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Best Famous Soaks Poems

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Written by Les Murray | Create an image from this poem

The Dream Of Wearing Shorts Forever

 To go home and wear shorts forever
in the enormous paddocks, in that warm climate,
adding a sweater when winter soaks the grass, 

to camp out along the river bends
for good, wearing shorts, with a pocketknife,
a fishing line and matches, 

or there where the hills are all down, below the plain,
to sit around in shorts at evening
on the plank verandah - 

If the cardinal points of costume
are Robes, Tat, Rig and Scunge,
where are shorts in this compass? 

They are never Robes
as other bareleg outfits have been:
the toga, the kilt, the lava-lava
the Mahatma's cotton dhoti; 

archbishops and field marshals
at their ceremonies never wear shorts.
The very word means underpants in North America.
Shorts can be Tat, Land-Rovering bush-environmental tat, socio-political ripped-and-metal-stapled tat, solidarity-with-the-Third World tat tvam asi, likewise track-and-field shorts worn to parties and the further humid, modelling negligee of the Kingdom of Flaunt, that unchallenged aristocracy.
More plainly climatic, shorts are farmers' rig, leathery with salt and bonemeal; are sailors' and branch bankers' rig, the crisp golfing style of our youngest male National Costume.
Most loosely, they are Scunge, ancient Bengal bloomers or moth-eaten hot pants worn with a former shirt, feet, beach sand, hair and a paucity of signals.
Scunge, which is real negligee housework in a swimsuit, pyjamas worn all day, is holiday, is freedom from ambition.
Scunge makes you invisible to the world and yourself.
The entropy of costume, scunge can get you conquered by more vigorous cultures and help you notice it less.
To be or to become is a serious question posed by a work-shorts counter with its pressed stack, bulk khaki and blue, reading Yakka or King Gee, crisp with steely warehouse odour.
Satisfied ambition, defeat, true unconcern, the wish and the knack of self-forgetfulness all fall within the scunge ambit wearing board shorts of similar; it is a kind of weightlessness.
Unlike public nakedness, which in Westerners is deeply circumstantial, relaxed as exam time, artless and equal as the corsetry of a hussar regiment, shorts and their plain like are an angelic nudity, spirituality with pockets! A double updraft as you drop from branch to pool! Ideal for getting served last in shops of the temperate zone they are also ideal for going home, into space, into time, to farm the mind's Sabine acres for product and subsistence.
Now that everyone who yearned to wear long pants has essentially achieved them, long pants, which have themselves been underwear repeatedly, and underground more than once, it is time perhaps to cherish the culture of shorts, to moderate grim vigour with the knobble of bare knees, to cool bareknuckle feet in inland water, slapping flies with a book on solar wind or a patient bare hand, beneath the cadjiput trees, to be walking meditatively among green timber, through the grassy forest towards a calm sea and looking across to more of that great island and the further tropics.


Written by Robert Lowell | Create an image from this poem

Waking in the Blue

 The night attendant, a B.
U.
sophomore, rouses from the mare's-nest of his drowsy head propped on The Meaning of Meaning.
He catwalks down our corridor.
Azure day makes my agonized blue window bleaker.
Crows maunder on the petrified fairway.
Absence! My hearts grows tense as though a harpoon were sparring for the kill.
(This is the house for the "mentally ill.
") What use is my sense of humour? I grin at Stanley, now sunk in his sixties, once a Harvard all-American fullback, (if such were possible!) still hoarding the build of a boy in his twenties, as he soaks, a ramrod with a muscle of a seal in his long tub, vaguely urinous from the Victorian plumbing.
A kingly granite profile in a crimson gold-cap, worn all day, all night, he thinks only of his figure, of slimming on sherbert and ginger ale-- more cut off from words than a seal.
This is the way day breaks in Bowditch Hall at McLean's; the hooded night lights bring out "Bobbie," Porcellian '29, a replica of Louis XVI without the wig-- redolent and roly-poly as a sperm whale, as he swashbuckles about in his birthday suit and horses at chairs.
These victorious figures of bravado ossified young.
In between the limits of day, hours and hours go by under the crew haircuts and slightly too little nonsensical bachelor twinkle of the Roman Catholic attendants.
(There are no Mayflower screwballs in the Catholic Church.
) After a hearty New England breakfast, I weigh two hundred pounds this morning.
Cock of the walk, I strut in my turtle-necked French sailor's jersey before the metal shaving mirrors, and see the shaky future grow familiar in the pinched, indigenous faces of these thoroughbred mental cases, twice my age and half my weight.
We are all old-timers, each of us holds a locked razor.
Written by John Ashbery | Create an image from this poem

Into the Dusk-Charged Air

 Far from the Rappahannock, the silent
Danube moves along toward the sea.
The brown and green Nile rolls slowly Like the Niagara's welling descent.
Tractors stood on the green banks of the Loire Near where it joined the Cher.
The St.
Lawrence prods among black stones And mud.
But the Arno is all stones.
Wind ruffles the Hudson's Surface.
The Irawaddy is overflowing.
But the yellowish, gray Tiber Is contained within steep banks.
The Isar Flows too fast to swim in, the Jordan's water Courses over the flat land.
The Allegheny and its boats Were dark blue.
The Moskowa is Gray boats.
The Amstel flows slowly.
Leaves fall into the Connecticut as it passes Underneath.
The Liffey is full of sewage, Like the Seine, but unlike The brownish-yellow Dordogne.
Mountains hem in the Colorado And the Oder is very deep, almost As deep as the Congo is wide.
The plain banks of the Neva are Gray.
The dark Saône flows silently.
And the Volga is long and wide As it flows across the brownish land.
The Ebro Is blue, and slow.
The Shannon flows Swiftly between its banks.
The Mississippi Is one of the world's longest rivers, like the Amazon.
It has the Missouri for a tributary.
The Harlem flows amid factories And buildings.
The Nelson is in Canada, Flowing.
Through hard banks the Dubawnt Forces its way.
People walk near the Trent.
The landscape around the Mohawk stretches away; The Rubicon is merely a brook.
In winter the Main Surges; the Rhine sings its eternal song.
The Rhône slogs along through whitish banks And the Rio Grande spins tales of the past.
The Loir bursts its frozen shackles But the Moldau's wet mud ensnares it.
The East catches the light.
Near the Escaut the noise of factories echoes And the sinuous Humboldt gurgles wildly.
The Po too flows, and the many-colored Thames.
Into the Atlantic Ocean Pours the Garonne.
Few ships navigate On the Housatonic, but quite a few can be seen On the Elbe.
For centuries The Afton has flowed.
If the Rio ***** Could abandon its song, and the Magdalena The jungle flowers, the Tagus Would still flow serenely, and the Ohio Abrade its slate banks.
The tan Euphrates would Sidle silently across the world.
The Yukon Was choked with ice, but the Susquehanna still pushed Bravely along.
The Dee caught the day's last flares Like the Pilcomayo's carrion rose.
The Peace offered eternal fragrance Perhaps, but the Mackenzie churned livid mud Like tan chalk-marks.
Near where The Brahmaputra slapped swollen dikes And the Pechora? The São Francisco Skulks amid gray, rubbery nettles.
The Liard's Reflexes are slow, and the Arkansas erodes Anthracite hummocks.
The Paraná stinks.
The Ottawa is light emerald green Among grays.
Better that the Indus fade In steaming sands! Let the Brazos Freeze solid! And the Wabash turn to a leaden Cinder of ice! The Marañón is too tepid, we must Find a way to freeze it hard.
The Ural Is freezing slowly in the blasts.
The black Yonne Congeals nicely.
And the Petit-Morin Curls up on the solid earth.
The Inn Does not remember better times, and the Merrimack's Galvanized.
The Ganges is liquid snow by now; The Vyatka's ice-gray.
The once-molten Tennessee s Curdled.
The Japurá is a pack of ice.
Gelid The Columbia's gray loam banks.
The Don's merely A giant icicle.
The Niger freezes, slowly.
The interminable Lena plods on But the Purus' mercurial waters are icy, grim With cold.
The Loing is choked with fragments of ice.
The Weser is frozen, like liquid air.
And so is the Kama.
And the beige, thickly flowing Tocantins.
The rivers bask in the cold.
The stern Uruguay chafes its banks, A mass of ice.
The Hooghly is solid Ice.
The Adour is silent, motionless.
The lovely Tigris is nothing but scratchy ice Like the Yellowstone, with its osier-clustered banks.
The Mekong is beginning to thaw out a little And the Donets gurgles beneath the Huge blocks of ice.
The Manzanares gushes free.
The Illinois darts through the sunny air again.
But the Dnieper is still ice-bound.
Somewhere The Salado propels irs floes, but the Roosevelt's Frozen.
The Oka is frozen solider Than the Somme.
The Minho slumbers In winter, nor does the Snake Remember August.
Hilarious, the Canadian Is solid ice.
The Madeira slavers Across the thawing fields, and the Plata laughs.
The Dvina soaks up the snow.
The Sava's Temperature is above freezing.
The Avon Carols noiselessly.
The Drôme presses Grass banks; the Adige's frozen Surface is like gray pebbles.
Birds circle the Ticino.
In winter The Var was dark blue, unfrozen.
The Thwaite, cold, is choked with sandy ice; The Ardèche glistens feebly through the freezing rain.
Written by Barry Tebb | Create an image from this poem

Bridge Over The Aire Book 3

 THE KINGDOM OF MY HEART





1



The halcyon settled on the Aire of our days

Kingfisher-blue it broke my heart in two

Shall I forget you? Shall I forget you?



I am the mad poet first love

You never got over

You are my blue-eyed

Madonna virgin bride

I shall carve ‘MG loves BT’

On the bark of every 

Wind-bent tree in 

East End Park



2



The park itself will blossom

And grow in chiaroscuro

The Victorian postcard’s view

Of avenue upon avenue

With palms and pagodas

Lakes and waterfalls and

A fountain from Versailles.
3 You shall be my queen In the Kingdom of Deira Land of many rivers Aire the greatest Isara the strong one Robed in stillness Wide, deep and dark.
4 In Middleton Woods Margaret and I played Truth or dare She bared her breasts To the watching stars.
5 “Milk, milk, Lemonade, round The corner Chocolate spread” Nancy chanted at Ten in the binyard Touching her ****, Her ****, her bum, Margaret joined in Chanting in unison.
6 The skipping rope Turned faster And faster, slapping The hot pavement, Margaret skipped In rhythm, never Missing a beat, Lifting the pleat Of her skirt Whirling and twirling.
7 Giggling and red Margaret said In a whisper “When we were Playing at Nancy’s She pushed a spill Of paper up her You-know-what She said she’d Let you watch If you wanted.
” 8 Margaret, this Saturday morning in June There is a queue at the ‘Princess’ for The matin?e, down the alley by the blank Concrete of the cinema’s side I hide With you, we are counting our picture Money, I am counting the stars in your Hair, bound with a cheap plastic comb.
9 You have no idea of my need for you A lifetime long, every wrong decision I made betrayed my need; forty years on Hear my song and take my hand and move Us to the house of love where we belong.
10 Margaret we sat in the cinema dark Warm with the promise of a secret kiss The wall lights glowed amber on the Crumbling plaster, we looked with longing At the love seats empty in the circle, Vowing we would share one.
11 There is shouting and echoes Of wild splashing from York Road baths; forty years on It stirs my memory and Will not be gone.
12 The ghosts of tramtracks Light up lanes To nowhere In Leeds Ten.
Every road Leads nowhere In Leeds Nine.
Motorways have cut The city’s heart In two; Margaret, Our home lies buried Under sixteen feet Of stone.
13 Our families moved And we were lost I was not there to hear The whispered secret Of your first period.
14 God is courage’s infinite ground Tillich said; God, give me enough To stand another week without her Every day gets longer, every sleep Less deep.
15 Why can’t I find you, Touch you, Bind your straw-gold hair The colour of lank February grass? 16 Under the stone canopy Of the Grand Arcade I pass Europa Nightclub; In black designer glass I watch the faces pass But none is like your’s, No voice, no eyes, No smile at all Like your’s.
17 From Kirkstall Lock The rhubarb crop To Knostrop’s forcing sheds The roots ploughed up Arranged in beds Of perfect darkness Where the buds burst With a pip, rich pink Stalks and yellow leaves Hand-picked by Candle-light to Keep the colour right So every night the Rhubarb train Could go from Leeds To Covent Garden.
18 The smell of Saturday morning Is the smell of freedom How the bounds may grow Slowly slowly as I go.
“Rag-bone rag-bone White donkey stone” Auntie Nellie scoured Her door step, polished The brass knocker Till I saw my face Bunched like a fist Complete with goggles Grinning like a monkey In a mile of mirrors.
19 Every door step had a stop A half-stone iron weight To hold it back and every Step was edged with donkey Stone in yellow or white From the ragman or the potman With his covered cart jingling Jangling as it jerked hundreds Of cups on hooks pint and Half pint mugs and stacks of Willow-patterned plates From Burmantofts.
20 We heard him a mile off Nights in summer when He trundled round the Corner over the cobbles Jamming the wood brake Blocks whoaing the horses With their gleaming brasses And our mams were always Waiting where he stopped.
21 Double summer-time made The nights go on for ever And no-one cared any more How long we played what Or where and we were left Alone and that’s all I wanted Then or now to be left alone Never to be called in from The Hollows never to be Called from Margaret.
22 City of back-to-backs From Armley Heights Laid out in rows Like trees or grass I watch you pass.
23 The Aire is slow and almost Still In the Bridgefield The Joshua Tetley clock Over the Atkinson Grimshaw Print Is stopped at nineteen fifty Four The year I left.
24 Grimshaw’s home was Half a mile away In Knostrop Hall Margaret and I Climbed the ruined Walls her hair was Blowing in the wind Her eyes were stars In the green night Her hands were holding My hands.
25 Half a century later I look out over Leeds Nine What little’s left is broken Or changed Saturday night Is silent and empty The paths over the Hollows Deserted the bell Of St.
Hilda’s still.
26 On a single bush The yellow roses blush Pink in the amber light Night settles on the Fewstons and the Copperfields No mothers’ voices calling us.
Lilac and velvet clover Grew all over the Hollows It was all the luck We knew and when we left Our luck went too.
27 Solid black Velvet basalt Polished jet Millstone grit Leeds Town Hall Built with it Soaks up the fog Is sealed with smog Battered buttressed Blackened plinths White lions’ paws Were soft their Smiles like your’s.
28 Narrow lanes, steep inclines, Steps, blank walls, tight And secret openings’ The lanes are your hips The inclines the lines Of your thighs, the steps Your breasts, blank walls Your buttocks, tight and Secret openings your Taut vagina’s lips.
29 There is a keening and a honing And a winnowing in the wind I am the surge and flow In Winwaed’s water the last breath Of Elmete’s King.
I am Penda crossing the Aire Camping at Killingbeck Conquered by Aethalwald Ruler of Deira.
30 Life is a bird hovering In the Hall of the King Between darkness and darkness flickering The stone of Scone at last lifted And borne on the wind, Dunedin, take it Hold it hard and fast its light Is leaping it is freedom’s Touchstone and firestone.
31 Eir, Ayer or Aire I’ll still be there Your wanderings off course Old Ea, Old Eye, Dead Eye Make no difference to me.
Eg-an island - is Aire’s True source, names Not places matter With the risings Of a river Ea land-by-water I’ll make my own way Free, going down river To the far-off sea.
32 Poetry is my business, my affair.
My cri-de-coeur, jongleur Of Mercia and Elmete, Margaret, Open your door I am heaping Imbroglios of stars on the floor Meet me by the Office Lock At midnight or by the Town Hall Clock.
33 Nennius nine times have I knocked On the door of your grave, nine times More have I made Pilgrimage to Elmete’s Wood where long I lay by beck and bank Waiting for your tongue to flame With Pentecostal fire.
34 Margaret you rode in the hollow of my hand In the harp of my heart, searching for you I wandered in Kirkgate Market’s midnight Down avenues of shuttered stalls, our secrets Kept through all the years.
From the Imperial on Beeston Hill I watch the city spill glass towers Of light over the horizon’s rim.
35 The railyard’s straights Are buckled plates Red bricks for aggregate All lost like me Ledsham and Ledston Both belong to Leeds But Ledston Luck Is where Aire leads.
36 Held of the Crown By seven thanes In Saxon times ‘In regione Loidis’ Baeda scripsit Leeds, Leeds, You answer All my needs.
37 A horse shoe stuck for luck Behind a basement window: Margaret, now we’ll see What truth there is In dreams and poetry! I am at one with everyone There is poetry Falling from the air And you have put it there.
38 The sign for John Eaton Street Is planted in the back garden Of the transport caf? between The strands of a wire mesh fence Straddling the cobbles of a street That is no more, a washing line And an abandoned caravan.
39 ‘This open land to let’ Is what you get on the Hollows Thousands of half-burned tyres The rusty barrel of a Trumix lorry Concrete slabs, foxgloves and condoms, The Go-Kart Arena’s signboards, Half the wall of Ellerby Lane School.
40 There is a mermaid singing On East Street on an IBM poster Her hair is lack-lustre Her breasts are facing the camera Her tail is like a worn-out brush.
Chimney stacks Blind black walls Of factories Grimy glass Flickering firelight In black-leaded grates.
41 Hunslet de Ledes Hop-scotch, hide and seek, Bogies-on-wheels Not one tree in Hunslet Except in the cemetery The lake filled in For fifty years, The bluebell has rung Its last perfumed peal.
42 I couldn’t play out on Sunday Mam and dad thought us a cut Above the rest, it was another Test I failed, keeping me and Margaret apart was like the Aztecs Tearing the heart from the living flesh.
43 Father, your office job Didn’t save you From the drugs They never gave you.
44 Isaiah, my son, You made it back From Balliol to Beeston At a run via the Playing fields of Eton.
There is a keening and a honing And a winnowing in the wind Winwaed’s water with red bluid blent.
Written by Carl Sandburg | Create an image from this poem

Killers

 I AM singing to you
Soft as a man with a dead child speaks;
Hard as a man in handcuffs,
Held where he cannot move:

Under the sun
Are sixteen million men,
Chosen for shining teeth,
Sharp eyes, hard legs,
And a running of young warm blood in their wrists.
And a red juice runs on the green grass; And a red juice soaks the dark soil.
And the sixteen million are killing.
.
.
and killing and killing.
I never forget them day or night: They beat on my head for memory of them; They pound on my heart and I cry back to them, To their homes and women, dreams and games.
I wake in the night and smell the trenches, And hear the low stir of sleepers in lines-- Sixteen million sleepers and pickets in the dark: Some of them long sleepers for always, Some of them tumbling to sleep to-morrow for always, Fixed in the drag of the world's heartbreak, Eating and drinking, toiling.
.
.
on a long job of killing.
Sixteen million men.


Written by Wilfred Owen | Create an image from this poem

Exposure

 I

Our brains ache, in the merciless iced east winds that knife us .
.
.
Wearied we keep awake because the night is silent .
.
.
Low drooping flares confuse our memory of the salient .
.
.
Worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious, nervous, But nothing happens.
Watching, we hear the mad gusts tugging on the wire.
Like twitching agonies of men among its brambles.
Northward incessantly, the flickering gunnery rumbles, Far off, like a dull rumour of some other war.
What are we doing here? The poignant misery of dawn begins to grow .
.
.
We only know war lasts, rain soaks, and clouds sag stormy.
Dawn massing in the east her melancholy army Attacks once more in ranks on shivering ranks of gray, But nothing happens.
Sudden successive flights of bullets streak the silence.
Less deadly than the air that shudders black with snow, With sidelong flowing flakes that flock, pause and renew, We watch them wandering up and down the wind's nonchalance, But nothing happens.
II Pale flakes with lingering stealth come feeling for our faces -- We cringe in holes, back on forgotten dreams, and stare, snow-dazed, Deep into grassier ditches.
So we drowse, sun-dozed, Littered with blossoms trickling where the blackbird fusses.
Is it that we are dying? Slowly our ghosts drag home: glimpsing the sunk fires glozed With crusted dark-red jewels; crickets jingle there; For hours the innocent mice rejoice: the house is theirs; Shutters and doors all closed: on us the doors are closed -- We turn back to our dying.
Since we believe not otherwise can kind fires burn; Now ever suns smile true on child, or field, or fruit.
For God's invincible spring our love is made afraid; Therefore, not loath, we lie out here; therefore were born, For love of God seems dying.
To-night, His frost will fasten on this mud and us, Shrivelling many hands and puckering foreheads crisp.
The burying-party, picks and shovels in their shaking grasp, Pause over half-known faces.
All their eyes are ice, But nothing happens.
Written by D. H. Lawrence | Create an image from this poem

Dreams Old

 I have opened the window to warm my hands on the sill
Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon 
Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still 
In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.
The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine, Like savage music striking far off, and there On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.
There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and wistfulness and strange Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as I greet the cloud Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite dreams that range At the back of my life’s horizon, where the dreamings of past lives crowd.
Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the mellow veil Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of David and Dora, With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter that shakes the sail Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed dreams lure the unoceaned explorer.
All the bygone, hush?d years Streaming back where the mist distils Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears No longer shake, where the silk sail fills With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm Of living has passed, on and on Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm Wake of the tumult now spent and gone, Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.
Written by Charles Bukowski | Create an image from this poem

Big Night On The Town

 drunk on the dark streets of some city,
it's night, you're lost, where's your 
room?
you enter a bar to find yourself,
order scotch and water.
damned bar's sloppy wet, it soaks part of one of your shirt sleeves.
It's a clip joint-the scotch is weak.
you order a bottle of beer.
Madame Death walks up to you wearing a dress.
she sits down, you buy her a beer, she stinks of swamps, presses a leg against you.
the bar tender sneers.
you've got him worried, he doesn't know if you're a cop, a killer, a madman or an Idiot.
you ask for a vodka.
you pour the vodka into the top of the beer bottle.
It's one a.
m.
In a dead cow world.
you ask her how much for head, drink everything down, it tastes like machine oil.
you leave Madame Death there, you leave the sneering bartender there.
you have remembered where your room is.
the room with the full bottle of wine on the dresser.
the room with the dance of the roaches.
Perfection in the Star Turd where love died laughing.
Written by Amy Clampitt | Create an image from this poem

On The Disadvantages Of Central Heating

 cold nights on the farm, a sock-shod
stove-warmed flatiron slid under
the covers, mornings a damascene-
sealed bizarrerie of fernwork
 decades ago now

waking in northwest London, tea
brought up steaming, a Peak Frean
biscuit alongside to be nibbled
as blue gas leaps up singing
 decades ago now

damp sheets in Dorset, fog-hung
habitat of bronchitis, of long
hot soaks in the bathtub, of nothing
quite drying out till next summer:
 delicious to think of

hassocks pulled in close, toasting-
forks held to coal-glow, strong-minded
small boys and big eager sheepdogs
muscling in on bookish profundities
 now quite forgotten

the farmhouse long sold, old friends
dead or lost track of, what's salvaged
is this vivid diminuendo, unfogged
by mere affect, the perishing residue
 of pure sensation
Written by Federico García Lorca | Create an image from this poem

Serenata

 The night soaks itself
along the shore of the river
and in Lolita's breasts
the branches die of love.
The branches die of love.
Naked the night sings above the bridges of March.
Lolita bathes her body with salt water and roses.
The branches die of love.
The night of anise and silver shines over the rooftops.
Silver of streams and mirrors Anise of your white thighs.
The branches die of love.

Book: Reflection on the Important Things