True Poems, with a Morrissey flavour

At First Sight

'Love at first sight,' some say, misnaming
Discovery of twinned helplessness
Against the huge tug of procreation.

But friendship at first sight? This also
Catches fiercely at the surprised heart
So that the cheek blanches and then blushes.

Robert Graves
 
i just find it dumb as shit. if god is god, then he's in everything.
and is everything
to put his hand on someones knee would be some sort of autoerotica. does god turn himself on? now that would be a question worth asking. but i get what moz was going for and i just think it's dumb as shit.

‘The Angels Are Voyeurs’

God is a tender pervert and the angels are voyeurs
Watching us forever, their vision never blurs
They make us then forget us for a hundred million years
And then by chance they glance at us and something in them stirs
They find us so provocative, so weak, so full of pride
Our cleverness, our nakedness, fills them with delight
The way we hold our coffee cups, the way we pick our words
God is a tender pervert and his angels
His angels are voyeurs

And when the tender pervert is too busy to admire us
He sends his angels down to pass amongst us and desire us
He gives them little notebooks where they note each quirk and boast
Our foolish pride and pompousness turn him on the most
When we're throwing temper tantrums
When we're giving up the ghost
The pervert keeps his distance
But his angels, his angels move in close

It intoxicates the Spaceman, watching how we thrill ourselves
Not by sex but by devising new ways to kill ourselves
He sees the way we tamper with the things we most depend on
The danger stands his hair on end and gives him a hard-on
He calls his angels down to watch that slut the world get hers
God is a tender pervert and his angels
His angels are voyeurs

The pervert and his angels hide amongst the stars and watch
And as we blow ourselves to bits the angels pump their cocks
Their semen flows across the sky and forms new milky wheys
And somewhere in some galaxy in less than seven days
They make a planet more curvaceous and much sexier than ours
Full of bigger sinners
More worthy of voyeurs

 
and is everything


‘The Angels Are Voyeurs’

God is a tender pervert and the angels are voyeurs
Watching us forever, their vision never blurs
They make us then forget us for a hundred million years
And then by chance they glance at us and something in them stirs
They find us so provocative, so weak, so full of pride
Our cleverness, our nakedness, fills them with delight
The way we hold our coffee cups, the way we pick our words
God is a tender pervert and his angels
His angels are voyeurs

And when the tender pervert is too busy to admire us
He sends his angels down to pass amongst us and desire us
He gives them little notebooks where they note each quirk and boast
Our foolish pride and pompousness turn him on the most
When we're throwing temper tantrums
When we're giving up the ghost
The pervert keeps his distance
But his angels, his angels move in close

It intoxicates the Spaceman, watching how we thrill ourselves
Not by sex but by devising new ways to kill ourselves
He sees the way we tamper with the things we most depend on
The danger stands his hair on end and gives him a hard-on
He calls his angels down to watch that slut the world get hers
God is a tender pervert and his angels
His angels are voyeurs

The pervert and his angels hide amongst the stars and watch
And as we blow ourselves to bits the angels pump their cocks
Their semen flows across the sky and forms new milky wheys
And somewhere in some galaxy in less than seven days
They make a planet more curvaceous and much sexier than ours
Full of bigger sinners
More worthy of voyeurs


Hey guys
I really don't appreciate you talking about my Saviour this way, so can you please be done now?
 
Hey guys
I really don't appreciate you talking about my Saviour this way, so can you please be done now?
Sorry, Ballerina. Please bear with. I don't think people have been disrespecting God as human. It's just that sexuality and creativity, divine and humdrum, do connect, and this has always been thought, and talked about, and Morrissey doesn't ignore it either but adds the feels. Many ancient Egyptians even believed one of their Gods created the world by ejaculating - which isn't completely inaccurate, even for humans and fellow creatures, to this day, is it? https://face2faceafrica.com/article...blic-masturbation-ceremonies-in-ancient-egypt

And Patti Smith recites the poem Spell, a rapturous epiphany about omnipresent holiness.
(what are we ever going to do without YouTube, if?)

I expect we will move on . Maybe you'll redirect us? :blushing:
 
Buffalo Bill's
by ee cummings

Buffalo Bill ’s
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus

he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death

*****************************************************

i feel like moz could use the last two lines as the heading for his inevitable morrissey central post when terrance stamp or alain delon die (heaven forbid!!)
 
I'm not sure what you're asking. For the believer, Godly = the Church: the Church teaches with the divine authority of the Holy Spirit. God can't sin, so I think it's a cheeky & amusing line to ask God whether he ever felt like sinning when someone put their hand on his knee. Am I taking it the wrong way?

totally cheeky & hilarious! As we can be sure was M’s intention. But buried in sadness, which where lies the genius.
 
John Berryman, Dreamsong 1

Huffy Henry hid the day,
unappeasable Henry sulked.
I see his point,—a trying to put things over.
It was the thought that they thought
they could do it made Henry wicked & away.
But he should have come out and talked.

All the world like a woolen lover
once did seem on Henry's side.
Then came a departure.
Thereafter nothing fell out as it might or ought.
I don't see how Henry, pried
open for all the world to see, survived.

What he has now to say is a long
wonder the world can bear & be.
Once in a sycamore I was glad
all at the top, and I sang.
Hard on the land wears the strong sea
and empty grows every bed.
 

The Geranium​

by theodore roethke


When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine—
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she’d lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half—smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried—out, she creaked like a tulip.)

The things she endured!—
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.

Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me—
And that was scary—
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash can,
I said nothing.

But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.
 
Sorry, Ballerina. Please bear with. I don't think people have been disrespecting God as human. It's just that sexuality and creativity, divine and humdrum, do connect, and this has always been thought, and talked about, and Morrissey doesn't ignore it either but adds the feels. Many ancient Egyptians even believed one of their Gods created the world by ejaculating - which isn't completely inaccurate, even for humans and fellow creatures, to this day, is it? https://face2faceafrica.com/article...blic-masturbation-ceremonies-in-ancient-egypt

And Patti Smith recites the poem Spell, a rapturous epiphany about omnipresent holiness.
(what are we ever going to do without YouTube, if?)

I expect we will move on . Maybe you'll redirect us? :blushing:

Idk let's just talk about poetry instead, cause God is holy, not human and not sexual. So let's talk about poetry without sexualising everything

Here's some poems of mine

Strings of Lights ・01/16/23
Strings of lights are blurry
And I'm blinking in a hurry

These lights, they cannot fall
Tears above them all

My eyes no longer see
Just colour in front of me

Already fuzzy lights
Fading shapes from my sight

Colour: in drops it lands
I put my face into my hands

But now I don't even have that freedom
My tears have pushed themselves down

Pushed themselves down, once in a while
My tears don't even know how to fall

They used to be like ancient friends
But now we're estranged, and I'm at both ends

The ends of happiness are frayed
But all my tears seem to have strayed

Strayed too far away
Now emotion has no say
 
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In Piles
------------

By me01/24/23

Snow falls
Overhead
Trees bear
Trees fed

Fed with snow
Branches white
Not a single thing
Is green, in sight

Snow falls,
On the ground
Piling up
Without a sound

Without a sound
It carries snow

The ground, it carries
And no one knows

Snow falls
Overhead
Pages turned
Pages read

Read to feed
Feed a soul
A soul carrying
What no one knows

Snow falls
On my head
In piles
In shreds

*In shreds
*In a garden
*Intrigue
Freeze and harden

Higher and higher
Watch it fall
In piles
They're so tall

Grass shows
No matter the height
The snow stands tall
But the grass is bright

Minor Reference to
* In Shreds, The Chameleons
* Perfume Garden, The Chameleons
* Intrigue in Tangiers, The Chameleons

Thinking of omitting the last four lines- what do you guys think?
 
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Sorry, Ballerina. Please bear with. I don't think people have been disrespecting God as human. It's just that sexuality and creativity, divine and humdrum, do connect, and this has always been thought, and talked about, and Morrissey doesn't ignore it either but adds the feels. Many ancient Egyptians even believed one of their Gods created the world by ejaculating - which isn't completely inaccurate, even for humans and fellow creatures, to this day, is it? https://face2faceafrica.com/article...blic-masturbation-ceremonies-in-ancient-egypt

And Patti Smith recites the poem Spell, a rapturous epiphany about omnipresent holiness.
(what are we ever going to do without YouTube, if?)

I expect we will move on . Maybe you'll redirect us? :blushing:


Thanks, I didn’t know about that ancient Egyptian creation story.


And Patti’s reading is lovely, you do know it’s written by Ginsberg, 1955!

But it’s not a new understanding of reality
It’s all there in this Sufi proverb …

Wherever the eye falls, there is the face of God.”


Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!
The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand
and asshole holy!
Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an
angel!
The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is
holy as you my soul are holy!
The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!
Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy
Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady
holy the unknown buggered and suffering
beggars holy the hideous human angels!
Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks
of the grandfathers of Kansas!
Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana
hipsters peace & junk & drums!
Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets!
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the
middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion
Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!
Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &
Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow
Holy Istanbul!
Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!
Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations
holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the
abyss!
Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!
bodies! suffering! magnanimity!
Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent
kindness of the soul!



and this sax solo is the holiest of poems …



Marshall Allen
 
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Thanks, I didn’t know about that ancient Egyptian creation story.

And Patti’s reading is lovely, you do know it’s written by Ginsberg, 1955!

But it’s not a new understanding of reality
It’s all there in this Sufi proverb …

Wherever the eye falls, there is the face of God.”...

I love Sufi stuff. That's a sax solo wild enough for whirling dervishes!

2 by Miroslav Holub, a 20th century Czech immunologist poet. They still resonate, and contain enough misery, if a little short on eternal light.

EiamqbmU8AA5SKm




The fly

She sat on a willow-trunk
watching
part of the battle of Crecy,
the shouts,
the gasps,
the groans,
the tramping and the tumbling.

During the fourteenth charge
of the French cavalry
she mated
with a brown-eyed male fly
from Vadincourt.

She rubbed her legs together
as she sat on a disembowelled horse
meditating
on the immortality of flies.

With relief she alighted
on the blue tongue
of the Duke of Clervaux.

When silence settled
and only the whisper of decay
softly circled the bodies

and only
a few arms and legs
still twitched jerkily under the trees,

she began to lay her eggs

on the single eye
of Johann Uhr,
the Royal Armourer.

And thus it was
that she was eaten by a swift
fleeing
from the fires of Estrees.

by Miroslav Holub
Czech; trans. George Theiner
 
Richard Corey
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.


*****************************************

Pediatric Suicide
by Franz Wright

Being who you are is not a disorder.

Being unloved is not a psychiatric disorder.

I can’t find being born in the diagnostic manual.

I can’t find being born to a mother incapable of touching you.

I can’t find being born on the shock treatment table.

Being offered affection unqualified safety and respect when and only when you score dope for your father is not a diagnosis.

Putting your head down and crying your way through elementary school is not a mental illness, on the contrary.

And seeing a psychiatrist for fifteen minutes per month

some subdoormat psychiatrist writing for just what you need lots more drugs

to pay his mortgage Lexus lease and child’s future tuition while pondering which wine to have for dinner is not effective
treatment for friendless and permanent sadness.

Child your sick smile is the border of sleep.

Abandoned naked and thrown to the world is not a disease.

She was unhappy just as I was only not as lucky.
 

The Hollow Men


Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy



I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
 
dreamyneil posted this on his old twitter. it's the sort of thing that made me love him beyond just his obvious charms. dreamyneil ALWAYS knows whats good. :hearteyes: :love: it's by elizabeth barrett browning and it makes me think of the lines "something went wrong and i know im not to blame" from "used to be a sweet boy". theres some so poetic and beautifully tragic about those lines to me, about something just going wrong, some glitch in the universe, and nothing to be done.

________________________________________________________DewjwZ9X4AAe-dT.jpg
 
from Dolores
(Notre-Dame des Sept Douleurs)


For the crown of our life as it closes
Is darkness, the fruit thereof dust;
No thorns go as deep as a rose's,
And love is more cruel than lust.
Time turns the old days to derision,
Our loves into corpses or wives;
And marriage and death and division
Make barren our lives.

Algernon Swinburne
 
 

The Hollow Men


Mistah Kurtz-he dead
A penny for the Old Guy



I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us-if at all-not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.


II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer-

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom


III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.


IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.


V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.


Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
by T.S. Elliot :thumb: Brings us down to size.
I'm not sure what you're asking. For the believer, Godly = the Church: the Church teaches with the divine authority of the Holy Spirit. God can't sin, so I think it's a cheeky & amusing line to ask God whether he ever felt like sinning when someone put their hand on his knee. Am I taking it the wrong way?
What about believers who don't have and never had a church, whose religious teachings are transmitted in other ways? And even in Christian denominations, beliefs differ? Quakers, who've had a disproportionate influence on society, just need to sit silently in a room for direct revelation. The Varieties of Religious Experience, as William James put it, perhaps?

Beyond​

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas,
language,
even the phrase "each other"
doesn't make any sense.

- by Rumi (also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, and theologian. He was born on September 30, 1207, in Balkh, which is now in Afghanistan. His family fled from the Mongol invasion and settled in Konya, Turkey, where Rumi lived for most of his life. Rumi was a prolific writer and his most famous work is the Masnavi, a six-volume poem that explores the mystical teachings of Sufism).
 
What about believers who don't have and never had a church, whose religious teachings are transmitted in other ways? And even in Christian denominations, beliefs differ? Quakers, who've had a disproportionate influence on society, just need to sit silently in a room for direct revelation. The Varieties of Religious Experience, as William James put it, perhaps?

If someone isn't a Christian, or is a liberal Christian, then I'm pretty sure they'd take the lyric as amusing, not blasphemous. My original comment was made from the perspective of Catholicism, which is my own tradition and of which (I assume) Morrissey is writing. The song is sung from the point of view of someone who has "explosive kegs between his legs" and is "so very tired of doing the right thing." By asking God if this kind of thing ever happened to him, I think he's slyly mocking the orthodox concept of a God who either as the Father reigns remote and sexless, or who as the Son exudes a saccharine chastity.

2NW-157__15021__14831.1405697908.jpg
 
If someone isn't a Christian, or is a liberal Christian, then I'm pretty sure they'd take the lyric as amusing, not blasphemous. My original comment was made from the perspective of Catholicism, which is my own tradition and of which (I assume) Morrissey is writing. The song is sung from the point of view of someone who has "explosive kegs between his legs" and is "so very tired of doing the right thing." By asking God if this kind of thing ever happened to him, I think he's slyly mocking the orthodox concept of a God who either as the Father reigns remote and sexless, or who as the Son exudes a saccharine chastity.

2NW-157__15021__14831.1405697908.jpg
jesus looks like richard oakes there :love:

e9ce161ff8dde69751c2847e9e1258fe.jpg
 
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