Epic Poems Thread

[Legionary74]

deleted

[Takeda Shingen]

The Poetic Edda:

http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/poetic_edda.html

Literally poetic epics.

[AVGWarhawk]

He ran from the Indies
To the Andies
In his undies.

:03:

[Dowly]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
But this one doesn't


/thread

[Betonov]

When I'm in a drunken mood
I cheer, dance and sing.
When I'm in a sober mood
I worry, grumble and think

But when my moods are over
and my time has come to pass,
I hopa I'm burried upside down,
so the world can kiss my ass

[krashkart]

A little blue bird with a yellow bill,
landed on my window sill.
I lured him in with a crust of bread,
then I crushed his little head.

[DarkFish]

The Poetic Edda:

http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/poetic_edda.html

Literally poetic epics.Aye!:DL
I've been fascinated/obsessed by Germanic/Nordic culture and religion for some time now, so this summer I finally decided I should read the Edda. Was a great collection of poems:DL Especially Hárbarðsljóð, often had to LOL while reading it:)


When I was in the bookstore buying the Edda, I spotted a copy of the Kalevala (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala)as well. Great epic poem which I can really recommend. Much more so an epic than the Poetic Edda, because whereas the Edda is a collection of often unrelated poems, the Kalevala tells one story.

[DarkFish]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some poems rhyme
But this one doesn'tViolets are blue
Roses are red
The Poetry Monster will come for you
If you continue rhyming like that:stare:

[frau kaleun]

Yesterday upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I think he's with the CIA.

The boy stood on the burning deck
Eating peanuts by the peck.
His father called, he would not go
Because he loved those peanuts so.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
A bear was Fuzzy Wuzzy.
When Fuzzy Wuzzy lost his 'air
He wasn't Fuzzy, was 'e?

[Garion]

A poem in Scots dialect

On a hill there stood a coo
it must be awa as its no there noo.

and

There once was a Fairy Called Nuff
Fairy Nuff.

and

Spring has spring
The grass is riz
I wonder where da boidys iz

Dey say da boids are on da wing
But thats obsoid
As the wings are on da boid.

Cheers

Garion

PS a coo is a cow :D

[antikristuseke]

Bad poetry, oh noetry!

[krashkart]

Bad poetry, oh noetry!

At one time I had three or four notebooks full of bad poetry. Maybe not bad thing they were lost to Father Time. :haha:

[frau kaleun]

I went on a limerick-writing binge once...

A Welshman who hails from Prestatyn
Has a wife who loves classical Latin.
He dresses, to please her,
As Julius Caesar
But he'd rather be General Patton.

"Scotch whisky's the finest on earth,"
Claimed a clansman of Highlander birth.
He came down from the north
To the mouth of the Forth
Just to belt back a fifth on the Firth.

A criminal youngster in Gloucester
Chased a woman and tried to accoucester.
But when she was caught, he
Found she knew karate.
It was then that he wished that he'd loucester.

A couple from Little Rock, Ark
Thought their romance could use a new spark.
But they lit such a fire
That instead of desire
They kindled a national park.

[Sailor Steve]

You once said don't get you started with limericks. I can see why now...

Those are brilliant! :rock:

[Jimbuna]

The boy stood on the burning deck
His heart was all a quiver
He gave a cough
His leg fell off
And floated down the river

[frau kaleun]

You once said don't get you started with limericks. I can see why now...

Those are brilliant! :rock:

Danke.

I had a small notebook full of them once. I used to pick place names at random out of the atlas to see if I could come up with a couple of rhymes and then turn them into a limerick. I don't know if I've still got any of them written/printed out or not. A lot of them were on my old computer but I don't think I saved any of those files... so I just have to rely on memory.

There are so many that I can remember the "gist" of, or the rhyming words from the end of lines, but can't quite piece together how they went in full. I'm not sure if that's a sad thing, or just my aging brain's small gift to the rest of the world. :O:

[Jimbuna]

Probably the latter :DL:03:

[Herr-Berbunch]

The wife's had a couple of poems published (including one about me), and she's quite good, but in my mind if it doesn't rhyme then I don't really listen :DL It really winds her up :D

[Jimbuna]

The wife's had a couple of poems published (including one about me), and she's quite good, but in my mind if it doesn't rhyme then I don't really listen :DL It really winds her up :D

Let's see it then :DL

[Herr-Berbunch]

Let's see it then :DL

I'll dig it out later. :D

[Herr-Berbunch]

Okay, here it is. The background to it is that we met just a couple of weeks before I joined the RAF in 1993, fell in love etc., and she wrote this just before I was due home on leave from my trade training early the next year.:

The Dusk

People have laughed and people have cried,
Babes have been born and old men have died,
Someone has smiled at the thought of tomorrow
And someone has broken down, beaten by sorrow,
One man is lying in bed all alone,
Counting the hours till he will be home.
A girl's sitting counting those hours just the same
Tomorrow at dusk she'll be with him again.
And people will laugh and people will cry.
Babes will be born and old men will die.
And she will just smile and remember no more,
The hours that she counted just one dusk before.

:D

[Gerald]

Great,you have good talent :up:

[Jimbuna]

Okay, here it is. The background to it is that we met just a couple of weeks before I joined the RAF in 1993, fell in love etc., and she wrote this just before I was due home on leave from my trade training early the next year.:

The Dusk

People have laughed and people have cried,
Babes have been born and old men have died,
Someone has smiled at the thought of tomorrow
And someone has broken down, beaten by sorrow,
One man is lying in bed all alone,
Counting the hours till he will be home.
A girl's sitting counting those hours just the same
Tomorrow at dusk she'll be with him again.
And people will laugh and people will cry.
Babes will be born and old men will die.
And she will just smile and remember no more,
The hours that she counted just one dusk before.

:D

Very nice...especially knowing the background behind it http://www.psionguild.org/forums/images/smilies/wolfsmilies/thumbsup.gif

[jumpy]

A bit of a resurrection, but I thought I'd share this with you all.

I'm currently reading one of two of the most epic poems of all time: The Odyssey. The other being The Illiad. I have both prose and the original meter translations of these great works of Homer (who or what he is or was is another debate entirely) and last night it jogged my memory of this thread enough to decide to contribute something of my own.

I've written many things since being a lad at school (what it is to be a teenager :rolleyes: )
But these days I seldom put pen to paper unless I have something important to say... though generally it's only important to me hehe.

I don't tend to like things that don't rhyme, but I use words and alliteration and other devices as I see fit before me. Typically, a bastardisation of the rhyming couplet is the result, as my intent is always more about what I feel than some clever artifice of rhythm or stress on pronunciation. This can tend to be over-simplistic, but I don't think complication is always necessary for whatever it is you are trying to communicate. It's less about the reader and more about the writer. I know what I meant, you can draw your own conclusions.

This, and other posts here, are illustrative of how I think and write prose - sometimes the meaning is not always clear or obvious, which defeats the object, but sometimes too, it is as much about the journey as the destination. Verse, on the other hand, I consider wholly different.

In some ways these musings and writings are as close to a journal of my thoughts and feelings as my ill-discipline is likely to get - I tried writing a diary once... but I found I didn't really have much to say. That was a curious understanding at the time. These days I always think it right to not court hubris or dally with self indulgence for its own sake, though sometimes this is hard to recognise when you are under pressure of sorts.

To that end, writing and more specifically poetry, is a great distillation of thought and emotion, quite sufficient to allude circumstance and temper in such a way as to exorcise your personal shadows into the light of the page before you.

'Catharsis' is a more succinct description, but like 'dichotomy', it is a word that leaves a metaphorical scum behind on both the tongue and the mind for me - perhaps this is a throwback to english A-level classes.
As the only male in a class of some twenty young women (you may think this to have been a great opportunity :O: but it was less than so, I can assure you haha) who, in their youth and impressionability, latched upon such words as above, with such fervour and diligence of mind as to make each lesson a tortuous hour of convolution and bombast, to shrink the sturdiest intellect to tears when contemplating Shakespeare or Jane Austen or Larkin or any number of literary greats (though I'm very much undecided that there's anything great about jane austen's 'mills and boon' efforts, despite popular opinion thinking otherwise).

But, though such personal reminiscence is laughing at me from time past in my youth - an amusement which given my last paragraph, is not lost upon me - I digress.

Here is something written earlier this year that makes some small attempt to coalesce my mind and heart in the aftermath of a time that brought me as close to ruin and self destruction as I'm ever likely to be, though this ought to be obvious.

Enough preamble, already...


Hari,

Don't look for a smile in the morning,
Don't look for warmth at night.
There's no-one there
When I cry out in the darklight.

So many memories of you
My tears cannot wash away.
Don't look for compassion
You can't tolerate or repay.

It was always about you;
Don't look for a kiss,
My lips are cold, Hari,
And taste but ashes.

Don't look for me,
My lips are blue.
Don't look for me, Hari.
It was all about you.

(04/2010)

I must note, that though I have added one or two words here and there after the majority was committed to paper, such subtle refinement, if you like, the rest seemed almost to write itself over a timespan of about five minutes; As though my hand and the pen and the mind that directed it were but a conduit for something other. What? I cannot say. Perhaps the heart or soul? Whatever, it does not demand scrutiny... it simply 'is' or rather 'was' and for that I am content.