favorite poem

[Cobra_Commander]

COOOOBRRRRAAAAAAA

 

--by Cobra Commander

[olyclimber]

Uhh...that doesn't even rhymn. And besides, I thought it went:

 

COOOOOOOOO

BBRRRAAAAAA

[snugtop]

COOOOBRRRRAAAAAAA

 

A fine troche. I was hoping he'd keep going...

 

 

 

[klenke]

I had to look up that word...and it appears you've spelled it wrong: trochee (two e's). A troche is something medical.

 

Here are some of mine own refrigerator magnet poems from 2000:

 

Cold moon

Gold sun

Red sky

Chill wind

Dark rain

A thousand fall mornings

Blow across the Earth.

____________________

 

A summer star

And soft planet

Wander through

My secret universe

Strangely childlike

 

Will you celebrate

This life forever

With me?

____________________

 

The evenings

Are as long as

Winter time.

____________________

 

Stormy shadow tell him

Her story and throw off

Deep relenting sleep

Spirit go out.

____________________

[snugtop]

Here's another one I like, by Elizabeth Bishop:

 

The Art of Losing

 

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

 

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

 

 

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

 

 

 

[ScottP]

Second only to Sam MAgee as my favorite Robert Service poem...

 

The Men That Don't Fit In

 

There's a race of men that don't fit in

a race that can't stay still.

So they break the hearts of kith and kin

and they roam the world at will.

They range the world, they roam the flood

they climb the mountain crest.

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood

and the don't know how to rest.

 

If they just went straight they might go far.

They are strong and brave and true.

But they are always tired of the things that are

and they want the strange and new.

They say, "Could I find my proper groove,

what a deep mark I would make."

So they chop and change, and each fresh start

is only a fresh mistake.

 

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

with a brilliant, fitful pace.

It's the slow steady plodding ones

who win in the life long race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

forgets that his prime is past,

'til he stands one day with a hope that's dead

in the glare of the truth at last.

 

He has failed, he has failed;

he has missed his chance.

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him

and now it's time to laugh.

He is one of the legion lost

he was never meant to win.

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in his bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

[Dru]

When awful darkness and silence reign

Over the great Gromboolian plain,

Through the long, long wintry nights;--

When the angry breakers roar

As they beat on the rocky shore;--

When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights

Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:--

 

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,

There moves what seems a fiery spark,

A lonely spark with silvery rays

Piercing the coal-black night,--

A Meteor strange and bright:--

Hither and thither the vision strays,

A single lurid light.

 

Slowly it wanders,--pauses,--creeeps,--

Anon it sparkles,--flashes and leaps;

And ever as onward it gleaming goes

A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.

And those who watch at that midnight hour

From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,

Cry, as the wild light passes along,--

'The Dong!--the Dong!

'The wandering Dong through the forest goes!

'The Dong! the Dong!

'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'

 

Long years ago

The Dong was happy and gay,

Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl

Who came to those shores one day,

For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,--

Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd

Where the Oblong Oysters grow,

And the rocks are smooth and gray.

And all the woods and the valleys rang

With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,--

'Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue

And they went to sea in a sieve.'

 

Happily, happily passed those days!

While the cheerful Jumblies staid;

They danced in circlets all night long,

To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,

In moonlight, shine, or shade.

For day and night he was always there

By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,

With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.

Till the morning came of that hateful day

When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,

And the Dong was left on the cruel shore

Gazing--gazing for evermore,--

Ever keeping his weary eyes on

That pea-green sail on the far horizon,--

Singing the Jumbly Chorus still

As he sate all day on the grassy hill,--

'Far and few, far and few,

Are the lands where the Jumblies live;

Their heads are green, and their hands are blue

And they went to sea in a sieve.'

 

But when the sun was low in the West,

The Dong arose and said;--

--'What little sense I once possessed

'Has quite gone out of my head!'--

And since that day he wanders still

By lake or forest, marsh and hill,

Singing--'O somewhere, in valley or plain

'Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!

'For ever I'll seek by lake and shore

'Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!'

 

Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,

Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,

And because by night he could not see,

He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree

On the flowery plain that grows.

And he wove him a wondrous Nose,--

A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!

Of vast proportions and painted red,

And tied with cords to the back of his head.

--In a hollow rounded space it ended

With a luminous Lamp within suspended,

All fenced about

With a bandage stout

To prevent the wind from blowing it out;--

And with holes all round to send the light,

In gleaming rays on the dismal night.

 

And now each night, and all night long,

Over those plains still roams the Dong;

And above the wall of the Chimp and Snipe

You may hear the sqeak of his plaintive pipe

While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain

To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;

Lonely and wild--all night he goes,--

The Dong with a luminous Nose!

And all who watch at the midnight hour,

From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,

Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,

Moving along through the dreary night,--

'This is the hour when forth he goes,

'The Dong with a luminous Nose!

'Yonder--over the plain he goes,

'He goes!

'He goes;

'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'