"chaucer" poems
A haunting stare with a serious note
Originates in a lad just thirteen
Ready to command or to set to task
Obedient, mature, and quick to rule
More comfortable with adults than peers
An old soul has he, loves cars from the past
Collects Civil War relics and antiques
Spends most his time reading and researching
Reads historical fiction, lost in time
Analyzes plants, insects, and ol' coins
He could be described like Chaucer's Cleric
"And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach."
He desires, especially, silver
Yet, gold and ex-presidents faces too
Protects younger members of his small clan
Only his hand will be attacking foe
It might be his fine grades, his quirk or two
That humbles his parents. Proudly they stand
And admire their first born miracle
A babe no more, his age will meet his soul.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 7:11 PM UTC
When poets die
It's sad and true,
It matters not
What their bodies do,
The spirit flies
To Poet's Corner,
In Westminster Abbey.
You'll not see
Busts or inscriptions
For all the poets
Whose spirits linger
Alongside Chaucer, Browning, Spencer,
And a myriad of authors.
Dead Poet you have earned your share;
Dead Poet I will know you're there,
Composing in the Laureate's lair.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 12:33 PM UTC
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How out of date are simple wooden beads
An upgrade is what the Rosary needs!
Something to give your meditations spice
Connected to your electronic device
Beamed back and forth to The Cloud, you see
With mega-mega gigs of memory
Doctor Ponsonby’s Patented Empowering
Electrical Rosary is just the thing!
The Ave Maria is so out of date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 the best, there ever was
Can't get with me, at da club
Other poets, need to respect
My reputation, I'll protect
I got a 9, pen in my hand
Write your name, in the sand
To me, you can't never stand
I ain't afraid, to let out a curse
Write you in, an ugly verse
I'm da best, you da worst
You can't, stay with my meter
I spit sick, iambic pentameter
I'm da truth you da cheater
You rhyme like Armstrong rides
You have to dope, ya got no rhymes
You da Cheech I'm da Chong
I write, you smoke da ****
You da burger, I'm da veal
I earn likes, you freakin still
You got da, cheesy *** rhymes
Droppin' words, like love & sublime
I put the free, in free verse
You all about, Nonsense Verse
I drop a sonnet, makes his head Shake
I'm the Chaucer, you da fake
I'm a Lyric, you the Lune
You can't quit writen', too crazy soon
Your stuff is dirt, mines the moon
You want a challenge, get in the ring
I'll make you cry but your mama sing
You'all poets, you got to know
You da fluff, I'm da show
I'm the king of the poets, HELLO
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 7:22 PM UTC
…These men are worth your tears:
You are not worth their merriment.
-Wilfred Owen, “Apologia Pro Poemate Meo”
When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean? Paradise Lost? Probably not
Nor Saint Paul speaking on the Field of Mars
The Kalevala, Hagia Sophia
With its pendentives lifting up our prayers
Horatius fighting to defend his bridge
And Wilfred Owen dying bravely on his
Lord Tennyson and Idylls of the King
Chapultepec, Henry V, Becket
The paratroops at Arnhem, Saint Thomas More,
His King’s loyal servant, but God’s first
The Stray Dog poets of Saint Petersburg
The brave last stand of Roland at Roncesvalles
Lewis and Tolkien and glasses of beer
Montcalm and Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham
Hildegard von Bingen, Siegfried and the Rhine
Magna Carta, HMS Hood, the Thames
The Grove of Daphne, “The Old Rugged Cross”
Beatrix Potter and her little pet rabbit
El Cid, Anne Frank, John Keats, Saint Benedict
“I Have a Dream,” Dostoyevsky, and Greene
Viktor Frankl, Dag Hammarkskjold, and Proust
Good Chaucer’s naughty pilgrims telling tales
The Gettysburg Address, Willie and Joe
Stern Saint Augustine of North Africa
Wodehouse writing a jolly bit of fun
Saint Corbinian and Bavaria
The ancient glories of Byzantium
Pius XII contra the bombs and lies
The 602nd TD Battalion
Saint Joan, the Prado, and Robert Frost
And far, far more.
When that loudmouth on the wireless machine
Alludes to Western Civilization
What does he mean?
Nov 4, 2018
Nov 4, 2018 at 4:06 PM UTC
This pleasant tale is like a little copse:
The honied lines so freshly interlace,
To keep the reader in so sweet a place,
So that he here and there full-hearted stops;
And oftentimes he feels the dewy drops
Come cool and suddenly against his face,
And, by the wandering melody, may trace
Which way the tender-legged linnet hops.
Oh! what a power has white Simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
I, that do ever feel athirst for glory,
Could at this moment be content to lie
Meekly upon the grass, as those whose sobbings
Were heard of none beside the mournful robins.
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'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'
'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'
'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.
2.3k
Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy
They say what I want to say better than me
Read Homer and Ovid, Basho and Su Shi
Chaucer and Boccaccio they've stood the test
Read Donne, Spenser, Marlowe, Jonson and Raleigh
Read Shakespeare and Milton and all of the rest
Read Swift, Pope, Blake, Tennyson, and Rossetti
The two Barrett Brownings are of interest
For feelings romantic as true as can be
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth are some of the best
Read Larkin and Betjeman if you're depressed
Read Wendy Cope to enjoy all of life's zest
Yes please don't think I despise modernity
Read Ted Hughes and Sylvia, Motion, Duffy
And how about all those I haven't addressed
Yeats, Auden, Joyce, Longfellow, Poe and Shelley
And all of the others I'm bound to have missed
They say what I want to say better than me
But what of the poet, with poets obessed?
In prose I am prolix, in speech stuttery:
So where will you find my emotions expressed?
On MySpace, on Twitter, read my poetry
It says what I want to say
Oct 7, 2009
Oct 7, 2009 at 11:12 AM UTC
Everyone says
"Oh, don't worry! It's just a phase."
Or even worse,
"You'll grow out of it soon."
And so you begin to think
That the quirks and smirks
You see in the mirror
When you've wiped the shower fog clear
Are somehow wrong and undesirable
To the masses of others outside your door
Even if what you see makes you happy.
And so you try to hide
Behind conformity and masks
Of aloofness,
Of apathy,
Of indifference,
Of nonchalance,
Until you yourself begin to believe
You've passed the phase!
You've grown out of it!
You're finally someone whom the world
Can pour its love and adoration on!
And so you wait for that sparkling moment,
When you go from ugly duckling
To ravishing debonair desirable swan,
Yet the days turn into weeks into months,
And finally years have passed away
But nothing happened.
And you find yourself wiping away
The shower fog with a tired hand
Only to see the quirks and smirks
That used to make you happy
Are gone and for what gain to you?
Where are the masses of adoring friends?
Where are the praises of who you've become?
You're all alone like you've always been.
But I ask you,
Is this really who you want to be?
Where's the girl who recites Chaucer?
And rolls down grassy hills?
Where is she whose snarky comments
Could hours of hilarity fill?
Where's the girl who laid bricks
Side by side with her father?
And imagined up the neighborhood
Olympics with his other two daughters?
So I'll ask you again,
Face in my mirror,
Are you happy?
Is this who we're going to be?
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 10:18 PM UTC
Some people write, but rarely read,
That seems to me most strange indeed,
They've read less than a hundred books,
Yet think they imitate the looks,
Of Sassoon, Cummings, Keats and Pound,
Or think they imitate the sound,
Of Lennon, Dylan, or Shakur,
And sometimes think they've offered more,
Than Chaucer, Wilde or Shakespeare could,
And claim they're more misunderstood,
Than even Salman Rushdie was,
Which really ticks me off because,
After having read such wondrous works,
A sense of failure always lurks,
Inside me whenever I write,
Yet they think they've done well tonight!
I hate them all! That's it - I've said it!
But they won't know until they've read it,
Which is quite doubtful, I'd attest,
Who'd read my work and skip the best?
Dec 29, 2015
Dec 29, 2015 at 1:55 AM UTC
There is delight in singing, tho' none hear
Beside the singer; and there is delight
In praising, tho' the praiser sit alone
And see the prais'd far off him, far above.
Shakspeare is not our poet, but the world's,
Therefore on him no speech! and brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walkt along our roads with step
So varied in discourse. But warmer climes
Give brighter plumage, stronger wing: the breeze
Of Alpine highths thou playest with, borne on
Beyond Sorrento and Amalfi, where
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
1.8k
On campus, warm sun bathing my shoulders
as I listen to two girls discuss poetry
(and the dreamy guy who teaches their class)
and I try not to laugh at them as they talk about
how romantic I would be to have poetry written about
them. I want to ask them if they are really that stupid.
Instead, I bite my tongue and enjoy the taste of pennies
that floods my mouth and keep my laughter gurgling inside of me.
I long to ask these simpering, silly girls
if they have ever read any poetry about life. Not about the
romantic notions of life, but about really-real life. Poetry about
blood and pain and ******* and dying and loving and art
and I want to force feed them great ****** bites of
Chaucer or Ginsberg or
Bukowski.
Yeah... Bukowski. Visceral, blunt, gory, beautiful Bukowski.
But I have a feeling that this action would go unappreciated.
Their poets don’t use language like **** or ****
Their poets don’t talk about the world I know.
Their poets live in a world of rewrite and revise.
I want to scream at them how silly they are and how much
their views will change over the next few years. And I realize that I may
have been staring (glaring?) at them because they have fallen
silent and are now looking at me with the squeamish discomfort
of people who have just realized that they’re being observed.
And I think to myself, **** it,” and I smile and tell them that
their handsome poetry professor is married, and their idea of poetry
is limited. “You should read some Bukowski,” I tell them, “Then,
you just might get it” and they gaze up at me slack-jawed, staring blankly
for a moment, and I want to make sure I have not sprouted another head.
Instead, I gather my things and walk away. And as I do, I revel in a fleeting
feeling of superiority because I know.
I understand.
I get it.
And I can almost feel special.
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 2:49 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.
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I've spent what feels like a lifetime
trying to ease my way into an English world.
The world of Chaucer and Eliot
and vocabulary only Merriam-Webster knew.
I declared a major.
I don’t know if it really matters anymore,
because when it’s dark
and the campus is empty
all I can feel are the forgotten words floating overhead like stars,
whispering for me to go home,
rectify the official white papers.
Become something else;
become anything but this.
Become who?
Someone who can’t feel anything
but the weight of the leaves
as they crunch under the lilt of their laugh?
Or the one who cries outside their advisor’s office,
because they read something so beautiful
yet still so small,
an unshared treasure?
Why write? Why speak?
I don’t know the answers to either.
Because when you are writing, you are speaking,
and one is almost as good as the other.
But when the words get caught in the back of your throat
and your feet are blocks of concrete,
unable to move
or think
or feel —
Is writing any better?
Will writing save the invisible,
or the insignificant
or the unheard?
The ones who disappear?
I've spent what feels like a lifetime,
trying to force my face into the light
and take a major that isn’t really mine,
dashing off poorly executed poems and flash fiction,
grasping for something that might work.
But in the end it’s nothing
and I am still just as
lost.
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 10:31 AM UTC
for Susan
He stood there in the card shop
finding it hard to decide
between a Chinese rose,
a flock of starlings,
a river scene in summer . . .
They all had printed blank inside
upon their cellophane wrappers.
He felt blank inside
when it came to words.
How do you say
(after twenty-six years)
I love you,
with that tremor and thrill
he remembered when,
stopping the car
between Holt and the sea,
he had looked into those still
jade green eyes, and told her so.
So he choose Tropical Birds in a Landscape
Jan van Kessel the Elder (1628-79).
It was Chaucer’s Technicolor Dream.
A Parliament of Fowles no less
who *welcome somer, with your sonne softe,
Wel han they cause for to gladen ofte,
Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys make
Ful blissful mowe they synge when they awake.*
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 12:49 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
A master of characterization
After moments of gesticulation
Your characters become universal
Images play without dress rehearsal .
First created, an idealistic knight,
Who teaches the perfect techniques to fight.
Next danced a lad of ladies' desire .
Your words described me, "a lad of fire."
A counterfeit nun pilgrimed with the bunch.
She starved her dogs to have a second lunch,
Yet, you viewed her as whimsical and tame.
The way she faked, sung, and lied was a shame.
Still, I know this false Prioress today,
Characters such as this wont fade away.
The Miller modeled your retched Scot.
I too am Scottish, but retched I'm not!
Though we don't always view the world as one,
I have the faint soul of your pseudo son.
I too would flirt with the strong Wife if Bath,
And roam with the pilgrims down that God path.
Master at comic irony, you are
The church was corrupt, relics in a jar
Or a pardon for an extorted fee.
Friars with gifts for girls could not trick thee.
Twenty four of one twenty were finished,
But the affects will not be diminished.
They say you're number two in history.
For people like me, that's a mystery.
In a quill duel between Shakespeare and you,
You'd leap to number one, Shakespeare to two.
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 7:56 PM UTC
When the saints...go marching in
Oh when the saints go marching in
Oh how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in
Of all the saints, I want to know
The ones who write, I'd love to meet
Oh how I'd love to meet all the authors
When the saints go down the street
E.A. Poe...even Thoreau
Hemmingway would be ok
Mailer and Andrew Taylor
I'd learn to drink like a sailor
when these saints come strolling in
The Writers Guild...I'd be fulfilled
Meeting writers long since dead
Just think of what I'm learning
All that knowledge in their heads
I'd love to know, I'd love to know
Is Bill Shakespeare who we think?
Christie, Austen and Dickens
This is where the whole plot thickens
When the saints go marching in
Is it the best, of all the books
Is the bible just a tale
Can you think of someone better
When Melville speaks about a whale
Capote sits, while Chaucer reads
Bronte knits while Stoker bleeds
Oh how I want to be in that number
When these saints go marching in
The list goes on, oh on and on
There's just so many who've passed on
It's a list that leads by example
When these saints go marching in
Oh when the saints go marching in
When the saints go marching in
How I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 11:20 PM UTC
SO PRIKETH HEM NATURE IN HIR CORAGES
Never did
help my Da enough.
Always
head-stuck-in-a-book.
"Donall son..."he call
"Can you hold this while
...I saw.!"
"Awwww Da!"
I'd wail.
Me lost in Chaucer
and his tale.
And so the saw saws
but all I see is..."Yo!"
"The Miller was a chap of sixteen stone,
A great stout fellow big in brawn and bone.
The saw cuts through the afternoon.
Pauses: then....chaw chaw
Chaucers on again.
"He did well out of them, for he could go
And win the ram at any wrestling show."
"Say what...?
Oh, don't get me
wrong I
adored the aesthetic beauty of
sawdust floating
in a universe of its own
suspended in sunlight and shadow.
The smell of pine
kidnapping my mind.
The green dance of the bubble
in a spirit level.
Didn't have time for all that
hammering and sawing.
I was a boy on a mission
ever since our teacher sighing
"Oh I...don't know why I
teach you scruff Chaucer
...you'll never read the book!"
But by the weekend
( furious at the rebuff )
I( ha ha)HAD!
My poor auld Da
only getting begrudging help.
"Whan that Aprille..."
( the words falling like gentle rain upon my mind )
"...with his shoures soote
the droghte of Marche..."
(Words words oh sweet words. . .)
"hath perced to the roote"
(My mind. . .)
"...bathed every veyne in swich licour,"
(the bubble in the spirit level
poised perfectly...perfectly poised)
"Of which vertu engendred is the flour."
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 5:29 PM UTC
On the phone and in a row boat...
It was there for the taking and they took it. Love lust and warm em-brace.
Faces in the dark whispers joy intellect speaking miles upon miles- they were the ******
To change a generation and build upon past memoirs notations poetry prose literature - swindling no one. In the deep they did swim
In the deep they did swim to find each other
In the deep they did swim breaking into paper huts and liquor bottles
In the deep they did swim
INVENT- INVENT -INVENT!
In the deep they did swim casting away the structures that were built for them- but not by them
In the deep they did swim live wires of truth justice perseverance principles
In the deep they did swim
What of Whitman! What of Geoffrey Chaucer!
What of social demand!
In the deep they did swim with no thirst for consequence
In the deep they did swim for life's love eroticism passion of words
In the deep they did swim
...for the beat generation
Jul 15, 2015
Jul 15, 2015 at 10:14 AM UTC
We called our maths master *** happy Chappie, Mr Chapman stank to high heaven like an ash tray and smoked like a chimney even while taking class.
We called the English teacher Jesus because he was young, bearded and wore a white suit. One of the lads flicked ink all down his back one day without him noticing as he walked up and down between the desks.
Another English teacher took it on himself to teach *** education. He advised us not to ********** the night before an exam. He doubled up as a career adviser and told everyone to go into banking or insurance.
The history master liked to nod off in lessons when he was supposed to be teaching us and we had to stay completely silent. If anyone made a noise he would yell at us, and he would sometimes hit us with a tennis shoe with a golf ball jammed in it. He wrote Stoke City for the cup in chalk mirror writing on the sole so that it would come out on our backsides when he whacked us.
The first headmaster was nice, we liked him, he was human. But then *** took over. He tightened up the rules about school uniform, no coloured shirts, things like that, but wore luminous green socks himself, the silly ******* He gave me the slipper for sciving off an afternoon once, I hated him. I think if I'd had a gun I might have shot him. Someone said they think he's dead now, and I thought good, I hope he died in agony ha ha.
Then there was Mr Eaton, another English master. He was one of those truly inspiring teachers whose enthusiasm for his subject was infectious.
On the day he introduced us to Chaucer's 'The Prologue ' he gave us the text and proceeded to recite from memory the whole thing. I never forgot that.
It was a mixed experience, Grammar School in the 1970's.
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 10:45 PM UTC
I’m a fan of my own poetry
I think it is most fine
I cogitate on every word
I swallow every line
Of all the words I’ve written
I hold each poem dear
No matter stones that you might throw
Nor how rude your Brooklyn cheer
I’d rather read my words of wit
Upon a restroom wall
Than Suffer Will and Chaucer’s
Works; inside some fancy hall
Folks today never talk like that
That train left long ago
So give me five my brother
Make it high; or make it low
Come share my homespun wisdom
I don’t promise it will rhyme
But you won’t need a college sheepskin
To interpret every line
I write words plain and simple
So a child of nine or ten
Can enjoy every story
As he reads them in the den
And I don’t need no critic
To explain or to expand
What the words meant when I wrote them
Because they’re already plain
If I never sell a single book
Well that will be just fine
For I’m a fan of my own poetry
And will read you every line
Sep 25, 2010
Sep 25, 2010 at 11:57 PM UTC
the small wooden floor room
where she spreads her trinkets
her mystery box spells and
potions in tiny bottles
she lay there amidst her tokens and treasures
and sings softly along with a song
that plays in the distance
on a radio
a song that speaks to her of simpler times
and beautiful people
of a better world we all left behind decades ago
a world she could rejoin if she belived hard enough
the days when she holds enough hope
there is a smile
and she faces out towards the sun
but i dread the days when
she captures a glance at the reflection
of her fast vanishing days
and how little things have changed in her life
her smile is gone on thouse days
her face is a shadow
i must carry her through
days like that she needs my strength
to keep from getting trapped
the crisp blue skies
frame the giant oak tree that we lay under
leaves float down here and there
with vivid fall color
you can taste fall in the air
you can feel it in the texture of her conversation
as she talks of hallows eve
and Christmas
William Tell
Ivanhoe and Chaucer
its the season for dinner theater
its the season for a bottle of red wine in the sand
by the river
and the tales to be told
grand ventures to be undertaken
in bold and fast words alone
she takes your hand
and with a deep smile touches your lips
with her fingertip
and begins to speak
but you never get to hear what she would have said
you awaken sheets soaked in sweat
twenty years on
and she still visits you near every night
sometimes its her on the beach where she died
sometimes its the weeks that lead up to that
godforsaken day
twenty years
twenty years
twenty years
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 2:53 PM UTC
And as smoke snaked from between your lips
Like the angry ash of inactive volcano,
You said “They’re all a bunch of crackers, no good, no fun, no nothing.”
I smirked as I tasted Parliament in your gums.
“That’s enough now, let’s party” and we certainly did. You (featuring
me) hit up every street and every open door; we heard
the Music bleeding in the road, shaking the feets of the young dead.
As their ears crinkled,
their mouths dried,
And their halos melted,
I thought I heard you humming Satie.
But you were only coughing up nicotine
In rhythm to the dying song of an overdosing art student.
Feb 15, 2010
Feb 15, 2010 at 9:43 AM UTC