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Poets for the war

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ONLY NICE THINGS

22:49 / 05.03.03

W00T!

I don't think even Billy Corgan could take issue with the sort of mad sk1llz that have produced such sensitive works as:

As men march off to war
so bravely for our freedom
the students smoke their dope
and liberals whine like women

The poets in their padded chairs
and actors in Los Angeles
will soon be caught in the cross-hairs
just like all the rest of us

Or the haunting, elegiac:

Take down Saddam like a sack of taters
Pay no attention to screamers and traitors
Anti-Americans, useful idiots and Bush-haters
Finish the job started by the Crusaders

Now the Big Dog’s wakin
In fear of Uncle Sam Saddam’s shakin
He says he’s WMD-free but he’s fakin
Bomb the sucker and make him eat bacon

Who says we shouldn’t go to war?
What else do we have the Army for?
Or the Air Force, the Navy and the brave Marine Corps?
Like Normandy in forty-four

On to Baghdad! And when we get there
And dig Saddam out of his lair
And lay his atrocities bare
And feed, clothe and heal all his poor victims, where

Will the antiwar poets have to jump
When America will have played its trump?
The world will thank us all but a rump
Oil at twenty a barrel gas a buck at the pump

Seriosuly, D00Ds, this page willl change your life. don;t be afraid to think. Poets fort he War

22:52 / 05.03.03

Dude, that's beautiful.

23:57 / 05.03.03

I love how they mixed "feed, clothe and heal all his poor victims," with "Finish the job started by the Crusaders" and "Bomb the sucker and make him eat bacon." Nice and absurd, just like the war.

The Apple-Picker

01:02 / 06.03.03

and liberals whine like women

Very convenient for me. Two birds, one stone and all that.

05:02 / 06.03.03

Come back Sassoon. All is forgiven...

A

05:06 / 06.03.03

...and just the other day I came up with the idea of compulsory military service for poets.

07:20 / 06.03.03

Haus neglected to mention that the first poem he quoted was by Emily Zola. What a name. Aren't some parents cool?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:29 / 06.03.03

"Why, O Gaul?"

This is fucking priceless.

07:44 / 06.03.03

will soon be caught in the cross-hairs
just like all the rest of us

Cross-hairs? Cross-hairs?

I particularly like the sense that everyone is feeling embattled except those whiny liberal types...

10:03 / 06.03.03

From 'A Lesser Evil' by Glenn Coleman

We all hate war, like Eleanor,
And Franklin’s small dog Fala.
But what is more, we all abhor,
It's call invoked by Allah.

"Allah... Parlor, Caller, Dollar? No... Dali's wife, Gala? "

The best name there is Thurman Woodfork.

So when is there going to be 'Poets Who Are Not Sure How They Feel About The War, Exactly, They Need A Little More Time To Think About It'?

Hattie's Kitchen

11:18 / 06.03.03

"So think real hard before you diss
Our chosen leaders who will not miss
The chance to pump oil
On Iraqi soil
While you are left drinking stale piss."

Absolutely fucking priceless...

Hattie's Kitchen

11:33 / 06.03.03

Oh my...

"While the people of France may be in a tissy.
In the home of the brave, we know they‘re all sissies."

I really cannot think of anythign to add at this moment, my brain has seized up.

11:39 / 06.03.03

...from The Insanity of Islam

"A rag on my head and a bomb in my shoe
paves my path to utopia where there are no Christians and no Jews."

11:55 / 06.03.03

From the "stale piss" poem Hattie quotes above, an "editor's note":

"Editor’s note: I suggested a few changes to Dr.[!] Lemantos that he rejected. I agreed to post his poem anyway with these caveats. First, I think the attack on Dr. Blix is unwarranted. Dr. Blix is doing his job and reporting the Iraqis as having no credibility. He does not make the political decisions at the UN. I also suggested restructuring the last verse such that he might use milder language. He thought the language appropriate to his vehemence."

Thank god there's an editor around!

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:07 / 06.03.03

Why, it almost makes me long for the 'Daily Poetry' thread to be revived. These hawks would think again if they fell down a rabbit hole. Ah, good times.

Whisky Priestess

16:23 / 06.03.03

...and just the other day I came up with the idea of compulsory military service for poets.

Whoa ... meme time!

Just the other day I came up with the idea of Poetry Boot Camp, where drop-out youths are forced to learn discipline by being taught to work within the strict metrical and structural constraints of villanelles and sonnets.

They would be woken at dawn by a bad-ass sergeant screaming

"AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE! For morning in the bowl of night
Has cast the stone that puts the stars to flight!
MOTHERFUCKERS!"

March songs would go something like this:
"Johnny Keats died very young
Coughing up his only lung
Shelley drowned and Byron shot
I'm gonna give it all I got!"

"Never mistake a spondee for a trochee, boy. That could get you and your buddies killed in the field. Now drop and give me fourteen, private! NOW!! One sonnet, no enjambment!"

Hapless kid drops and composes a sonnet as he's doing pressups.

Etc. ... get me Spielberg!

17:20 / 06.03.03

Hope you don't mind if I steal your poetry sergeant to paste above my bed, Whisky Priestess. Funny stuff.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

22:38 / 06.03.03

While we're on the whole yomping thing, has anyone else noticed that A. E. Houseman's Loveliest of trees, the cherry now fits almost perfectly into that same rhythm ? Provided you sort of slur over the word 'loveliest', coz of that pesky extra syllable. Y'know, like:

"Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,
Is hung with bloom along the bough."

etc.

Goodness Gracious Meme

22:53 / 06.03.03

well, I've got my position on Yurrop figured, finally, thanks to Colin Hinde:

Jacques Chirac

Jacques Chirac, Jacques Chirac.
Please give most of France straight back,
To Hitler.
Because you didn’t want to fight for it.

Jacques Chirac, Paris Jacques,
What is it your backbone lacks?
A loud bark,
But your bite is like a baby on the teat.

Jacques Chirac, Not Union Jacques,
Your Gallic charm offensive pact,
Pleases Moscow
But even more it pleases thugs in Baghdad.

Jacques Chirac, le Cockerel Jacques,
To be the new De Gaulle, that’s fact.
Or Napolean?
Wake up and try to smell Le caffe Granddad.

Jacques Chirac, Mon ami Jacques,
The kids of France are down with rap
and burgers.
The Sun King’s reign has set. It’s over

Qui est 'Le caffe Granddad'?

Est-ce que c'est l'homme dans l'annonce du Kenco?

22:58 / 06.03.03

Gosh, he's a bit behind the times, isn't he? Someone should really tell him that the Sun King's reign ended in 1715...

I am very glad that my backbone lacks bite.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:46 / 06.03.03

I think there should be an entire thread devoted to poets' boot-camp march songs.

I don't know but I've been told
The Ill-i-ad is mighty old...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:12 / 07.03.03

I'm quite fond of Gershon Hepner's "The Smoking Gun"-

When guns are hidden you attack
before you ever see their smoke;
if we don’t do this to Iraq
the Arab street will get the joke.

The Chinese, Russians and the Frenchies
demand more evidence, of course,
since they’ve been lying with the wenches
who ply the streets and lie like whores.

Only Albion’s not perfide,
but hopefully George Bush will foil
attempts they’re making to mislead,
enticed by Saddam’s sexy oil.

I think it's the "Frenchies/wenches" rhyme that really does it for me.

10:31 / 07.03.03

Who says you can't be flexible within rigid form? Not our pal Gilbert.

"A Haiku by Gilbert"

Saddam's men lay dead
Carpeting the desert in heaps
World a better place

A marine comes home
Places jar on his mantle
Saddam's balls displayed

Bright flash, mushroom cloud
An evil regime destroyed
America wins

When war is over
Sleazy dictators will know
Don't mess with US

Hey France! Hey Saudis!
When we are done with Saddam
Which of you is next?

Daisycutter bomb
Parachutes on Saddam's house
Live on CNN

M1 tank flies fast
blasting across the desert
Iraq surrenders

B2 Stealth Bomber
JDAMS blast sixteen targets
Back next day with more

CIA opens
Archives of Saddam Hussein
French contracts found

10:53 / 07.03.03

Oh dear god.

D'you think the last one's a piss take?

10:55 / 07.03.03

Actually if we're going there, they all might be piss takes.
A horrible feeling inside tells me they're real..
who said poetry's irrelevant?

10:59 / 07.03.03

A marine comes home
Places jar on his mantle
Saddam's balls displayed,

Isn't a mantle a cloak? It's all very well shortening mantelpiece to fit the haiku but I prefer the picture of him pinning the jar to his coat. And my Mum's coming round tomorrow, so balls on the mantelpiece just wouldn't do at all.

11:00 / 07.03.03

Actually, we anti-war types may sneer, but remember this effort?

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

er, umm....

11:04 / 07.03.03

Those haikus are like some sort of twisted wank fantasy. I mean, for instance:
Daisycutter bomb
Parachutes on Saddam's house
Live on CNN

11:06 / 07.03.03

And the balls thing, obviously.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:12 / 07.03.03

The Sergeant tells me war is Hell,
He does it in a villanelle,
Victory, there's nothing sweeter,
'Cept iambic pentameter!

Whose Donne?
John Donne!
Blake wrote?
London!

One-two-three-four,
Motion is extremely poor!

We're gonna give our enemies,
Daffodil bulbs instead of eyes!
It's a war, it's them and us,
It's just like Archilochus!

11:19 / 07.03.03

Kit-Cat, Motion's poem is indeed a poetic shit sandwich, but how about this response, with editor's note:

Poets for the War does not endorse ad hominem attacks. The main problem many of us have with the bulk of the Poets Against the War is their ad hominem attacks on President Bush. They illogically and without proof accuse the president of being much more dangerous than Saddam Hussein al Tikriti. That said, Mr. Fox’s poem is a true masterpiece of tit for tat. It addresses the British Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion, who wrote a poem called “CAUSA BELLI”. Comparing the two poems, one sees why Mr. Fox is indulging in ad hominem and doing an excellent parody at the same time. He even manages to copy the poor scansion in the second line. So, enjoy!

"Caca Scribendi"
(To the Poetaster Laureate)

He’s read some books, writes poems, but never can
Come up with four brief lines that actually scan.
He seeks applause from all his fellow rads
As compensation for his missing ‘nads.

11:24 / 07.03.03

And balls on your cloak is a great idea, without the jar of course. Just one pinned neatly on either side, or maybe they can be used to clip it round your neck. I regularly greet the morning by opening the window, sniffing the air and deciding whether or not I'll need my cloak and balls around my neck that day.

11:26 / 07.03.03

From my upcoming website, POETS WHO AREN'T SURE HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT THE WAR, EXACTLY:

I'm not sure about the war at all,
Not sure about the war,
It could be that Saddam's a threat,
Or Dubuhya's just sore,
It could be that there's lots of bombs,
Or maybe there's just four,
The only thing I'm sure about,
Is that I'm not quite sure.

NB: This is deliberately bad for comic effect. And because I can't actually write good poetry. Everybody wins...

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:36 / 07.03.03

I'd be willing to forgive anyone who gave Andrew Motion a slagging, except that they called him a 'rad'. Uh-huh, yeah, that ker-azee anarchist poet laureate...

Whisky Priestess

15:11 / 07.03.03

CAUSA BELLI by Andrew Motion

They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

Following in the grand tradition of Poets Laureate who can't write for shit, I see (Colley Cibber et al - but at least they had an excuse).

But oh my God, Andrew Motion is just everything that's wrong with modern poetry - perhaps even everything that's wrong with the entire world. There's more poetry in the fucking telephone directory than any of his tedious, talentless slim-volume excrescences. If I had three-quarters of my brain removed and replaced with Linda McCartney sausages I could still fart better poetry than Andrew Motion.

Sorry, I just really, really loathe his "work". Which won't stop me applying for a course at UEA taught by him. Argh! I'm not sure I will be able to get through the interview without trying to beat him to death with a copy of his creepy-ass biography of Philip Larkin.

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