Poets Corner

I thought it would be nice if we could share some of our favorite poetry with one another and also perhaps discuss what they may mean or maybe even how they may relate to us as Jedi. Let me start off with one of my very very favorites. I have posted it before in another area but I thought it may be more prudent to to share it in a more meaningful way here. It is entitledIf

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

Another of my favorites is by Robert Frost and is entitled Lodged

Lodged

The rain to the wind said,
'You push and I'll pelt.'
They so smote the garden bed
That the flowers actually knelt,
And lay lodged--though not dead.
I know how the flowers felt.

A final poem for the evening I might add is very short and yet full of so much meaning. It was written by Jack Kerouac and does not have a title that I am aware of. The poem goes as follows:

\"I am God\"

Here you go, here's something I wrote a while ago, in Iraq. Its kind of dark, but hey, so am I. It is titled \"Who are you?\"

From the depths of Hell you came,
Just sitting, staring at the Sun.
The brightness and flames,
Enticing hatred and rage,
You do nothing, but sit and stare.
My eyes are bleeding now,
Is this something you have done?
I hear screams drowning out all sound,
Like a million people burning alive.
It makes me want to kill everything.
From the smallest child, to the eldest man.
Plants and creatures across the world.
I will show them the true meaning of pain,
No mercy will be shown, not even to you.
You’ll be the first in this bloodlust genocide,
Taste the hilt of my sword, warm it for use.
Scream for help, feed my hunger,
Life will cease to exist.
What is this, no desperation, no scream?
Just pain, a sharp, undeniably real pain.
As my blood puddles around my body,
Your laugh echoes through my head,
You’re gone, but your laugh lingers on,
I know now who you are, you are me.


As you can see I came a long way from where I was, I do still like this poem alot though.

Dhagon Krayt

this is a poem by Charles Bukowski, who was a beat poet right up until his death in 1994.

\"question and answer\"
he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer
night, running the blade of the knife
under his fingernails, smiling, thinking
of all the letters he had received
telling him that
the way he lived and wrote about
that--
it had kept them going when
all seemed
truly
hopeless.

putting the blade on the table, he
flicked it with a finger
and it whirled
in a flashing circle
under the light.

who the hell is going to save
me? he
thought.

as the knife stopped spinning
the answer came:
you're going to have to
save yourself.

still smiling,
a: he lit a
cigarette
b: he poured
another
drink
c: gave the blade
another
spin.

--from The Last Night of the Earth Poems

I'll have to dig for some of my favorite poetry but for now you can suffer my own creations;-P These are all on Deviant by the way..



Celophane

The thin divide that separates
My darkened life of magistrates,
Judging harshly, always watching
Callus disregarded taunting.

Where does life continue on,
From this cliff I now am perched?
Choices led me to this place
Of empty grand expanse.

And yet, despite, the shell still lingers,
Thin transparent, ever present,
Sealing out the outside world,
Encompassing my all encompassed.

Dancing lights and forms without,
Vision blurs when passed throughout,
Yet through the haze I see about
What dancing, everyone enjoys.

Materialist, money, sadistic,
Image, appearance, gas efficient
Stronger, louder, quicker, cooler,
Ever working, ever better.

I can see, and yet I’m separate,
Clearly there and yet transparent
To all the world, oh so apparent,
My prison, plastic cellophane.

When the World Ends

All is naught but fire and brimstone,
rancid scents among the tomb stones.
Cold and musk, the heavy air,
to breathe is not but suffocation.

Walking through a haze of nothing,
Nothingness and callous feelings.
In a world of grand design,
Nature’s beauty unrevealing.

Where are all the tender hearted?
Hiding from the hardened hearts.
Greater evils lurk within,
Without is reaped with damage.

You can see it, lurking darkly,
In the shadows of humanity
Creature not, and hardly living,
Undead evil, unforgiving.

Where are all the righteous ones?
Have they left, home disregarded?
Throughout time, strength is waning,
When shall the mighty fall?

But despite, and in good timing,
Hope is growing, redefining,
Strength of love, soon prevailing,
Human hearts are soon conjoining.

So here I wait, deft hands combining,
Simple things to keep me climbing,
Toward a radiance; inner strength,
World ends, without a trace,

And patiently I sit and wait.

this is actually supposed to be a Celtic tune, sung rather.

Soldier's Lament


Home is just a memory that I cannot recall,
For I have tried before, yet I get fragments of it all.
I've been off to war for nay on seven years today,
And I cannot recall the simple pleasures of that day.

Maidens singing cross the golden fields while children play
Gentle mannered men living lives of peace I pray.
These are not the things I see anew throughout the day
For war brings only pain and suffering
I've got my sword and my true love, my shield of oaken wood
And with my bow I'll smite them down wherever they hath stood.
But if I ever return home I'll be right out lost,
for of a maidens charms I have not but what I've got
And what I've got is strength and force, and I dare not use that,
And so I'd be defenseless to the ways of maidens charm,
for Home is just a memory that I cannot recall,
I've tried a thousand times and yet its not my memory,
Its gone away with whom I was, upon those summer days,
I've changed and now I'm different though if better I'm not sure,
But I know one thing true and it is what I'm fighting for,
Home is just a memory that I cannot recall,
But I will keep on fighting in the memory of all,
For I am naught but simple soldier fighting for my land,
and that is how I'll be when I am dead and gone again.

For I'll be just a memory that no one can recall.
Try and try again they get but fragments of my all
And I'll be much at peace wherever next I venture true,
with memories of peace and war ever at my call.

And last one for now. Sorry for the dark theme, I write poetry when I am down to clear the emotions.. odd, yes?


Death's Spade

If only I could make things work,
kill the pain and stop the hurt
Change the ever killing blade
which evil caries, to a spade
that it may be of better worth
to cleans the land and promote birth
but killing is what evil does
and death is part of all of us
so is the pain not thus a piece?
Is hardship not a requisite
For life; to live a world apart
From pure white bliss, tranquility?
One world parted in its own
And owning nothing in the end
Walk the line and take the hit
To validate the end’s release
And at death’s blade, or spade,
All shal fall in darkened glades
Of lilies black, and not much more
Bodies piled up, and still
More bodies dropped to pack and fill.
Death works alone,
With pain it kills.

not at all, this is a very common practice among poets