"thames" poems
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories ****** but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
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These days have ebbed
as Love's swell was checked:
the waters in some places
- all but dammed!
But now at last
I sense the rising tide
and thank Temese
for the current's turn;
now following that great writhing snake
to where its pulsing head will rake;
over the mucky soiled watery beds
of Woolwich
Greenwich
Limehouse
- and under -
Tower Bridge
To that great gloating sight
A crown of a billion lights
Blazing day and night:
And somewhere within
In the slick oily warmth
Our flood tides mesh,
As over each other we wash.
Hard thrusts
wicked deep cuts
given and received
are recorded in that great mirror smoked!
where with a tug and a shove
on the banks
in the streets
through the loopy twists
everything prospers in the glow
as the decades decaying flow;
each ***** bud
red with new blood
one after t'other
flowers
before their purple petals scatter.
Let's on the luck o' the dice
(you 'n' me!)
ride out
on the flotsam and jetsom
that has carried us this far
and as pleases
merge.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 2:32 AM UTC
So I'll have mine
and you'll have yours?
who could ask
for anything more!
grey beards march
the union jack
build a wall
and send them back!
Grudge, sludge
a sanguine view
****** off
and take the cue
hide, plunge
aristocrat
run the field
like an old tom cat
Narrow pass
and capital flow
falling crude
and currency woe
deep depression,
mutineers
the mastermind
of project fear!
Silver spoon
at Hampton court
madness waits
in Davenport
divisible
and off the grid
**** it up
100 quid
Helen’s horsemen
unified
the springbok club
will never hide
plebiscite
in deep despair
an open scroll
Trafalgar square
Grapple, grovel
sentry shame
along the shore
of river Thames
king of wankers
lord of beat
break the rule
of old elite!
Stone the posse
bullets bare
load the chambers
fists in air
voices, faces
haunted souls…
should i stay
or should i go?
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 2:21 PM UTC
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos,
Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon
till it came out clean.
Allen Ginsberg
Boulder, 26 April, 1980
.
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 5:51 AM UTC
Did you see the tarnished surface
that made you look again
Was it reflected in the lyrics
in the Anthem of the Thames
Was the traffic still diverted
Had the Borough lost good men
Were mothers dry from crying
at the Anthem of the Thames
Did you see the children drowning
Was the tide too high from rain
Were the barges towed in silence
past the Anthem of the Thames
Were the songs drowned out by shouting
Did the words turn boys insane
Did the drum beats beat past midnight
to the Anthem of the Thames
Was it echoed through the arches
Did the shadows hide the stains
Did the wounded walk til morning
through the Anthem of the Thames
Will you still be here at day break
Do you claim this grey domain
Will you pray for restoration
of the Anthem of the Thames
Oct 8, 2018
Oct 8, 2018 at 4:24 PM UTC
I.
While raging tempests shake the shore,
While Ælus’ thunders round us roar,
And sweep impetuous o’er the plain
Be still, O tyrant of the main;
Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray,
While my Susanna skims the wat’ry way.
II.
The Pow’r propitious hears the lay,
The blue-ey’d daughters of the sea
With sweeter cadence glide along,
And Thames responsive joins the song.
Pleas’d with their notes Sol sheds benign his ray,
And double radiance decks the face of day.
III.
To court thee to Britannia’s arms
Serene the climes and mild the sky,
Her region boasts unnumber’d charms,
Thy welcome smiles in ev’ry eye.
Thy promise, Neptune keep, record my pray’r,
Not give my wishes to the empty air.
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Her name is Halima
And she leans from her window
In her hijab that covers her hair
Halima don't spit on the people below
Her mama laughs - My Halima!
But that's her little daughter
And she knows when Halima spits -
It's - the purest rose water
Halima's hijab is of the greenest green
That covers her chestnut hair
With the handprint of a man
Large and brown embroidered there
And her long white dress embroidered
With buds and leaves and thorny stems
And secret roots and blooms of roses
In her house above the Thames
Halima don't spit! Her mama chides
But the people sailing by
Think the air is filled with roses
So they smile and they sigh
As Halima in her hijab
With the handprint of a man
Turns the ***** river to rose water
As only Halima can ...
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 11:26 AM UTC
I wander thro’ each charter’d street.
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
A mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man.
In every Infants cry of fear.
In every voice; in every ban.
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackening Church appalls.
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
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Homage Kenneth Koch
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean
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An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly,
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.
Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.
The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.
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…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
*(Not a home, I said.
An address.
The badges and the blossoms
Bragged ‘excess’.
Etched into every tree
The word:
S U C C E S S)*
I am London
And he is me,
Not ever knowing which London to be,
A button eyed orphan,
A one man band,
A Dickensian madman
Whey-faced and untanned.
I was a Ruby Infant,
(Montpelier)
Via turreted school
(Machiavellian lair)
My conspiracy of ravens
The guardians of lore,
Falling in feathers
To a barbershop floor.
My mind is confetti -
From each Westminster wedding,
Each pill, each stumble,
A little be-heading.
I first kissed a girl in Trafalgar Square
And the memory of her is still there in the air,
In the backdrops of photographs snapped up by tourists,
In the lost eyes of pigeons,
(I know it, I’m sure of it -
because I know London
And he knows me -
We flow into each other
Like the Thames, to the sea).
Gobstopper ******** in Whitechapel lanes,
Knee-deep in the streets, leaving opal-ghost stains,
The bleeding graffiti of Mary Jane Kelly,
Our deaths, our murders,
So many, so many...
Bells,
Chiming,
Dark
Oubliettes,
Cradle me, London,
My bowed silhouette,
Settle me down
in your newspaper bed,
Love me,
Watch over me,
And when I am dead,
Make me a martyr,
Smooth out my head
Swallow me up in your gum studded streets,
Somewhere busy where I can feel millions of feet
Treading into me,
Over and
Over again,
And every so often, now and then,
Play out your bells for my syllables four,
*Ding **** ding ****
Four and no more,
To remind yourself, London,
Of silly old me,
Who like you,
Never knew,
Which London to be.
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 10:56 AM UTC
Coconut, coconut, coconut,
Crack!
Stained white on the inside,
Brown on the out.
Hit it on its head,
Slash it apart.
Nourish it with spices,
Of a Southern past.
Fuzzy to touch,
Lined in coir.
The remaining path
In defining who we are.
Droplets of the Ganges,
Drowned in the Thames.
A conflicted soul,
In search of a cleanse.
Coconut, coconut, coconut,
Crack!
That one's spoiled!
So send him back.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 8:02 PM UTC
+
A bed-sits high and dry,marooned on a sandbank of night.
As radio 4-casts its nets to isolated ships like me that rudderless drift on into the light.
Still dark outside,no sounds,save the distant echoing bark of a hungry fox ----streets away.
Another dawn ripped blackbin bag of a day creeps and ouzes in
Heavy unfocused lids fogged in the steamy smokeyness of tea and a first fag
plenty of time plenty of time.
Time before the world wakes to the morning pips and its flushing, brushing, rushing sounds
A greyness gathers just beyound my pained curtains, as with a silent sigh a roosted blackbird clears its fasted throat.
Then as if by magic I 'm carried, scimming high above and beyound this mooring set in a silvered sea,on a welcomed mantra known to all.
As if a calling pray at day break,following each word in a moment subline
Un angle vole un angle vole.
Rockall - Malin - Hebrides
Humber - Fisher - German bight
Thames - Dover - Wight.
Each single secert understood and noted only by a few as I glide over in paced, pausey surf rolling words
North northeast - 994 - Falling slowly - Low pressure moving away - Gales 8 very poor - Backing 3-4 later - Mainly good - Becoming variable - Syclonic later - Increasing 6-7 mainly west - Swally showers for a time - Fair - Good.
Oh so good, each pure English comforting sounds heard over lapping waves of air.
The bushy wet nosed fox sulks and cowers away from the breaking sun, as the blackbird draws a dewdropped breath though golden nib and tapping gently, call a hidden choir into song just for me.
Reminding me of the things I'd for gotten I care about.
Sharp timed unwelcomed pips flood the ears to prise open sticky eyes from promised dreams and spoon-cuddles warm
As I set forth on wetted pavements, ready to decline into my charted day.
Yet smiling as if blessed and no longer alone
But filled with early morning salty thoughts of strangers
I
have
yet
to
meet
Feb 24, 2011
Feb 24, 2011 at 7:47 AM UTC
Cold sunlight
River Thames shivering
chopped glass
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 1:47 PM UTC
The Thames nocturne of blue and gold
Changed to a Harmony in grey:
A barge with ochre-coloured hay
Dropt from the wharf: and chill and cold
The yellow fog came creeping down
The bridges, till the houses’ walls
Seemed changed to shadows and St. Paul’s
Loomed like a bubble o’er the town.
Then suddenly arose the clang
Of waking life; the streets were stirred
With country waggons: and a bird
Flew to the glistening roofs and sang.
But one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.
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Glimmering lights from the powerful skyline,
reflected like jet flames in the River Thames.
Lights multiplied by the flash of a camera,
capturing beauty in it's searching lens.
I wasn't so sure of here before,
but now I know there will always be
a place in my heart for this great city.
A home, a hub for the bustling race.
Some say mind over matter,
I say heart over mind,
but my heart has learned to love
that which my mind has made a matter.
Dec 29, 2012
Dec 29, 2012 at 4:46 PM UTC
December 1899
I
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold-on-fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He—he has fallen—in the far South Land…
II
’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather—
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
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It's London, all the time,
when at night I close my eyes,
it's when and where I get to roam and dwell,
in the city I know inside-out so well,
where all the narrow streets and cobbled stones,
teacups, pint glasses, and fresh scones,
lend themselves into the misty English air,
of London's ancient, yet so modern flair,
of Piccadilly, and Hyde Park Corner's box,
riding Black Cabs, or a big Red Double-Bus,
evening gas-lamp walks with ol' Saucy Jack,
fish and chips and shandys for a perfect snack;
then the changing of The Guard at Buckingham,
where native Cockney's and young mums with prams,
gather for a view of Lizzy's Royal Family Show;
but, my, how rich the April sun sets and does glow,
over the rolling raging river Thames of yore,
where ancient Roman armies marched to shore,
proclaimed: LONDINIUM! -the regal rest,
of civilised peoples and the Royal Crests,
where lives and deaths would go and come,
yet The City despite all odds has lost and won,
in the hearts, souls and minds of all who take,
great London as their true hearth and home to stake,
and arise and fall the poet's versing nights and days,
whilst Big Ben chimes his toll in the foggy haze;
and alas, London from my slumber dissipates,
to that of which I yearn and love, asleep or wake,
knowing where my home of soul-keep lies divine:
in London, my dear London; it's London, all the time.
______
London:
http://beautyineverything.com/3366195864
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 7:31 PM UTC
*They say that
Van Gogh ate yellow paint
To put the happiness inside him.
But she, instead, would
Cut out the sadness from her skin
And let the hatred pour out
In gushing streams of red,
Her screams echoing
The injustice of colour.
Her wheat skin looked prettier, she thought,
With the raked furrows of half healed scars
And painful slurs
Etched into the deep ochre of her soul.
She quietly detested her terracotta skin,
Smooth like a polished stone
Picked up from the Ganges.
But here in the pale waters of the Thames
She was a blot of burnt sienna on an otherwise ivory white riverbank.
And every new cut
Would heal bloodless and waxen,
Which made her vow to herself to cut off her skin completely,
Leaving nothing but
The darkened red of her fury
And a frightened echo of a scream
In a room filled with bitter laughs and slurs,
In a room filled with the muffled cries of the oppressed and unheard.*
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 8:25 AM UTC
The dragonflies and meadow-sweet
Follow the banks of ‘The Wandle’
Allowing what is hidden and not heard
Behind posted iron railings
To be noted, found on a map, imagined
Its very name conjures up the river’s journey
Drawing one into its currents and flows
A place of beauty where time seems slow
Rippling the edges of thought, living as a space,
Exploration, given by inclusion and exclusion
Forever to ‘wandle along’ under the sky
Between the gaps in the real
And what finds itself from what
Came before in experience and words.
Love Mary x
The River Wandle is the largest river of the south southwest sector of London, England. Its name is thought to derive from the community around its mouth, Wandsworth. About 9 miles long, it passes through the London Boroughs of Croydon, Sutton, Merton, and Wandsworth to join the River Thames on the Tideway..
Mouth: River Thamesnn
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 7:01 AM UTC
"Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun."
In valleys of springs and rivers,
By Ony and Teme and Clun,
The country for easy livers,
The quietest under the sun,
We still had sorrows to lighten,
One could not be always glad,
And lads knew trouble at Knighton
When I was a Knighton lad.
By bridges that Thames runs under,
In London, the town built ill,
'Tis sure small matter for wonder
If sorrow is with one still.
And if as a lad grows older
The troubles he bears are more,
He carries his griefs on a shoulder
That handselled them long before.
Where shall one halt to deliver
This luggage I'd lief set down?
Not Thames, not Teme is the river,
Nor London nor Knighton the town:
'Tis a long way further than Knighton,
A quieter place than Clun,
Where doomsday may thunder and lighten
And little 'twill matter to one.
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Never until the mankind making
Bird beast and flower
Fathering and all humbling darkness
Tells with silence the last light breaking
And the still hour
Is come of the sea tumbling in harness
And I must enter again the round
Zion of the water bead
And the synagogue of the ear of corn
Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound
Or sow my salt seed
In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn
The majesty and burning of the child's death.
I shall not ******
The mankind of her going with a grave truth
Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath
With any further
Elegy of innocence and youth.
Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
Robed in the long friends,
The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
Secret by the unmourning water
Of the riding Thames.
After the first death, there is no other.
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I
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And what remains to us of thee?
No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,
And what remains to us of thee?
And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are chill and cold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?
Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?
II
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This modern world hath need of thee.
No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
For Faun and nymph are old and grey,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This is the land where liberty
Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,
This modern world hath need of thee!
A land of ancient chivalry
Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
This England lacks some stronger lay,
This modern world hath need of thee!
Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!
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