OPPONENT POEMS

An Orator-s Complaint

How many the troubles that wait
On mortals!â??especially those
Who endeavour in eloquent prose
To expound their views, and orate.
.....

Robert Fuller Murray

Widows

My mother's playing cards with my aunt,
Spite and Malice, the family pastime, the game
my grandmother taught all her daughters.

.....

Louise Gluck

Point Spread

The skull in the box is that of Cornelius A. Burleigh, the first man to be hanged in London, Ontario, August 19, 1830. The public hanging attracted an audience of over 3,000 when the village of London numbered only a few hundred. Because the rope broke, he was hanged twice! The top of the skull was taken on a world tour by Dr. O.S. Fowler, a phrenologist.
This part of the skull was presented to the Harris family.
(Eldon House brochure)

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

How Salvator Won

The gate was thrown open, I rode out alone,
More proud than a monarch who sits on a throne.
I am but a jockey, yet shout upon shout
Went up from the people who watched me ride out;
.....

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

90 Minutes Left

Little by little I started
Walking on the field of doom
The grass so softly parted
While the sphere filled with gloom
.....

Hadi Sharara

Duello

A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
.....

Robert Service

A Day's Ride

Bold are the mounted robbers who on stolen horses ride
And bold the mounted troopers who patrol the Sydney side;
But few of them, though flash they be, can ride, and few can fight
As Walker did, for life and death, with Ward the other night.
.....

Anonymous Oceania

Solomon On The Vanity Of The World, A Poem. In Three Books. - Knowledge. Book I.

The bewailing of man's miseries hath been elegantly and copiously set forth by many, in the writings as well of philosophers as divines; and it is both a pleasant and a profitable contemplation.
~ Lord Bacon's Advancement of Learning.

The Argument
.....

Matthew Prior

Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part Ii. - Xxiv - Saints

Ye, too, must fly before a chasing hand,
Angels and Saints, in every hamlet mourned!
Ah! if the old idolatry be spurned,
Let not your radiant Shapes desert the Land:
.....

William Wordsworth

Iphigenia In Tauris. - Act The Fifth.

SCENE I.

THOAS. ARKAS.

.....

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Ballplayer

i cop a squat on a squared-off log,
to watch you ball on the community center court.
butt numb, i shift my weight

.....

Evie Shockley

Duello

A Frenchman and an Englishman
Resolved to fight a duel,
And hit upon a savage plan,
Because their hate was cruel.
.....

Robert William Service

The Builders

Behold, I built a fowlhouse in my yard!
Two months agone the great work was begun,
And ev'ry eventide I labored hard,
What time my daily office grind was done.
.....

Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis

Poems Of Joys

O TO make the most jubilant poem!
Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death.
O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments! full of grain and trees.
.....

Walt Whitman

Investigating Flora

'Twas in scientific circles
That the great Professor Brown
Had a world-wide reputation
As a writer of renown.
.....

Banjo Paterson

Ch 02 The Morals Of Dervishes Story 44

I asked a good man concerning the qualities of the brethren of purity. He replied: â??The least of them is that they prefer to please their friends rather than themselves; and philosophers have said that a brother who is fettered by affairs relating to himself is neither a brother nor a relative.â??

If thy fellow traveller hastens, he is not thy fellow.
Tie not thy heart to one whose heart is not tied to thine.
.....

Saadi Shirazi

A Song Of Joys

O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music-full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments-full of grain and trees.

.....

Walt Whitman

Saltbush Bill

Now is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey --
A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day;
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,
They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good;
.....

Banjo Paterson

Egotism

YE powers fantastic ! goblin, sylph and fay,
Whose subtle forms no laws material sway ;
Ethereal essences, that dart and glide
Wherever pleasure or caprice may guide ;
.....

Jane Taylor

Care Of Birds For Their Young

As thus the patient dam assiduous sits,
Not to be tempted from her tender task,
Or by sharp hunger, or by smooth delight,
Tho' the whole loosen'd spring around her blows,
.....

James Thomson

The Blindfolded Woman

I am walking towards a formidable building
With walls encased with bricks and stones,
I see your maidenly form,
Standing tall with your glory.
.....

Rose Marie Juan Austin

Saltbush Bill

Now is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey,
A man must cover with traveling sheep a six-mile stage a day;
But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood,
They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good;
.....

Banjo Paterson (andrew Barton)

Investigating Flora

'Twas in scientific circles
That the great Professor Brown
Had a world-wide reputation
As a writer of renown.
.....

Banjo Paterson (andrew Barton)

A Rule Of Life

'If you want to annoy an opponent thoroughly, and even to harm him,' said a crafty old knave to me, 'you reproach him with the very defect or vice you are conscious of in yourself. Be indignant ... and reproach him!

'To begin with, it will set others thinking you have not that vice.

.....

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Trump's Reelection

I
A trader today
Told me Trump's reelection bid
Gives him insomnia
.....

Emmanuel Inya Otu-nwachi

Ode, To The Duke Of Wellington

This, this is inspiration's hour!
Poetic Genius, rushing on my soul,
Rouses her every sense, her every power,
And with a force too mighty to controul
.....

Thomas Oldham

Boca

"Nature abhors a vacuum", theorists of both philosophy and
politics assure us.

What's more, the phenomena is not confined to mere
.....

Paul Cameron Brown

Fault Of Days Our Life

Do your ideas shine on the lands
Valles and on of Shakespeares poems
invalid from values and stories be
smart he had ideas for a new
.....

Plantard Dacull

Leadership Tussle

Readers are leaders
Elections are like investment
Politicians unleashing miscreant on their opponent
Fighting to seek power
.....

Theophilus Katon Chidonku

An Orator's Complaint

How many the troubles that wait
On mortals!--especially those
Who endeavour in eloquent prose
To expound their views, and orate.
.....

Robert Fuller Murray

The Quarrel Between The Dogs And The Cats And Between The Cats And The Mice (prose Fable)

Discord has always reigned in the universe; of this our world furnishes a thousand different instances, for with us the sinister goddess has many subjects.

Let us begin with the four elements. Here you may be astonished to observe that they are, throughout, in antagonism to each other. Besides these four potentates how many other forces of all descriptions are everlastingly at war!

.....

Jean De La Fontaine

Errands

We repeat, the aim of the IRA has always been the liberation of our homeland. Any who aid or abet the enemy must fall full prey to force of arms. (The Republican Proclamation)

Somewhere in the distance a dog kept at his baying. A long mournful whelping that seemed torn from the damp night's very throat. Sean could not help but hear it; so deeply did the dog's vocal cords implant sound upon human ears. He could not help but think of the provos warning nuzzled like that dog's steady cry over and over into the fabric of one's memory swift as searing iron.

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

My Adversary

I had a comrade who was my adversary; not in pursuits, nor in service, nor in love, but our views were never alike on any subject, and whenever we met, endless argument arose between us.

We argued about everything: about art, and religion, and science, about life on earth and beyond the grave, especially about life beyond the grave.

.....

Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

Jabiru

Clarence, the pipe stem would grow hot with rage, then become agitated over his apparent inability to stop smoking. You see, he was a misfit in more ways than one. He didn't snap firmly in place when ordered, and more importantly, he resented the appendicular attachment to a place and time not his own choosing.

Clarence would stew near the pipe bowl, rife with burnt ends and hacking smoke. The pipe had a bite and it was he who enlisted its bitter end.

.....

Paul Cameron Brown

Johney Scot

The Text of this popular and excellent ballad is given from the Jamieson-Brown MS. It was copied, with wilful alterations, into Scott's Abbotsford MS. called Scottish Songs. Professor Child prints sixteen variants of the ballad, nearly all from manuscripts.

The Story of the duel with the Italian is given with more detail in other versions. In two ballads from Motherwell's MS., where 'the Italian' becomes 'the Tailliant' or 'the Talliant,' the champion jumps over Johney's head, and descends on the point of Johney's sword. This exploit is paralleled in a Breton ballad, where the Seigneur Les Aubrays of St. Brieux is ordered by the French king to combat his wild Moor, who leaps in the air and is received on the sword of his antagonist. Again, in Scottish tradition, James Macgill, having killed Sir Robert Balfour about 1679, went to London to procure his pardon, which Charles II. offered him on the condition of fighting an Italian gladiator. The Italian leaped once over James Macgill, but in attempting to repeat this manoeuvre was spitted by his opponent, who thereby procured not only his pardon, but also knighthood.

.....

Frank Sidgwick

Jesus At The Door In Dreadlocks

94 days after the wrangle
we did not taste each other's words,
on the staircase a helpless woman gasps on a stretcher
& that was the 7th body; going…
.....

Gabriel Awuah Mainoo

Love; Basketball

Running along in trickled lines
Blinding my vision and caressing my nose
It bears the taste of the sea but not the accompanying freedom
I see in blurred visions but my defeat couldn't be clearer
.....

Jael Von El

The Propagandist Upstairs

Whenever I tie my shoelaces to accomplish something
Every time I want to take a significant step in my life
I hear echoes of menaces whimpering inside my cranium
An unseen voice whispering to me that I cannot make it
.....

Tatenda Gonorashe