infinitesimal experience
Now yields its milk in my naissance.

Sincerity gasps, awed by herself.
 
There is a Poetry thread???? Why am I just starting to notice this?
 
Some of the poems I like:

Alone And Drinking Under The Moon, by Li Bai (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Po)

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

A Tree, by Kostas Karyotakis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kostas_Karyotakis)

With calm, indifferent brow
I'll greet the afternoons, the dawns.

A tree, I'll stand and gaze at both
the tempest and the azure sky.

I'll say that life's the coffin
in which people's joy and sorrow die.

A Song Of Despair, by Pablo Neruda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Neruda)

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!
 
Thanks to Treehouse of Horrors, I looked up "The Raven".

I don't understand some words, and the grammer makes my head spin, but it IS pretty powerful. Gets a very clear atmosphere through.
 
Thanks to Treehouse of Horrors, I looked up "The Raven".

I don't understand some words, and the grammer makes my head spin, but it IS pretty powerful. Gets a very clear atmosphere through.
quote the raven...eat my shorts! -- bart simpson:)
 
The Godmother
by Dorothy Parker


The day that I was christened-
It's a hundred years, and more!-
A hag came and listened
At the white church door,
A-hearing her that bore me
And all my kith and kin
Considerately, for me,
Renouncing sin.
While some gave me corals,
And some gave me gold,
And porringers, with morals
Agreeably scrolled,
The hag stood, buckled
In a dim gray cloak;
Stood there and chuckled,
Spat, and spoke:
"There's few enough in life'll
Be needing my help,
But I've got a trifle
For your fine young whelp.
I give her sadness,
And the gift of pain,
The new-moon madness,
And the love of rain."
And little good to lave me
In their holy silver bowl
After what she gave me-
Rest her soul!
 
I assume this is a place for OUR works??

If so then...one from me.



My Sunday Best


Is this all?

It’s not what I expected.

I heard the call

I had always assumed I’d be rejected

What now? Another life?


What of my son and wife?

Is that me below?

A man in a suit I don’t even know

A tube in my arm, blood flows out

In goes a preservative no doubt

Days later, all gather

They reminisce and weep, not party like I’d rather.

I... in my Sunday best.

Mother, weeping, holds me to her breast

Just as she did when I came into this world

My white flag of surrender unfurled

The grim reaper screams by

So this is what it is like to die?

Just darkness? Where is the bright light?

It seems I went quietly into that dark night.

Transported, then hoisted down

Am I no longer a proper noun?

I guess I’ll lay here and await a rebirth

The melodic din of shoveled earth.
 
So I wrote this little piece for a story I’m writing with a friend of mine. I dunno if it’s good or not, but....


As we walk together this grassy hill
Averting doom of earthly ills
Sitting by the river wide
And drawing from the mountainside

The King is calling for his land
Guided by his earthy hand
A ferry to fear and not to hate
A barter now a-fore too late

We twist through the sceptered isles
We drift into our demonic wiles
My mind, her soul, entwined, entombed
Upon this flowered sky marooned

O then shall once our trumpets sound
And buried deep, we, in the ground
As all our lives come towards our ends
We'll find the chemical wedding, my friends.
 
Enjoy this shithole of a poem.

Cold World

The walk home on a quiet night
Miles away from your warmth, or anyone's
As an experience denies the slightest chance
That there is kindness in a cold world

The sky is purple-black, my heart the latter
Fuck everyone, do they even matter?
Surely it would console to know
That there is kindness in a cold world

A car that passes, I wish it drove me over
So this would be my last day spent sober
Still, I can't deny that when she smiles
There is kindness in a cold world

Guide me, brother, I love you so
Make me believe, give me hope
"Discard these thoughts, wipe the tears
For there is kindness in this cold world."
 
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