I won't tell you there's no monster 'neath your bed,
I won't sell you that it's all in your head,
This world of ours is not as it seems,
There are monsters indeed, but they're not in your dreams,
So learn what you can from the beasts you defeat,
You'll need it for some of the people you meet...

- Voltaire, "Goodnight Demonslayer"

Well The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe is a classic. .

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

And then Auguries of innocence by William Blake.

But most of the poems I've read were in Danish ><

Here is one I love:

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all
oppression and shame,
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with
themselves, remorseful after deeds done,
I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying,
neglected, gaunt, desperate,
I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer
of young women,
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be
hid, I see these sights on the earth,
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and
prisoners,
I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who
shall be kill'd to preserve the lives of the rest,
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon
laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these--all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent.

Im Nebel

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Einsam ist jeder Busch und Stein,
Kein Baum sieht den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.

Voll von Freunden war mir die Welt,
Als noch mein Leben Licht war,
Nun, da der Nebel fällt,
Ist keiner mehr sichtbar.

Wahrlich, keiner ist weise,
Der nicht das Dunkle kennt,
Das unentrinnbar und leise
Von allen ihn trennt.

Seltsam, im Nebel zu wandern!
Leben ist einsam sein.
Kein Mensch kennt den anderen,
Jeder ist allein.



In the Fog

Strange, to wander in the fog.
Each bush and stone stands alone,
No tree sees the next one,
Each is alone.

My world was full of friends
When my life was filled with light,
Now as the fog descends
None is still to be seen.

Truly there is no wise man
Who does not know the dark
Which quietly and inescapably
Separates him from everything else.

Strange, to wander in the fog,
To live is to be alone.
No man knows the next man,
Each is alone.

Hermann Hesse

one of my favorite poems ^-^

To One Who Is Too Cheerful

Your head, your air, your every way
Are scenic as the countryside;
The smile plays in your lips and eyes
Like fresh winds on a cloudless day.

The gloomy drudge, brushed by your charms,
Is dazzled by the vibrancy
That flashes forth so brilliantly
Out of your shoulders and your arms.

All vivid colours, and the way
They resonate in how you dress
Have poets in their idleness
Imagining a flower-ballet.

These lavish robes are emblems of
The mad profusion that is you;
Madwoman, I am maddened too,
And hate you even as I love!

Sometimes within a park, at rest,
Where I have dragged my apathy,
I have felt like an irony
The sunshine lacerate my breast.

And then the spring's luxuriance
Humiliated so my heart
That I have pulled a flower apart
To punish Nature's insolence.

So I would wish, when you're asleep,
The time for sensuality,
Towards your body's treasury
Silently, stealthily to creep,

To bruise your ever-tender breast,
And carve in your astonished side
An injury both deep and wide,
To chastize your too-joyous flesh.

And, sweetness that would dizzy me!
In these two lips so red and new
My sister, I have made for you,
To slip my venom, lovingly!

Charles Baudelaire was messed up.

FREMMED, ALENE av Sille Myreng

En gang den Ene, alltid den Ene
i feil dimensjon er du ensom, alene
Du puster, du snakker, men er ei blant dem
som kaller den blågrønne Tellus sitt hjem

Den stygge andunge som aldri blir svane
for tankene går i en helt annen bane
Du lengter deg bort, men du vet ikke hvor
du vil bare dit dine artsfrender bor

Du vakler deg frem, hvert minutt er en pine
Og venter på at isen rundt hjertet skal tine
Timer blir til dager, minner til grus
men enda så kjenner du lengselens sus

Du vrir deg i søvne, du vil ikke låne
mer tid i en verden med en fremmed måne
Du synker ned i bitter apati
og vet; fremmed, alene, det vil du forbli


Strange, alone by Sille Myreng

Once the One, always the One
In the wrong dimension you’re lonely, alone
You breathe, you talk, but you’re not among those
Who call the blue-green Tellus their home

The ugly duckling who never becomes a swan
Cause your thoughts go in entirely other tracks
You long to get away, but you don’t know where
You just wanna go where your congeners are

You stumble along, each minute is misery
Waiting for the ice around your heart to thaw
Hours become days, memories gravel
But yet you feel the sparkle of longing

You wiggle in your sleep, you don’t wanna spend
More time in a world with an alien moon
You sink down in bitter apathy
And know; strange, alone you’ll always be.



Written by an "amateur", published in "Nemi". This is my favourite poem.

Inger Christensen's "Alphabet". It's technically a book length peom, but each small section is a letter in the alphabet (A to N only) and a new number in the fibonacci sequence. I can't post all, since it is too long, but these are the first few parts (A to F):

1
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist

2
bracken exists; and blackberries, blackberries;
bromine exists; and hydrogen, hydrogen

3
cicadas exist; chicory, chromium,
citrus trees; cicadas exist;
cicadas, cedars, cypresses, the cerebellum

4
doves exist, dreamers, and dolls;
killers exist, and doves, and doves;
haze, dioxin, and days; days
exist, days and death; and poems
exist; poems, days, death

5
early fall exists; aftertaste, afterthought;
seclusion and angels exist;
widows and elk exist; every
detail exists; memory, memory's light;
afterglow exists; oaks, elms,
junipers, sameness, loneliness exist;
eider ducks, spiders, and vinegar
exist, and the future, the future

6
fisherbird herons exist, with their grey-blue arching
backs, with their black-feathered crests and their
bright-feathered tails they exist; in colonies
they exist, in the so-called Old World;
fish, too, exist, and ospreys, ptarmigans,
falcons, sweetgrass, and the fleeces of sheep;
fig trees and the products of fission exist;
errors exist, instrumental, systemic,
random; remote control exists, and birds;
and fruit trees exist, fruittherein the orchard where
apricot trees exist, apricot trees exist
in countries whose warmth will call forth the exact
colour of apricots in the flesh

who are your favorite poets?

A few of my favorites:
E. E. Cummings
Sylvia Plath
Anne Sexton
Russell Edson
Allen Ginsberg

Post your favorites and/or favorite poems.

Edgar Allen Poe
Walt Whitman
Robert Frost
E.E. Cummings
Emily Dickinson

Sleep - by Russell Edson

      There was a man who didn't know how to sleep; nodding off every night into a drab, unprofessional sleep. Sleep that he'd grown so tired of sleeping.
      He tried reading The Manual of Sleep, but it just put him to sleep. That same old sleep that he had grown so tired of sleeping . . .
      He needed a sleeping master, who with a whip and a chair would discipline the night, and make him jump through hoops of gasolined fire. Someone who could make a tiger sit on a tiny pedestal and yawn . . .

Adrienne Rich - From an Atlas of the Difficult World

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a grey day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plains' enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not in your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

Adrienne Rich
Emily Dickinson
John Donne
Andrew Marvell
Sylvia Plath
Samuel taylor Coleridge
Percy bysshe Shelley
John Clare
Margaret Atwood

You guys should post some poems!

I remember we had already a poems topic so I merged it into this topic! =)


Another favorite of mine.


Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Pablo Neruda - Walking Around

Dolor - Theodore Roethke

Mondnacht

Es war, als hätt' der Himmel
Die Erde still geküsst
Dass sie im Blütenschimmer
Von ihm nun träumen müsst

Die Luft ging durch die Felder
Die Ähren wogten sacht
Es rauschten leis die Wälder
So sternklar war die Nacht

Und meine Seele spannte
Weit ihre Flügel aus
Flog durch die stillen Lande
Als flöge sie nach Haus



Night Of The Moon

It was as though the sky
had silently kissed the earth,
so that it now had to dream of sky
in shimmers of flowers.

The air went through the fields,
the corn-ears leaned heavy down
the woods swished softly—
so clear with stars was the night

And my soul stretched
its wings out wide,
flew through the silent lands
as though it were flying home.


Joseph von Eichendorff

The defintion of Love

My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begottten by Despair
Upon Impossibility

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet i quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixed;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eyes does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have placed
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heavens fall,
And the earth some new convulsion tear,
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.

As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours, so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.

Andrew Marvell 1621-1678

Hmm, I found mine in a poem book but it's actually a song text. But whatever.... I like it very much.


Komm großer schwarzer Vogel

Komm großer schwarzer Vogel, komm jetzt!
Schau, das Fenster ist weit offen,
Schau, ich hab' Dir Zucker aufs Fensterbrett g'straht.

Komm großer schwarzer Vogel, komm zu mir!
Spann' Deine weiten, sanften Flügel aus
und leg's auf meine Fieberaugen!
Bitte, hol' mich weg von da!

Und dann fliegen wir rauf, mitten in Himmel rein,
in a neue Zeit, in a neue Welt.
Und ich werd' singen, ich werd' lachen,
ich werd' "das gibt's net", schrei'n,
weil ich werd' auf einmal kapieren
worum sich alles dreht.

Komm großer schwarzer Vogel, hilf mir doch!
Press' Deinen feuchten, kalten Schnabel auf
meine Wunde, auf meine heiße Stirn!

Komm großer schwarzer Vogel,
jetzt wär's grad günstig!
Die anderen da im Zimmer schlafen fest
und wenn wir ganz leise sind,
hört uns die Schwester nicht?
Bitte, hol mich weg von da!

Und dann fliegen wir rauf, mitten in Himmel rein,
in a neue Zeit, in a neue Welt.
Und ich werd' singen, ich werd' lachen,
ich werd' "das gibt's net", schrei'n,
weil ich werd' auf einmal kapieren
worum sich alles dreht.

Ja, großer schwarzer Vogel, endlich!
Ich hab' Dich gar nicht reinkommen g'hört,
wie lautlos Du fliegst mein Gott,
wie schön Du bist!

Auf geht's, großer schwarzer Vogel, auf geht's!
Baba, ihr meine Lieben daham!
Du, mein Mädel, und du, Mama, baba!
Bitte, vergesst's mich nicht!

Auf geht's, mitten in den Himmel eine,
nicht traurig sein, na, na, na ist kein Grund zum Traurigsein!
Ich werd' singen, ich werd' lachen, ich werd' "das gibt's net" schrei'n.
Ich werd' endlich kapieren, ich werd' glücklich sein!
Ich werd' singen, ich werd' lachen, ich werd' "des gibt's net" schrei'n.
Ich werd' endlich kapieren, ich werd' glücklich sein!
Ich werd' singen, ich werd' lachen, ich werd' endlich glücklich sein!


Come, big black bird

Come, big black bird
Look, the window’s wide open
Look, I spread some sugar on the windowsill for you
Come, big black bird, come to me!
Spread your wide, smooth wings
And put them on my feverish eyes
Please bring me away from here

And then we will fly up
Right into heaven
Into a new time, into a new world
And I will sing, I will laugh,
I will yell “this can’t be”
Because I will finally understand
What everything is all about

Come, big black bird, help me!
Press your moist, cool beak
On my wound, on my hot forehead
Come, big black bird
Now would be a great time
The others here in the room are fast asleep
And if we are all quiet
The nurse won’t hear us
Please, bring me away from here

And then we will fly up
Right into heaven
Into a new time, into a new world
And I will sing, I will laugh,
I will yell “this can’t be”
Because I will finally understand
What everything is all about

Yes, big black bird, finally!
I haven’t heard you come in at all
How silently you fly!
My god, how beautiful you are!
Go, big black bird, off we go!
Goodbye, my dear ones at home
You, my girl, and you, mom, goodbye!
Please, don’t forget me

Off we go, right into heaven
Don’t be sad, no, no, no - it’s no reason to be sad
Because I will sing, I will laugh, I will yell “this can’t be”
Because I will finally get it, I will be happy
I will sing, I will laugh, I will yell “this can’t be”
Because I will finally get it, I will be happy
I will sing, I will laugh, I will finally be happy

Ludwig Hirsch

Allen Ginsberg - America...

Well here's an audio recording, which is way cooler than just reading it:
http://jenegade.vox.com/library/audio/6a00c2252334938fdb00d4141fc1b66a47.html

Angels Of The Love Affair - Anne Sexton

"Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that festering hole."
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.
Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you
of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle,
you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue,
you of the fierce solar energy, Mademoiselle,
take some ice, take come snow, take a month of rain
and you would gutter in the dark, cracking up your brain.

Mother of fire, let me stand at your devouring gate
as the sun dies in your arms and you loosen it's terrible weight.



2. ANGEL OF CLEAN SHEETS

Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in the madhouse they came like specks of cinnamon
as I lay in a choral cave of drugs,
as old as a dog, as quiet as a skeleton.
Little bits of dried blood. One hundred marks
upon the sheet. One hundred kisses in the dark.
White sheets smelling of soap and Clorox
have nothing to do with this night of soil,
nothing to do with barred windows and multiple locks
and all the webbing in the bed, the ultimate recoil.
I have slept in silk and in red and in black.
I have slept on sand and, on fall night, a haystack.

I have known a crib. I have known the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I was defiled.



3. ANGEL OF FLIGHT AND SLEIGH BELLS

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act--that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the drreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world's bicycle goes by.



4. ANGEL OF HOPE AND CALENDARS

Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of Kleenex,
that hole where the fire woman is tied to her chair,
that hole where leather men are wringing their necks,
where the sea has turned into a pond of urine.
There is no place to wash and no marine beings to stir in.

In this hole your mother is crying out each day.
Your father is eating cake and digging her grave.
In this hole your baby is strangling. Your mouth is clay.
Your eyes are made of glass. They break. You are not brave.
You are alone like a dog in a kennel. Your hands
break out in boils. Your arms are cut and bound by bands

of wire. Your voice is out there. Your voice is strange.
There are no prayers here. Here there is no change.



5. ANGEL OF BLIZZARDS AND BLACKOUTS

Angle of blizzards and blackouts, do you know raspberries,
those rubies that sat in the gree of my grandfather's garden?
You of the snow tires, you of the sugary wings, you freeze
me out. Leet me crawl through the patch. Let me be ten.
Let me pick those sweet kisses, thief that I was,
as the sea on my left slapped its applause.

Only my grandfather was allowed there. Or the maid
who came with a scullery pan to pick for breakfast.
She of the rols that floated in the air, she of the inlaid
woodwork all greasy with lemon, she of the feather and dust,
not I. Nonetheless I came sneaking across the salt lawn
in bare feet and jumping-jack pajamas in the spongy dawn.

Oh Angel of the blizzard and blackout, Madam white face,
take me back to that red mouth, that July 21st place.



6. ANGEL OF BEACH HOUSES AND PICNICS

Angel of beach houses and picnics, do you know solitaire?
Fifty-two reds and blacks and only myslef to blame.
My blood buzzes like a hornet's nest. I sit in a kitchen chair
at a table set for one. The silverware is the same
and the glass and the sugar bowl. I hear my lungs fill and expel
as in an operation. But I have no one left to tell.

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists. Once I called breakfast the sexiest
meal of the day. Once I invited arrest

at the peace march in Washington. Once I was young and bold
and left hundreds of unmatched people out in the cold.

Thread = Dead?

Necropost!

My favorite poets are Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rudyard Kipling, and Herman Melville.


'If' by Rudyard Kipling

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 imposters 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 wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it 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!


So much awesomeness in one great piece.

The greatest use in media of this poem:

Wow, I must agree that was pretty epic.

Here's a few poems I love.

The first one is just so true. I see it in life every day.

Solitude

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow it's mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox


I think this one is about depression.

Alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe


Something more inspirational...

Don't Quit

WHEN THINGS GO WRONG, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest, if you must-but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up, though the pace seems slow-
You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man,
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup.
And he learned too late, when the night slipped down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out-
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt-
And you never can tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit-
It's when things seem worst that you mustn't quit.

Unknown