What is your favorite poem, or poems?

I need to know.

For science.

If you think think this is a topic to display your own poems, you are gravely mistaken. Go here for that.

And yeah, I know there have been other topics like this. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of them.

And uh... I need more uh... up-to-date data.

For science.

The poem I made up 2 minutes ago.

There are holes in the sky
Where the rain comes in
But they're very, very small
That's why rain's thin.

Spike Milligan.

How 'bout the Raven, mate?

I'm still quite fond of that bugger, eh?

Poetry makes my brain hurt.

However, of the migranes that I call poetry, some are not as bad as others. Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas springs to mind.

Dante's Inferno.

have we lost you to the british?
or are you just crazy?

Lewis Carrol - The Jabberwocky.

I have it memorized, but I'm too lazy to type it out here.

Same.

On the Ning Nang Nong

On the Ning Nang Nong
Where the Cows go Bong!
and the monkeys all say BOO!
There's a Nong Nang Ning
Where the trees go Ping!
And the tea pots jibber jabber joo.
On the Nong Ning Nang
All the mice go Clang
And you just can't catch 'em when they do!
So its Ning Nang Nong
Cows go Bong!
Nong Nang Ning
Trees go ping
Nong Ning Nang
The mice go Clang
What a noisy place to belong
is the Ning Nang Ning Nang Nong!!

Spike Milligan



A Silly Poem

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Spike Milligan

String String
is an important thing
Rope is thicker
but string is quicker!

If the meaning of this is obscure
it is; the higher the fewer!

-Spike again

Az

"Ode" by Arthur Shaughnessy ("We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams ...")

ach, it really shouldn't. it's not necessarily supposed to be difficult. most isn't - it's just concentrated because you have a smaller space to say things in (unless you're being Epic, in which case, er, ignore me).

and i can't choose a favourite poem any more than i can choose one favourite song - not even for science (especially your kind - you'll be breeding nasty things in vats soon, i suspect). but i rather like some ian duhig, like this one -


Ken's Videos, Seahouses

'Love and hate are horns on the same goat' - Wise Woman, The Vikings

In two minds about renting The Vikings from Ken's Videos,
I ask Ken. He shrugs. Acknowledging the cinematography -
'Scorcese adored Cardiff's work' - Ken feels Northumbria,
Like Scorceses's Raging Bull, cries out for black and white.

I see again my brother's whole prison wing, a moving barcode
In the black-and-white striped shirts of Newcastle United,
Or away strip washdays. He'd scored his fingers LOVE and
HATE
To look hard; my soft knight who chased dragons in tin foil.

Ken's voice breaks in to press the case for a recent Beowulf:
The baddies, a tribe of matriarchal subhuman cannibals;
The hero, an exiled Arab poet played by Antonio Banderas.
The line grows. On the horns of a helmet, I hesitate, lost.


and i always love norman maccaig:

Praise of a collie

She was a small dog, neat and fluid -
Even her conversation was tiny:
She greeted you with bow, never bow-wow.

Her sons stood monumentally over her
But did what she told them. Each grew grizzled
Till it seemed he was his own mother's grandfather.

Once, gathering sheep on a showery day,
I remarked how dry she was. Pollochan said, 'Ah,
It would take a very accurate drop to hit Lassie.'

She sailed in the dinghy like a proper sea-dog.
Where's a burn? - she's first on the other side.
She flowed through fences like a piece of black wind.

But suddenly she was old and sick and crippled...
I grieved for Pollochan when he took her a stroll
And put his gun to the back of her head.


and lots more, but they change from day to day.

Man, have pity on man.
Rain from the outraged sky
drowned the innocent earth
yet the seed did not die.
Flowering from that rebirth,
man, have pity on man
as you hold the fire in your hand
that can destroy mankind
and desolate every land.
If the power and the glory is this,
a flame that burns to the bone,
what shall be left to grow
when you and your fires have gone?
What maimed and desolate few
shall recover life's full span
from among the ashes of time?
Man, have pity on man.

--Ursula Vaughan Williams

My friend Dani wrote this one about a year ago. By far, my favorite poem EVER.

Dig A Shallow Grave

I found a poem in my pocket today.
Scribbled on a napkin,
I wrote it weeks ago
when we were out to dinner
together.
You crossed your arms
looking offended.
You waited.
I apologized --
I'm almost finished
I promise
just a couple more lines
I have to get them down
I'll forget them
I'm almost finished.
I'm sorry.

I should have told you
that you were so beautiful
so wonderful
that you inspired poetry.
Poetry intense and urgent.
I would have been lying.

You never understood
the separation
of all things.
You never understood
the independence
of beauty.
You never appreciated
the beauty
of independence.

I never loved you.

And that is beautiful.

Second favorite? Shakespeare's Sonnet 18. I have it memorized. I even translated it into ROT13 once without the translator.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. There's also this rather cute Heinrich Heine poem I hold dear:

Guter Rat

Gib ihren wahren Namen immer
In deiner Fabel ihren Helden.
Wagst du es nicht, ergehts dir schlimmer:
Zu deinem Eselbilde melden
Sich gleich ein Dutzend graue Toren -
»Das sind ja meine langen Ohren!«
Ruft jeder, »dieses gräßlich grimme
Gebreie ist ja meine Stimme!
Der Esel bin ich! Obgleich nicht genannt,
Erkennt mich doch mein Vaterland,
Mein Vaterland Germania!
Der Esel bin ich! I-A! I-A!« -
Hast einen Dummkopf schonen wollen,
Und zwölfe sind es, die dir grollen.

The Iliad.

I wrote a poem once. Twas' better than Homer's Iliad, but I can't remember it, and I lost the document I wrote it in.

One bright day in the middle of the night,
two dead boys got up to fight,
back to back they faced eachother...
drew their swords and shot one another

A deaf policeman heard the noise,
came and shot those two dead boys
If ya dont believe my stories true,
ask the blind man, he saw it too.

Okay, that one is pretty lame but almost anything by Shel Silverstein is great.

Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
In Soviet Russia,

POEM WRITES YOU!

lord_scythe wins.

I concur.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Ozymandias, some of Rudyard Kipling's poems, and let's throw Clancy of the Overflow by Banjo Paterson in there as well.

My personal favorites...

There once was a lad from Manilla,
Who tried to grow enhanced vanilla,
It tasted like plastic,
So he quit being spastic,
And now his plants line the landfilla.

Haha!