Favourite Poems

[ray winstone]

Come on you erudite WHOer's, lets have your best.......


IF - Rudyard KiplingIf you can keep your head when all about you
   Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
   But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
   Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
   And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
   If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
   And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
   Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
   And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;If you can make one heap of all your winnings
   And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
   And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
   To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
   Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
   Or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
   If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—
   Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

[Monsieur merde de cheval]

You'll never make the station

You fat bastard 

You're going home in a fuckin ambulance 

 

[RBshorty]

I met a traveler 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 upon 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.”

Ozymandias

Percy Shelly.


When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for the day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself 
And see what that man has to say

For it isn’t your Father, or Mother, or Wife,
Whose judgement upon you must pass
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one starring back from the glass.

He’s the fellow to please - never mind all the rest.
For he’s with you, clear to the end
And you’ve passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

The Man in The Glass

Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr.

[Hermit Road]

John Betjeman didn’t write a poem about West Ham but if he did….


Canning Town, where fog and factory stand,
And iron sings beneath the worker’s hand,
Where Thames’s tides, both brown and cold,
Once shaped the ships, the anvils bold. 

The men who wrought from iron and steel
A team whose spirit none could steal,
From Thames Ironworks they rose to fame,
And West Ham took its hallowed name. 

And there’s Brooking, gliding soft as air,
Through muddy fields, with skill so rare,
A graceful thread through clattering boots,
Where football bloomed in east-end roots.

 But still the streets lie soot-streaked, grey,
With echoes of a matchday’s fray,
The clink of pint glass, hum of tune,
As shadows lengthen, late afternoon. 

For here, beneath this London sky,
Where bubbles drift and dreams may die,
There’s something in the working air,
A pride that lingers, everywhere.

[F 129 Row66]

A termite found a piece of wood.
He tasted it, and found it good,
And that is why your Aunty May,
Fell through the kitchen floor today.

[MaryMillingtonsGhost]

What does this have to do with West Ham?

Nice monostich fella

[oioi]

Get Back on Drugs You Fat Fuck
When I go back to Longridge Park
Does anybody wish me good luck
All they say is Hey Clarke
Get back on drugs you fat fuck
Get back on drugs you fat bastard
Get back on drugs you fat fuck

We only like you when you’re plastered
Get back on drugs you fat fuck
They say I’m piling on the pounds
But that ain’t the reason I suck
Put the doughnut down
Get back on drugs you fat fuck

Get back on drugs you fat degenerate
Get back on ’em you shmuck
You’re the size of a minor emirate
You were good once but I don’t remember it
Get back on drugs you fat
Jumpin’ Jehosophat
Get back on drugs you fat prick

John Cooper Clarke

[Iron Duke]

Just for you, Gank:

I'm dreaming dreams,
I'm scheming schemes,
I'm building castles high.
They're born anew,
Their days are few,
Just like a sweet butterfly.
And as the daylight is dawning,
They come again in the morning.

I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams,
They fade and die.
Fortune's always hiding,
I've looked everywhere,
I'm forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.

[Gank]

What does this have to do with West Ham?