Share your favorite poem with me.

JulieBoBoo

Is it too presumptuous to post one of my own?

No? okay, then, I will

The Cat and His Kingdom

Now who can understand the cat
Who thinks himself a worthy prize?
Just sitting with the potted plants
While watching you with wary eyes,
And daring you to make him move
For he knows well his chosen place
And you are but a pawn for him~~
A toy amongst the human race.
For he is rule, master, King
And YOU invader to his throne
So never for a moment think
That this proud animal you own.
For he’s allowed you to exist
And roam his kingdom as you will
So he must watch your every move
While perched upon his windowsill.

8/4/82

Unfortunately, I am now highly allergic to cats, but once had a life with some lovely Siamese :glasses:
PL John

I really liked this.

Pollywog39

I really liked this.

THANKS, Little Miss Bossy

Artemis_Acorn

I love lots of poetry, some deeply moves me. This is just one of my favorites, but it makes me laugh every time.

THE LOSER

Mama said I'd lose my head
If it wasn't fastened on.
Today I guess it wasn't
'Cause while playing with my cousin
It fell off and rolled away
And now it's gone.
And I can't look for it
'Cause my eyes are in it,
And I can't call to it
'Cause my mouth is on it
(Couldn't hear me anyway
'Cause my ears are on it),
Can't even think about it
'Cause my brain is in it.
So I guess I'll sit down
On this rock
And rest for just a minute....
- Shel Silverstein

bikermike5094

Old mother hubbard
went to the cupboard
to get old rover a bone

but when she bent over
rover took over
and gave her a bone of his own!!!

Andrew Dice Clay

Pollywog39

I love lots of poetry, some deeply moves me. This is just one of my favorites, but it makes me laugh every time.

THE LOSER

Mama said I'd lose my head
If it wasn't fastened on.
Today I guess it wasn't
'Cause while playing with my cousin
It fell off and rolled away
And now it's gone.
And I can't look for it
'Cause my eyes are in it,
And I can't call to it
'Cause my mouth is on it
(Couldn't hear me anyway
'Cause my ears are on it),
Can't even think about it
'Cause my brain is in it.
So I guess I'll sit down
On this rock
And rest for just a minute....
- Shel Silverstein

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Shel Silverstein! I have a few of his books..............hard to pick a fave, but I think this one rates up there:

Sick
by Shel Silverstein

"I cannot go to school today,"
Said little Peggy Ann McKay,
"I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash, and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more--that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut, my eyes are blue--
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke--
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb,
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is--what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is---Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!"

MissO﹠A

Fitting for this time of year. One of my favourites:

Tam O' Shanter by Robert Burns

For its full glory and beauty, in Scots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGgZjyZrdzg

VegGrrl

"There was an old man from Nantucket..."

thankyou4thevenom

My favourite poem has always been

As I was walking down the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away

fitev

Ahh, this is a good topic. One that comes to mind is my little girl's and my fav...

Songwriters: Alan Irwin Menken
(Disney's Tangled "Healing Incantation")

Flower, gleam and glow
Let your power shine
Make the clock reverse
Bring back what once was mine

Heal what has been hurt
Change the fates' design
Save what has been lost
Bring back what once was mine

What once was mine

sister_bear

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

289. The Untold Want


THE untold want, by life and land ne’er granted,
Now, Voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.

SkateboardFi

O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from my self depart
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie.
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe though in my nature reigned
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all
-Shakespeare, Sonnet 109

(my bf sent me this when we got back together after almost 5 years of being separated)

NatalieWiley

Sister for Sale by Shel Silverstein

One sister for sale!
One sister for sale!
One crying and spying young sister for sale!
I’m really not kidding,
So who’ll start the bidding?
Do I hear the dollar?
A nickel?
A penny?
Oh, isn’t there, isn’t there, isn’t there any
One kid that will buy this old sister for sale,
This crying and spying young sister for sale?

leynak

Ode

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.

Arthur O’Shaughnessy (1844-1881)
- I plan on getting at tattoo with the first 2 lines when I meet my goal

I also like Annabel Lee by Edgar Allen Poe

sunkisses

Homage to My Hips by Lucille Clifton

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don't fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don't like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top

sunkisses

forgiving my father by Lucille Clifton

it is friday. we have come
to the paying of the bills.
all week you have stood in my dreams
like a ghost, asking for more time
but today is payday, payday old man;
my mother's hand opens in her early grave
and i hold it out like a good daughter.

there is no more time for you. there will
never be time enough daddy daddy old lecher
old liar. i wish you were rich so i could take it all
and give the lady what she was due
but you were the only son of a needy father,
the father of a needy son;
you gave her all you had
which was nothing. you have already given her
all you had.

you are the pocket that was going to open
and come up empty any friday.
you were each other's bad bargain, not mine.
daddy old pauper old prisoner, old dead man
what am i doing here collecting?
you lie side by side in debtors' boxes
and no accounting will open them up.

NVintage

With Flowers in our Hands
by John Cowper Powys

COME let us walk thro' their burning hell
With flowers in our hands!
With flowers in our hands let us walk there,
And see what power that evil air,
That evil air and those burning hours,
Have to hurt us who carry flowers!

___Soundwave___

Kubla Khan
BY SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Motorsheen

Dark and lonely on the summer night.

Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.

Watchdog barking - Do he bite?

Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.

Slip in his window,

Break his neck!

Then his house

I start to wreck!

Got no reason --

What the heck!

Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.

C-I-L-L ...

My land - lord ...

nossmf

I first learned of this poem when S.E. Hinton quoted it in The Outsiders, but it's the only poem I have ever memorized for myself (not counting poems memorized for school and subsequently forgotten...)

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf,
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- Robert Frost

J_NY_Z

The Charge of the Light Brigade
BY ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

I
Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!” he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

II
“Forward, the Light Brigade!”
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

III
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

IV
Flashed all their sabres bare,
Flashed as they turned in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army, while
All the world wondered.
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right through the line they broke;
Cossack and Russian
Reeled from the sabre stroke
Shattered and sundered.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

V
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell.
They that had fought so well
Came through the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

VI
When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!