Poems that make you shiver

[ivocaliban]

A few more modern fellows who give me shivers in an entirely different way:


The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.​

-Theodore Roethke




Dream Song 14

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) "Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no
Inner Resources." I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as Achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into the mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.​

-John Berryman




beasts bounding through time--

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward
us
impossibly.​

-Charles Bukowski

 

[Wombat]

WINTERHYRN


Is this the womb from which the world will be reborn?
This shrouding of thick and silky grey covering clouds?
Harvest is gone, so the time of Saturn arrives
And another sad year sees its end;
Samhain is in my blood.
You, Mother, must now await your husband's warm return,
Sitting, waiting, all blanketed in.
No sounds of the children now; they've gone elsewhere.
But now Hecate, trivisaged and dark,
Rules the hour which used to be yours and yours alone.
Then the stars held their breath.
Then the Walls gave way.
Now there is uncheering cold in the bones with no relief at hand.
The season of patience, hope, and stillness
Has given way to the long, cruel, and evil-iron days
During which all is dead.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

Now dear children, pay attention.
I am the voice from the pillow
I have brought you something;
I tore it from my chest.
With this heart I have the power
to keep you from your sleep*.
I sing until the day awakens;
A bright light on the sky.
My heart burns!

They come for you in the night,
Demons, genies, black faeries.
Creeping out of the celler-shaft
They want to peek under your covers.

Now dear children, pay attention.
I am the voice from the pillow.
I have brought you something;
A bright light on the sky.
My heart burns!

They come for you in the night
And steal your small, hot tears
Waiting until the moon awakens
To drip them into my cold veins.

Now dear children, pay attention.
I am the voice from the pillow.
I sing until the day awakens;
A bright light on the sky.
My heart burns!

* literally, "to blackmail your eyelids."


EDIT: The Friendly's Recruiting Song from Soldier, Ask Not. It's in my sig but I'll probably change it soon so here it is:

Soldier, ask not now, or ever,
Where to war your banners go.
Anarch's legions all surround us.
Strike! and do not count the blow!

Glory, honor, praise and profit,
Are but toys of tinsel worth.
Render up your work, unasking,
Leave the human clay to earth.

Blood and sorrow, pain unending,
Are the portion of us all.
Grasp the naked sword, opposing,
Gladly in the battle fall.

So shall we, anointed soldiers,
Stand at last before the Throne,
Baptized in our wounds, red-flowing,
Sealed unto our Lord, alone!
​

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Yeah, but I could see Christina Ricci doing a film of the poem

Gah! Get it out of my brain! Get it out of my brain!

The Auld Grump, actually so can I and it's not that bad...

 

[Prince of Happiness]

By Sunao (1887-1926), it's a jizei or death poem that one gives in your final moments. Funny how something like dying can make everything else seem trivial:

"Spitting blood

clears up reality

and dream alike."

 

[Sephiroth no Miko]

There are a great many poems already mentioned that I like-- The Bells (Poe), Dolores (Swinburne), Destruction of Sennacherib (Byron), If (Kipling)-- just to name a few but none have haunted me as deeply as this one (original is written in Hebrew):

Out of Three or Four People in a Room
Yehuda Amichai

Out of three or four people in a room
One always stands at the window.
Has to see the evil among thorns
And the fires on the hill.
And how people who went out whole,
Are returned in the evening
Like small change to their homes.

Out of three or four people in a room
One always stands at the window.
His hair dark above his thoughts.
Words stand behind him.
Before him, voices straying without a kit bag,
Hearts without rations, prophecies without water,
And big stones returned
But left sealed like letters with no
Address and no receiver.