Written by
Barry Tebb |
For Jeremy Reed
Rejection doesn’t lead me to dejection
But to inspiration via irritation
Or at least to a bit of naughty new year wit-
Oh isn’t it a shame my poetry’s not tame
Like Rupert’s or Jay’s - I never could
Get into their STRIDE just to much pride
To lick the arses of the poetry-of-earthers
Or the sad lady who runs KATABASIS from the back
Of a bike, gets shouted at by rude parkies
And writing huffy poems to prove it.
.
.
Oh to be acceptable and
IN THE POETRY REVIEW
Like Lavinia or Jo
With double spreads
And a glossy colour photo
Instead I’m stuck in a bus queue at Morden
London’s meridian point of zero imagination
Actually it’s a bit like ACUMEN with the Oxleys
Boasting about their 150,000 annual submissions-
If what they print’s the best God help the rest.
.
.
)
At least my Christmas post had - instead of a card
From Jeremy Reed - his ELEGY FOR DAVID GASCOYNE -
The best poem I’ve had by post in forty years
And Jeremy’s best to date in my estimate -
The English APOLLINAIRE - your ZONE, your SONG
OF THE BADLY LOVED - sitting in a cafe in South End Green
I send you this poem, Jeremy, sight unseen,
A new year’s gift to you, pushing through
To star galaxies still unmapped and to you, BW,
Sonneteer of silence, huddled in the fourth month
Of your outdoor vigil, measuring in blood, tears and rain
Your syllable count in hour-glass of pain.
|
Written by
James A Emanuel |
Stairstep music: ups,
downs, Bill Robinson smiling,
jazzdancing the rounds.
She raised champagne lips,
danced inside banana hips.
All Paris wooed Jo.
Banana panties,
perfumed belt, Jazz tatooing
lush ecstasies felt.
Josephine, royal,
jewelling her dance, flushing
the bosom of France.
|
Written by
Eugene Field |
Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack and I appeared;
He said that Julius Caesar had been billed a week or so,
And would have to have some armies by the time he reached St.
Jo!
O happy days, when Tragedy still winged an upward flight,
When actors wore tin helmets and cambric robes at night!
O happy days, when sounded in the public's rapturous ears
The creak of pasteboard armor and the clash of wooden spears!
O happy times for Jack and me and that one other supe
That then and there did constitute the noblest Roman's troop!
With togas, battle axes, shields, we made a dazzling show,
When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St.
Jo!
We wheeled and filed and double-quicked wherever Brutus led,
The folks applauding what we did as much as what he said;
'T was work, indeed; yet Jack and I were willing to allow
'T was easier following Brutus than following father's plough;
And at each burst of cheering, our valor would increase--
We tramped a thousand miles that night, at fifty cents apiece!
For love of Art--not lust for gold--consumed us years ago,
When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St.
Jo!
To-day, while walking in the Square, Jack Langrish says to me:
"My friend, the drama nowadays ain't what it used to be!
These farces and these comedies--how feebly they compare
With that mantle of the tragic art which Forrest used to wear!
My soul is warped with bitterness to think that you and I--
Co-heirs to immortality in seasons long gone by--
Now draw a paltry stipend from a Boston comic show,
We, who were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St.
Jo!"
And so we talked and so we mused upon the whims of Fate
That had degraded Tragedy from its old, supreme estate;
And duly, at the Morton bar, we stigmatized the age
As sinfully subversive of the interests of the Stage!
For Jack and I were actors in the halcyon, palmy days
Long, long before the Hoyt school of farce became the craze;
Yet, as I now recall it, it was twenty years ago
That we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St.
Jo!
We were by birth descended from a race of farmer kings
Who had done eternal battle with grasshoppers and things;
But the Kansas farms grew tedious--we pined for that delight
We read of in the Clipper in the barber's shop by night!
We would be actors--Jack and I--and so we stole away
From our native spot, Wathena, one dull September day,
And started for Missouri--ah, little did we know
We were going to train as soldiers with Brutus in St.
Jo!
Our army numbered three in all--Marc Antony's was four;
Our army hankered after fame, but Marc's was after gore!
And when we reached Philippi, at the outset we were met
With an inartistic gusto I can never quite forget.
For Antony's overwhelming force of thumpers seemed to be
Resolved to do "them Kansas jays"--and that meant Jack and me!
My lips were sealed but that it seems quite proper you should know
That Rome was nowhere in it at Philippi in St.
Jo!
I've known the slow-consuming grief and ostentatious pain
Accruing from McKean Buchanan's melancholy Dane;
Away out West I've witnessed Bandmann's peerless hardihood,
With Arthur Cambridge have I wrought where walking was not good;
In every phase of horror have I bravely borne my part,
And even on my uppers have I proudly stood for Art!
And, after all my suffering, it were not hard to show
That I got my allopathic dose with Brutus at St.
Jo!
That army fell upon me in a most bewildering rage
And scattered me and mine upon that histrionic stage;
My toga rent, my helmet gone and smashed to smithereens,
They picked me up and hove me through whole centuries of scenes!
I sailed through Christian eras and mediæval gloom
And fell from Arden forest into Juliet's painted tomb!
Oh, yes, I travelled far and fast that night, and I can show
The scars of honest wounds I got with Brutus in St.
Jo!
Ah me, old Davenport is gone, of fickle fame forgot,
And Barrett sleeps forever in a much neglected spot;
Fred Warde, the papers tell me, in far woolly western lands
Still flaunts the banner of high Tragic Art at one-night stands;
And Jack and I, in Charley Hoyt's Bostonian dramas wreak
Our vengeance on creation at some eensty dolls per week.
By which you see that public taste has fallen mighty low
Since we fought as Roman soldiers with Brutus in St.
Jo!
|
Written by
Marriott Edgar |
I'll tell you the story of Jonah,
A really remarkable tale;
A peaceful and humdrum existence he had
Until one day he went for a sail.
The weather were grand when they started,
But later at turn of the tide
The wind started blowing, the water got rough,
And Jonah felt funny inside.
When the ship started pitching and tossing
He tried hard his feelings to smother,
At last he just leant his head over the side
And one thing seemed to bring up another.
When the sailors saw what he were doing
It gave them a bit of a jar;
They didn't mind trippers enjoying theirselves,
But thowt this 'ere were going too far.
Said one "Is there nowt you can think on
To stop you from feelin' so bad?"
And Jonah said "Aye, lift me over the side
And chuck me in, there's a good lad.
"
The sailor were not one to argue,
He said "Happen you know what's best.
"
Then he picked Jonah up by the seat of his pants
And chucked him in, as per request.
A Grampus came up at that moment,
And seeing the old man hard set,
It swam to his side and it opened its mouth
And said "Come in lad, out of the wet.
"
Its manner were kindly and pleading,
As if to say R.
S.
V.
P.
Said Jonah "I've eaten a kipper or two,
But I never thowt one would eat me.
"
The inside of Grampus surprised him,
'Twere the first time he'd been behind scenes;
He found 'commodation quite ample for one
But it smelled like a tin of sardines.
Then over the sea they went cruising,
And Jonah were filled with delight;
With his eye to the blow-'ole in t'Grampus's head
He watched ships that passed in the night.
"I'm tired of watching," said Jonah,
"I'll rest for a minute or so.
"
"I'm afraid as you wont find your bed very soft,"
Said the Grampus, "I've got a hard roe.
"
At that moment up came a whale boat,
Said Jonah, "What's this 'ere we've struck?"
"They're after my blubber," the Grampus replied,
"You'd better 'old tight while I duck.
"
The water came in through the spy-'ole
And hit Jonah's face a real slosher,
He said, "Shut your blow-'ole!" and Grampus replied
"I can't lad, it needs a new washer.
"
Jonah tried 'ard to bail out the water,
But found all his efforts in vain,
For as fast as he emptied the slops out through the gills
They came in through the blow 'ole again.
When at finish they came to the surface
Jonah took a look out and he saw
They were stuck on a bit of a sandbank that lay
One rod, pole or perch from the shore.
Said the Grampus, "We're in shallow water,
I've brought you as far as I may;
If you sit on the blow 'ole on top of my head
I'll spout you the rest of the way.
"
So Jonah obeyed these instructions,
And the Grampus his lungs did expand,
Then blew out a fountain that lifted Jo' up
And carried him safely to land.
There was tears in their eyes when they parted
And each blew a kiss, a real big 'un,
Then the Grampus went off with a swish of it's tail
And Jonah walked back home to Wigan.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
What guts he had, the Dago lad
Who fought that Frenchman grim with guile;
For nigh an hour they milled like mad,
And mauled the mat in rare old style.
Then up and launched like catapults,
And tangled, twisted, clinched and clung,
Then tossed in savage somersaults,
And hacked and hammered, ducked and swung;
And groaned and grunted, sighed and cried,
Now knotted tight, now springing free;
To bend each other's bones they tried,
Their faces crisped in agony.
.
.
.
Then as a rage rose, with tiger-bound,
They clashed and smashed, and flailed and flung,
And tripped and slipped, with hammer-pound,
And streamin sweat and straining lung,
The mighty mob roared out their joy,
And wild I heard a wench near-by
Shriek to the Frenchman: "Atta Boy!
Go to it, Jo-jo - kill the guy.
"
The boy from Rome was straight and slim,
And swift and springy as a bow;
The man from Metz was gaunt and grim,
But all the tricks he seemed to know.
'Twixt knee and calf with scissors-lock,
He gripped the lad's arm like a vice;
The prisoned hand went white as chalk,
And limp as death and cold as ice.
And then he tried to break the wrist,
And kidney-pounded with his knee,
But with a cry and lightning twist
The Roman youth had wrested free.
.
.
.
Then like mad bulls they hooked and mauled,
And blindly butted, bone on bone;
Spread-eagled on the mat they sprawled,
And writhed and rocked with bitter moan.
Then faltered to their feet and hung
Upon the ropes with eyes of woe;
And then the Frenchman stooped and flung
The wop among the mob below,
Who helped to hoist him back again,
With cheers and jeers and course cat-calls,
To where the Gaul with might and main
Hung poised to kick his genitals
And drop him senseless in the ring.
.
.
.
And then an old man cried: "My son!"
The maddened mob began to fling
Their chairs about - the fight was done.
Soft silver sandals tapped the sea;
Palms listened to the lack of sound;
The lucioles were lilting free,
The peace was precious and profound.
Oh had it been an evil dream? .
.
.
A chapel of the Saints I sought,
And thee before the alter gleam
I clasped my hands and thought and thought.
.
.
.
|
Written by
Maxine Kumin |
Up attic, Lucas Harrison, God rest
his frugal bones, once kept a tidy account
by knifecut of some long-gone harvest.
The wood was new.
The pitch ran down to blunt
the year: 1811, the score: 10, he carved
into the center rafter to represent
his loves, beatings, losses, hours, or maybe
the butternuts that taxed his back and starved
the red squirrels higher up each scabbed tree.
1812 ran better.
If it was bushels he risked,
he would have set his sons to rake them ankle deep
for wintering over, for wrinkling off their husks
while downstairs he lulled his jo to sleep.
By 1816, whatever the crop goes sour.
Three tallies cut by the knife are all
in a powder of dead flies and wood dust pale as flour.
Death, if it came then, has since gone dry and small.
But the hermit makes this up.
Nothing is known
under this rooftree keel veed in with chestnut
ribs.
Up attic he always hears the ghosts
of Lucas Harrison's great trees complain
chafing against their mortised pegs,
a woman in childbirth pitching from side to side
until the wet head crowns between her legs
again, and again she will bear her man astride
and out of the brawl of sons he will drive like oxen
tight at the block and tackle, whipped to the trace,
come up these burly masts, these crossties broken
from their growing and buttoned into place.
Whatever it was is now a litter of shells.
Even at noon the attic vault is dim.
The hermit carves his own name in the sill
that someone after will take stock of him.
|
Written by
Tanwir Phool |
Muhammad(SAWAWS) Rah-e-Haq dikhaanay ko aa'ey
GunaahoN sey ham ko bachaanay ko aa'ey
Sharee'at ki mash'al jahaaN maiN jalaa kar
Zilaalat ki Zulmat miTaanay ko aa'ey
Du'aa ki Khuda sey , hidaayat dey in ko
Jo Taa'ef maiN kaafir sataanay ko aa'ey
JahaaN maiN shaqaawat kaa thaa daur dauraa
Woh(SAWAWS) RaHmat kay moti luTaanay ko aa'ey
Gunahgaar ummat ko jab roz-e-maHshar
Rasool-e-Khuda(SAWAWS) baKhshwaanay ko aa'ey
Yahi Phool kahnay lagaa , meray Aa'qaa(SAWAWS)
Mujhay pairhan maiN chhupaanay ko aa'ey
(Poet : Tanwir Phool)-(Naat from "Anwaar-e-Hiraa" published in July,1997)
Link about Naat : http://www.
thefullwiki.
org/Naat
You may read more poetry of Tanwir Phool at these links :
http://www.
urdubandhan.
com/bazm/viewforum.
php?f=33
http://www.
urdubandhan.
com/bazm/viewtopic.
php?f=8&t=7438
http://urdunetjpn.
com/ur/category/tanwir-phool/
|
Written by
Tanwir Phool |
For Tanwir Phool's poetry see these links:
http://www.
urduyouthforum.
org/designpoetry/Tanwir_Phool_designpoetry.
php
http://urdunetjpn.
com/ur/category/tanwir-phool/
http://forum.
urdujahaan.
com/viewtopic.
php?f=18&t=4969
*****************************************************************************
RUBA'I
Jo lamHa guzartaa hai who keya detaa hai?
Dauraaniya-e-zeest bataa detaa hai
Aie Phool ! ghaTaa umr se ik aur baras
Jaataa huwaa har saal sadaa detaa hai
(From "DhuwaaN DhuwaaN Chehray" published in April,1999)
English translation.
What is given by the moment passed?
It tells one the spent period of his or her life.
Every passing year is saying that one more year is being
decreased / deducted from one's life.
****************
RUBA'I
Tu maaNg sadaa SuHbat-e-bad Khoo se panaah
Saathi jo buraa ho to who kartaa hai tabaah
ShaitaaN se bhalaa'i ki tawaqqu hai tujhay !
LAA HAULA WALAA QUWWATA ILLAA BILLAH
(From "Gulshan-e-SuKhan" published in January,1970)
English translation
You should seek riddance from the company of sinful person.
If the companion is evil-minded ,you will be ruined.
Do you expect beneficence from the Devil?
There is no source of strength save that of God.
(Poet : Tanwir Phool ) http://duckduckgo.
com/Tanwir_Phool
|
Written by
Omer Tarin |
I.
You are not dead
Why do they call you
Mohen-jo-daro,
“ Mounds-of-the-Dead”?
You are not dead!
You have never been dead
Or buried
Or cremated
By the scorching banks of the Sindhu;
Historians have conspired against you
A thousand and one tales
Have besmirched your name
Misguided fools have imagined
Your obituary to be true;
Sentimental fools have sung elegies
By their own graves
Garlanded their own biers,
Cursed the stars and howled at the heavens
Self-piteous tears, in the hope
That some part of their practiced grief would be remembered
As poetry,
A fitting tribute to your eternal face;
Maybe, they would be able to, by their ululations,
Raise demons from the earth
Or bring forth spectres
From darkest shadows of the thinnest air, precipitating
Some prophecy, nameless and foreboding, a small
Tin medal on their pathetic breasts,
Stark in their hunger for inspired flights;
Other dust should fashion other jars, not having the consistency
Of ours.
It has been foretold that you will not die
That you will not die thus, at the behest of historians
Or for the research of archaeologists
Or even the yapping lap-dogs
Aping the tawny shades of our leonine skins;
It has been foretold,
And we are witnesses to you survival.
II.
Priest-Kings and dancing girls
The sands have shifted,
As the river has---
You are only abandoned,
“Mound-abandoned-and-shifted”.
Take heart! Be not sad,
The sons of Sindhu are around you;
You cannot die while your sons live,
While the children of the river still ply their wide boats
On your consort’s undulating breast;
While your daughters carry their vessels
Fashioned from your clay;
In every face, you are alive.
In the mien of priest-kings who have renounced
Their crowns and pulpits for lives of love and freedom—
At Bhit Shah, they sing your songs;
At Sehwan, they celebrate your being;
In every prayer and call to prayer you are revealed
Rising gradually towards the heights of Kirthar
Rolling ceaselessly over the sands of Kutch
With every partridge crooning in the cotton,
With every mallard winging over Manchar,
You come forth—
The Breaker-of-the-Shackles-of-Tyranny
The-Keeper-of-the-Honour-of-Dancing –girls
Friend-of-the-Imprisoned-Hari
Last-Flower-amidst-the-Thorns-of-Despair!
You are the yellow turmeric staining the red ajrak
Of our wounds
Anointing your martyrs
Healing your casualties
Soothing us with your whispered lullaby
Such as our mothers used to sing us
In our cradles
From the earliest dawn of creation;
Even now, your humped oxen plod home in the evening
Of their tillage;
Every day I hear the rise and fall of your undeciphered script
In the cadences of children
In the chattering of women
In the murmur of lovers
In the gestures of old men
In the anger of the young.
III.
A Dream Untold
It was said, long ago, that you will not die
That forever you will live in the eyes of every child,
That you will rise from your gargantuan sleep,
Arise, woken by the winds!
When the Eastern Gates of your citadel are opened wide
All wars will cease
Your sons will no longer flinch under the lash,
Your daughters will no longer be distraught,
The pillars of fire and smoke will settle down
And the silent waste-lands speak with voices of prophecy;
When precious stones will once again etch the bright circumference
Of your ruins
And the heavens shake themselves into fleeting shapes,
Vain and irresolute constellations plunge
Into narrow circles of despair—
It has been said that you will flourish again,
When the crashing shores
Of sea and river
Melt into each other
When waves shiver
Into the rock’s embrace.
Then I, too, shall awaken, I trust,
And behold you in your truth.
------------
* (c) Omer Tarin.
Pub ''The Glasgow Seeker'', UK, 2005
|
Written by
Tanwir Phool |
Tiri Qudrat ko yaa Rab ! zarray zarray sey a'yaaN dekhaa
Qamar maiN ,shams maiN ,anjum maiN Tujh ko zaufishaaN dekhaa
Who sheereeN Naam hai ALLAH kaa jo RaaHat-e-dil hai
Fanaa jo ho geya Us par, usay hi jaawidaaN dekhaa
Pukaaraa markaz-e-dil sey to paayaa paas hi Us ko
Usay hi BaKhshnay waalaa ,Usay hi MehrbaaN dekhaa
Sahaaraa be-basoN kaa hai , Who mazloomoN kaa Waali hai
Usi kay aastaanay ko panaah-e-be-kasaaN dekhaa
Samajh saktaa naheeN Israar Haq kay aa'dam-e-Khaaki
Na aiesaa falsafi dekhaa , na aiesaa nukta daaN dekhaa
Gulistaan-e-jahaaN maiN Phool ki faryaad Sun yaa Rab !
Tiraa hi Naam lay kar us ko maSroof-e-fuGhaaN dekhaa
(Poet : Tanwir Phool)
You can read more poetry of Tanwir Phool at these links :
http://urdunetjpn.
com/ur/category/tanwir-phool/
http://www.
urdubandhan.
com/bazm/viewtopic.
php?f=8&t=7438
|