Poetry Corner: The Geek edition

A Rifleman’s Prayer

Oh Lord, I would live my life in freedom, peace and happiness, enjoying the simple pleasures of hearth and home. I would die an old, old man in my own bed, preferably of sexual overexertion.

But if that is not to be, Lord, if monsters such as this should find their way to my little corner of the world on my watch, then help me to sweep those bastards from the ramparts, because doing that is good, and right, and just.

And if in this I should fall, let me be found atop a pile of brass, behind the wall I made of their corpses.


-Geek with a 45 (aka. The Geek)

Because sometimes, violence is the only answer

When engaged in conversation regarding current international affairs and concerns, I am often asked if maybe I'm just a bit blood thirsty. My response, now, is along these lines:

"I have a wife, three kids, and two cats, all of whom I dote on endlessly.
I teach Sunday school every week to some very unique and gifted children, all of whom I adore.
Both sides of my family, for all their faults and foibles, are the most dear people in the world, and there's nothing I wouldn't do for them.
I have several hundred people I consider my friends, all over the world, and I'd gladly give them the shirt off my back, my last dollar, or even my life.
I am a man filled with love for those around him, even those I disagree with.

You bet your life I'm blood thirsty!"



If I have to kill every last predatory bastard on Earth with my own two hands in order to safeguard those I love, then I will do so with same determination I bring to all arduous tasks.

Poetry Corner, audio-visual edition

I'm gonna break with own poorly established tradition and post an instrumental instead. A recently composed one at that, I believe in 2000, which just goes to show that there are still composers out there doing good work in that area. Howard Shore is another good example, he did the music for the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Anyway, find six and a half minutes to just sit back and enjoy. The name of the piece is Lux Aeterna, but is more commonly known as Requiem for a Dream. Either way, the nom de guerre fits this haunting piece.



It starts out just barely audible and picks up just a bit under thirty seconds in.

Poetry Corner-Snipe's Lament

Having spent my share of time standing the watch in the hole, I well remember seeing this on a plaque outside the Chief Engineer's officer. To this day I can't remember without getting a little emotional. Life down in the pit is no easy thing. Eighteen hour days, ambient temperature never below 105 and more often around 120 with the humidity high enough that water condenses on every surface, including skin. And those poor bastards get paid only as much as the admin type who spends six hours a door working in an air conditioned office and stand, maybe, one watch a week.

Yeah, it's no easy life, but they live it.

SNIPE'S LAMENT

Now each of us from time to time has gazed upon the sea
and watched the mighty warships pulling out to keep this country free.
And most of us have read a book or heard a lusty tale,
about these men who sail these ships through lightning, wind and hail.
But there's a place within each ship that legend's fail to teach.
It's down below the water-line and it takes a living toll
- - a hot metal living hell, that sailors call the "Hole."
It houses engines run with steam that makes the shafts go round.
A place of fire, noise, and heat that beats your spirits down.
Where boilers like a hellish heart, with blood of angry steam,
are molded gods without remorse, are nightmares in a dream.

Whose threat from the fires roar, is like a living doubt,
that at any moment with such scorn, might escape and crush you out.
Where turbines scream like tortured souls, alone and lost in Hell,
are ordered from above somewhere, they answer every bell.
The men who keep the fires lit and make the engines run,
are strangers to the light and rarely see the sun.
They have no time for man or God, no tolerance for fear,
their aspect pays no living thing a tribute of a tear.
For there's not much that men can do that these men haven't done,
beneath the decks, deep in the hole, to make the engines run.
And every hour of every day they keep the watch in Hell,
for if the fires ever fail their ship's a useless shell.

When ships converge to have a war upon an angry sea,
the men below just grimly smile at what their fate will be.
They're locked below like men fore-doomed, who hear no battle cry,
it's well assumed that if they're hit men below will die.
For every day's a war down there when gauges all read red,
twelve-hundred pounds of heated steam can kill you mighty dead.

So if you ever write their songs or try to tell their tale,
the very words would make you hear a fired furnace's wail.
And people as a general rule don't hear of these men of steel,
so little heard about this place that sailors call the "Hole."
But I can sing about this place and try to make you see,
the hardened life of the men down there, 'cause one of them is me.
I've seen these sweat-soaked heroes fight in superheated air,
to keep their ship alive and right, though no one knows they're there.

And thus they'll fight for ages on till warships sail no more,
amid the boiler's mighty heat and the turbine's hellish roar.
So when you see a ship pull out to meet a war-like foe,
remember faintly if you can, "The Men Who Sail Below."

-Anonymous

Poetry Corner

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost

Poetry corner returns, also: Heroes

So, for those of you out there who watched Heroes last night, Mohinder's first closing speech was largely composed of one of my favorite poems.

THE SECOND COMING

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: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind 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?

-William Butler Yeats

One of the few poems I actually memorized in high school. Good stuff.

I'll blog more and explain my absence in an hour or two.

Poetry Corner, Segeant MacKenzie

Segeant MacKenzie

By: Joseph Kilna MacKenzie

Scots Tongue

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid

Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

Ains a year say a prayer faur me
Close yir een an remember me

Nair mair shall a see the sun
For a fell tae a Germans gun

Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Lay me doon in the caul caul groon
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun
Whaur afore monie mair huv gaun

English Translation

Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone

When they come I will stand my ground
Stand my ground I'll not be afraid

Thoughts of home take away my fear
Sweat and blood hide my veil of tears

Once a year say a prayer for me
Close your eyes and remember me

Never more shall I see the sun
For I fell to a German's gun

Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Lay me down in the cold cold ground
Where before many more have gone
Where before many more have gone

Listen to the lyrics here.

Poetry corner-The Second Coming

THE SECOND COMING

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: a waste of desert sand;
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
Wind 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?

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

Introducing the poetry corner!

I know, I know, poetry is for sissies, etc. Whatever, it's my blog.

The Commando's Prayer

Give me, my God, what you still have;

give me what no one asks for.

I do not ask for wealth, nor success,

nor even health.
People ask you so often, God, for all that,

that you cannot have any left.
Give me, my God, what you still have.

Give me what people refuse to accept from you.

I want insecurity and disquietude;

I want turmoil and brawl.
And if you should give them to me,

my God, once and for all,

let me be sure to have them always,

for I will not always

have the courage to ask for them.

Corporal Zirnheld

Special Air Service

1942

Hardly what I'd call a sissy poem. More will follow.