"larkin" poems
Whilst we destroy what we are,
Another’s suffering does nothing,
Nothing at all to alleviate our pain.
That we in the west live in luxury,
Does nothing either: why should it?
We are spawned from choice,
Conceived via free will, and ******
Dropped into a cradle of filth,
Finally crawling, learning to hate,
Not knowing why, nobody knows why,
Well do they? Do they?
Emerging and ready to die, yes,
Already damaged and broken,
Bereft of the truth of life, sick,
Perishing lost and alone, uncaring,
We the ****** misunderstood,
Chastised, ‘we never had it so good?’
We who inherited the earth, yeah,
We have it good, no struggle, none!
And therein lies our issues, true,
We have no need to fight, have we?
So, we fight ourselves, cutting,
And we live to cause suffering,
Our own agony screamed wildly!
Go on, frown, older generation,
Go on, you know you want to.
Call us, shake your wise heads,
Whilst we destroy what we are.
©Paul M Chafer 2015
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 10:20 AM UTC
Poulton Library and
Adele & I are here to
share with whoever
arrives some thoughts
concerning War and
Literature. Linda sets
us up with chairs and
table, and first here is
delightful surprise: Pat
who I taught thirty years
ago - there will be no
need for me to dig a
trench and put on a
jacket bullet-proof
with tin hat on my
head - Philip Larkin
Alun Lewis, Sassoon
and Wilfred Owen
give staunch support
to Jon Stallworthy's
World War One tome
Anthem for Doomed
Youth: Twelve Poets
but doomed not us
this century later.
(c) C J Heyworth June 2014
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 12:25 PM UTC
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
i guess darwinism
originated
on the islands
of gallapagos,
turtle turtle turtle ********
but not on syracuse
or cyprus or corfu
watching mortality
when watching ***** develop
into arthritis and ****
Dec 31, 2015
Dec 31, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
The only legacy of maturity is insensitivity
I will die old will think nothing of it.
The young tend sodium springs
All the while watched by the barren.
Muted observers to life labours conceiving gasp
Unwilling to interpret.
Bald cries to heaven go souls dug with grapples stuck.
Silence takes precedence in the right seat
Unlawful is the wrong
Red is the left
Old knows all is dark.
We run water to rid false colour
Run it until we are dry
Run it until we are black.
Apr 25, 2012
Apr 25, 2012 at 9:00 AM UTC
My hour on the stage half dun
Gone are days of limerick fun
Gone green dragon flying as Lark
Remembering ex-marine snark
In Hollywood bar, his heart trice
Failed, still caring drove to hospice
There, where days laid he on just one leg
Amputated cries, pain dared beg.
Yet after death lurked a grin,
A lark phone call to next of kin.
Frank doctor blind to ****** pun
Irate, berate to unkind son,
Spoke he with clenched fist did shook,
Asking who laments father cook.
Feb 1, 2013
Feb 1, 2013 at 10:41 PM UTC
They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were ****** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 19, 2013 at 5:21 AM UTC
Larkin
quoted Forster's
"Only connect..." at an
inept boxing match. Was either
correct?
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 3:22 AM UTC
by Philip Larkin
They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were ****** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
Philip Larkin
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 11:46 AM UTC
I breach the oak doors
Odiferous damp confronts
Mixes with incense
Serried box pews patiently
Wait for sermon or Larkin
Apr 25, 2010
Apr 25, 2010 at 7:12 AM UTC
"They **** you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were ****** up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself."
Phillip Larkin (1922 – 1985)
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 10:18 AM UTC
A little longer,
And time will be stronger,
Drafting a world where no such road will run
From you to me
—Philip Larkin
There I sat
Alone with my pie
With its perfect golden crust
And its sugary dust.
The metal fork I
Used rang clear
When it clicked against the plate
Cutting smallish bites.
It’s then that I
Think of my mother—
She taught me how to cook
This pie from a second-rate book.
I was six
When we had to move;
It was best, I was told, to leave what I knew behind
And I didn’t mind.
Everything was new
We had a very small house
Then I started again at school
Oh, the kids were cruel!
And there was nothing
Like our loneliness
I thought to my mother
Too quiet to tell her I loved her.
I hid in my chair
She found the book
“We’ll make a sour cherry pie”
And pulled a glass for whiskey.
We cooked for hours
Cutting cherries and folding crust
Neither of us was concerned
When we saw the pie had burned.
We didn’t care
About the charred
Black welts and the rock-like crust
With its burnt carbon dust—
My mother and I
Were happy, we knew
the fruit and syrup survived
hot and sour, baked inside.
Feb 2, 2010
Feb 2, 2010 at 11:49 AM UTC
~for Philip Larkin~
Soundless dark of wakeful night
panic thrills the heart
and chokes the mind
with dread of dying
of lying dead -
white marble stone dead -
passed
beyond self
to nothingness
and nowhere.
Just energy burst free,
blowback
to the godless Universe
body to ashes
atoms,
and nothing more.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 24, 2015
Nov 24, 2015 at 7:39 PM UTC
Larkin walking on the ground
Muddy lovers gather round
Want to know what lives they've found
Uptown, downtown, outoftown.
And I see the things they share
If they won't care, why should I care?
So many shadows overwhelm
Until they bust & burst over the helm.
Now the boat is on its own
The seagulls watching, away they've flown.
Jul 20, 2010
Jul 20, 2010 at 11:09 AM UTC
And another day starts pushing
first poetry like lines
from a retired Marine
Larkin cookbook who stops
singing because I asked
if he was Army
I've never heard Das Veilchen
but Mädchen hitch hiked to hear
Reggae Prince far wide beat
in and around
Aalen perhaps the softest sound
from a Brother I've never
heard or had.
Joan and her Wild punk song really
icon and cult forms
from Assisi 142
Mercy mercy was
it my whole faith then
and now
Jul 16, 2015
Jul 16, 2015 at 1:50 PM UTC
There is nothing more than composing
sonnets and blank verse,
like Larkin and Heaney never willingly leaving home,
seeing character and landscape grow:
no television, by view of partition
a barbed wire sandwich
a calculated drip feed reaction.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 6:52 PM UTC
Novels are about other people but poems are about yourself
-Philip Larkin-
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 9:46 AM UTC
For my situation in life
I don’t blame my parents
or anything like that,
They may well have been crap
And ****** me up
(Just Like Larkin said)
But blaming others won’t change anything,
It is as it is
And I try and take ownership
Rather than mitigate and delegate
Hate.
Over the years
I’ve met many people who look back in anger,
Blame all the faults they have,
All the problems they’ve encountered,
On their parents
Or others,
How they were raised as kids
Else treated at school by a teacher.
And, you know,
Maybe it’s true
And maybe it’s not,
But I try hard
Not to linger,
To doff
And point an accusatory finger.
Standing naked and alone
Facing with all your faults,
Taking ownership is difficult
And accountability *****
But when the blade of justice swings
It’s important - even for such a schmuck as me -
To face the consequences,
Not to duck!
Sep 19, 2019
Sep 19, 2019 at 2:53 PM UTC
Abide
by Michael R. Burch
after Philip Larkin's "Aubade"
It is hard to understand or accept mortality—
such an alien concept: not to be.
Perhaps unsettling enough to spawn religion,
or to scare mutant fish out of a primordial sea
boiling like goopy green tea in a kettle.
Perhaps a man should exhibit more mettle
than to admit such fear, denying Nirvana exists
simply because we are stuck here in such a fine fettle.
And so we abide . . .
even in life, staring out across that dark brink.
And if the thought of death makes your questioning heart sink,
it is best not to drink
(or, drinking, certainly not to think).
Originally published by Light. Keywords/Tags: Philip Larkin, Aubade, abide, death, mortality, religion, drink, drinking, drunk, alcohol, fettle, mettle, Nirvana
Mar 24, 2020
Mar 24, 2020 at 8:44 PM UTC
Many of our dead are paper cuttings,
memories of those surviving or
doing duty by our famous dead.
Guardian obituries
stored in books I've read.
Hughes, Eliot, Larkin, Heaney,
MacNiece and Thomas mourning their last drinks.
Uncomfortable shelfmates all,
eternal quarrels, truth debates.
Eliot polite and debonair,
while Hughes cares no for airs and graces
but puts the ladies through their paces.
Heaney digs his pen through family,
myth and culture's history, mining
human misery and mystery,
then Larkin's calendar of life
confronts our stark reality.
I cannot pass these shelves untouched,
demanding voices drench the air,
nor can I find a useful test
by which I can decide who's best.
Aug 19, 2017
Aug 19, 2017 at 2:34 PM UTC
"Girl you got this"
Your desire you might get
If you work hard, put yourself out there
A capitalist poem? I must be out of myself!
Dreary poem, this is.
Like true life - **** this ****
I am Philip Larkin today
Or at least I try to be.
Misplaced in space, a nice wound in my head.
Girl
With her head buried in papers
Struggling hard, prey to Amway beasts
And lowpaid jobs and pocket misery
Let's **** this **** Get rich.
A **** me hard, all I really need.
Girl
With no money and too many needs
You've got freedom but you lack the wheels
To drive you away from here
And this fight for a penny
Makes sense because we are. Sad system this one!
Our promised land...even if we break up.
I'll rename it, claim land back.
Girl
Lost in a tough world
Stay your ground.
She knows
The meaning and the key
Is simply love
And for what love can't afford
(None of them really blissful things)
Hard work, and luck
(None of them glee)
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 6:45 PM UTC
“Earth’s immeasurable surprise.
They could not grasp it if they knew,
what so soon will wake and grow;
utterly unlike the snow”
- Phillip Larkin.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 2:51 PM UTC