Welcome to Gaia! ::

In the process of struggling to create something new i've decided to make this poetry thread. The concept is that there are poems that contain an entire life philosophy or life changing ideas/ ideals. That we all have read a few and would benefit from sharing them. i'm starting this off with the historic Beat Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti... and the Wikipedia cut and paste goes...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (born March 24, 1919)[1] is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind (New York: New Directions, 195 cool , a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of over 1 million copies.

**My favorite collection of his work is entitled "These Are My Rivers" and it's "A New Directions Paperbook" ( www.ndpublishing.com )**




Lawrence Ferlinghetti



-Endless Life



Endless the splendid life of the world

Endless its lovely living and breathing

its lovely sentient beings

seeing and hearing feeling and thinking

laughing and dancing sighing and crying

through endless afternoons endless nights

drinking and doping talking and singing

in endless Amsterdamns of existence

with endless lively conversations

over endless cups of coffee

in literary cafes on rainy mornings

Endless street movies passing

in cars and trams of desire

on the endless tracks of light

And endless longhair dancing

to airless punk rock and air head disco

through Milky Way midnights

to the Paradisos of dawn

talking and smoking and thinking

of everything endless at night

in the white of night the light of night

Ah yes oh yes the endless living and loving

hating and loving kissing and killing

Endless the ticking breathing breeding

meat-wheel of life

turning on and on through time

Endless life and endless death

endless air and endless breath

Endless worlds without end of days

in autumn capitals

their avenues of leaves ablaze

Endless dreams and sleep unravelling

the knitted sleeves of care

the labryinths of thought

the labyreves of love

the coils of desire and longing

myriad endgames of the unnameable

Endless the heavens on fire

endless universe spun out

World upon a mushroom pyre

Endless the fire that breathes in us

tattooed fire-eaters dancing in plazas

swallowing flaming gasoline air

Brave the beating heart of flaming life

its beatings and pulsings and flame-outs

Endless the open fields of the senses

the smell of lust and love

the calling and calling of cats in heat

their scent of must of musk

No end to the sound of the making of love

to the sound of bed springs creaking

to the moan of lovers making it

heard through the wall at night

No end to their groans of ecstasy

moans of the last lost climax

the sound of jukebox jumping

the flow of jass and gyzm

jived in Paradiso

And then the endless attempts to escape

the nausee of Sartre

the bald hills of burned out sensation

joie de vivre in despair

boatsloads of enlightenment

ships of merde afloat by Charon's moat

greeds hysterias paranoias

pollutions and perversions

Endless l'homme revolte'

in the anonymous face of death

in the tracks of the monster state

Endless his anarchist visions

endless his alienation

endless his alienated poetry

gadfly of the state Bearer of Eros

Endless the sound of his life on earth

his endless radio broadcasts and tv transmissions

newspapers rolling off endless rolls on rotary presses

the flow of words and images

on endless typewriter ribbons and tapes

automatic writings and scrawlings

endless poemes dictes by the unknown

Endless the calling on telephones to ends of earth

the waiting of lovers on station platforms

the crying of birds on hills and rooftops

the cawing and cawing of crows in the sky

the myriad churning of crickets

the running seas of crying waters

rising and falling on far shingles

the lapping of tides

in the ides of autumn

salt kiss of creation

No end to the sea bells tolling

beyond the damns and dykes of life

and the calling and calling of bells

in empty churches and towers of time

No end to the calamitious enunciation

of hairy holy man

Endless the ever unwinding

watchspring heart of the world

shimmering in time

shining through space

Endless the tourist boats through it

bateaux mouches in endless canals

millions of windows aflame in sunset

the City burns with leftover light

and the red light districts rock and glow

with endless porn and neon cocks

and vibrators vibrating endlessly

in lonely topfloor rooms of leaning houses

Endless the munching

on the meat-sandwiches of lust

the juicey steaks of love

endless dreams and orgasms

fertility rites and rites of passage

and flights of fertile birds over rooftops

and ther dropping of eggs in nests and wombs

the temps and attempts of the flesh

in furnished rooms of love

where sings the stricken dove

No end to the birthing of babies

where love or lust has lain

no end to the sweet birth of consciousness

no end to the bitter deaths of it in vain

No end no end to the withering

of fur and fruit and flesh so passing fair

and the neon mermaids

singing each to each somewhere

Endless the slight variations

of the utterly familiar

the fires of youth the embers of age

the rage of the poet born again

No end no end to any and all creation

in the mute dance of molecules

All is transmuted all is muted

and all cries out again again

Endless the waiting for God and Godot

the absurd actions absurd plans and plays

dilemmas and delays

Absurd the waiting without action

for the withering away of war

and the withering away of the state

Insane the waiting without action

for the insane ending!

Endless the wars of good and evil

the flips of fate the trips of hate

endless nukes and faults all failing-safe

in endless chain reactions of the final flash

while the White Bicycles of protest

still slowly circle round it

For there will be an end to the dogfaced gods

in wingtip shoes and Gucci slippers

in Texas boots and tin hats

in bunkers pressing buttons

For there is no end to the hopeful choices

still to be chosen

the dark minds lighted

the green giants of chance

the fish-hooks of hope in the sloughs of despond

the hills in the distance the hills in the bush

hidden streams of light and unheard melodies

sessions of sweet silent thought

stately pleasure domes decreed

and the happy deaths of the heart everyday

the cocks of clay

the feet in running shoes

upon the quai

And there is no end

to the doors of perception still to be opened

and the jet streams of light

in the upper air of the spirit of man

in the outer space inside us

in the Amsterdamns of yin & yang

Endless rubaiyats and endless beatitudes

endless shangri-las endless nirvanas

sutras and mantras

satoris and sensaras

Bodhiramas and Boddhisatvas

karmas and karmapas!

Endless singing Shivas dancing

on the smoking wombs of ecstasy!

Shining! Transcendent!

into the crystal night of time

in the endless silence of the soul

in the long loud tail of man

in his endless sound and fury

signifying everything

with his endless hallucinations

adorations annihilations illuminations

erections and exhibitions

fascismo and machismo

circuses of the soul astray

merrygorounds of the imagination

coney island of the mindless

endless poem dictated

by the uncollected voice

of the collective unconcious

blear upon the tracks of time!



In the last days of Alexandria

The day before Waterloo

The dancing continues

There is a sound of revelry by night


~


(Amsterdam, July 1980)


-i read this again upon completing this post and realized it gets into some serious pr0n territory. Were all adults here. So seriously post what moves you. [that doesn't mean post a Scion advertisement]




My intent was to celebrate "the great poems" by the standard definition. If you have something of your own you want to add, i'm saying, "r0k 0ut". Now to see what becomes.....

Don't let the greats and their ability to out reference you as a sign of your own inferiority. Here's one of the greatest poems ever penned and no one even knows who wrote it....



To whom this may concern
I have no wisdom
or insight to share
to such varying degrees of experience
but what remains inside of me
knows that I have faith in you
and whatever belief you may have

inspiration shines on everyone
everybody has their time to love, hate, sympathize and envy
we are at different stages
s i m u l t a n e o u s l y
we are living our lives
eternally finding ourselves
and so I sit here writing what comes to mind
and as I listen to my voice
I realize I've found part of my soul....


~


-Anonymous



This isn't about who has the best material. It's just about sharing and being open and honest. Quote a manga, write something on the spot.... here check it out.... this will go in a book some day...



Bloody Valentine 47 is my friend,
she can dress up like a smoking hot Lithuania
though i've never met her and don't really know what she looks like.... of really have a studied grasp or the Axis Power Hentalia series
hope i spelled that last line right
the end
and stuff


~




See!! Amazing poem right there. If this guild dies i will go awww shucks. Lets do stuff people.... lots of stuff!




and now back to the waiting and watching game. [yay]

Lewis Carroll... w00t!


It may be the fate this thread to be a sinking air ship for me and copilot Bloody. But let me tell you this is going to be the best looking sinking air ship you ever saw. We will crash and burn with style and immense beauty. I'm trying to document a great many techniques and approaches to make this thread well rounded. That's why it is my honor to present the next piece to be shared from the gifted zen poetess....


-Portia Nelson



AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN FIVE CHAPTERS




1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost...
I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I'm in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in...it's a habit
My eyes are open; I know where I am;
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

~


So immediate and clear. It gives me the chills.

What can i say. Day after day i feel like this is a save file for historic poetic expression. Like a fresh piece of internet cement wall for me to vandalize. i might post 3 or 4 pieces of timeless Charles Bukowski before it's over. Will i ever let this post die. Most likely not. We have to keep the fire blazing while i make real moves in the writing game. Everyone grab a good beer, shot, wine glass, can of pepsi, vitamin water, whatever your preference. Let us celebrate the possible extinction of the human race as it is seen in this epic... it fills me up with pride to present...






Charles Bukowski






Dinosauria, We






Born like this

Into this

As the chalk faces smile

As Mrs. Death laughs

As the elevators break

As political land scapes dissolve

As the super market bag boy holds a college degree

As the oily fish spit out their oily prey

As the sun is masked

We are

Born like this

Into this

Into these care fully mad wars

Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness

Into bars where people no longer speak to each other

Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

Born into this

Into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die

Into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty

Into a country where the jails are full and the mad houses closed

Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

Born into this

Walking and living through this

Dying because of this

Muted because of this

Castrated

Debauched

Disinherited

Because of this

Fooled by this

Used by this

Pissed on by this

Made crazy and sick by this

Made violent

Made inhuman

By this

The heart is black ened

The fin gers reach for the throat

The gun

The knife

The bomb

The fingers reach toward an unre spon sive god

The fingers reach for the bot tle

The pill

The powder

We are born into this sor row ful deadliness

We are born into a government 60 years in debt

That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt

And the banks will burn

Money will be use less

There will be open and unpublished murder in the streets

It will be guns and roving mobs

Land will be useless

Food will become a diminishing return

Nuclear power will be taken over by the many

Explosions will continually shake the earth

Radiated robot men will stalk each other

The rich and the chosen will watch from space plat forms

Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s play ground

The sun will not be seen and it will always be night

Trees will die

All vegetation will die

Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men

The sea will be poisoned

The lakes and rivers will vanish

Rain will be the new gold

The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind

The last few survivors will be over taken by new and hideous

diseases

And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition

The petering out of supplies

The natural effect of general decay

And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

Born out of that.

The sun still hidden there

Awaiting the next chapter.



~

i write allot and it's very abstract and my opinion on my work is always in flux. 99% of my poetry (stuff i've posted here so far) comes from books.... The good stuff is hidden away and you gotsta go on the dig to find it.

This is my third day at a new J,O,B after an eternity of unemployed chaos. i've been off shift thirteen seconds and i'm already getting bugged..... this is to be continued...


Sm00cheS and such >>> la dee da >>> Lyekka

3nodding ninja pirate question

OK indeed. i'm never going to have any free time for the rest of eternity..... boo hoo. But then i posted even more Charles Bukowski like bam....


splash



the illusion is that you are simply
reading this poem.
the reality is that this is
more than a
poem.
this is a beggar's knife .
this is a tulip .
this is a soldier marching
through Madrid .
this is you on your
death bed.
this is Li Po laughing
under ground.
this is not a god- damned
poem.
this is a horse asleep.
a butterfly in
your brain .
this is the devil's
circus.
you are not reading this
on a page.
the page is reading
you.
feel it?
it's like a cobra . it's a hungry eagle circling the room.

this is not a poem. poems are dull,
they make you sleep .

these words force you
to a new
madness.

you have been blessed, you have been pushed into a
blinding area of
light.

the elephant dreams
with you
now.
the curve of space
bends and
laughs.

you can die now.
you can die now as
people were meant to
die:
great ,
victorious ,
hearing the music ,
being the music ,
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.

~


found in Betting on the Muse - pg. 13 - 1996




...And childlike wonder swallowed all who read the passages as their imaginations raced out beyond all the limitations that were lying around before the shock wave of inspired endlessnessism.


wink hehehehe

Kleo my dear, you are sooooo verrry, verrrrry, verrrrrry. In looking for one psychotic poem in my files i came across this marvelous piece of the timeless Allen Ginsberg. Lick a postage stamp and join the beat culture for an acid trip search for the very face of god.




LYSERGIC ACID



-Allen Ginsberg



It is a multiple million eyed monster
it is hidden in all its elephants and selves
it hummeth in the electric typewriter
it is electricity connected to itself, if it hath wires
it is a vast Spiderweb
and I am on the last millionth infinite tentacle of the spiderweb,
a worrier
lost, separated, a worm, a thought, a self
one of the millions of skeletons of China
one of the particular mistakes
I allen Ginsberg a separate consciousness
I who want to be God
I who want to hear the infinite minutest vibration of eternal
harmony
I who wait trembling my destruction by that aethereal music
in the fire
I who hate God and give him a name
I who make mistakes on the eternal typewriter
I who am doomed

But at the far end of the universe the million eyed spyder that
hath no name
spinneth of itself endlessly
the monster that is no monster approaches with apples, perfume,
railroads, television, skulls
a universe that eats and drinks itself
blood from my skull
Tibetan creature with hairy breast and Zodiac on my stomach
this sacrificial victim unable to have a good time


My face in the mirror, thin hair, blood congested in streaks down
beneath my eyes, cocksucker, a decay, a talking lust
a snaeap, a snarl, a tic of consciousness in infinity
a creep in the eyes of all universes
trying to escape my Being, unable to pass on to the Eye
I vomit, I am in a trance, my body is seized in convulsion, my
stomach crawls, water from my mouth, I am here in
Inferno
dry bones of myriad lifeless mummies naked on the web, the
Ghosts, I am a ghost
I cry out where i am in the music, to the room, to whomever
near, you, Are you God?
No, do you want me to be God?
Is there no answer?
Must there always be an answer? you reply,
and were it up to me to say Yes or No ---
Thank God I am not God ! Thank God I am not God !
But that I long for a yes of harmony to penetrate
to every corner of the universe, under every condition whatsoever
a Yes there Is . . . a yes I Am . . . a Yes You Are . . . a We


A We
and that must be an It, and a They, and a Thing with No
Answer?
It creepeth, it waiteth, it is still, it is begun, it is the Horns of
Battle it is Multiple Sclerosis
it is not my hope
it is not my death at Eternity
it is not my word, not poetry
beware my Word


It is a Ghost Trap, woven by priest in Sikkim or Tibet
a crossframe on which a thousand threads of differing color
are strung, a spiritual tennis racket
in which when I look I see aethereal lightwaves radiate
bright energy passing round on the threads as for billions of years
the thread-bands magically changing hues one transformed to
another as if the
Ghost Trap
were an image of the Universe in miniature
conscious sentient part of the interrelated machine
making waves outward in Time to the Beholder
displaying it's own image in miniature once for all
repeated minutely downward with endless variations throughout
all of itself
it being all the same in every part

This image of energy which reproduces itself at the depths of
space from the very Beginning
in what might be an O or an Aum
and trailing variations made of the same word circles round
itself in the same pattern as its original Appearance
creating a larger image of itself throughout depths of Time
outward circling thru bands of faroff Nebulae & vast Astrologies
contained, to be true to itself, in a Mandala painted on an
Elephant's hide,
or in a photograph of a painting on the side of an imaginary
Elephant which smiles, tho how the elephant looks is an
irrelevant joke ---
it might be a sign held by a Flaming Demon, or Ogre of
Transcience,
or in a photograph of my own belly in the void
or in my eye
or in the eye of a monk who made the sign


or in its own Eye that stares on itself at last and dies


and tho an eye can die
and tho my eye can die
the billion-eyed monster, the Nameless, the Answerless, the
Hidden-from-me, the endless Being
one creature that gives birth to itself
thrills in its minutest particular. sees out of all the eyes differently
at once
One and not One moves on its own ways
I cannot follow


And I have made an image of the monster here
and I will make another
it feels like Cryptozoids
it creeps and undulates beneath the sea
it is coming to take over the city
it invades beneath every Conciousness
it is delicate as the Universe
it makes me vomit
because I am afraid I will miss its appearance
it appears anyway
it appears anyway in the mirror
it washes out of the mirror like the sea
it is myriad undulations
it washes out of the mirror and drowns the beholder
it drowns the world when it drowns the world
it drowns in itself
it floats outward like a corpse filled with music
the noise of war in its head
a babe laugh in its belly
a scream of agony in the dark sea
a smile on the lips of a blind statue
it was there


it was not mine
I wanted to use it for myself
to be heroic
but it is not for sale to this conciousness
it goes its own way forever
it will complete all creatures
it will be the radio of the future
it will here itself
it wants another form another victim
it wants me
it gives me good reason
it gives me reason to exist
it gives me endless answers
a consciousness to be separate and a consciousness to see
I am beckoned to be One or the other, to say I am both and
be neither
it can take care of itself without me
it is both answerless (it answers not to that name)
it hummeth on the electric typewriter
it types a fragmentary word which is
a fragmentary word,

MANDALA

Gods dance on their own bodies
New flowers open forgetting Death
Celestial eyes beyond the heartbeat of illusion
I see the gay Creator
Bands rise up in anthem to the worlds
Flags and banners waving in transcendence
One image in the end remains myriad-eyed in Eternity
This is the Work ! This is the knowledge ! This is the End
of man !

~

S.F. June 2, 1959