From time to time a poem

The Chaos - Gerard Nolst Trenité

Good luck

~~~~~~~

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Unintentionally, the next poem I wrote myself has the same title as the last poem I posted (not mine)...

The Chaos

There’s no such thing as silence,
No peace here in this life,
No escape from company, while
Darkness splinters light.

Alarms interrupt our dreams,
And calls disturb our time,
Ignorance kills our harmony
And anger makes us blind.

Hold onto hope, be duty bound
To improve your lot while here
Do well by others, while you can
And make a strength your fear.

I didn't write this poem myself, but it's my favourite and has great meaning to me. In case you didn't know, I have a large, dark brown birthmark that covers my right cheek. Naturally it gets me a lot of unwarned attention from people I pass in the the street. This poem is about that, and I feel it really relates to me.

Faceless
By Benjamin Zephaniah

You have to look beyond the face
to see the person true,
Deep down within my inner space
I am the same as you;
I've counted since that fire burnt
the many lessons I have learnt.

You have to talk to me and not
the skin that holds me in,
I took the wisdom that I got
to make sure I would win;
I'm counting weaker folk than me
who look but truly cannot see.

I've seen compassion from the blind
who think with open eyes,
It's those that judge me quick you'll find
are those that are unwise;
why judge the face that I have on
just value my opinion.

Friends will come and friends will go,
now I need friends who feel.
My friends have changed so much and so,
I make sure they are real;
I took the ride and paid the price,
I can't afford to do that twice.

I came to here from ignorance
I cannot call it bliss,
and now I know the importance
of loving me like this;
To leave behind that backward state
of judging looks is very great.

I'm beautiful,
I'm beautiful
this minor fact I know,
I tell you It's incredible
near death has made me grow;
Look at me, smile, you are now seeing
a great thing called a human being.

our myth

A swirling speak of stardust
blown on the breath of life
to dance through all of nature
remembering tunes still whispered
of space, of worlds, of ground.
To forge new paths of life and death
To partners old and new
To touch each earthly experience
And know each part anew.

A chapter is beginning
The ending always know
For where our steps may wonder
We always reach our home.
Our hearts may know
What minds dismiss
And bury beneath reality
For where we are, is where we were,
And the normal life is slippery.

If we were to see and understand
Each journey took before
Then all would be familiar, secure,
safe in the flow of nature,
nestled high within the stars,
we would recognise our reflection
In each and every face.
know ourselves within the thunderstorm,
See our spirit in the fox
In the rustling leaves that know our secret thoughts
and feel our own breath blow with the winter crispness.

the sanity we cling to
The nature of ourselves we deny
We clothe ourselves in ritual
To blend in with the story
That must be told.
This is our story, each path, each step, each chapter that unfolds
And in order to learn and grow within it
We forget
Until the chapter ends and we lay within the darkness
To be greeted once again
As the beginning becomes the end.
A new story to be told.

The Peace of Wild Things
By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

In the silence I hear
In the taste of sadness I feel
When the red mist covers the world I remember.
Every wound crys out
Every word cuts deep
As the past and future become one
Now I understand.

Never enougth,
Always hollow inside,
Existing from moment to moment
Life flowing by.
A watcher, non participation in what is,
Holding togeather by the thinnest thread,
Unravelling in the darkness.

Laid bare
Nerve endings exposed
To be played by you
Never more.
The sweetness of pain,
Bitter tears never shed.
Fall forever through the nightmare,

Lost in emotion,
Making paths in the sand,
Look back and see the water,
Cutting of the land.
The smell of copper in your mouth
The sting of love forgotten,
The emptiness of moments
will never stay my hand.

When all is done and now I rest
Forgive my weakness
Lay my head upon the soft green grass
And walk away
Dont look back
I was never broken
I belonged to the past.
There my death was
Waiting for the realisation to catch up with this shell.

I never left
My time stopped there,
My emptiness was telling
I am sorry for the pain.
Now whisper in your anger
And softly close your eyes.
This shell that lies beside you
Decieves you with this life

DUVET - Brian Bilston

Duvet,
you are so groovet,
I'd like to stay under you
all of Tuesdet.

Descend into Darkness

as we descend into Darkness
we feed the beast
well knowing that it will devour us
and we let him
because we know
its the only way
up
to the light again

because he who fears the dark
will blow out his candle
with his fear

so
eat me , eat me alive
and i will arise , tearing your stomach apart
light will fill you , warm you , burn you

and i will rise
stronger than ever , Shining

Not for me

Its not for me ....
It will never be ,and neither should it
It was decided before we were born
We were just trying to defy fate

Do the thing ,do the thing Now !
do each other ,onto one another
from another place , to here ,
we are drawn into existence
we wander ,we wonder ,
and we just are

And as the taste of your salty tears
enters my mouth i remember,
the poisoned water
from a long and lost Sea
How we struggled how we failed
Its not for me
And neither should it be ...

~Marta Lina Thomassen