She forced us to eat cheese
To make us constipated
We begged her please
Because we were nauseated

She made us wash it down
With milk in a tall glass
And like a log jam
It blocked up my ass

Groan and moan
Can't pass a stone
She didn't even care we
Could not digest her dairy
Her nipples so damned hairy

(My contribution to bad poetry.)

A selection from e.e. cummings' first published work:

In heaven's intolerable athanor
inimitably tortured the base day
utters at length her soft intrinsic hour,
and from those tenuous fires which more and more
sink and are lost the divine alchemist,
the magus of creation,lifts a flower-
whence is the world's insufferable clay
clothed with incognizable amethyst.

We have a new type of rule now.
Not one man rule or rule of aristocracy or plutocracy,
But of small groups elevated to positions of absolute power
By random pressures and subject to political and economic factors
That leave little room for decision.
They're representatives of abstract forces
Who've reached power through surrender of self.
The Iron-Will Dictator is a thing of the past.
There will be no more Stalins, no more Hitlers.
The rulers of this most insecure of all worlds
Are rulers by accident,
Inept, frightened pilots at the controls
Of a vast machine they cannot understand,
Calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push.

...it's probably for the best you died in 1997.

(is 3fingerspointback)

Here's a good one for our times (for all times):

Sadiq

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more. (Sa'di - 13th Century)

It should make you shake and sweat,
nightmare you, strand you in a desert
of irrevocable desolation, the consequences
seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline
feeds the muscle its courage, no matter
what god shines down on you, no matter
what crackling pain and anger
you carry in your fists, my friend,
it should break your heart to kill.

- Brian Turner

And since I quoted Plath, here's her former hubby (taken from the book Crow) with part of his bleak creation story:

A Childish Prank

Man's and woman's bodies lay without souls,
Dully gaping, foolishly staring, inert
On the flowers of Eden.
God pondered.

The problem was so great, it dragged him asleep.

Crow laughed.
He bit the Worm, God's only son,
Into two writhing halves.

He stuffed into man the tail half
With the wounded end hanging out.

He stuffed the head half headfirst into woman
And it crept in deeper and up
To peer out through her eyes
Calling its tail-half to join up quickly, quickly
Because O it was painful.

Man awoke being dragged across the grass.
Woman awoke to see him coming.
Neither knew what had happened.

God went on sleeping.

Crow went on laughing.

 what can we do?

at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity.
some understanding and, at times, acts of
courage
but all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn't
have too much.
it is like a large animal deep in sleep and
almost nothing can awaken it.
when activated it's best at brutality,
selfishness, unjust judgments, murder.

what can we do with it, this Humanity?

nothing.

avoid the thing as much as possible.
treat it as you would anything poisonous, vicious
and mindless.
but be careful. it has enacted laws to protect
itself from you.
it can kill you without cause.
and to escape it you must be subtle.
few escape.

it's up to you to figure a plan.

I have met nobody who has escaped.

I have met some of the great and
famous but they have not escaped
for they are only great and famous within
Humanity.

I have not escaped
but I have not failed in trying again and
again.

before my death I hope to obtain my
life.

from blank gun silencer - 1994

----- I, for one, renounce our insect overlords!

Two of G.K. Chesterton's triolets:

I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs:
Of all the things I wish to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That hasn't any cares,
And doesn't even have to wish
I wish I were a jelly fish
That cannot fall downstairs.
_______

I am fond of Jews,
Jews are fond of money --
Never mind of whose.
I am fond of Jews.
Oh, but when they lose,
Damn it all, it's funny.
I am fond of Jews,
Jews are fond of money.

There was a Mad Arab who said
That Cthulhu, though dreaming, is dead,
But some future night
When the stars become right,
He'll abandon his watery bed.

  --Azathoth & Veratrine

The cosmos contains nothing of greater importance for the negligible atoms called human beings than the condition of being elegantly amused. --HPL

Here's some found Poetry, entitled:

Coming Soon/New Releases

take seriously the promise that love is an ambiguous force
something not unlike a snuff film starring yourself
it never evaporates

It is, in a word, brilliant.

Horror and betrayal ensue

----- I, for one, renounce our insect overlords!

..of Dulce Et Decorum Est.. because you know, quoting poetry makes you a prick, but quoting poetry with Latin passages makes you a pretentious prick.

tweet chirps the little bird  
meow says the cat, toungue licking lips
each has things to say

Tipping Sacred Cows

Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
I wonders where
Da boidies is?

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

    I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
          That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
          When all at once I saw a crowd,
          A host, of golden daffodils;
          Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
          Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

          Continuous as the stars that shine
          And twinkle on the milky way,
          They stretched in never-ending line
          Along the margin of a bay:                                  10
          Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
          Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

          The waves beside them danced; but they
          Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
          A poet could not but be gay,
          In such a jocund company:
          I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
          What wealth the show to me had brought:

          For oft, when on my couch I lie
          In vacant or in pensive mood,                               20
          They flash upon that inward eye
          Which is the bliss of solitude;
          And then my heart with pleasure fills,
          And dances with the daffodils.

cribbed from wikipedia because it is raining not just outside where LA drivers cannot function when wet but also inside my office: Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day. Rain, rain, go away, Come again another day. Rain, rain, go away. Come again some other day. Little Arthur wants to play, In the meadow by the hay. Rain, rain, go to Spain, Never show your face again. Rain, rain, pour down, But not a drop on our town. Rain on the green grass, and rain on the tree, And rain on the housetop, but not on me. Rain, rain, go away, Come again on washing day. Rain, rain, go to Germany, And remain there permanently. Rain, rain, go away, Come on Martha's wedding day. (who's Martha and what did she do to deserve that?) Rain, rain, go away, Come again another day, If you don't, I will say, Rain, rain go away. Rain, rain, go away, Come again some other day, We want to go outside and play, Come again some other day. Rain, rain, go away, Come again some other day, If you don't, I don't care, I'll pull down your underwear! (from my childhood, that's how I remember all children's verses ending)

make it rain you nappy headed ho's

we really need auto carriages or a reminder that we don't have them:(

make it rain you nappy headed ho's

I have to take issue with nmiguy's depiction of Sylvia Plath's poetry as "whining". You could call, for example "Lady Lazarus" a lot of things (including chilling, flippant, raging, etc), but "whining" would be a difficult interpretation to justify. Here:

 "I have done it again.
  One year in every ten
  I manage it----

  A sort of walking miracle, my skin
  Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
  My right foot

  A paperweight,
  My face a featureless, fine
  Jew linen.

  Peel off the napkin
  0 my enemy.
  Do I terrify?----

  Yes, yes Herr Professor
  It is I.
  Can you deny
  The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
  The sour breath
  Will vanish in a day.

  Soon, soon the flesh
  The grave cave ate will be
  At home on me

  And I a smiling woman.
  I am only thirty.
  And like the cat I have nine times to die.

  This is Number Three.
  What a trash
  To annihilate each decade.

  What a million filaments.
  The peanut-crunching crowd
  Shoves in to see

  Them unwrap me hand and foot
  The big strip tease.
  Gentlemen, ladies

  These are my hands
  My knees.
  I may be skin and bone, I may be Japanese.

  Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
  The first time it happened I was ten.
  It was an accident.

  The second time I meant
  To last it out and not come back at all.
  I rocked shut

  As a seashell.
  They had to call and call
  And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

  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've a call.

  It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
  It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
  It's the theatrical

  Comeback in broad day
  To the same place, the same face, the same brute
  Amused shout:

  'A miracle!'
  That knocks me out.
  There is a charge

  For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
  For the hearing of my heart----
  It really goes.

  And there is a charge, a very large charge
  For a word or a touch
  Or a bit of blood

  Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
  So, so, Herr Doktor.
  So, Herr Enemy.

  I am your opus,
  I am your valuable,
  The pure gold baby

  That melts to a shriek.
  I turn and burn.
  Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

  Ash, ash ---
  You poke and stir.
  Flesh, bone, there is nothing there----

  A cake of soap,
  A wedding ring,
  A gold filling.

  Herr God, Herr Lucifer
  Beware
  Beware.

  Out of the ash
  I rise with my red hair
  And I eat men like air."

After that Hughes poem, I should probably temper it with something more traditionally beautiful:

The Ships Are Made Ready In Silence

Moored to the same ring:
The hour, the darkness and I,
Our compasses hooded like falcons.

Now the memory of you comes aching in
With a wash of broken bits which never left port
In which once we planned voyages,
They come knocking like hearts asking:
What departures on this tide?

Breath of land, warm breath,
You tighten the cold around the navel,
Though all shores but the first have been foreign,
And the first was not home until left behind.

Our choice is ours but we have not made it,
Containing as it does, our destination
Circled with loss as with coral, and
A destination only until attained.

I have left you my hope to remember me by,
Though now there is little resemblance.
At this moment I could believe in no change,
The mast perpetually
Vacillating between the same constellations,
The night never withdrawing its dark virtue
From the harbor shaped as a heart,
The sea pulsing as a heart,
The sky vaulted as a heart,
Where I know the light will shatter like a cry
Above a discovery:
"Emptiness.
Emptiness!  Look!"
Look.  This is the morning.

- W.S. Merwin

Pound.

LOQUITUR: En Bertrans de Born.
Dante Alighieri put this man in hell for that he was a stirrer up of strife.
Eccovi!
Judge ye!
Have I dug him up again?
The scene is at his castle, Altaforte. "Papiols" is his jongleur. "The Leopard," the device of Richard Coeur de Lion.

        I

        Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
        You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
        I have no life save when the swords clash.
        But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
        And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
        Then howls my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

        II

        In hot summer have I great rejoicing
        When the tempests kill the earth's foul peace,
        And the lightnings from black heav'n flash crimson,
        And the fierce thunders roar me their music
        And the winds shriek through the clouds mad, opposing,
        And through all the riven skies God's swords clash.

        III

        Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
        And the shrill neighs of destriers in battle rejoicing,
        Spiked breast to spiked breast opposing!
        Better one hour's stour than a year's peace
        With fat boards, bawds, wine and frail music!
        Bah! there's no wine like the blood's crimson!

        IV

        And I love to see the sun rise blood-crimson.
        And I watch his spears through the dark clash
        And it fills all my heart with rejoicing
        And pries wide my mouth with fast music
        When I see him so scorn and defy peace,
        His lone might 'gainst all darkness opposing.

        V

        The man who fears war and squats opposing
        My words for stour, hath no blood of crimson
        But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
        Far from where worth's won and the swords clash
        For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing;
        Yea, I fill all the air with my music.

        VI

        Papiols, Papiols, to the music!
        There's no sound like to swords swords opposing,
        No cry like the battle's rejoicing
        When our elbows and swords drip the crimson
        And our charges 'gainst "The Leopard's" rush clash.
        May God damn for ever all who cry "Peace!"

        VII

        And let the music of the swords make them crimson!
        Hell grant soon we hear again the swords clash!
        Hell blot black for always the thought "Peace!"

In regione caecorum, rex est luscus.

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense.
Refrigerator.

In regione caecorum, rex est luscus.