This Be the Worse

They fuck you up, the chaps you choose
To do your Letters and your Life.
They wait till all that's left of you's
A corpse in which to shove a knife.

How ghoulishly they grub among
Your years for stuff to shame and shock:
The times you didn't hold your tongue,
The times you failed to curb your cock.

To each of those who've processed me
Into their scrap of fame or pelf:
You think in marks for decency
I'd lose to you? Don't kid yourself.

Robert Conquest, Demons Don't, 1999

Lives of great men all remind us
we could make our lives sublime
if we didn't leave behind us
letters never burnt in time.

I haven't seen pelf in a poem since Walter Scott.

Deleted due to poster's obtuse stupidity.



[This message has been edited by Michael Cantor (edited June 22, 2006).]

I like the fresh use of what is often a cliche rhyme, "life/knife." Nice intertextual suggestion of Larkin, nice use of four-letter words. Like the alteration in "curb your cock." I heartily agree with the sentiment as well.

Obtusely similar poem by C. S. Lewis:

Odora Canum Vis: A Defense of certain modern biographers and critics

Come now, don't be too eager to condemn
Our little smut-hounds if they wag their tails
(Or shake like jellies as their tails wag them)
The moment the least whiff of sex assails
Their quivering snouts. Such conduct after all,
Though comic, is in them quite natural.

As those who have seen no lions must revere
A Bull for Pan's fortissimo, or those
Who never tasted wine will value beer
Too highly, so the smut-hound, since he knows
Neither God, hunger, thought, nor battle, must
Of course hold disproportioned views on lust.

Of all the Invaders that's the only one
Even he could not escape; so have a heart,
Don't tie them up or whip them, let them run.
So! Cock your ears, my pretties! Play your part!
The dead are all before you, take your pick.
Fetch! Paid for! Slaver, snuff, defile and lick.

Odora canum vis: smelly little dogs.




[This message has been edited by David Landrum (edited June 30, 2006).]

Good one. Here's another: http://www.the-buckeye.org/folly/200...ip_larkin.html

Re: sex, I dunno. Some people think if you so much as mention that someone got around, or was gay, or had an unusual sexual preference, that you're "scandal-mongering." But that assumes you think those things are scandalous.

Poem to die for. In a failed poem I rhymed pelf with elf, and tilth with illth. No wonder it failed.

Larkin's "Let this be Verse" is a good vehicle for re-visioned versions.

Larkin blames parental influence for our "problems" in life, but I think the psychological archetypes (as represented by the Greek pantheon) are more to blame.

Verse Still


They fuck you up, these archetypes,
and they mean to, yes they do.
They give you all their wants and likes
and lusts to conquer or to screw.

But they were fucked up in their turn
by Zeus' or Hera's nasty tricks
which they pass on to make us yearn
or kick against the godly pricks.

The gods drive impulse - nothing much
your family does to screw your head
has such effect - the gods' made clutch
for power twists and strips your thread.




------------------

The poem seems a bit clunky to me--with cuss words thrown in for a "gritty" effect. The first two lines indicate that the inadequacy of capturing the biographical "truths" of the speaker's life was initiated by the speaker in the first place. So the complaint of the poem, for this reader, seems less valid because the speaker brings it on him/herself. Maybe I'm missing something, but is this poem arched for arched's sake?

jr!

Reminds me of another small parody I love.

Original Victorian version:

Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone:
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in our own.

Realist's version by Kingsley Amis:

Life is mostly grief and labor,
Two things help us through:
Chortling when it hits your neighbor,
Whinging when it's you.