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Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,

Whatever they are,

As bribes to teach them how to execute

Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;

This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club,

Jive at the Mecca, use deodorants, and

On Saturdays squire ex-schoolgirls to the pub

By private car.


Such uncorrected visions end in church

Or registrar:

A mortgaged semi- with a silver birch;

Nippers; the widowed mum; having to scheme

With money; illness; age. So absolute

Maturity falls, when old men sit and dream

Of naked native girls who bring breadfruit

Whatever they are.

WHAT IS LOVE????

love is watching your friends and catching them as they fall...... love is watching your friends and not catching them when they fall, but offering your hand to help them back up..... love is giving energy to someone youve never met,.... in the hope they will pass it on to someone they never met..... love is listening when you need to,.... love is not listening when you need to..... love is showing that you have nothing in your pockets to give,.... love is giving whats in your hand when your pockets are empty..... love is having nothing to say when understanding silence is called for..... love is letting the person that you once loved be happy without you...... love is writing a tune for someone that they may never hear..... love is hearing the song that someone wrote for you...... love is going without to attain the abundance within....... love is going within to imagine a smiling face..... love is free like a molecule and trapped like a fart in a lift..... love is having nothing to prove,... love is proven with action.... love is kindness in the face of hostility..... love is hostility in the face of unfairness.....love is the sun on my face.... love is why i am here for you to sit with quietly..... love is doing it because you can......love is Always with you.....

easyuk 2007....


here's something a bit soppy I wrote a few years ago dunno if it suits but your welcome to it.

Is this any good?


A friend is someone I depend on

An ear to lend on

Someone to pin my hopes on.


A friend like you.


A friend is someone I care for,

Buy a share for,

Give up my last Rolo for.


A friend like you.


A friend is someone I laugh with

Share a bath with

But never share my boyfriend with!


A friend like you.

Thanks y'all.


In the end I wrote what could only be described as a prose poem, and threw in a little Whitsun Weddings for good measure (I know that's about weddings and not friendship, but I crumbled in awe and wonder and thought the cynical optimism of Larkin could shore me up a little).

Rosie, I'm sure you did brilliantly. I did look through the dusty shelves of my memory for something on friendship, and failed utterly. Then I googled it and here you owe me, as the stuff you find on websiteaboutfriendshippoems.org et al is horrendous moonbeam-type stuff, which caused me to lose my lunch. Larkin is a genius -


Our almost-instinct almost true:

What will survive of us is love


- and that's (almost) good enough for me.

On Friendship

Kahlil Gibran


Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.



When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.



And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.




I know this is all too late, but he is always worth a read.

Having embraced 'The Prophet' I wondered if he had anything on friendship.

SteveT, thank you, that was lovely. And I might try a last minute crammer, though I fear I am too late - still, it's a wonderful thing to read.


Moos, you're right: Arundel Tomb always hits me like a punch to the solar plexus: those last two lines - sublime. And in truth, I put that in too, not just the more optimistic Whitsun Weddings. It's not all chocolate boxes and roses, eh..?

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