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Gavros 9:31 Sun Feb 25
Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Percy Bysshe Shelly

KLM 12:26 Wed Feb 28
Re: Ozymandias

Bravo gavros! My fav poem

Past one o’clock
You must have gone to bed
The milky war slips silver streams thru the night.
But I am in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
There is no cause to awaken our troubled you.
And, as they say, the incident is dead
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains and hurts
There is a quietness settled upon us now
For the night wraps the sky in a tribute from the stars
How can we avoid, in hours like these, to address
The age, history and everything.

Final poem by futurist, Mayakovsky before suicide. Driven to despair by the lifeless heart and the cold sneer of command of a contemporary pharaoh. The poets grasped what was going on better then the economists!

Leonard Hatred 11:43 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

I could have read
A poem called
Ozymandias
To her instead
I lived for the moment
It was a futile
Gesture anyway
I was here
And she was here
And being broad
Of mind and hips
We did the only
Thing possible
I guess I shouldn't have strangled her to death
But I had to go to work and she had laced my coffee with acid
Normally I wouldn't have minded
But I'm allergic to sulfuric acid
Besides she had acne
And if you've got acne well I apologize for disliking it intensely.
But it's understandable that ugly people have got complexes
I mean it seems to me that ugly people don't have a chance
It's only the children or the fucking wealthy who tend to be good looking
An ugly fart
Attracts a good looking
Chick, if he's got money
An ugly fart
Attracts a good looking
Chick if he's got money
An ugly fart
Attracts a good looking
Chick
If he's got money
It's different for Jews somehow
I'd like to see
A passionate
Film between
The two ugliest
People in the world.
When I say ugly
I don't mean rough looking
I mean hideous
Don't tell me that
Aesthetics are
Subjective, you
Just know the truth
When you see it
Whatever it is
Muscle
Power, muscle
Power, muscle
Power, muscle
Power

orwells tragedy 11:41 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

Bill Jones had been the shining star upon his college team.
His tackling was ferocious and his bucking was a dream.
When husky William took the ball beneath his brawny arm
They had two extra men to ring the ambulance alarm.

Bill hit the line and ran the ends like some mad bull amuck.
The other team would shiver when they saw him start to buck.
And when some rival tackler tried to block his dashing pace,
On waking up, he'd ask, "Who drove that truck across my face?"

Bill had the speed-Bill had the weight-Bill never bucked in vain;
From goal to goal he whizzed along while fragments, strewed the plain,
And there had been a standing bet, which no one tried to call,
That he could make his distance through a ten-foot granite wall.

When he wound up his college course each student's heart was sore.
They wept to think bull-throated Bill would sock the line no more.
Not so with William - in his dreams he saw the Field of Fame,
Where he would buck to glory in the swirl of Life's big game.

Sweet are the dreams of college life, before our faith is nicked-
The world is but a cherry tree that's waiting to be picked;
The world is but an open road-until we find, one day,
How far away the goal posts are that called us to the play.

So, with the sheepskin tucked beneath his arm in football style,
Bill put on steam and dashed into the thickest of the pile;
With eyes ablaze he sprinted where the laureled highway led-
When Bill woke up his scalp hung loose and knots adorned his head.

He tried to run the ends of life, but with rib-crushing toss
A rent collector tackled him and threw him for a loss.
And when he switched his course again and dashed into the line
The massive Guard named Failure did a toddle on his spine.

Bill tried to punt out of the rut, but ere he turned the trick
Right Tackle Competition scuttled through and blocked the kick.
And when he tackled at Success in one long, vicious prod
The Fullback Disappointment steered his features in sod.

Bill was no quitter, so he tried a buck in higher gear,
But Left Guard Envy broke it up and stood him on his ear.
Whereat he aimed a forward pass, but in two vicious bounds
Big Center Greed slipped through a hole and rammed him out of bounds.

But one day, when across the Field of Fame the goal seemed dim,
The wise old coach, Experience, came up and spoke to him.
"Oh Boy," he said, "the main point now before you win your bout
Is keep on bucking Failure till you've worn the piker out!"

"And, kid, cut out this fancy stuff - go in there, low and hard;
Just keep your eye upon the ball and plug on, yard by yard,
And more than all, when you are thrown or tumbled with a crack,
Don't sit there whining-hustle up and keep on coming back;

"Keep coming back with all you've got, without an alibi,
If Competition trips you up or lands upon your eye,
Until at last above the din you hear this sentence spilled:
'We might as well let this bird through before we all get killed.'

"You'll find the road is long and rough, with soft spots far apart,
Where only those can make the grade who have the Uphill Heart.
And when they stop you with a thud or halt you with a crack,
Let Courage call the signals as you keep on coming back.

"Keep coming back, and though the world may romp across your spine,
Let every game's end find you still upon the battling line;
For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes - not that you won or lost - but how you played the Game."

Sniper 11:19 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

You blow and I’ll do the fingering

HairyHammer 11:13 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

I went to green street today
Just wanted to feel it again
I found that if I sit far enough away
I can still pretend that it's there
Oh I know it's silly, and sad too
But I don;t care, that's me
When you actually think of it
It was just a big pile of bricks
But bricks that stood magnificent
Our home our History, now gone
I shut my eyes then open quickly
I can see the crowds flowing
Can't smell the burgers though
An old woman brushes past
I pretend she is one of us
Did old women go to games?
Someone just shouted, IRONS !
Well OK I imagined it, and it was me
This place is still real though
Not like the plastic promise
It hurts a bit being here, not easy
But it is still Green street
And Green street lives strong
You can all do it too if you wish
Go to green street and blink slowly
IRONS! IRONS! IRONS! IRONS!.

zebthecat 10:49 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

gph 9:38 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

Reading between the lines of the Invictus myth, what appears to have happened is that the Men of Kent were too stupid to find their way to the Battle of Hastings, where their fighting prowess may have made a difference (but probably wouldn't have - see below).

After the battle, Bill the Conqueror decided to make his way to London via Kent. The locals turned out and made plain their opposition to Bill by WAVING BRANCHES AT HIM.

Bill decided to go around Kent.

Rather than realising that Bill had more important things to do than slaughter a load of gurning fools armed with bits of TREE, the Kent boys claim this shows they REMAIN UNCONQUERED.

RBshorty 9:15 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

Breaking Bad at its finest.

SurfaceAgentX2Zero 9:09 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

Swiss. 4:03 Mon Feb 26

,English poet William Ernest Henley that trumps you all.

Invictus'

Invictus, eh?

Sounds like it might be about Kent. So I'm OUT.

Dolittle 8:08 Tue Feb 27
Re: Ozymandias

Doesn't touch the majesty of Evidently Chicken Town

ironsofcanada 4:23 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

London

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse

Swiss. 4:03 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

by English poet William Ernest Henley that trumps you all.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

gph 1:04 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

Smith and Shelley are the clear winners so far

HairyHammer 11:07 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

One of my balls are itching
Should I scratch the itch
Or sit and wait for it to go
I look at the clock taunting me
Early morning cold and crisp
Nothing to do nowhere to go
Impatiently I scratch it
And the itch is now gone
My only friend in the world
Reminding me of my existence
Alone again waiting, tick tock
What's left for me to feel
Should I go.

Darby_ 10:43 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

Fish shop
How cold the lips of salted bream

joe royal 7:59 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

Between the hours of twelve and two
The nagging doubts will come to you
Be paranoid parents coz they're after your kids
You don't know what an Aryan master race is
They'll plant the seeds that will grow in time
And start the disease that will poison their minds
Fill them up with hatred and dress them up in robes
You know how the story goes

joe royal 7:56 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

So we go inside and we gravely read the stones
All those people all those lives
Where are they now?
With the loves and hates
And passions just like mine
They were born
And then they lived and then they died
Seems so unfair
And I want to cry

You say: "ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn"
And you claim these words as your own
But I've read well, and I've heard them said
A hundred times, maybe less, maybe more

If you must write prose and poems
The words you use should be your own
Don't plagiarise or take "on loans"
There's always someone, somewhere
With a big nose, who knows
And who trips you up and laughs
When you fall
Who'll trip you up and laugh
When you fall

Gavros 1:49 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

i dont usually have much time for poetry myself but this is an absolute masterpiece.

the impermenace of humanity in a few lines.

gph 1:27 Mon Feb 26
Re: Ozymandias

One of the few bits of poetry I like.

Result of a private competition to write on the Ozymandias theme, between Shelley and Horace Smith, as I discovered from Wikipedia.

Horace's effort's not too shabby either.

In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Although I find cutting the number legs down to one gives it a Pythonesque quality in a way I can't account for.

kirok1 9:48 Sun Feb 25
Re: Ozymandias

Thought Gold was tweeting about himself again for a minute... but no picture of a helicopter or mention of 442 Green St, debt, or dyslexia, so no.

Leonard Hatred 9:48 Sun Feb 25
Re: Ozymandias

"I should have read a poem called Ozymandias to her instead"

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