I have moved the thread here for now until we have time to discuss and deal with it. I don't have time right now.
They are all childish and yes, Andy needs to calm down, but so does everyone else. People need to grow thicker skin.
Let the thread rest here for a while, but the thread isn't the problem, the posters are. They will pollute another thread soon. I'm all out of suggestions. I will try talking to all parties involved, but that will have to wait until morning. One last attempt at making them see reason.
“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”
Is everyone okay with us opening up this forum thread again once we have remove the arguments and discussions that does not belong in a lovely poem thread?
Yes, the thread should be tidied up and moved back.
Yes, guess we can give the kids their ball back now.
“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.”
Lost without a thought.
Maybe they forgot,
That I was here for them in the end.
He ran without another glance,
And she fell into a binding trance,
Alone I watched the ruining of my friend.
I wanted to chase him, ready for flight.
And bring him back to see the light.
And get this tragedy to mend.
But she told me to stay.
He will find his own way.
And I let my own pride bend.
So here I sit still.
Wondering what will,
Stop this reoccuring trend.
But there's nothing to do.
That I can do.
So away my sanity, I send.
I know it isn't a poem as such, but it sort of is. I've always believed, and a few people have agreed, that a song is merely a poem, set to music. When you look at the two forms, you find that they share a lot of the same trappings - rhythm, rhyme, meter, repetition, even stanzas, though they are called verses in songs.
White Stripes – I'm Finding It Harder To Be A Gentleman
Well I'm finding it harder
To be a gentleman every day
All the manners that I've been taught
Have slowly died away
But if I held the door open for you
It wouldn't make your day
You think that I care
About me and only me
When every single girl needs help
Climbing up a tree
Well I know it don't take much
To satisfy me
Maybe it's whatever's in my head
That's distracting me
But if I could find emotion
To stimulate devotion
Well then you'd see
Well I'm finding it hard to say
That I need you twenty times a day
I feel comfortable so baby why
Don't you feel the same?
Have a doctor come and visit us
And tell us which one is sane
I never said I wouldn't
Throw my jacket in the mud for you
But my father gave it to me so
Maybe I should carry you
Then you said
"You almost dropped me"
So then I did
And I got mud on my shoes
A thread of ill-repute
lays here,
but that's the past,
and now it is resurrecting itself.
Once a place of darkness,
it is now one with hope and light,
no more conflict,
a land reborn.
Will You?
Will you forgive clumsy indiscretions,
Mistakes and crass foolishness?
Will you look beyond a false impression
And seek an unbiased, un-blinkered truth?
Will you care enough to want to
Look any further than the obvious
And make the effort to overcome
Your preconceived notions?
Do you have it within you to agree
That mistakes have been made
By both parties in the conflict?
Do you have the willingness
And awareness to acknowledge
That to move forward what has passed
Needs to be left firmly in the past?
Can you forgive and forget?
More to the point, do you want to?
Most importantly:
Will you?
Saved (Ode to Ozzy)
You are what I desperately needed when I was lost
My life had demanded a massive emotional cost
Adrift, unwanted, alone and cruelly misused
My good nature and reputation cynically abused
Cowed and cautious, solitude my best defence
I clothed myself with an air of indifference
Shut away, out of sight and out of mind
Trying to leave the hurt and the bad memories behind.
But then I saw your face and realised I was wrong
To make myself believe that I did not belong
In a world where you urgently needed me
To be as strong as I possibly could be
To save you from an unpleasant fate
Another day or two and I would have been too late
To rescue not only you, but myself as well
From what was turning into a living hell
Your story was little better than mine, I heard
Rarely had you known affection or heard a kind word
I vowed to right that situation from the day that we met
And to never give you reason to ever regret
Trusting me to treat you with dignity and respect
And to love you as you had the right to expect
You gave me a reason to get up each day
To enjoy your company, to live, to laugh and play
To give to you freely and unashamedly
My love and and my heart unreservedly
I receive from you complete and utter devotion
Your loving looks fill me with such emotion
That I am proud to tell you every single day
How much I love you in every single way
You are more than a companion, you’re my best friend
And I’ll be with you all the way, right to the end
Until that final parting of our ways
When we reach the end of our days
But that time is a long way off yet,
Isn’t it, Ozzy, my beloved canine pet?
Oh no, I'm poeming again,
help me someone,
make it stop,
because I fear this poem is a flop.
The Ballad of the Drama Queen
Not so long ago your heart was irreparably broken
You didn’t want to hear his name spoken
Your misery was so all-consuming -
And you were full of dooming and glooming -
That the threat of self-harm was bandied about
Just for attention, of that I have no doubt.
Yet here we are just a few weeks down the line
It seems to me that you’re doing perfectly fine
Professing yet more undying adoration
To the object of your latest infatuation
I’ll give it a couple of months at best
Until he works out that you’re an unbearable pest
And like those before him (me included)
He’ll conclude that you are emotionally deluded
He won’t want you clinging on like a limpet
He’ll be wanting, as quick as possible, to forget
That had the misfortune to learn your name
And became embroiled in your sick game
Because a stupid game is all it is to you
It’s the way you work; it’s what you do
To create drama in your sad and empty life
You engineer all the stress and strife
Then garner all the sympathy you can get
Whilst painting him as the worst one yet
Until the next unsuspecting guy comes into view
To be zeroed-in on by predatory you.
Then the whole charade will start again once more
But your game is tiresome now and you’re a bore.
There’s a chance that one day the tide will turn
And that you will finally come to learn
That love and relationships are a two-way street
And that you will somehow, some day meet
Someone who will refuse to play by your twisted rules
Just to end up on your List of Fools.
To see beyond your artifice and manipulations
And develop for you true and strong emotions
It may come to pass, who can tell
Meanwhile you’ll put through hell
Your latest beau who has yet to experience
The depth and extent of you malevolence
When you take umbrage at an imagined slight
And manufacture yet another fight
Just so that you can step back and say smugly
“Look how that nasty bastard treated me”
If I was the kind of person to interfere
I’d tell him all about you, ‘dear’
But, what the heck, he’s made his bed
He’s believed everything you said
It’s not down to me to save him from his fate
Besides it’s probably already too late
You’ve dug your claws in, good and fast
Which almost guarantees that this relationship cannot last!
A dream that never came true
I woke up dreaming of you.
Holding me close to you.
But it wasn't meant to be you.
A dream that never came true.
It was then I had met you.
I just knew I had to get close to you.
I only chose you.
A dream that never came true.
I gave my heart to you.
I fell too quickly for you.
I let my breath fade as I look a you.
A dream that never came true.
I had faught for you.
Sometimes even against you.
Just because I love you.
A dream that never came true.
So now I still alone, it's true.
My heart so pure and true.
For my dream that never came true.
My dream that was always you.
In Primary School, one of the poets we studied was Pam Ayres. This installed in me a life long love of her work, she is wistful and funny and her perceptiveness captures both the Joy and the unfairness of life.
This is one that I read to my daughters last night...
OH, I WISH I'D LOOKED AFTER ME TEETH by PAM AYRES
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food.
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers,
And to buy something else with me shillin’.
When I think of the lollies I licked
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
Sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.
My mother, she told me no end,
‘If you got a tooth, you got a friend.’
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.
Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’
Didn’t seem worth the time – I could bite!
If I’d known I was paving the way
To cavities, caps and decay,
The murder of fillin’s,
Injections and drillin’s,
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.
So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine
In these molars of mine.
‘Two amalgam,’ he’ll say, ‘for in there.’
How I laughed at my mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath.
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s methey are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.
From underneath
I'm under the bed.
An old shirt in hand.
The scent welcoming and strong.
I close my eyes.
Block out the lies.
Pretending nothing is wrong.
The shirt dries my tears,
That nobody hears.
Wishing once again I was home.
Holding you near,
Calming my fear.
Even though I am actually alone.