There is a Beautiful Creature
Living in a hole you have dug.

So at night
I set fruit and grains
And little pots of wine and milk
Beside your soft earthen mounds,

And I often sing.

But still, my dear,
You do not come out.

I have fallen in love with Someone
Who hides inside you.

We should talk about this problem---

Otherwise,
I will never leave you alone.

~ Hafiz

Via BoingBoing:

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through?
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness sake don't call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

More of those, here.

A beetling woman named pridgetts
had a violent abhorrence of midgets
off the end of a wharf
she once pushed a dwarf
whose truncation reduced her to fidgets

Edward Gorey

And Bri, you're welcome. Anything to make you happy.


well, nearly.

thanks, footfootfoot :) I printed it out and stuck it on the fridge door. The part I like best is the 'you don't have to be good' part. I can do that! :)

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td>The Saddest Poem
</td> <td width="120">
</td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td valign="top" width="20"> </td> <td valign="top"> I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.

Write, for instance: "The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance."

The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?

I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don't have her. To feel that I've lost her.

To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.

What does it matter that my love couldn't keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.

That's all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.

As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.

The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.

I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.

Someone else's. She will be someone else's. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.

Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.

Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.

Pablo Neruda </td></tr></tbody></table>

<table align="center" border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="90%"><tbody><tr><td align="center">When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">I all alone beweep my outcast state</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">And look upon myself and curse my fate,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">With what I most enjoy contented least;</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Haply I think on thee, and then my state,</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">Like to the lark at break of day arising</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings</td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center">That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

W. Shakespeare
</td></tr> </tbody></table>

Although I am very well aware that LumberJim is a man of surprising depth for a car salesman ... errrr, automotive finance manager, but every now and again I wonder if Jinx forgot to log into her own account.

eh. you want me.

[Steven]Dude posts like a lady![/Tyler]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!


--Rudyard Kipling

All the above is predicated by a big IF. So, don't get too excited.

The Twilight Is My Robe

Unto you I whisper
The wildest dreams

In the coldness of night

Shrouded in crystals
Through a frosty dusk
Souls of the fullmoon awaits
Their shadows ablaze

We are all bending
Our tired leaves over your empty shell
In the sign of true esteem
Are you beloved lord
Sighing deep under these waterfalls?

The birds of the sun
Seperates these dark clouds
While the winds of winter sleeps gently around
I am sworn to the oath
To breathe...

At the waters I dwell
The waves are still whispering
Ancient lullabies
I die....
While our mystic brothers still seek

Under your command I will obey
In my vision
You are the embodiment of pure freedom
But through my eyes you are made of stone


Opeth

A short poem I can definitely relate to from Mr Robert Rankin (I've just reached the point in his book, 'Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls', where the Cellar gets a mention BTW - how odd....)

BAD MEMORY

By the bound Victorian gasogene.
By the black slate memory board.
By the swish French cooking calendar.
By the shutters I secured.
By the rows of hanging plant pots.
By the slightly dripping fridge.
By the wibbly wobbly worktop.
By the dust along the ridge.
By the rack of grey enamelware.
By the strangely angled shelf.
By the larder door that does not close
That I also fitted myself.
By the celing lights that don't light up.
By the dimmer that does not dim.
By the waste disposal unit
That bit my uncle Jim.
By the nasty Kenwood blender.
By the red tiles on the floor.
I'm obviously in my kitchen.

But what did I come in here for?

++

The Motorcycle Song

I don't want a pickle
Just want to ride on my motorcycle
And I don't want a tickle
I'd rather ride my motorcycle
And I dont want to die
I want to ride my motorcy... cle...

Arlo Guthrie

Perhaps this thread deserves a bump

That Robert Rankin verse really stuck in my mind, It was what I was searching for when I found this thread.

Here is one by

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Last Leaf

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And he looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone!"

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said--
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago--
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.