True Poems, with a Morrissey flavour

[goinghome]

Since Morrissey's lyrics tend to be poetic and thoughtful, how about sharing verses like that here?

To start, does this one make the grade?

[Like a white stone]​

Anna Akhmatova - 1889-1966

Translated from the Russian by Babette Deutsch and Avrahm Yarmolinsky

Like a white stone deep in a draw-well lying,
As hard and clear, a memory lies in me.
I cannot strive nor have I heart for striving:
It is such pain and yet such ecstasy.
It seems to me that someone looking closely
Into my eyes would see it, patent, pale.
And, seeing, would grow sadder and more thoughtful
Than one who listens to a bitter tale.
The ancient gods changed men to things, but left them
A consciousness that smoldered endlessly,
That splendid sorrows might endure forever.
And you are changed into a memory.
- https://poets.org/poem/white-stone

 

[nicky wire's legs]

Obsession

Great woods, you frighten me like cathedrals;
You roar like the organ; and in our cursed hearts,
Rooms of endless mourning where old death-rattles sound,
Respond the echoes of your De profundis.

I hate you, Ocean! your bounding and your tumult,
My mind finds them within itself; that bitter laugh
Of the vanquished man, full of sobs and insults,
I hear it in the immense laughter of the sea.

How I would like you, Night! without those stars
Whose light speaks a language I know!
For I seek emptiness, darkness, and nudity!

But the darkness is itself a canvas
Upon which live, springing from my eyes by thousands,
Beings with understanding looks, who have vanished.

-- charles baudelaire

 

[Optimistic Fool]

just dropping one right now- I’ll post more when I’m not busy
First, its inspired by this beautiful song called My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon by The Siddeleys.

With Every Sense ・ 01/28/23
By myself
———————————
Slightly
A drift of springtime air
Floats through
And I wish that January
Was something else
When everything smells like spring
And I'm so jealous of my past self

The way she sings 'South End'
It drives my heart insane
That's where the nostalgia likes to attack
And summer's killing my brain
There's no genie
Certainly

With everything in me
I want summertime
Just like everything breathes
Its air
I can smell open windows
In every song I hear
And with every sense I think of you
And I want you even more

 

[nicky wire's legs]

just dropping one right now- I’ll post more when I’m not busy
First, its inspired by this beautiful song called My Favourite Wet Wednesday Afternoon by The Siddeleys.

With Every Sense ・ 01/28/23
By myself
———————————
Slightly
A drift of springtime air
Floats through
And I wish that January
Was something else
When everything smells like spring
And I'm so jealous of my past self

The way she sings 'South End'
It drives my heart insane
That's where the nostalgia likes to attack
And summer's killing my brain
There's no genie
Certainly

With everything in me
I want summertime
Just like everything breathes
Its air
I can smell open windows
In every song I hear
And with every sense I think of you
And I want you even more

what do you know?! someone here wrote a poem that is actually a poem! as opposed to, say, exhibitionist desperation or pathetic deepseated rage pretending to be a poem.

very nice!!

 

[Optimistic Fool]

what do you know?! someone here wrote a poem that is actually a poem! as opposed to, say, exhibitionist desperation or pathetic deepseated rage pretending to be a poem.

very nice!!

Thank you : )
I'll be posting some more later don't worry

 

[goinghome]

Prisms​

by Laura Riding Jackson - 1901-1991

What is beheld through glass seems glass.

The quality of what I am
Encases what I am not,
Smooths the strange world.
I perceive it slowly
In my time,
In my material,
As my pride,
As my possession:
The vision is love.

When life crashes like a cracked pane,
Still shall I love
Even the slight grass and the patient dust.
Death also sees, though darkly,
And I must trust then as now
Only another kind of prism
Through which I may not put my hands to touch.
- https://poets.org/poem/prisms?mc_cid=b953179ead&mc_eid=fd068c9d7e

 

[Lucifer Sam]

Senex

Oh would I could subdue the flesh
Which sadly troubles me!
And then perhaps could view the flesh
As though I never knew the flesh
And merry misery.

To see the golden hiking girl
With wind about her hair,
The tennis-playing, biking girl,
The wholly-to-my-liking girl,
To see and not to care.

At sundown on my tricycle
I tour the Borough’s edge,
And icy as an icicle
See bicycle by bicycle
Stacked waiting in the hedge.

Get down from me! I thunder there,
You spaniels! Shut your jaws!
Your teeth are stuffed with underwear,
Suspenders torn asunder there
And buttocks in your paws!

Oh whip the dogs away my Lord,
They make me ill with lust.
Bend bare knees down to pray, my Lord,
Teach sulky lips to say, my Lord,
That flaxen hair is dust.

John Betjeman (1940)

 

[goinghome]

Breaking [News]​

by Noor Hindi

I’m not a poet anymore—
I’ve interviewed too many politicians.
All they care for is ghosts.
Breaking news, I’m breaking
up with my stupid shame.
I have dates on my calendar
just for f***ing. I do this
between my 9-5. Hello, hello.
I’m quieter than I seem.
I’m a man in a suit.
Please pass the damn hookah.
Please tell the magistrates
I’m tired of reporting.
My desire to fix this window is corrupt.
Your desire to call your looking
through this window
an act of social justice is corrupt.
At a protest, a white woman calls me fake news.
Okay, fine, I tell her back. I don’t smile
anymore. I do the job so well
I outcry the eagles. I outrun
the sad. I trouble
my brain into a blender
then hand you a cup.
My mother holds a butterfly
to the sky.
White winged glimmering mess.
Someone, please, snap a photo.
My shoes are drenched in blood.
- https://poets.org/poem/breaking-news-0?mc_cid=0718571e60&mc_eid=fd068c9d7e

 

[Optimistic Fool]

Breaking [News]​

Hopeless (Romantic)
・01/26/23・
I guess I'm feeling pretty hopeless
Could you tell?
I guess I'm sad but I'm doing well
Backwards across this road
And sideways - well, who knows?

If falling asleep is a fault,
Then what is crying?
I've committed a crime,
Thinking by lines
And they'll get me for it
I'll watch them torture it
My head
My love
My pride
Torture me
Mix it up inside
Bowl me down the alley
I'll hit all the pins

Yes, I'm living in opposite day
No! It wasn't supposed to go that way…

- yours truly

 

[nicky wire's legs]

Senex

Oh would I could subdue the flesh
Which sadly troubles me!
And then perhaps could view the flesh
As though I never knew the flesh
And merry misery.

To see the golden hiking girl
With wind about her hair,
The tennis-playing, biking girl,
The wholly-to-my-liking girl,
To see and not to care.

At sundown on my tricycle
I tour the Borough’s edge,
And icy as an icicle
See bicycle by bicycle
Stacked waiting in the hedge.

Get down from me! I thunder there,
You spaniels! Shut your jaws!
Your teeth are stuffed with underwear,
Suspenders torn asunder there
And buttocks in your paws!

Oh whip the dogs away my Lord,
They make me ill with lust.
Bend bare knees down to pray, my Lord,
Teach sulky lips to say, my Lord,
That flaxen hair is dust.

John Betjeman (1940)

I like the rhythm and visuals of this poem, although it's theme holds no partcular appeal to me. I like the line "the wholly to my liking girl" because it makes me think of nicky wire

So have you like always been oversexed or is it a particular set of life circumstances that leads you to being this way??

 

[Optimistic Fool]

I like the rhythm and visuals of this poem, although it's theme holds no partcular appeal to me.

I agree

 

[Lucifer Sam]

So have you like always been oversexed or is it a particular set of life circumstances that leads you to being this way??

I don't know, but what I like about the poem is that it's whimsical and devout at the same time. Morrissey's song Dear God Please Help Me has a similar flavor, exception the devotion is superficial. Betjeman is pious in asking God to take away his lust, while Morrissey succumbs to his, and has a line I found blasphemous when I was a believer, but can now appreciate for its irreverent hilarity: "then he motions to me | with his hand on my knee | Dear God, did this kind of thing happen to you?"

I think I might be in the minority, though: I prefer the live arrangement to the lush orchestral studio version.

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

I don't know, but what I like about the poem is that it's whimsical and devout at the same time. Morrissey's song Dear God Please Help Me has a similar flavor, exception the devotion is superficial. Betjeman is pious in asking God to take away his lust, while Morrissey succumbs to his, and has a line

I found blasphemous when I was a believer, but can now appreciate for its irreverent hilarity: "then he motions to me | with his hand on my knee | Dear God, did this kind of thing happen to you?"

Blasphemous because Morrissey suggests that
God has the same qualities as a human being or sins or desires too also? But if man is created in Gods image, then I guess it’s a fair question

I think I might be in the minority, though: I prefer the live arrangement to the lush orchestral studio version.

 

[Lucifer Sam]

Blasphemous because Morrissey suggests that
God has the same qualities as a human being or sins or desires too also? But if man is created in Gods image, then I guess it’s a fair question

It's definitely blasphemous from the standard of Catholic orthodoxy: Christ is said to share in our human nature but not our fallen nature. He can be tempted, being human, but being divine, he can't want to sin. God can only want and will the good. So it's funny to essentially ask Jesus if he ever felt like committing a sin—and a sin of flesh at that, for which the Church is notorious for guilt-tripping the faithful. Morrissey had done this sort of thing before, of course, in I Have Forgiven Jesus. It's his passive-aggressive wit: he makes his peace with Jesus in the same breath as mocking the Catholic doctrine that Jesus is blameless (being God).

 

[goinghome]

It's definitely blasphemous from the standard of Catholic orthodoxy: Christ is said to share in our human nature but not our fallen nature. He can be tempted, being human, but being divine, he can't want to sin. God can only want and will the good. So it's funny to essentially ask Jesus if he ever felt like committing a sin—and a sin of flesh at that, for which the Church is notorious for guilt-tripping the faithful. Morrissey had done this sort of thing before, of course, in I Have Forgiven Jesus. It's his passive-aggressive wit: he makes his peace with Jesus in the same breath as mocking the Catholic doctrine that Jesus is blameless (being God).

If it is a sin, in Godly terms, as opposed to Church terms?

Happy World Poetry Day!

Morrissey included a lovely John Betjeman poem, quite different in tone to the one posted above, narrated by the author, in his 2004 NME compilation CD, Songs To Save Your Life.

A Child Ill by J. Betjeman (to his young son)​

Oh little body, do not die.
The soul looks out through wide blue eyes
So questioningly into mine,
That my tormented soul replies
“Oh little body, do not die;
You hold the soul that talks to me,
Although our conversation be
As wordless as the windy sky.”
So looked my father at the last,
Right in my soul before he died,
Though words we spoke went heedless past
As London traffic-roar outside.
And now the same blue eyes I see
Look through me from my little son,
So questioningly, so searchingly
That youthfulness and age are one.
My father looked at me and died
Before my soul made full reply.
Lord, leave this other light alight:
Oh little body, do not die.

 

[gashonthenail]

 

[Lucifer Sam]

If it is a sin, in Godly terms, as opposed to Church terms?

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?

 

[ZOOM FROM GLOOM]

It's definitely blasphemous from the standard of Catholic orthodoxy: Christ is said to share in our human nature but not our fallen nature. He can be tempted, being human, but being divine, he can't want to sin. God can only want and will the good. So it's funny to essentially ask Jesus if he ever felt like committing a sin—and a sin of flesh at that, for which the Church is notorious for guilt-tripping the faithful. Morrissey had done this sort of thing before, of course, in I Have Forgiven Jesus. It's his passive-aggressive wit: he makes his peace with Jesus in the same breath as mocking the Catholic doctrine that Jesus is blameless (being God).

I think M was asking god, not Jesus. I’m sure he would have addressed him by his name if he was. I think he was humanizing god in the song.

 

[Lucifer Sam]

I thought M was asking god, not Jesus.

He was. I guess I just went to Jesus because the visual is better, and probably because of the Christopher Marlowe theory that "St. John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom; that he used him as the sinners of Sodoma." Morrissey is surely aware of that one, right? But I could also picture the corporeal, gray-bearded God the Father of Catholic iconography having a hand come to rest on his knee in invitation.

 

[nicky wire's legs]

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?

i just find it dumb as shit. if god is god, then he's in 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.