Any Man Speaks
I, after difficult entry through my mother's blood
And stumbling childhood (hitting my head against the world);
I, intricate, easily unshipped, untracked, unaligned;
Cut off in my communications; stammering; speaking
A dialect shared by you, but not you and you;
I, strangely undeft, bereft; I searching always
For my lost rib (clothed in laughter yet understanding)
To come round the corner of Wardour Street into the Square
Or to signal across the Park and share my bed;
I, focus in night for star-sent beams of light,
I, fulcrum of levers whose end I cannot see ...
Have this one deftness - that I admit undeftness:
Know that the stars are far, the levers long:
Can understand my unstrength.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Wet City Night
Light drunkenly reels into shadow;
Blurs, slurs uneasily;
Slides off the eyeballs:
The segments shatter.
Tree-branches cut arc-light in ragged
Fluttering wet strips.
The cup of the sky-sign is filled too full;
It slushes wine over.
The street-lamps dance a tarentella
And zigzag down the street:
They lift and fly away
In a wind of lights.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Night Piece
Climb, claim your shelf-room, far
Packed from inquisitive moon
And cold contagious stars.
Lean out, but look no longer,
No further, than to stir
Night with extended finger.
Now fill the box with light,
Flood full the shining block,
Masonry against night.
Let window, curtain, blind
Soft-sieve and sift and shred
The impertinence of sound.
Now draw the silence up,
A blanket round your ears;
Lay darkness close and sure,
Inverted cup to cup
On your acquiescent eyes:
Dismissing body's last outposted spies.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Medley: I Get Around/little Deuce Coupe
Round round get around
I get around, yes
(*laughter* *clap*)
Get around round round, I get around
I get a--
Get around round round, I get around
From town to town
Get around round round, I get around
(woo!)
Im a real cool head
Get around round round, I get around
Im making real good bread
Get around round round, I get a square
(ow!)
Im getting awfully mad driving down the street
(ow!)
I just dont want to be bugged sitting next to my sweets
(*laughter*)
Bom bom bom ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta
The other guys are pretty tough
So those other gats over there better not get tough
I get around
Get around round round, I get around
From town to town
Get around round round, I get around
Im a real cool head
(fake it, come on, mike! artistry!)
Im makin real good bread
Get around round round, I get a square
I get around
Round
Get around, round round
(rock out, carl!)
(anybody...)
(come on, baby!)
([...])
We always take my car although its a heap
And we never get turned down by the chicks we pick up on
Not much...
None of the guys go steady cos it wouldnt be right guard
To leave their best girls home on a saturday night
I get around
Get around round round, I get around
From town to town
Get around round round, I get around
Im a real cool head
Get around round round, I get around
Im making real good bread
Get around round round, I get around
I get around round woo ooooo oooo ooo ooo ooo oooo
Round round get around, I get around
Square
Get around round round, I get a square
Get around round round, I get around
Get around round round, I get around
(dont stop!)
Get around round round, I get around
Boop boop boop boop
Get around round round, I get around
I get around
(oh yeah!)
(oh, that was really bad.)
(lets do little deuce coupe while [...]. real fast, obviously.)
(Ive got it, brian. here, bruce, do your famous [...].)
(oh.)
(bom bom.)
(like this.)
(hey, do the--)
(oh--)
Well Im not braggin, babe, so dont put me down
Well, Ive got the cutest little piece in town
Well, Im not braggin, babe, oh yeah
([...] carl [...])
(we lost it.)
Shes my little deuce coupe
(hey, carl.)
You dont know what I got
Talk to me, baby
Talk to me, baby
Well Im not braggin, babe, so dont put me down
But Ive got the fastest set of wheels in town
When something comes up to me he dont even try
cos if I had a set of wings, man, I know she could fly
Hey
My little deuce coupe
You dont know what i--
Little deuce coupe
Yeah
You dont know what I got
Shes got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten (*laugh*) till the lake pipes roar
Ah, bom bom bom bom
And if that aint enough to make you flip your lid
Theres one more thing: I got the pink slip daddy
(*laughter*)
Oh yeah
Da da dom da da dom ba da
(oh, lets do luau!)
(talk to me, baby!)
She comes on like a rose, da da dap
(do the stroll!)
Shes my little deuce coupe
You dont know what I got
(*laughter*)
song performed by by Beach Boys
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Cornishman
The train pulled away from the station,
The driver grinned up at the box,
The signalman glowered at the driver's face
As he slotted the lever across,
The train slid easily through the points
As it blew three whistle blasts,
One for the train, one for the box,
And one for Miss Caroline Glass.
Caroline waved him a cheery farewell
From the cottage she owned on the bank,
She'd once been engaged to the signalman,
But now she'd moved up a rank.
'A driver is such an important man, '
She'd said to her former beau,
'He holds all those lives in his hands when he drives,
And he crosses the country, so.'
'But you - you stand in this signal box,
Pull levers, and ring little bells,
I'd rather be out on the railway track
With the steam blowing over the vales! '
And so it was, there, in the pub one night,
While enjoying the Olde Tyme Dance,
The driver cut in, and he whirled her around
As the signalman watched, askance.
'I'm going to be driving The Cornishman, '
The driver had told her then,
'It's really an honour, the Cornwall Express,
Come down, and I'll show you around.
The coaches are really the latest type,
With cushions, and bright as the sun…'
So Caroline gave back her ring that night,
Then shrugged - said: 'It's been fun! '
The signalman brooded, and wept at night,
To think of his Caroline Glass
Alone in the arms of the driver, Ben,
While he sat alone in the house.
He vowed revenge, but he didn't know
How ever he'd win her back,
She never would look at the signal box
While the train was down on the track.
He watched her boarding The Cornishman
First Class, to travel for free,
At the end of the trip, in a cheap hotel…
The signalman thought he could see,
Just what they would do at the end of the line
And his forehead grew lined and grim,
He nearly went mad at the thought of her
Alone in a bed, with him.
The weeks went by as he shifted points
And pulled at the levers yet,
He heard how the couple were now engaged
And the wedding date was set,
In three short weeks they would tie the knot,
She'd be lost to him for good,
He worked in a fever of misery,
And often wept where he stood.
He crept right up to her cottage light
When The Cornishman was away,
He hoped she'd show him some true remorse,
And ask him, then, to stay;
She laughed, 'Don't come like a creeping dog,
Just say what you have to say…'
He took one look at her curling lip,
Then turned, and slunk away.
'The train had sat in the station, set
To wait 'til the signal changed,
The signalman paced back and forth
In the box, like one deranged,
He stared on down at the driver, Ben,
Who looked back up, and laughed,
His fireman shoveled the coal within,
And opened up the draught.
The northern goods would be right on time,
It had always raced straight through,
The signalman slapped his forehead then,
He knew what he had to do.
He hurriedly pulled the signal off,
Then busied him switching points,
He pulled more levers across that day
Than he's ever pulled there since.
The Cornishman started to pull away,
The driver grinned up at the box,
But then it crossed to the southern line
Though nobody noticed the lapse,
It picked up speed as it left the points
And it blew three whistle blasts,
One for the train, one for the box,
And one for Miss Caroline Glass.
Caroline waved him a cheery farewell
From the cottage called Hollyhocks,
She'd once been engaged to the signalman,
Who glared at her now from the Box.
The Cornishman had reached the bend
When the goods came rumbling down,
And the loco's locked head on that day
With a blasting, grinding sound.
The wagons from the goods derailed,
Came hurtling over the bank,
Loaded with coal and bitumen
With the signalman to thank,
The tiny cottage just disappeared
In a storm of iron and coal,
And Caroline Glass was dead, before
She had waved her last farewell.
The signalman turned pale, dead white,
His heart had all but stopped
When he saw what happened to Caroline Glass
As he stood in the signal box
'A Signalman is important too, '
He said in a maddened fear,
'He holds all those lives in his hands when he pulls
All those levers and bells, my dear.'
8 June 2008
poem by David Lewis Paget
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The British
We are a people living in shells and moving
Crablike; reticent, awkward, deeply suspicious;
Watching the world from a corner of half-closed eyelids,
Afraid lest someone show that he hates or loves us,
Afraid lest someone weep in the railway train.
We are coiled and clenched like a foetus clad in armour.
We hold our hearts for fear they fly like eagles.
We grasp our tongues for fear they cry like trumpets.
We listen to our own footsteps. We look both ways
Before we cross the silent empty road.
We are a people easily made uneasy,
Especially wary of praise, of passion, of scarlet
Cloaks, of gesturing hands, of the smiling stranger
In the alien hat who talks to all or the other
In the unfamiliar coat who talks to none.
We are afraid of too-cold thought or too-hot
Blood, of the opening of long-shut shafts or cupboards,
Of light in caves, of X-rays, probes, unclothing
Of emotion, intolerable revelation
Of lust in the light, of love in the palm of the hand.
We are afraid of, one day on a sunny morning,
Meeting ourselves or another without the usual
Outer sheath, the comfortable conversation,
And saying all, all, all we did not mean to,
All, all, all we did not know we meant.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Earthfast
Architects plant their imagination, weld their poems on rock,
Clamp them to the skidding rim of the world and anchor them down to its core;
Leave more than the painter's or poet's snail-bright trail on a friable leaf;
Can build their chrysalis round them - stand in their sculpture's belly.
They see through stone, they cage and partition air, they cross-rig space
With footholds, planks for a dance; yet their maze, their flying trapeze
Is pinned to the centre. They write their euclidean music standing
With a hand on a cornice of cloud, themselves set fast, earth-square.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Unlyric Love Song
It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first:
To offer you now at last my least and my worst:
Minor, absurd preserves,
The shell's end-curves,
A document kept at the back of a drawer,
A tin hidden under the floor,
Recalcitrant prides and hesitations:
To pile them carefully in a desparate oblation
And say to you "quickly! turn them
Once over and burn them".
Now I (no communist, heaven knows!
Who have kept as my dearest right to close
My tenth door after I've opened nine to the world,
To unfold nine sepals holding one hard-furled)
Shall - or shall try to - offer to you
A communism of two ...
See, entry's yours;
Here, the last door!
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Focus
focus
focus on god
focus on freedom
focus on forgiveness
focus on sweet speech
focus on treasures
focus on humility
focus on commitment
focus on mind
focus on success
focus on health
focus on healthy transformation
focus on goodness
focus on laughter
focus on fun
focus on angel
focus on sweetness
focus on wealth
focus
poem by Johnny Walks
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Cant Get It Out Of My Head
Midnight on the water.
I saw the oceans daughter.
Walking on a waves chicane,
Staring as she called my name.
And I cant get it out of my head,
No, I cant get it out of my head.
Now my old world is gone for dead
cos I cant get it out of my head.
Breakdown on the shoreline,
Cant move, its an ebbtide.
Morning dont get here till night,
Searching for her silver light.
And I cant get it out of my head,
No, I cant get it out of my head.
Now my old world is gone for dead
cos I cant get it out of my head, no no.
Bank job in the city.
Robin hood and william tell and ivanhoe and lancelot, they dont envy me.
Sitting till the sun goes down,
In dreams the world keep going round and round.
And I cant get it out of my head,
No, I cant get it out of my head.
Now my old world is gone for dead
cos I cant get it out of my head, no no.
No, I cant get it out of my head,
No, I cant get it out of my head.
Now my old world is gone for dead
cos I cant get it out of my head, no no no no.
song performed by by Electric Light Orchestra
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Square Peg, Round Hole
He's a square peg in a round hole
Misfit in a slick world
Don't play the game
Don't do what he's told
He's a square peg in a round hole
Square peg don't care
The bright lights he's not there
Catch the shadows see him slip away
Square peg that's what they say
Square peg, Suare peg
Square peg, you have got to be strong
Square peg, he's got his own song
Square peg, I'll see you around
Square peg, face down
Square peg, round hole
song performed by by Chris Rea
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
Lonesome Night
You brothers, who are mine,
Poor people, near and far,
Longing for every star,
Dream of relief from pain,
You, stumbling dumb
At night, as pale stars break,
Lift your thin hands for some
Hope, and suffer, and wake,
Poor muddling commonplace,
You sailors who must live
Unstarred by hopelessness,
We share a single face.
Give me my welcome back.
Translated by James Wright
Submitted by Holt
poem by Hermann Hesse
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
February 23
Light rain is falling in Central Park
but not on Upper Fifth Avenue or Central Park West
where sun and sky are yellow and blue
Winds are gusting on Washington Square
through the arches and on to LaGuardia Place
but calm is the corner of 8th Street and Second Avenue
which reminds me of something John Ashbery said
about his poem "Crazy Weather" he said
he was in favor of all kinds of weather
just so long as it's genuine weather
which is always unusually bad, unusually
good, or unusually indifferent,
since there isn't really any norm for weather
When he was a boy his mother met a friend
who said, "Isn't this funny weather?"
It was one of his earliest memories
poem by David Lehman
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Now a Star
Now a Star is something for you and I to see, a bright and firy spectacle
in belief, it boasters it's rays in every way, our's give us light in the
day, God's Star shows in our heart of something beautiful on day, a star
shows bright even in the night, now we know of it's might, just thinking of
Betelguse, and the quieting red it produce, the sky if full of these stars,
for a quite night, and time for truce, a signal of peace, peace in heaven,
a universal signal, for peace on earth.
poem by Dennis L. Maxberry
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Different Race
We look beyond the stars at night
and ponder at the glowing lights.
Romancing in our fiction head
what might or might not be there.
We close our eyes
and dream of an encounter
with some different race than our own.
Telescopes search the skies at night
for some signal from afar.
Searching for some form of life
that might live on a distant star.
Hoping to find we are not alone
within the universe so vast.
24-25 June 2009
poem by David Harris
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Cinema Screen
Light's patterns freeze:
Frost on our faces.
Light's pollen sifts
Through the lids of our eyes ...
Light sinks and rusts
In water; is broken
By glass ... rests
On deserted dust.
Light lies like torn
Paper in corners:
A rock-pool's pledge
Of the sea's return.
Light, wrenched at the edges
By wind, looks down
At itself in wrinkled
Mirrors from bridges.
Light thinly unweaves
Itself through darkness
Like foam's unknotting
Strings in waves ...
Now light is again
Accumulated
Swords against us ...
Now it is gone.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Seaport
Green sea-tarnished copper
And sea-tarnished gold
Of cupolas.
Sea-runnelled streets
Channelled by salt air
That wears the white stone.
The sunlight-filled cistern
Of a dry-dock. Square shadows.
Sun-slatted smoke above meticulous stooping of cranes.
Water pressed up by ships' prows
Going, coming.
City dust turned
Back by the sea-wind's
Wall.
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
A Corner Streetlight
Dark corner in the night
Illuminated by only the moon's light
Unitl the street light
Floods the scene with a glowing light
Nothing stands on the corner
Yet stories, stories of this light
Are told in the night
Stories are told of this corner
A murder, a rape
A suicide, a drug overdose
The street light shows
What the world has to display.
A child troubled, deeply hurt
By a girl who he loved
With all his heart and soul.
She left him torn apart.
The street light, like a stage
Gives him a place to stay
The light shows his sorry tears
Then shows the gun next to his head.
A woman, small
Stands in the light
Screams for help
As the man she sees is doing her unkindly
A man left laying, needle in hand
He got his fix, his final fix.
Theat saved him
From this wretched land.
A woman left bloody
On the post
A knife in her chest
The broken heart bleeds
The street light shows us
Life's evil on display
But when the light turns off, like now
Does it all go away?
poem by Skylar Kendall
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
I See Them
When I was younger I wanted to overcome the world, in dreams I seen it from above, I wanted to influence, to share my feelings of God, to express an impulse, a will I did not yet understand, yet new, part of me still feels that way, but much less. I am in awe of the people, the lovely souls that have shared some much, over come so much, are not seem by their love ones yet, I see them, they see their light upon me, slowly they see them selves in my eyes, and their own. The world sees them as they come more and more into focus. Such brighten up the world, the lives of some many others.
poem by Michael Kavuoti
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Pain Of Losing You
I’m going through the pain of losing you
It’s a pain I can not bear
I always had your love, with you
That I could share.
So many memories that flash through my mind
Of all those precious moments and all the beautiful times.
Of walking down the street holding each others hand
Smiling with each other, and the future that we planned.
Sitting in the park till the moment that it got dark
Then looking up to the sky, and trying to count the stars.
When looking in your eyes, I felt like I was floating
High in the sky with all the stars above
Searching every star for your everlasting love.
I recall when we met, it seems so long ago
That I had asked you if you wanted to see a show.
You gave me a smile which I never could forget
Then you cracked a joke that I remember yet.
All these memories stay running in my mind
And I can’t stop them, and I don’t want to try.
Memories are like the ocean waves that
Beat against the shores, they are here now
And will be forever more.
The pain of losing you leaves me angry deep inside
For I know, that it wasn’t your time to die.
I know that GOD works in mysterious ways
And every night I ask him, as I get on my knees to pray.
I saw you in my dreams last night, and I heard
You gently say, that you truly love me
But with GOD you have to stay.
He had taken you for a reason which I would
Not understand, but everything you do was
to help your fellow man.
So with a sadness that I feel deep in my heart
With these words I love you, we will now part.
We will be together in the afterlife
And that’s when I’ll ask you if you’ll be my wife.
poem by Louis Rams
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Man In The Bowler Hat
I am the unnoticed, the unnoticable man:
The man who sat on your right in the morning train:
The man who looked through like a windowpane:
The man who was the colour of the carriage, the colour of the mounting
Morning pipe smoke.
I am the man too busy with a living to live,
Too hurried and worried to see and smell and touch:
The man who is patient too long and obeys too much
And wishes too softly and seldom.
I am the man they call the nation's backbone,
Who am boneless - playable castgut, pliable clay:
The Man they label Little lest one day
I dare to grow.
I am the rails on which the moment passes,
The megaphone for many words and voices:
I am the graph diagram,
Composite face.
I am the led, the easily-fed,
The tool, the not-quite-fool,
The would-be-safe-and-sound,
The uncomplaining, bound,
The dust fine-ground,
Stone-for-a-statue waveworn pebble-round
Submitted by Stephen Fryer
poem by Arthur Seymour John Tessimond
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!