"agincourt" poems
Now, today has been a **** day in every single way.
Today was the start of my holiday in Spain, until French strikes,
caused me pain. We were not flying.
Now, I did not weep, wail or flail my skin, instead, I said c'est la vie.
They are so very French.
Reminded myself that the French are cheese eating surrender monkeys,
awful at football (soccer) dreadful at tennis, middling in rugby,
and tend to suffer delusions of grandeur **** a French word!)
They lost at Agincourt, Waterloo, WW2, think snails are a delicacy,and allowed Mr. ****** in to rub their bellies.
But, I am H.A.P.P.Y.
Home
Alive
Prompt
Proud
Y?
Because I'm eating strawberries and cream, whilst watching Wimbledon.
How very British!
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 4:52 PM UTC
Nature teaches us our tongue again
And the swift sentences came pat. I came
Into cool night rescued from rainy dawn.
And I seethed with language - Henry at
Harfleur and Agincourt came apt for war
In Ireland and the Middle East. Here was
The riddling and right tongue, the feeling words
Solid and dutiful. Aspiring hope
Met purpose in "advantages" and "He
That fights with me today shall be my brother."
Say this is patriotic, out of date.
But you are wrong. It never is too late
For nights of stars and feet that move to an
Iambic measure; all who clapped were linked,
The theatre is our treasury and too,
Our study, school-room, house where mercy is
Dispensed with justice. Shakespeare has the mood
And draws the music from the dullest heart.
This is our birthright, speeches for the dumb
And unaccomplished. Henry has the words
For grief and we learn how to tell of death
With dignity. "All was as cold" she said
"As any stone" and so, we who lacked scope
For big or little deaths, increase, grow up
To purposes and means to face events
Of cruelty, stupidity. I walked
Fast under stars. The Avon wandered on
"Tomorrow and tomorrow". Words aren't worn
Out in this place but can renew our tongue,
Flesh out our feeling, make us apt for life.
3.4k
an old familiar,
an adversary of the first degree,
when we wrestle,
me and this god
disguised as an angel disguised as man,
the door to where we tangle,
clicks shut with a perceptible oval sounding,
a trumpet announcing commencement of the festivities,
that we are
Occupado
no stray observers permitted in,
the room entrances locked,
someone's two hands upon each temple,
(cannot be mine, for)
inside we combat literally,
"mano-a-mano"
hand to hand,
word to word,
gradually, continuously,
up close and personally,
one on
One
over the course of a lifetime,
each battle named,
famously borrowed and thus recorded,
Agincourt, Waterloo, Gettysburg, Leningrad, Ðiên Biên Phú,
for the record keeping purposes of our unforgiving ******
historian
the rules of engagement somewhat flexible,
biting, choking, eye gouging,
kicking when down, not just legal,
encouraged, no holds barred,
when we wrestle,
the dirtier the
better
take turns declaring a victor,
for that matters little, truly,
just a record keeping notation,
the battle and its aftermath,
the waves of pain inflicted,
the casualty count engorged,
is the greatest glory,
dans une manière de
parler
though sent away the children,
our earthly goods,
designating them purportedly,
non-combatants observers,
yet 'no rules' meant
they could be accidentally drawn in,
non-combatant status does not prevent them
from being freely captured or
killed
the conflict ongoing,
no one ever calls for a truce,
for both unequal adversaries know,
no quarter will ere be given,
and though the tide shifts,
each individual battle produces as always,
a winner and a
loser
noisy affairs,
long after the battle,
the slain yet scream,
perhaps I am confused,
perhaps it is the day's survivors,
announcing that sadly,
they are still
alive
it must be the latter,
for here I am writing and recording,
and though alone,
I hear an ever growing louder,
gouging sine wave scream piercing,
daring my soul to leave my wracked
body
for though mortal wounded,
I am therefore
both dead and alive,
but which more so,
none can surely
say
this conflict remains
unconcluded
the pain in my hip, now
everywhere,
my Jacob, now, Israel,
marker
so visible even if itself,
unseen
3:59am
May 17, 2014
May 17, 2014 at 4:03 AM UTC
Of ***** roasting pans and racks and island fog!
*if you love me, then you know poems wright themselves when standing, driving, bus riding, ********** and especially when
doing manly battle, ******* ***** dishwashing midst island fog
a passing remark goes noticed and summoned to a
Friday night feast, roasted fowl, wild rice with golden raisins and mushrooms, English spring peas, was it a Montrachet?
for dessert the washing up is obligation mine, a traditional desertion,
separation of church and state, her cooking a church in which I worship, she states eloquently:
“Unto Caesaria , Render Her the cleanup”
this is hand to hand combat, no dishwasher mechanical
can scrub like the human hand, and with body english,
water hot, but no gloves employed for this is ***** man’s work,
not for sissies, cleaning roasting pans and roasting racks
that are at least twenty years burnt and crusted with a blackened
finish, residue of other lovers and dinners P.N. (pre-nat)
array three kinds of sponges and some human & metallic *****
no one asking which came first,
the scrubbing away of life feasting residues,
or the poem writing that comes with pre & postscript sleepiness
when I say the dark stains and the grease buildup are
flavor enhancers, am beknighted with starry stares of
“how stupid do you think I am?” and sadly return to the
Battle of Agincourt, the one the American lost….*
but they do source poems that flavor life
2020
Jul 17, 2021
Jul 17, 2021 at 11:54 AM UTC
A leaf fell, twisting in the Fir Green Square,
Like a spear thrown through the air;
A dog, distant and real,
Has barked five hundred years on Sheep Street.
Holy Trinity, the bone keeper, keeps doors open.
The Avon, not so sweet now, flows on;
Swans swim and preen, and tonight,
Henry will rage on Agincourt again,
Calling on his brothers, and me,
To breach the vicious cycle of lonely barks
And the immutable march of time.
Take my hand, look into my eyes,
My brotherhood of men.
Aug 24, 2016
Aug 24, 2016 at 9:23 AM UTC
There we stood, resplendent, in our articles of war
daring for a moment to forget the matters core--
that death and dying looming, like mountains in the night,
would be the grim reward for those who'd dared to fight.
The British expedition, in that humid august air,
would hoist the recognition of mankind's new despair;
the wave of Schlieffen's reckoning had broken us that day
and the yeoman of Agincourt had come and gone away.
We fought and bled and fought and died a day or two at Mons,
but soon retreat was sounded, a melody to pawns.
French soil stained in English blood and washed in English tears
then tilled by German cannons for four more ********* years
was less the blessing we first conceived, that bitter, deafening fall,
so late in 1914, when the Great War came to call.
The salient crumbled, frailly; a grave portent it seemed,
soon would come the Somme, Verdun, and horrors never dreamed.
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 8:40 PM UTC
Tell me men of Agincourt
what was it for
why did we fight and
did we win at all?
A hundred years of war
what was it for?
The prelude that we chew upon
meatless bones across
the Somme?
Tell me,
Edward,Humphrey,Henry,
men of Agincourt,
what was it for?
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 8:31 AM UTC
THE SOLDIER
Billy Clark was seventeen
When he went off to war.
He kissed his mum and dad goodbye
And walked out through the door.
He kissed his girl at the station
And wiped away her tears.
He said that he’d be back again
If it took a thousand years.
He headed for the trenches,
For Afghanistan.
Gallipoli, The Falklands.
Beirut and Vietnam.
He set off for Dunkirk,
Agincourt and Troy.
Passchendaele would make
A man out of a boy.
A million Billy Clarks
Have gone away to war.
Old men sit and shake their heads.
They’ve passed this way before.
He was in the thick of it
Right from the very start.
But Billy was a brave boy
With a patriotic heart.
Billy fought his hardest
But he was in a fix.
These were guns and tanks he faced
Not childhood toys and sticks.
Now, Billy was no coward,
But he was scared as hell.
No boy should have to bury
His comrades where they fell.
It took a thousand years
For Billy to return
And still the burning question is:
When will we ever learn?
When will this crazy world unite
And watch each others’ back?
When media screams the headline:
‘GREEN MEN FROM MARS ATTACK!!!!’.
A million Billy Clarks
Have gone away to war.
Old men sit and shake their heads
They’ve seen it all before.
Apr 28, 2019
Apr 28, 2019 at 5:00 PM UTC
The moans and screams of dying men;
a scene and sound surreal.
The flower of French Chivalry
cut down by English steel.
English Harry has won this day
on this wet and muddy ground.
So many high born men laid low,
but I am still around.
It was my blood that ransomed me
when others’ blood was shed.
I am the Duke of Orleans.
A poet, some have said.
In the aftermath of battle;
wounded, left to bleed.
Sir Richard Waller found me
and attended to my needs.
So today I am his prisoner,
we’ll become friends in time.
Now I am bound for England
as a “guest” of the English crown.
We’d had the numbers and the strength
to bring proud Henry down.
His Yeoman archers turned the tide
on this awful muddy ground.
Beset by woods on either flank
No room to strike or move.
It was our Constables’ worst mistake
and the last, as time would prove
Like a dark and deadly rain they fell
out of a clear blue sky.
Here on the field of Agincourt
where Princes came to die.
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 8:01 PM UTC
Benny took
his bow and arrows
onto the grass behind
Arrol House.
Jim had a crossbow
with three arrows.
On the area
away from them
Jim had set up a target.
Mine is more accurate
he said
because I can view
along the line
of the crossbow
you have to view
along by where your hand
holds the bow.
Jim went first
and hit the target spot on.
Your turn now
he said.
Benny aimed
at the target
and fired his arrow
but missed the target
it fell on the grass behind.
Told you
he said
try again.
Jim went first
and fired
and hit
the target again.
Benny aimed
at the target
and hit it
and the arrow stuck
on the target.
That's good
Jim said.
They played around
with the arrows and targets
for quite some time
then his mother
said it was time for dinner
and he went in.
Benny went back
to his parents' flat
and put his bow
and arrows away
and had lunch.
He read in
a history book
that at the battle of Agincourt
an archer could fire
12 arrows in a minute
and an arrow
could wound someone
at 250 yards
but killed them
at a 100 yards
and in the battle
a 1,000 arrows
were fired every second.
I must tell Jim that
Benny mused
my arrows hadn't gone
that far maybe
if I took the rubber plunger
off the end
it would go
much farther
but it might be dangerous
he thought
and get in trouble
if I got caught.
Aug 8, 2017
Aug 8, 2017 at 3:32 AM UTC
Taste
new words
to see
it through.
a pseudo
synaesthesia
grown easy
on the eyelet,
fits, apparently
awake
the derelict
convictions
say,
it cannot be
this much is all
The All, we are
to ever have
and less the time
to take
Seems aeons
since the badlands
let, their Agincourt
of arrowheads,
projecting from
the epicentred
tragedies
of Your
a softer
vector
than before
yet, pertinent,
as ever
Their
ambient
trajectories
descending
back to you
Jul 23, 2022
Jul 23, 2022 at 5:21 AM UTC
I wanted words to drop on my head
"Topic sentences" he said
Last of the new poets
The last one on this side of the world
But he was speaking another language
I tried to conjure up words
Henry V at Agincourt
Dr King in Washington
'A Hard Rains Gonna Fall'
From some town hall
Words, words, words
I don't know what to write.
My brain has no way with words
Dylan says ' It's hard, it's hard and
it's hard...I know!
But he says 'I can'
He tells me about Sylvia Plath and
Ernest Hemingway
And Three Hundred Tang Poems
And something stared in my soul
A story of forgotten words
"Write" he said.
I began to make my own way.
Sep 18, 2017
Sep 18, 2017 at 6:40 AM UTC