REQUEST: poems about monsters ! :)

[michayye.livejournal.com]

Hi everyone! I'm looking for effective poems about monsters. They can be terrifying poems, adorable poems or, beautifully, the conceptual idea of some kind of monster described through imagery or played with metaphorically.

Something lovely (though unrelated to monsters) for your time:

Deep Chess
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Life itself like championship chess
dark players jousting
on a checkered field
where you have only
so much time
to complete your moves
And your clock running
all the time
and if you take
too much time
for one move
you have that much less
for the rest
of your life
And your opponent
dark or fair
(which may or may not be
life itself)
bugging you with his deep eyes
or obscenely wiggling his crazy eyebrows
or blowing smoke in your face
or crossing and recrossing his legs
or her legs
or otherwise screwing around
and acting like some insolent invulnerable
unbeatable god
who can read your mind & heart
And one hasty move
may ruin you
for you must play
deep chess
(like the one deep game Spassky won from Fischer)
And if your unstudied opening
was not too brilliant
you must play to win not draw
and suddenly come up with
a new Nabokov variation
And then lay Him out at last
with some super end-game
no one has ever even dreamed of

And there’s still time-
Your move

The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: Fit the First

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The Hunting of the Snark
Fit the First: The Landing

"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

The crew was complete: it included a Boots—
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods—
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes—
And a Broker, to value their goods.

A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share—
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck,
Though none of the sailors knew how.

There was one who was famed for the number of things
He forgot when he entered the ship:
His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings,
And the clothes he had bought for the trip.

( He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed, )

"The Five Days Remaining" by Hafez

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

The Five Days Remaining

The goods produced in the factories of space and time
Are not all that great. Bring some wine,
Because the desirables of this world are not all that great.

Heart and soul are born for ecstatic conversation
With the soul of souls. That’s it. If that fails,
Heart and soul are not in the end that great.

Don’t become indebted to the Tuba and Sidra trees
Just to have some shade in heaven. When you look closely,
My flowering cypress friend, you’ll see that these trees are not all
that great.

The true kingdom comes to you without any breaking
Of bones. If that weren’t so, achieving the Garden
Through your own labors wouldn’t be all that great.

In the five days remaining to you in this rest stop
Before you go to the grave, take it easy, give
Yourself time, because time is not all that great.

You who offer wine, we are waiting on the lip
Of the ocean of ruin. Take this moment as a gift; for the distance
Between the lip and the mouth is not all that great.

The state of my being – miserable and burnt
To a crisp – is proof enough that my need
To put it into words is not all that great.

You ascetic on the cold stone, you are not safe
From the tricks of God’s zeal: the distance between the cloister
And the Zorastrian tavern is not after all that great.

The name Hafez has been well inscribed in the books,
But in our clan of disreputables, the difference
Between profit and loss is not all that great.

by Hafez, trans. Robert Bly