HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: bunny@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Poem - Script
Keywords: To the written word...
Date: 9 Oct 92 03:36:52 GMT
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana


SCRIPT

Elegant script in a multitude
  of hands and styles,
allow me to adore your fleeting form.

Vast hoards of brothers have illumed
  as well as other, holy men -
and have perfected curves sans limitations.

Through ages told and untold have
  they all dwelt in the confines
of your boldly colored, weighty shadows.


-Tracy Flynn-Marsh
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: sheilah@wam.umd.edu (Sheila Herndon)
Subject: Re: Creation of Urdu newsgroup
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1992 14:19:02 GMT


Doug and Don bickering like quer...ulous cats. 
>)Have a care O'Toole 
>)or this just might lead
>)to a duel.
>)
>I fear not thy miscreant hands.


(I'll be yaw's second.)




(You silly gentelmen! you perturbatious scoundrels!
stop this petty fighting. 
Fight for something more than vanity.

(oh Sure - you say it is honor. pfah!))

(spelling?)
-- 
I am always wrong. Don't believe me ever.
stark raving sane  sheilah@wam.umd.edu
From: douzzer@media.mit.edu (renzzuoP .G leinaD)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: love ever screaming in my ear
Date: 15 Oct 92 08:08:07 GMT
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory


why,
why must such a beautiful thing
be seen as ugly
by so many?
she said to me once,
"why do you yell at me?"
i could always understand her screaming.
i always felt her pain.
and she simply asks me,
when she hurts me,
"why do you yell at me?"
like a tiny, tiny child.
why must they all tell me
my love isn't real?
my love isn't good?
how can they say this?
why do they yell at me?
why does everyone yell at me?
why does no one understand?
why does no one answer?
my love is all there is to me.
she is my only joy and my only pain
and all else scarcely tickles.
and now, like some stupid storybook,
she sends me away,
she sends everyone away,
and makes us all watch her die.
but it is my stapled eyeballs alone
that *must* watch, alone
in their depth of torture.
i can forgive her for anything.
but why does no one understand?
what is their excuse?
can they simply not imagine?
is my love to always be
nothing but insanity to them?
don't they know,
can't they see,
without my love
for her, and her alone,
i die?
it's been a long time.
we've both seen times
harder than anyone should.
and here we huddle in the same corner,
she and i,
and my love can but terrify her.
am i writing the epic alone?
no, i am not.
she is writing the epic.
i simply cannot bring her
to understand her own epic,
can bring no one to understand our epic.

and so i just cry and cry and cry
and it is better than nothing,
so, so much better than nothing.
15oct92 0349

-daniel
From: cecilw@access.isc-br.com (Cecil Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Shades of Green...The Answer
Date: 13 Oct 92 17:53:09 GMT
Organization: ISC-Bunker Ramo, Spokane, WA


 Cecil Williams writes:
>>)OK Sheila, I'll pick on you just a little bit...
>
>>)Did you know you managed to work your way into one of my poems a few 
>>)months back? I bet you didn't even notice it! Was posted right here 
>>)in view of the whole world, and nobody, not even the rain, 
>>)noticed it.
>>)
>>)I'll award 10 bonus points to the first person who remembers the poem...

 donz@ui.org (Posthumous O'Toole) writes:

>> "Gringo in Mexico City"
>

Cecil writes:
>Wrong answer, but thanks for playing...
>
>The poem we're looking for actually has an explicit reference to 
>"the Sheila...". 
> ...
>I'll repost the subject poem...
>... if no one comes up with the answer by tuesday.

IT'S Tuesday, and here it is....
THE ANSWER POEM 
*****************************************************
From: cecilw@access.isc-br.com (Cecil Williams)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Poem--Turtles
Date: 16 Jun 92 18:30:51 GMT
Organization: ISC-Bunker Ramo, Spokane, WA


 (Ralph Cherubini) wrote:
>
>                        Turtles
> 
>Turtles,
>life
>carrying white ovals
>within
>depositing generations
>in sandy nests
>until I awaken
>once more.
>

Turtles? Since you're touting 
Turtles, I will tell you 
about the turtle I saw,
last week, I saw a turtle
playing the oboe, yes I saw
Mr. Turtle, actually, playing the
oboe in the pit, the orchestra pit
OK, Mr. Turtle is a man, but he was
playing the oboe, and he was in a pit,
and on the stage, when the curtains parted,
the fog flowed down from the valley, 
and Brigadoon appeared, it was the day,
and Brigadoon appeared for a day. 
And the heather grew fine on the hill,
and the grass was green in the dale,
and I'm sure I saw the Sheila, in a daliance  <<-----------Our very own Sheila
with a dalesman, frolicking in the far away.



Cecil
 

***************************************************



Seems as though 
Turtles,
Jello
and Unicorns
are the basis
for many poems 
lately...
I wonder if anyone 
can combine the three
into one ultimate poem?



Cecil (the original rambler american)
From: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: sister, sister / Marie Coffin
Date: 16 Oct 92 22:48:29 GMT
Article-I.D.: IASTATE.1992Oct16.174829
Reply-To: mcoffin@IASTATE.EDU (Marie Coffin)
Organization: Iowa State University


	sister, sister
	------------------------------------------------------------
	
	i have your letter
	in which you ask me to write
	in which you say
	that you are fine, the baby is fine,
	she sleeps four hours 
	every night
	and the new car is big enough
	for everyone.
	
	i have your letter.
	it sits on my desk amid
	all the little folders
	that hide my thesis
	and i know
	we have changed places
	like the time -- remember?
	you wanted to sleep
	on the top bunk because i did
	so mother made me switch.
	it lasted almost a week
	until you fell out of bed.
	
	now i fall behind.
	i used to walk you home from school:
	you are the mother,
	but i am still a pupil
	as if you went on growing and growing
	and i stood still
	buried in chalk, doing 
	those student things
	never knowing
	that everyone else was turning, gone.
	
	you wanted whatever i had
	but i wanted
	a baby.
	some days i still want
	that heavy helpless warmth
	and your serene confidence,
	the sense that carries you.
	i have this paper i carry instead:
	my baby that's never born
	in a rainy march that never
	turns to spring
	and i have your letter
	in which you ask me
	
	to write.


Marie Coffin
October 16, 1992
From: pirillo2044@iscsvax.uni.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Currently Untitled
Date: 14 Oct 92 23:22:05 -0500
Organization: University of Northern Iowa





        Come listen to the shouting whispers
    Echoing from my past.
        Pretend to hear their lamenting desires
    As the tears begin to fall.

        She is out there waiting for me
    And the deoxyribonucleic acid
        Trickles down my spine...
    In anticipation for the moment
        When she finds me resting
    Under her pillow--her hand upon mine.

        Come watch the drooling mongrels
    Stand before me now.
        Remember the memories of a day gone by
    When the tears begin to fall.

        She left me two years before yesterday.
    But I never forgot those things
        Which I promised to remember...
    The unfinished plot-line;
        The dreams left unfulfilled;
    The time we spent together.

        Come to me and you will find
    What was left behind before.
        Only touch my heart and say
    I am here to give you more.

        Come on someone...
    I'm very lonely...
        I'm sitting outside under the stars...
    But the sky seems empty from where I stand.
        Won't someone lend me a hand?

                                        --Chris Pirillo

        "Well, this poem was basically improvised... and if you couldn't tell,
    I was just a tad bit depressed.  Oh well, I hope the words came out right.  
    Once again, your comments are welcome..."

                                     Dream on,

                                     Christopher J. Pirillo
                                     THE LOCKER GNOME
From: wachtel@canon.co.uk (Tom Wachtel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: in this fair
Date: 9 Oct 92 19:58:49 GMT
Reply-To: wachtel@canon.co.uk
Organization: Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd

=

	in this fair hand is a colour, warmly grand
	it's all I hold, count the silver, taste the gold
	and the telling's half the story
	and the story's half the tale being told
	falter rhythm...
	shades of darker wanton pale...
	I'd paint you silver crimson, all aglow
	wanting, wilful, plainsong playful, steal the show
	and show the steel, the warm blue steel
	of your winsome lose some soul
	I'd love to tell your story
	like your story should be told
	all in shades of words to touch
	to hold on sand by hand
	caress embrace enfold



-- 

Tom Wachtel (wachtel@canon.co.uk)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: colossal@cbnewsg.cb.att.com (colossal Microscope)
Subject: e-Dada haiku #3
Keywords: d-Dada haiku
Organization: AT&T
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 18:06:42 GMT



                      e-Dada haiku #3
                      ---------------


                     mirror brown chestnuts
                     eyes polished by sunlit smiles
                     dripping icicles




collaborative poets:
--------------------
line 1: JABOLLIGER@miavx3.mid.muohio.edu
line 2: Liz Haight <haight@ipl.rpi.edu>
line 3: frank@iastate.edu    Frank Poduska


---

c         _     m         
 o        \\     i        
  l      ((\\     c      
   o      (\___    r      
    s      ||       o                     -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
     s  ========     s                      -=-=-   jack thomas weres   -=-=-
      a               c                       -=-=- jtw@acpfs.att.com -=-=-
       l               o                        -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
                        p                                  |||
                         e                                 |||
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: steele@aem.umn.edu (Stephanie Steele)
Subject: Re: Criticism
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 20:09:47 GMT

jason,

i know you wrote this i while ago, but i was browsing and your
title caught my eye because i am currently in two writing workshops
where i believe criticism is a problem- more about that in a sec.

basically, i agree that writers should write because they have to
write, we shouldn't be writing for anybody or thing, per se, but
i disagree that criticism is unimportant to writers.  i believe
that serious writers are also serious critics, must also be serious
critics, for two reasons- reading poetry seriously involves an ability
to form critical thoughts about the art and its message, i think we
all agree that good writers are good readers, and my point is that
in order to be a good reader you must have a critical mind- and as
far as "beginning" poets go, or poets that are still exploring and
learning the craft, criticism is an invaluable practice that will
only help poets understand why things work and dont work in particular
pieces, and this in turn helps the writing process itself.

i believe that almost all poems fail, and i am relieved by this for
some reason...when one finally does work it isn't magic, it's a critical
mind demonstrating the ability to choose and commit.

i think overallk, unfortunately, criticism immediately puts people
on the defense, and it really shouldn't.  anyway, the deal with
my workshops applies here as well, i think.  i'm bummed because in
a class of about 17 students the same five are always critiquing
works brought before the class, while the rest sit silent. next week
i'm going to ask if people can't at lit critique the work on the hard
copy and turn it in to the author at the end of the class if they don't
feel comfortable speaking up in front of people.  I mean we all paid
good money to be involved in a group experience, to take part in some
sort of collective consciousness, otherwise we would sit at home alone,
or sign up for some correspondence course or find a private mentor to
work with....i mean why do people post their poems in rap? i do it
with the hopes that somebody might be able to offer some critical 
thoughts about my work, not just to hear people say "good job," which
is always nice of course, and which has, unfortunately (?) been the
only kind of "criticism" i've received.

in short, we should all become better critics and accept criticism
with open arms, knowing full well that most of it might not help,
but some of it usually does, especially in a group situation when
you have 17 all telling you that line 5 is confusing, or that the
imagery in line 4 is brilliant.

now, what the critics write is another story.....

toughtfully yours,

sls
--

=======================================================================
			   Stephanie Steele
			steele@chip.aem.umn.edu
From: wachtel@canon.co.uk (Tom Wachtel)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: I was grave ten
Date: 9 Oct 92 19:56:24 GMT
Reply-To: wachtel@canon.co.uk
Organization: Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd

=


	I was grave ten days ago
	ten days ago I went to my mother's grave
	I gravely went there to my mother's grave
	to set a wintered colour on my mother's grave
	and my father's grave
	my father's very grave
	they lie there together
	engraved in each other
	like they lied there together
	before they laid them there together
	just a quarter of a century apart
	before, they laid there together
	close by me, close by you
	just a quarter of a century apart



-- 

Tom Wachtel (wachtel@canon.co.uk)
From: tpl@eng.cam.ac.uk (Tim Love)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Portrait
Date: 15 Oct 92 14:32:22 GMT
Organization: cam.eng

Portrait

I turn and say I'm cold.
A fire, he says, will dry his oils too quickly.
I turn back towards the window,
not a grey hair out of place. I cannot smile.

Beyond, huge flocks sweep closer, become gulls
in my eyes, or crows with velvet fingers,
waving. My skin's turned brown as a rotten apple. Press,
and the wrinkles will go. Not now, the guards will notice.

My cheeks are red, my elegant hands hidden,
but when you turn away I'll stretch to touch
- not you - these false panels, these instruments
to measure humidity. It'll turn out nice they say. 

I stare past you into the street. No, not birds; a cloud.
No, the billowing stained curtains. Buy a postcard of me.
Don't forget.




Tim Love 1991
From: bunny@bsu-cs.bsu.edu (Marsh)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Poem -don't laugh turtle
Date: 11 Oct 92 19:16:31 GMT
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana


DON'T LAUGH TURTLE

dark eyes, heavy-lidded,
	dart
   slowly like Turtle crossing
white line on Highway;
	laugh
   because cars can't hurt his
hard old shell
	tough
   green turtle crossing yellow
line on Highway can't see
	dead
   crushed turtles on ashphalt
	dead
   flat plates with leather hides
tanner tougher by wind,
	time
   dead green saucer because
they laughed when they crossed
	Highway


-Tracy Flynn-Marsh
From: beh@kropotkin.gnu.ai.mit.edu (various Howellses)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: and some seed fell on rocky ground
Date: 8 Oct 92 00:48:24 GMT
Distribution: rec
Organization: Internet access via the Free Software Foundation


And some seed fell on rocky ground,
and it could not take hold,
and was wasted, and grew not.



His seed falls on rocky ground.
A woman who is not a woman, and 
yet, somehow, is a woman.
It is so hard to know what a woman
is
when the hand which touches her is
not warm
is not full of life.

What am I, then,
who will never bring forth fruit?
Am I parasite,
or perhaps merely a plastic image,
blown up with widened hips and 
enlarged breasts, to bring pleasure
but not produce?

I have avoided life
in small pink bonnets,
in blue booties,
knowing what I have only learned
though no one taught me.

And some seed fell on rocky ground
and was wasted,
and did not grow.

Will he look for another woman?
A real woman,
not a figure, made in the image
of the earth mother,
but flesh and blood,
warm and yielding,
not the softness of age and neglect?

It isn't age
nor neglect
but merely the fact that
inside me
I am rocky ground.


--Nancy Howells
(beh@gnu.ai.mit.edu through the good graces of my husband)
From: bob@netxcom.netx.com (Robert Thralls)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Empty words(?? use of jack hammer..)
Date: 15 Oct 92 19:01:20 GMT
Organization: NetExpress Inc., Vienna, VA, USA


>In article <1992Oct6.153907.27012@hobbes.kzoo.edu>, k084118@hobbes.kzoo.edu (Pamela S. Rivers) writes:
>>
>>He speaks to me and those that will listen
>>or pretend to
>>loudly, like the sound of a jack hammer
>>and like the jack hammer 
>>the noise means nothing to me
>
>
>	Wonderful. I love it. I love everything about it. If it were a woman, i

Sorry, missed the rest of the poem, but as far as context from this goes...
Perhaps a jack hammer is wrong loud noise to use...
The usage invokes an image of change. Something of foundation is
being broken up, it may not affect me directly, but change is change.
It becomes the sound of change, ringing in the ear, causing headaches
in those closeby. This sound GIVES meaning to his words...  $.02

no signature required.
From: jondarr@macadam.mpce.mq.edu.au (jondarr c g h 2 gibb)
Subject: Minutes to Midnight
Organization: Macquarie University, Australia.
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 03:17:41 GMT


        Minutes to Midnight

It's minutes to midnight,
  the last of the moonlight
is scattered in its own grey paleness,
Shadows still play
  where the moonbeams lay
but the stars do their dancing in darkness.

As the slight crescent moon
  winks out, leaving in gloom
tiny brightly lit sparks of nocturnals,
And the eyes of the night
  make their own eery light
in the dawn of their midnight eternal,

All at once there's a cry
  from the hunters on high
and a scattering scurry for cover,
With a swoop and a dive
  the whole forest's alive
as the scavengers hide from each other.

Is there nothing to save
  the insane and the brave
as they scamper away in the starlight ?
It's a life on the run
  when you don't see the sun
and the moon has been hidden at midnight.

			10th October, 1992


                    
              Anyway the wind blows ...
                                                //\         /\\
                             /                 || * \ . . / * ||
               .  _   _   _/  _   _  _          \\____\X/____//
              / /_/ / / /_/ /-/ /  /             / *  /O\  * \
          ._/                                    \__/  "  \__/

jondarr@macadam.mpce.mq.edu.au  (137.111.216.12)
jondarr@mpce.mq.edu.au
jondarr@macgraw.mpce.mq.edu.au
From: mas4@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (MICHAEL ANTHONY STRAUSS)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Afterbirth Stew      -Stimpee
Date: 9 Oct 92 14:39:56 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

My wife's labor pain does loom,
As she doth a baby with yon womb.

A tasty treat I do spy,
Some of it splashed in my eye.

It smells bad, but cooks real good,
Boil it with carrots, beets, and wood.

Frothy potion of discarded skin and blood,
Tastes like vomited cow cud.

Fatty tissue and umbilical cord,
A feast for a King that I can afford.

This is some smelly shit but tasty brew,
What is the recipe for this fucking Afterbirth Stew...

      -Stimpee

      Replies welcome
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: steele@aem.umn.edu (Stephanie Steele)
Subject: love poem
Summary: love poem
Keywords: love poem
Organization: University of Minnesota
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 17:03:29 GMT

i wanted to write you a love poem,
you know- full of ethereal draped lovelies
hushed languid kisses
the kind of poem that bilows like the gossamer
drapes on filmy summer nights
and embraces you with the aphrodisiac
of night blooming jasmine dripping off the dusk
i wanted the poem to swell like some dark body
of water and to roll sequaciously
side to side like our wet stomachs pressed
lightly together- i wanted to hear
the poem breathe like the osier tree sighing helplessly
into the thick of tepid afternoon-
the short whispered gasps that i blow into your ear
i wanted the poem to taste of your pale salty shoulder
all warm and light- and i wanted it to be the translucent
blue the midnight moon gently filters     
through orange blossoms while we giggle
and slowly take off our clothes
i wanted it to dance with liquid feet and lay us in the dark
blanket of the sky while i carefully brushed stars
from your hair and we both closed our eyes to feel the press
of warm lips on our lids and listened to the slight
slight push of the sun
i wanted to write you a love poem,
you know the kind.
       
       sls
      i wnated it to dance with liquid feet and lay us in the dark
From: steele@aem.umn.edu (Stephanie Steele)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: Criticism
Date: 11 Oct 92 00:33:13 GMT
Organization: University of Minnesota

jason-
i now have your address and my CORRECT address, which is, in fact
SCREWED on the network (in case anybody else may be reading this and
want to email me anything- hopeful wishes, eh?) IS

steele@chip.aem.umn.edu

ta da!

sls

--

=======================================================================
			   Stephanie Steele
			steele@chip.aem.umn.edu
From: moonbeam@iastate.edu (Timothy J Cockerham)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Fear
Date: 12 Oct 92 20:30:25 GMT
Article-I.D.: du248-07.moonbeam.718921825
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA


	Fear.
What is it that I fear?
Is it a fear of the unknown?

It creeps into my thoughts as I try to change my life.
It binds me and paralyses my body. 
I remain trapped, safe in my own little world. I want out
so badly, but even that is a lie. 
Why must I go through with this act? In the end I know that
nothing will have changed. I don't have the power to do it.
How calmly I can tell myself that tommorrow it will be different,
and I forget to see my own lies. She was right, and I know that I
have to take her advice. 
But, how can I tell someone that their touch means the world to me?
How can I show her that I need her only to ask, and I could break away
from the stone of my fears? 
My own desires are never enough. 

	-Tim-
	Please respond in any way.
	moonbeam@iastate.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
From: lichter@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter)
Subject: late night at ralphs
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 06:47:05 GMT

		late night at ralphs
		---------------------------------------------------------

		i saw george bush last 
		night in the supermarket

		it was just past midnight
		at the ralphs on venice

		the secret service planted face
		down the ragman who tried to wash
		the limo windows with blue spray and
		recycled news

		george was having trouble
		dealing with the recalcitrant
		wheels of a beat up old cart

		squeezing toilet paper and
		secretly testing the gummy bears
		his eyes glowed with fresh discovery

		a laid off auto worker tried to get
		an autograph for his waitress girlfriend
		but george, in shades, was going incognito

		the flattopped filipino dude at
		the register beeped george's steaks 
		through without comment and flipped
		them artistically into paper or plastic

		see, george said to himself,
		things are just swell!

				Michael Lichter
				October 15, 1992