h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Rules - contributions should not be offensive, and should be kept to 2/3 lines only if of previously-published material, even if we suppose they're out of copyright, (to protect the site against any unnecessary trouble in these troubled times). Please give the author. External links, if wanted, are OK.

Original work can, indeed, be any length, but best to keep it short, to fit the other contributions.

Please link your lines to the previous ones implicitly or explicitly, to keep this a communal conversation of feelings and ideas.



The following advice was received from the editors of h2g2. These rules are based on it.

"The two-three lines idea is probably safest. The specifics on copyright are that they expire 70 years after the death of the author, not the publication of the piece, although even here there are exceptions (Disney have a miraculous way of extending the copyright of their works…).

We'd also like to avoid people just copying and pasting material because it begins to get tricky if we! , say, allow one entire copyright -free poem but don’t' allow an entire passage from the Koran or the Bible. We don't want to become a receptacle for pasted-in material, so the link idea is also a good one."

Jab

Trying my best to make it plain
Trying to remember that it's just a game
Tryin to be the first to say
Contributions do not have to rhyme

Also, please say 'original'if it is. I forgot!

Leave the Wise to wrangle, and with me
The quarrel of the universe let be:

Make game of that which makes as much of thee.




[By Omar Khayyam, trans. Edward Fitzgerald.]

or the Ruby Art of Homer K M?
Now ...
sit in a straight-backed chair
& repeat 40 times after me
prisms and pilgrims
and the devil will flee! (folklore)

Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.

[Baa baa black sheep; Anon.]

never been much good at writing verse
as for rhyming words, even worse
thought I would have a bash
though the words may clash


*orig. now, so more later*

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain
With Grammar, and nonsense, and learning.

[She Stoops to Conquer; Oliver Goldsmith.]

And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.

[from The Sentence by Anna Akhmatova]

Another off top of head.....

*Summer Days*
oh for those long summer days
where warm winds blow your cares away
to be lounging on a beach
all cares and worries out of reach.



*orig*

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire...

[T.S.Eliot The Wasteland]

I like the weather, when it is not rainy,
That is, I like two months of every year.

[Beppo, Byron.]

If I say, 'Do you think it's going to rain?'
and she says, 'I don't know,'
I start thinking : Does she really like me?


[It's Raining In Love - Richard Brautigan]

Love seeketh only Self to please,

Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

[Songs of Experience, William Blake]

Heaven-Haven
a nun takes the veil
...
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the sing of the sea.

(Gerald Manley Hopkins - RIP 1889)

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower


[Wm Blake - Auguries of Innocence]

I also love a quiet place
That's green, away from all mankind.

[The Kingfisher, W. H. Davies]

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

(Byron)