The poetry/quotation/song lyric thread

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Theres a famous american poet (i think) talking at the end of this clip, and a few seconds at the intro. I dont know who he is, but he sounds cool! - can someone tell me the guys name please?

Canibus - Poet Laureate II
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I80ZVcYPuek[/youtube]

Calexico - "Sunken Waltz"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nQTFjMravM[/youtube]

Washed my face in the rivers of empire
made my bed from a cardboard crate
down in the city of quartz
no news, no new regrets
tossed a susan b. over my shoulder
and prayed it would rain and rain
submerge the whole western states
call it a last fair deal
with an american seal
and corporate hand shake
take the story of carpenter mike
dropped his tools and his keys and left
and headed out as far as he could
past the cities and gated neighborhoods
he slept ‘neath the stars
wrote down what he dreamt
and he built a machine
for no one to see
then took flight, first light
of new morning

Neko Case - "Dirty Knife"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAG-1-8efMw[/youtube]

So suddenly the madness came
With its whiskered, wolven, ether pangs
He locked the door
And shut the blinds
He laid down on the floor and he slept like iron
While the dirty knife worked deep
Into his spine
The blood runs crazy
The blood runs crazy

Cascading letters pool on the stairs
The grass is high, the cats are wild
You can't even touch the tip of their tails
And the blood runs crazy with giant strides

He sang nursery rhymes to paralyze
The wolves that eddy out the corner of his eyes
But they squared him frozen where he stood
In the glow of the furniture piled high for firewood

And the blood runs crazy with giant strides
And the woodsman failed to breech those fangs in time
So they dragged him through the underbrush
Wearing three winter coats and a dirty knife

Meat Puppets - "Oh, Me"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W327T_6KB_Y[/youtube]

if i had to lose a mile
if i had to touch feelings
i would lose my soul
the way i do

i don't have to think
i only have to do it
the results are always perfect
and that's old news

would you like to hear my voice
sweetened with emotion
invented at your birth?

i can't see the end of me
my whole expanse I cannot see
i formulate infinity
and store it deep inside of me

Wilco - "Hummingbird"
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6-hIczcC-A[/youtube]

His goal in life was to be an echo
Riding alone, town after town, toll after toll
A fixed bayonet through the great southwest to forget her

She appears in his dreams
But in his car and in his arms
A dream can mean anything
A cheap sunset on a television set can upset her
But he never could

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

His goal in life was to be an echo
The type of sound that floats around and then back down
Like a feather
But in the deep chrome canyons of the loudest Manhattans
No one could hear him
Or anything

So he slept on a mountain
In a sleeping bag underneath the stars
He would lie awake and count them
And the gray fountain spray of the great Milky Way
Would never let him
Die alone

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

Remember to remember me
Standing still in your past
Floating fast like a hummingbird

A hummingbird
A hummingbird

What a coincidence! I thought about posting this, and right now (as I'm writing this line) it comes from the radio...

To celebrate the winter solstice, a little more exotic song
- CMX: Talvipäivänseisaus http://www.cmx.fi/levyt/index.php?album=aura#9

And my translation - CMX: Winter Solstice

snow in every direction
and not a road anywhere
I am going back
where I started from
the silver of the moon glows
lighting the cold skies
I am gazing at the trek
trying to estimate the distance

did I finally get going
towards the North of the legends
that is always far away
that won't meet you on the roads

this year the crop will be lost
the cattle won't yield milk
embryos will freeze in the wombs
and the love for life will die
on the eastern bank of the river
I get suffocated by my cough
embracing the coldness to keep warm

now past the stairs and the well
through the park, and if it's below zero [Centigrade, ie. freezing]
even past the observatory
and through the woods, over the rock
to the spring where
water is black and open
there lies a pale boy
whose mouth spills
child's life to the water

"Hands feel strange, eyes feel like somebody else's,
thoughts feel worn out, words feel said to pieces.
Why did you start, why did you go, beyond the border to the outside,
far from the lands of people, away to the foot of a mountain.
Holy place, every place.
Nobody dares visit here.
Here a golden sister steps by the stream, into the stream."

Bad poetry

Early days after stopping AS systemising:


Hang

hey just to hang
when something is said, not
to run in the cave and delve and check
instead to hang, chill, wait
until maybe my NT stuff
will give something back,
maybe not

I find myself laughing, all the time. I'm happy. I might be in this
game.

http://unlearningasperger.blogspot.com/ ... arted.html

Much madness is divinest sense, to a discerning eye; much sense, the starkest madness.
--Emily Dickinson

Quotes on Music

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

I think music in itself is healing. It's an explosive expression of humanity. It's something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we're from, everyone loves music.


Since music is the only language with the contradictory attributes of being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being comparable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man.

Music is the only sensual pleasure without vice.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossile to be silent.


A lot of music today is so serious. Lighten up! As entertainers, we're not descendants of theologians. We're descendants of court jesters.

An old favourite (both the poem and the poet )

W B Yeats: "A Coat"

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

Sylvia Plath "Channel Crossing"

On storm-struck deck, wind sirens caterwaul;
With each tilt, shock and shudder, our blunt ship
Cleaves forward into fury; dark as anger,
Waves wallop, assaulting the stubborn hull.
Flayed by spray, we take the challenge up,
Grip the rail, squint ahead, and wonder how much longer

Such force can last; but beyond, the neutral view
Shows, rank on rank, the hungry seas advancing.
Below, rocked havoc-sick, voyagers lie
Retching in bright orange basins; a refugee
Sprawls, hunched in black, among baggage, wincing
Under the strict mask of his agony.

Far from the sweet stench of that perilous air
In which our comrades are betrayed, we freeze
And marvel at the smashing nonchalance
Of nature : what better way to test taut fiber
Than against this onslaught, these casual blasts of ice
That wrestle with us like angels; the mere chance

Of making harbor through this racketing flux
Taunts us to valor. Blue sailors sang that our journey
Would be full of sun, white gulls, and water drenched
With radiance, peacock-colored; instead, bleak rocks
Jutted early to mark our going, while sky
Curded over with clouds and chalk cliffs blanched

In sullen light of the inauspicious day.
Now, free, by hazard's quirk, from the common ill
Knocking our brothers down, we strike a stance
Most mock-heroic, to cloak our waking awe
At this rare rumpus which no man can control :
Meek and proud both fall; stark violence

Lays all walls waste; private estates are torn,
Ransacked in the public eye. We forsake
Our lone luck now, compelled by bond, by blood,
To keep some unsaid pact; perhaps concern
Is helpless here, quite extra, yet we must make
The gesture, bend and hold the prone man's head.
And so we sail toward cities, streets and homes
Of other men, where statues celebrate
Brave acts played out in peace, in war; all dangers
End : green shores appear; we assume our names,
Our luggage, as docks halt our brief epic; no debt
Survives arrival; we walk the plank with strangers.

I'm sorry if this seems disrespectful, but my Dad used to say it to me (he was a big Goons fan), and it still makes me smile when I think about it.

Spike Milligan, after Felicia Hemans (1793 - 1835)...

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled.

Twit.

Hehehe, I like that.

Here's another 'burning deck'

The boy stood on the burning deck,
His feet were covered in blisters.
He had no trousers of his own
And so he wore his sister's.

ANON

Ooh, I love Sylvia Plath! I heard there's going to be a new movie version of the Bell Jar. But apparently Julia Stiles is starring in it... I can't decide who's worse, Julia or Gwyneth Paltrow.

"Imagine", John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Ahhhh. Spike Milligan - recognised for his off-the-wall comedy. Sadly, his poetry has not had the recognition it deserves.

Love Song

If I could write words
Like leaves on an Autumn forest floor
What a bonfire my letters would make.
If I could speak words of water
You would drown when I said
'I love you'.

Oberon (written during a nervous breakdown)

The flowers in my garden
grow down.
Their colour is pain.
Their fragrance sorrow.
Into my eyes grow their roots
feeling for tears.
To nourish the black
hopeless rose
within me.

Tempo

I have a sense of future,
I feel naked in today,
let me hurry into tomorrow,
it gives promise of perhaps.
Let me escape these cloying yesterdays,
I sense a better perfume,
Let me wash away these footprints,
I don't want people to know where I've been,
I want them to guess where I am.


I could go on - but I won't... lol.

I agree, notlurkingwell - have you read his poetry as illustrated by his strange, surrealistic little drawings? They seem to add something to the words - I can see the ones for "Love Song" in my mind as I type.

Yes, I thought it might be you who posted that version of it.