Help me find a cool poem to read aloud at a gathering <<squirm>>

[filthymindedvixen]

Have promised to do this for a friend.
Need to find a not-hackneyed poem which is good for reading out loud. Cool/funky maybe rather than something straight out of The Nation's Favourite Poem IYKWIM.
Having said that, I haven't read anything other than The Puffin Book Of Children's Poems for years

please help, oh hugely cultured ones!

er, not that much Twig!

I'm more Mavis Riley than Whoopi Goldberg IYKWIM...

Of course there is always one of my favourites

There's nothing I would rather do
Than slip and slide on top of you
Until you come
And I come too.

There are holes in the sky
Where the rain comes in
But they're terribly small
That's why rain is thin

Spike Milligan

A Silly Poem

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Spike Milligan

Benjamin Zephaniah or Ogden Nash? Both witty and readable. Will try to google something.

Carol Anne Duffy's The World's Wife often goes down well in a crowd as does Simon Armitage.

Always better to go for the comic than the deep, I think. I could not AT ALL carry off Maya Angelou, but I can do a fabulous over the top To A Haggis (Louse, Mouse, etc.)

Have you time to get to a library & rootle about in collections of perennials like Ogden Nash or, oh, who's that woman, you know the Alconquin Round Table one, you know who I mean? Or Stevie Smith is good. But I still think you should look at the Carol Ann Duffy book, & esp. the Edward Lear

'Bloody men are like bloody buses -
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.'

Wendy Cope

A quick, and typical Ogden Nash:

Everybody Tells Me Everything
by Ogden Nash

I find it very difficult to enthuse
Over the current news.
Just when you think that at least the outlook is so black that it can grow no blacker, it worsens,
And that is why I do not like the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.

Or if you want something more poet-esque, how about Billy Collins:

The Dead
The dead are always looking down on us,
they say,
while we are putting on our shoes or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the glass-bottom boats,
of heaven as they row themselves slowly through eternity.
They watch the tops of our heads moving below on earth,
And when we lie down in a field or on a couch,
Drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon,
They think we are looking back at them,
which makes them lift their oars and fall silent and wait,
like parents,
for us to close our eyes

I am a bunny rabbit
Sitting in me hutch
I always sit up this end
Don't care for that end much

Pam Ayres Fan of Kent

(sorry, not very helpful but I love Pam)

Dorothy Parker, that's who I meant.

On the other hand ... I would be a bit wary about reading very very short things, whether funny or not - in a pub you might be finished before people have noticed you've started. Better something with a bit of substance (two or three verses), a narrative, something to latch on to ... one of Belloc's lesser known Cautionary Tales, maybe.

The Road To Damascus
A man was walking one night
Down a lane without a light
Thinking that he heard a sound
The man then turned around
Someone jumped him suddenly
And assaulted him violently
Badly beaten and then robbed
He lay in the road and sobbed
Injured for many hours he lay
Many people had passed his way
Only one stopped, not to assist
To take his watch off his wrist
Hours later came a Samaritan
A social worker name of Stan
He was greatly shocked to see
Deeds committed by humanity
?Whoever hit you on the head
Really needs some help,? he said

Copyright © Paul Curtis.

I like this one, given that you don't really want to do this, but have said yes out of love for your friend.

Yes (Muriel Rukeyser)

It's like a tap-dance
Or a new pink dress,
A shit-naive feeling
Saying Yes.

Some say Good morning
Some say God bless -
Some say Possibly
Some say Yes.

Some say Never
Some say Unless
It's stupid and lovely
To rush into Yes.

What can it mean?
It's just like life,
One thing to you
One to your wife.

Some go local
Some go express
Some can't wait
To answer Yes.

Some complain
Of strain and stress
The answer maybe
No for Yes.

Some like failure
Some like success
Some like Yes Yes
Yes Yes Yes.

Open your eyes,
Dream but don't guess.
Your biggest surprise
Comes after Yes.

Or this one, as a poetic apology for not being quite as into this as you might have been....

Apologia (Connie Bensley)

My life is too dull and too careful -
even I can see that:
the orderly bedside table,
the spoilt cat.

Surely I should have been bolder
What could biographers say?
She got up, ate toast and went shopping day after day?

Whisky and gin are alarming,
Ecstasy makes you drop dead.
Toy boys make inroads on cash
and your half of the bed.

Emily Dickinson help me.
Stevie, look up from your Aunt.
Some people can stand excitement,
some people can't.

Oops, sorry for the extra ^s. (The italics are there in the original, but I obviously got carried away).

I think you need some WH Auden. Partly because I love him anyway but mostly because they just sound so well read aloud. There are many that are beautiful but for a boho crowd, what about this? It's the third part of his poem to WB Yeats:

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

The thing with a reading like this is to read it with honesty and passion. It's no good being coy and hiding behind with something wittily ironic and post-modern. Read something you care about - inevitably you will read it well.

vixen you haven't said what the occasion is? It would help to know.

Lots of people like Auden, even those who have never heard him before, and he wrote a couple of really good pounding rhythmic poems - try 'O where are you going' to creep people out, for instance.

Brian Patten good for reading out loud (and he has web-site so you can check out his rhymes).

look up david shrigley. he is not a poet but an artist, but uses alot of writing in his work. if you give me a subject i will look in my book. it will outcool the bohos

Sacked from sainsbury's

The devil finds work for idle hands. to return the favour (we presume) Idle hands gives Devil a hand job in sainsbury's car park. They are caught by the police. devil escapes with a caution (it is his first offence) but Idle hands has been caught doing stuff before and gets 40 hours community service. He is made to sweep up leaves and paint the railings around the park. "it could have been worse" his lawyer tells him.

Another vote for John Hegley
or what about Benjamin Zephaniah ?

or a nice bit of Betjeman ?