"canterbury" poems
Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering Electrical Rosary
*This ilke Monk leet olde thynges pace,
And heeld after the newe world the space.*
Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
How out of date are simple wooden beads
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Beamed back and forth to The Cloud, you see
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Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
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The Ave Maria is so out of date
It’s Ave ME now, ‘cause we’re all so great!
Make your prayers less about God, more about you
Signal yourself through sacred Tooth of Blue
A camera hidden in the crucifix
Enables you to take your selfie-flicks
The Pater beads count each joggery mile
Or kilometres if those are your style
The Ave beads are recycled with care
To save the forests, the rivers, and air
Designed in Germany, made in China
High-definition beads; there’s nothing finer
Buy the first (as advertised on tv)
And we’ll send you a second all for free
Remember: for weddings, funerals, and daily devotions
Let RAM and ROM go through all the motions
Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary – O make it sing!
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 7:24 AM UTC
I'm making a pub pilgrimage,
A malted Mecca trip;
I'm leaving all I love at home
Crusading with the Picts.
I'll be alone with all my thoughts,
It's what must needs be done,
To keep the demons off.
Publicans meet me on the steps,
On Sundays by the side;
This trip of three thousand miles
May **** should I survive.
My altar's elbow worn,
The finest oaken wood;
I'll climb the stairs on knees,
Hear bells, raise cups of cheer.
There's games of chance,
Some romance,
With songs and several fools;
It has trappings of Canterbury
In pubs all called O'Tooles.
There's Highland mead,
And broken bread,
With harps from inner rooms,
I'll have dispirited spirits
And revel inside tombs.
My cave awaits on my return,
It's dark and hard and cold;
But I know the light's within my sight,
If I move this granite stone.
I'll bring with me a scapula
To make those visions stop,
The relics that I sought,
Those demons of a sot.
Sep 25, 2015
Sep 25, 2015 at 9:16 AM UTC
"See they come, post haste from Thanet"
See they come, post haste from Thanet,
Lovely couple, side by side;
They've left behind them Richard Kennet
With the Parents of the Bride!
Canterbury they have passed through;
Next succeeded Stamford-bridge;
Chilham village they came fast through;
Now they've mounted yonder ridge.
Down the hill they're swift proceeding,
Now they skirt the Park around;
Lo! The Cattle sweetly feeding
Scamper, startled at the sound!
Run, my Brothers, to the Pier gate!
Throw it open, very wide!
Let it not be said that we're late
In welcoming my Uncle's Bride!
To the house the chaise advances;
Now it stops—They're here, they're here!
How d'ye do, my Uncle Francis?
How does do your Lady dear?
3.7k
We have dignity, right?
Since the 1600's we've thought with minds of reason
Anselm of Canterbury created pragmatism
Out of the most sacred and holy of things
And since then our rationalism has worn suits.
War is for the common, the petty.
Let the east quarters bury themselves in poverty
Leave them to their primitive ways
I want my son's to return
They'll be studying the Romantics in the Fall
We have no need for war
I want my daughters to come back to their homes
Instead of manufacturing arms to fight
These unreasonable beasts
We have no need for war.
Let the Calvary of America flex its powered machines
We are civilized.
Poster Childs for the post modern
With the intention to overtake
Our own philospohy, that indicates-
(with the raise of a brow, a tip of the head)
That -
We have no need for war.
Dec 11, 2012
Dec 11, 2012 at 4:19 PM UTC
An old man in a lodge within a park;
The chamber walls depicted all around
With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing **** I hear the note
Of lark and linnet, and from every page
Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
1.6k
Poetry, the reason we are all here.
Writing words that we hope someone reads and hears
Hears in the sounds of the words, them coming alive
Vocally there is a potency to written words
Say them out loud, hear them, feel them form in your mouth
Soulfully continue this aged tradition of story telling
Poetry, is known globally, it transcends diplomacy,
it reaches souls, hearts and minds.
Like a minority,poetry is seen as weak and bleak,
but then life is not a bed of roses, there are thorns.
Reproachfully it is scorned, 'poet? Try writing a novel'
Wrongfully seen as the poor man to a novelist, poetry
at its best conveys, more in a few verses than a thousand
pages of a novel. Lonesome is the poet, that sees truth.
There is merit in poetry, the continuation of odes told by
the fireside, Viking, Persian, Celt, all historic bardic civilisations.
Purity in poetry leads down a path least travelled these days
but tales of yore still prevail, and Beowulf still roars.
Canterbury tales still elicit smiles, cries and woe.
Shakespeare, Dante, Poe, Neruda, Thomas, Petrarch all Poets with soul.
So, you tell me, and all of us poets are we the novelists poor relation?
Or, just reclaiming our station in life as the purest storytellers?
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 10:39 AM UTC
To: Thomas
Message: hey did u reed that bok
bout Chauser cuz i didnt
get it. Its jus 2 hard 2
read n i dont kno y
we r doin this.
I meen we r good @ talkin
in our english so y r we
reedin all of this ol ****
Who needs it or even cares?
Canterbury Tales? Mor lik
#icantspellbarytails!
LOL. its like 2 long but
txt me bk cuz I dont get it
n ned help 4 the test.
TTYL, busy day sooo gotta g
~<3 Becky
Sent at 2:00pm April 2, 2011
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 4:54 PM UTC
This weekend the NRL final will be played
South Sydney and Canterbury Banks-town
Shall do battle on the hallowed footy ground
The match up will be a ripper for sure
There is little love lost between these teams
A sell out crowd is primed and ready to cheer
The fans in the stands will be rooting hard
As those twenty six men give it their all on the field
Up for grabs is the coveted victor's trophy
There is a lot of anticipation building
Across the state of New South Wales
We can't wait for the final to get here
The big day of league holds us intrigued
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 2:46 AM UTC
I work at the cathedral day and night
at rest times I sit looking at the daily hues
from morning to the end of day
the shadows in the architecture shine through
The gargoyles turn from grey to a warming red
and above their sentinel loyal heads
the spires shine like diamonds
blessed in the morning with a pure blue sky
A break or two, three or four
different times of the day
just to watch the patterns pass
in the shadows of this limestone building
I worked my guts off on this building
sweet Canterbury in my cathedral city
revamped it's, I'm listening points
and at times of day, when weather permits
I do read the shadows in the architecture
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 6:47 PM UTC
The drunken Navy cook was suppurative 1 with tats
And the supply boat was always sunk or late
Our officers would not release the c-rats
So one night someone forced a lock, and we ate:
Tin-can crackers, mother////ers and ham
Mystery meat with beans in tomato sauce
Beans and baby ////s and some heavy jam
Beef slices with potatoes in sphagnum moss
But Lieutenant Macbeth, a lord over the earth
Found us, and then he much displaced the mirth 2
1 Cf. Chaucer’s cook in The Canterbury Tales
2 Macbeth III.IV.132-133
In the end, Lieutenant Macbeth (not the ////’s real name) could do nothing since the looted c-rats were so widely distributed that he’d have had to write up the entire unit.
May 25, 2019
May 25, 2019 at 4:19 PM UTC
Her Horse didn’t canter in Canterbury
Her braided hair was long and Brown.
She galloped uncovered in Coventry
so that taxes would drop like her gown.
Hot to trot without makeup or Jewelry
Hair undone, long tresses hang down.
A ****** named Tom was observing her
riding through town sans a gown.
A woman of substance and Charity-
Not given to horsing around.-
Her legend comes down from antiquity
That’s how seldom those taxes go down.
Dec 30, 2011
Dec 30, 2011 at 9:45 PM UTC
Bedsit lights flicker
floorboards creak
the night prolongs plans
to see through the situation
An envisaged train journey to Canterbury
may just reawaken this
side of reason
realising clear thoughts
the richness of discourse
where I may visit some folk club
summarise these my questions
through a better door
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 2:52 PM UTC
I take my knowledge from architects, medieval painters and galore.
I walk along the stretch of times, Read the Canterbury Tales from folks of yore.
I've written literature in my own dialect, through the beautiful English language.
I find awe in the act of creation, new etymologies where old writers anguished.
My words: symphonies of the beloved and dead Beethoven; like the arias of Wagner.
I am the high priest, the new catholicicist propogandising as your Cardinal.
I am the spiritual technology, provided to the ailment of what we call society.
I am the new Ghandi, the Dalai Lama deservedly inspiring your piety.
I am the Luciferous angel of life, breathing heaven through the cesspool of Earth.
I am the post-modern Romeo and Juliet, Warhol's 15 minutes of fame and worth.
I am the Alexander Mcqueen, the metaphilosopher of fabric illusions.
I am the lyricist of society, speaking through the castrated eunychs.
I am Stephanie Myer, inspiration of vampiric genius to adolescent impressionables.
I am Jane Austen, author of new age thrillers such as The Secret and Lesbian Misérables
I am the eclipsing of twilight, the post-mortem autopsy of a rotting cadaver.
I am Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson, legends inspiring a race of sleeping pill grabbers.
I am the Blockbuster, the Titanic Avatar, $4.9 Billion to children in poverty.
I am Gangnam Style, 2.5 Billion viewers of the Palestinian Bombings.
I am modern philosophe, the birth giver of Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, Derrida.
I am Steve Jobs, terrible father, tyrant and billionaire technological reliever.
I am God, the predeccesor and successor of all eternal life.
I am Satan, damnation and strife.
I am Tupac, rapper of gangster warfare. Inspirational to first world degenerates.
I am Oprah, most powerful black woman with white hillbilly aesthetics of Ellen Degeneres.
Thank you, to world's only true Genius.
Hail Kanye West, our one and only revered Yeezus.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 4:18 AM UTC
+
Canterbury crimson
On the plot that stands the rim
Beckoning the lonely souls
Oh please do come on in
Find a feast that’s waiting
Drink until your fill
Kick those shoes across the floor
Spit along the spill
Everyone is happy
Can’t you see their smiles
Torches burn the shadows through
Some have come from miles
Dance among the ruins
Yes, your life is there
Fall into the dark abyss
We’ve so much more to share
Crawl the crooked hallway
Feel the pain increase
Blistered skin and fractured bone
Oh well, to say the least
Chains are always ready
Locks are rusted tight
Forget about the sunrise spell
Just make it through the night
There’s no use in crying
It’s music to our ears
Melodies of freakish song
Lyrics penned in fears
Find the darkest corner
Make yourself at home
Hell accepts most anyone (even poets)
You’ll never be alone
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 9:02 AM UTC
Geoffrey Chaucer died last weekend
about six hundred years ago.
One Autumn day muffled drums tapped
out a dying pulse, a knock at
heaven’s gate. I listen for hooves,
the soft thud of an old man’s shoes
on the path outside the ‘grace mansion’
in the corner of the churchyard,
thinking he might just be riding
down to Canterbury again;
but no, hooves and voices are both
silent. No more good wives’ tales
set down between journeys on the
King’s or even Bishop’s business
and reread at evening stops at
some inn along the Kentish road.
I sit a little longer, sad
until the voices of a priest,
a nun, a soldier, an ostler
carry to me upon the breeze
and I know the pleasure you will,
somewhere, sometime, in future years.
Nov 14, 2013
Nov 14, 2013 at 5:43 PM UTC
Carrie Lee could care less about coffee.
Her arms lay crossed as she gazed out the window at the busy street.
Carrie gave a sigh, '"So why did you choose to see me?"
Jeremy cleared his throat and fiddled his fingers in discomfort.
"I missed you, Carrie. You were too busy to chat when I was in Germany."
She glanced his way and blinked a few times.
"Did you also miss Tracy, Lisa, Katie...?"
He quickly grasped the tone of her voice and squirmed in his seat.
Carrie's throat clenched once the words left her mouth, she predicted he'd get up and leave.
"I told you, Louie set me up to run into them like that. You know I would never hurt you."
"One fish, two fish,red fish, blue fish one deceive, two deceive."
He was puzzled , gasping for air over his failed attempt to convince her of his intentions.
"Tracy barely spoke to me at school, Lisa made fun of me daily, and Katie-"
Carrie's voice was stern and sharp and she gracefully stood from her seat and cut him off.
"Can you say you only care about me, honestly?"
Jeremy stood up and held Carrie's arms to reassure that she wouldn't leave.
"Carrie, please: listen to me."
She whipped her body away from his grasp. Eyes stinging from the memories she tried to forget for all those months.
He chased after her, wiping away her tears that flow free.
In disappointment she mumbles, "I'm sorry Jeremy, I guess your son just has to grow up not knowing his father."
"Carrie..."
People were staring as she gracefully stormed her way out of the cafe. It was just like their breakup in high school all over again.
"It's Carrie now. Katie tomorrow. Stay strong girl, leave him be."
His hand clenched the space in his chest he could feel expanding as his eyes started to hail.
Despite the tears blinding his vision, he followed her once again. "Of all the people in the world my heart had to choose, it choose you, Carrie."
His persistence made her feet stop, heart clench and mind reel.
Tears streaming down his face to his neck and his rosary.
She spoke "If I had a choice, it would choose you too. Maybe another life."
And at that moment, amidst the busy streets of Canterbury
was the soft whisper of two lonely hearts,
pledging to one another in loyalty,
"I love you".
May 7, 2016
May 7, 2016 at 10:50 PM UTC
A Baby-Boomer walks so freely through the town
he pays no mind to those suffering around
“Why don’t poor people just get jobs,”
he asks himself,
“And stop bellyaching?
And women need to shut their mouths and stop complaining
the wage gap is a fallacy
they invented to work less.
trust me I am a man who would understand the oppressed,
a man who has always been gainfully employed,
in fact if you ask me I am simply annoyed
that others dare to call me privileged
just because I can afford more than they do
(well that and the fact that because of my face
I can be sure that I will not be chased
by the police unrightfully
or a strange man most frighteningly).”
He walks alone in the darks of night
and yet his bones do not creak with fright
for he knows the world respects his white skin,
his wife, and the money he keeps only for him.
On his wall hangs a college degree
he got from a school in 1983
“I don’t understand why the millennials are such whiners
pull yourself up by your bootstraps while you’re still minors,
yes we ruined the economy, but it’s not that hard
if you just stop focussing on being so avant-garde
and get a job, who do you think you are?
Just kids trying their best to be what they are?
Disgusting excuse,
sell your soul to businesses,
it’s what Reagan would do.”
As he puts his money to bed at night
in the house he bought when the market was still alright
he wonders why kids these days
seem so tired and hungry for praise.
Oct 3, 2015
Oct 3, 2015 at 5:01 PM UTC
first of all i unblock the reading block.
then i unblock the writers block,
that i feel heavy in my chest
the rest is the monk in me exposed
to write dailies on all sorts of matters.
this aspiration i am declaring
will be re-written by monks hand
i can feel flow of the monk,
like Geoffry Chaucer reincarnated
modern day Canterbury Tales, i will write
on my poetry pilgrimage .
i am an aspiring poetry monk
i foresee a poetry monk,
who will invent and reinvent words
for poetic stories to be told infinitely
like numbers.
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 7:27 AM UTC
Chaucer and the Lightendyten 1
“The Prologue” to The Canterbury Tales
Grinds from the photocopying machine
And thus the casual observer, he wails
That technology produces the scene
And yet good Chaucer wrote in the long ago
Rhymed rhythms to instruct and to delight
The copier came later, as you know -
Our pilgrim was the first these tales to write
Or was he?
So here is a problem, which I you begge:
Of which came first, the cicen or the egge?
1 There was of course no Middle English word for “photocopier” so I cobbled one together from “lighte,” to give light, and “endyte,” to write. Chaucer said it was okay.
Jan 15, 2019
Jan 15, 2019 at 3:55 PM UTC
small items for sewing and other notions.
ribbons wound carefully secured with a
nice topped pin, not the ordinary.
it should be so, or sew.
buttons in bottles, and jars,
safed for the occasion, with
occasional poppers, oft worded
press fasteners unlike hooks,
and eyes,known as hooks and eyes.
the word appears in chaucer’s
canterbury tales, appears here,
too.
haber dashers have patron saints
just like all the other trades,
alongside worshipful companies.
at the mill , all is tidy now.
sbm.
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 1:31 AM UTC
it was all oh so very sad,
a guy has a brain haemorrhage
gets diagnosed as a schizophrenic
starts saying things like:
i’m charles the third, i’m charles the third!
you know: ***** cut me through
ended up being a hyena on my mother’s
payroll of the united front of housewives...
and... as all tragedies assert... one whiskey later
i was dry on the wordplay, and to the tune of ‘ta da!’ wrote this.
now monkey get peanut and elephant get banana...
no for either? oh... eddy lizard then... keep ‘em
rattling phrased i: i’m a comedian funniest telling jokes
when telling them pretending to be an act’ ‘tore
slicing through canterbury with weak knees - but stiff lips mind you -
although i was wearing the iron curtain for a corset
and buzz wording a spider to an amalgam with
web and fly and juicy to then go further and
word it to an anagram with the otherwise aimed
for hope of storming in and saying... vietnam!
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC
The Olde English poem,
The Holy Rood,
Was mystical and new.
The courtiers liked what they heard,
The troubadours sang out their truth.
Then Beowulf gave it design;
A plot with characters,
Some nearing divine,
With beasts and bravery bounding;
A new literature was sounding.
Soon Canterbury clopped along,
Lyrical poetry became song,
And morphed into Paradise,
Lost and found in common meter,
With angelic imagery, good and evil,
Undone in metaphysics.
Round the Lakes the poets roamed,
Windermere, Grasmere, and Dorothy's home.
They walked in beauty, day and night,
Warned the world was too much with us,
That nature was our friend.
Gave intimations of our end,
We still need listen to.
Jan 2, 2018
Jan 2, 2018 at 11:11 AM UTC
The Beggar at Canterbury Gate
The beggar sits at Canterbury Gate,
Thin, pale, unshaven, sad. His little dog
Sits patiently as a Benedictine
At Vespers, pondering eternity.
Not that rat terriers are permitted
To make solemn vows. Still, the pup appears
To take his own vocation seriously,
As so few humans do. For, after all,
Dogs demonstrate for us the duties of
Poverty, stability, obedience,
In choir, perhaps; among the garbage, yes,
So that perhaps we too might live aright.
The good dog’s human plays his tin whistle
Beneath usurper Henry’s1 offering-arch
For Kings, as beggars do, must drag their sins
And lay them before the Altar of God:
The beggar drinks and drugs and smokes, and so
His penance is to sit and suffer shame;
The King’s foul murders stain his honorable soul;
His penance is a stone-carved famous name
Our beggar, then, is a happier man,
Begging for bread at Canterbury Gate;
Tho’ stones are scripted not with his poor fame,
His little dog will plead his cause to God.
1Henry VII, who built the Cathedral Gate in 1517, long after the time of Henry II and St. Thomas Becket
Dec 15, 2016
Dec 15, 2016 at 5:03 PM UTC
Were we in Canterbury come Aprile
After the drought of March
that had pierced down to its root,
And Geoffrey Chaucer chronicled
our pilgrimage of mutual exploration,
what naked tales would the two us tell?
Jan 16, 2011
Jan 16, 2011 at 5:58 PM UTC