Favorite Poems

Working Man - Poem by K.J. Jackson
Another Day
Another dollar
That's what I get
For, I'm blue collar
Working hard
For all the bosses
Sitting upstairs
In the office

Grab a coffee
On the way
do the same stuff
every day
nothing changes
It's routine
That's the way
It's always been

I am just a working man
Doing the best job that I can
Nine to Five, or Eight to Four
Do my eight and out the door
Loading trucks to hit the road
Get 'em out with a full load
Doing just the best I can
I am just a working man

Twenty minutes
and two breaks
That is all
The time I take
Sneak a smoke
When I can
This is the life
Of a working man

Old and rusted
two tone truck
Always busted
Just my luck
Working hard
To make a dollar
It's the lot
of a blue collar

I am just a working man
Doing the best job that I can
Nine to Five, or Eight to Four
Do my eight and out the door
Loading trucks to hit the road
Get 'em out with a full load
Doing just the best I can
I am just a working man

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There once was a girl from Nantucket,

Wait....

Never mind...

 

Or the Man from Kent......but thats bent

Sorry G its all PMs fault

 

or see that girl dressed in red she===never mind that too

 

monkey madness!

 

Kipling
If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

 

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's s time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down


While often thought of as an anti-war song, it is not.

Stephen Stills was inspired to write the track because of the "Sunset Strip riots" in November 1966. The trouble, which started during the early stages of the counterculture era, was in the same year Buffalo Springfield had become the house band at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles.

It was within this period that local residents and businesses had become increasingly annoyed by late-night traffic congestion caused by crowds of young people going to clubs and music venues along the Strip. In response they lobbied the city to pass local ordinances that stopped loitering and enforced a strict curfew on the Strip after 10pm. However young music fans felt the new laws were an infringement of their civil rights.

On Saturday, November 12, 1966, fliers were distributed on Sunset Strip inviting people to join demonstrations later that day. Several of Los Angeles' rock radio stations also announced that a rally would be held outside the Pandora's Box club on the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Crescent Heights. That evening as many as 1,000 young demonstrators, including celebrities like Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda (who was handcuffed by police), gathered to protest against the enforcement of the curfew laws. Although the rallies began peacefully, trouble eventually broke out among the protesters and police. The unrest continued the next night and periodically throughout the rest of November and December forcing some clubs to shut down within weeks.

So, an anti-big nanny state protest song.

 

So, do we have an official Dirty Limericks thread lying hereabouts? Perhaps in the Inferno?

I have a few limericks
writ tawdry.
Also irreverent, indecent, and bawdy.
And perverted, obscene, and (if you know what I mean)
perhaps just a little bit naughty...

 

@UncleMorgan limericks of any kind are good. the title is favorite poems. Limericks are a form of poetry. ... give it your best shot

 

Eons ago I was chatting in a forum where limericks were being bandied about. Some guy posted that he never wanted to see another limerick about brass balls, a hermit named Dave, buckets, or Nantucket.

Accordingly, I instantly wrote and posted the following ditty:

A hermit named Dave from Nantucket
kept eleven brass balls in a bucket.
He used to have twelve
but, amusing himself,
he lost a ben-wa where he stuck it.


The guy never did write back,

 

There once was a lady of Niger ,
that smiled as she rode on a tiger,
coming back from the ride was the lady inside,
and the smile on the face of the tiger.

 

Here's one for the Preppers:

In the wake of pandemic disaster
there's no way of getting dead faster
than trying to steal
a Prepper's last meal
when he's developed a taste for trespasser.

 

The Roman Centurion's Song

Legate, I had the news last night --my cohort ordered home
By ships to Portus Itius and thence by road to Rome.
I've marched the companies aboard, the arms are stowed below:
Now let another take my sword. Command me not to go!

I've served in Britain forty years, from Vectis to the Wall,
I have none other home than this, nor any life at all.
Last night I did not understand, but, now the hour draws near
That calls me to my native land, I feel that land is here.

Here where men say my name was made, here where my work
was done;
Here where my dearest dead are laid--my wife--my wife and
son;
Here where time, custom, grief and toil, age, memory, service,
love,
Have rooted me in British soil. Ah, how can I remove?

For me this land, that sea, these airs, those folk and fields surffice.
What purple Southern pomp can match our changeful Northern
skies,
Black with December snows unshed or pearled with August
haze--
The clanging arch of steel-grey March, or June's long-lighted
days?

You'll follow widening Rhodanus till vine an olive lean
Aslant before the sunny breeze that sweeps Nemausus clean
To Arelate's triple gate; but let me linger on,
Here where our stiff-necked British oaks confront Euroclydon!

You'll take the old Aurelian Road through shore-descending
pines
Where, blue as any peacock's neck, the Tyrrhene Ocean shines.
You'll go where laurel crowns are won, but--will you e'er forget
The scent of hawthorn in the sun, or bracken in the wet?

Let me work here for Britain's sake--at any task you will--
A marsh to drain, a road to make or native troops to drill.
Some Western camp (I know the Pict) or granite Border keep,
Mid seas of heather derelict, where our old messmates sleep.

Legate, I come to you in tears--My cohort ordered home!
I've served in Britain forty years. What should I do in Rome?
Here is my heart, my soul, my mind--the only life I know.
I cannot leave it all behind. Command me not to go!

 

Fine write, that.

 

Another Kipling... best military poet that I have read...

 

The White Man's Burden
1899

THE UNITED STATES AND THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS
Take up the White man's burden --
Send forth the best ye breed --
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild --
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Take up the White Man's burden --
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times mad plain.
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden --
The savage wars of peace --
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden --
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper --
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go make them with your living,
And mark them with your dead!

Take up the White man's burden --
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard --
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: --
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
"Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden --
Ye dare not stoop to less --
Nor call too loud on freedom
To cloak your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your Gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden --
Have done with childish days --
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Broken Oar
From A Book Of Sonnets
Once upon Iceland's solitary strand
A poet wandered with his book and pen,
Seeking some final word, some sweet Amen,
Wherewith to close the volume in his hand.
The billows rolled and plunged upon the sand,
The circling sea-gulls swept beyond his ken,
And from the parting cloud-rack now and then
Flashed the red sunset over sea and land.
Then by the billows at his feet was tossed
A broken oar; and carved thereon he read,
"Oft was I weary, when I toiled at thee";
And like a man, who findeth what was lost,
He wrote the words, then lifted up his head,
And flung his useless pen into the sea.