A KIND OF DISTRACTION

Related poetry:

1. Modern Love XXVII: Distraction is the Panacea Distraction is the panacea, Sir! I hear my oracle of Medicine say. Doctor! that same specific yesterday I tried, and the result will not deter A second trial. Is the devil’s line Of golden hair, or raven black, composed? And does a cheek, like any sea-shell rosed, Or clear as widowed sky, seem most divine? […]...
2. Her Kind I have gone out, a possessed witch, Haunting the black air, braver at night; Dreaming evil, I have done my hitch Over the plain houses, light by light: Lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in […]...
3. Be Kind we are always asked To understand the other person’s Viewpoint No matter how Out-dated Foolish or Obnoxious. One is asked To view Their total error Their life-waste With Kindliness, Especially if they are Aged. But age is the total of Our doing. They have aged Badly Because they have Lived Out of focus, They have […]...
4. If Death Is Kind Perhaps if Death is kind, and there can be returning, We will come back to earth some fragrant night, And take these lanes to find the sea, and bending Breathe the same honeysuckle, low and white. We will come down at night to these resounding beaches And the long gentle thunder of the sea, Here […]...
5. A few kind words A few kind words, what can be bought with that? In essence just a clique of tidy prose, A verb, a noun, perhaps an adjectival phrase Offered in the form of venal praise – and be surprised at what it buys. Like a fleeting smile it’s currency outweighs The simple form, a hint of urbane […]...
6. TO THE KIND READER No one talks more than a Poet; Fain he’d have the people know it. Praise or blame he ever loves; None in prose confess an error, Yet we do so, void of terror, In the Muses’ silent groves. What I err’d in, what corrected, What I suffer’d, what effected, To this wreath as flow’rs belong; […]...
7. What Kind Of Mistress He Would Have Be the mistress of my choice, Clean in manners, clear in voice; Be she witty, more than wise, Pure enough, though not precise; Be she showing in her dress, Like a civil wilderness, That the curious may detect Order in a sweet neglect; Be she rolling in her eye, Tempting all the passers by; And […]...
8. A Certain Kind of Holy Men Not every wino is a Holy Man. Oh, but some of them are. I love those who’ve learned To sit comfortably For long periods with their hams Pressed against their calves, Outdoors, With a wall for a back-rest, Contentedly saying nothing. These move about only when Necessary, On foot, and almost always In pairs. I […]...
9. What Kind Of A Person “What kind of a person are you,” I heard them say to me. I’m a person with a complex plumbing of the soul, Sophisticated instruments of feeling and a system Of controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century, But with an old body from ancient times And with a God even older than […]...
10. Poetry Is A Kind Of Lying Poetry is a kind of lying, Necessarily. To profit the poet Or beauty. But also in That truth may be told only so. Those who, admirably, refuse To falsify (as those who will not Risk pretensions) are excluded From saying even so much. Degas said he didn’t paint What he saw, but what Would enable […]...
11. INFAMOUS POET I never did fit in – at six or sixty one – I stand out in a crowd, too young or old And gather pity like a shroud. “Is that real silk?” A teenager inquired. “As real as Oxfam ever is For one pound fifty.” The vast ballroom was growing misty And blurred with alcohol […]...
12. Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind. Because the lover threw wild hands toward the sky And the affrighted steed ran on alone, Do not weep. War is kind. Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment, Little souls who thirst for fight, These men were born to drill and die. The unexplained glory flies above […]...
13. Piscine kind of kinship To glibly say that Joe was sort of odd Quite missed the point. Peculiar in many Ways and kind of weird, I would have Been afraid of him were I a child (if I ever Was a meek and mild retiring kid), avoided Him as if the plague. But he was good to Mutti, And […]...
14. Psalm LXXIII: Now I'm Convinced the Lord Is Kind Now I ‘m convinced the Lord is kind To men of heart sincere; Yet once my foolish thoughts repined, And bordered on despair. I grieved to see the wicked thrive, And spoke with angry breath, “How pleasant and profane they live! How peaceful is their death! “With well-fed flesh and haughty eyes, They lay their […]...
15. My Favoured Fare Some poets sing of scenery; Some to fair maids make sonnets sweet. A fig for love and greenery, Be mine a song of things to eat. Let brother bards divinely dream, I’m just plain human, as you see; And choose to carol such a theme As ham and eggs and tea. Just two fried eggs […]...
16. Cold A cold February wind Crawls up my leg And rattles my knees A preacher fumbles Over the verses That I know by heart Why doesn’t he know them? Quaking, I sit Watching two unknown Men folding the flag Each turn means something; I forget The coffin is a beautiful wood I wonder whose grave This […]...
17. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
18. Pensive and Faltering PENSIVE and faltering, The words, the dead, I write; For living are the Dead; (Haply the only living, only real, And I the apparition-I the spectre.) 5...
19. Some we see no more, Tenements of Wonder Some we see no more, Tenements of Wonder Occupy to us though perhaps to them Simpler are the Days than the Supposition Leave us to presume That oblique Belief which we call Conjecture Grapples with a Theme stubborn as Sublime Able as the Dust to equip its feature Adequate as Drums To enlist the Tomb....
20. When I read the Book WHEN I read the book, the biography famous, And is this, then, (said I,) what the author calls a man’s life? And so will some one, when I am dead and gone, write my life? (As if any man really knew aught of my life; Why, even I myself, I often think, know little or […]...
21. A SIMPLE POEM I want you to continue writing Because I will not always be around With lips that will never touch mine Read your poems out loud So that the words are left engraved On the wall Make me feel your voice rush through me Like a breeze from Oyá I want to hear about Puerto Rico […]...
22. The Tortoise In Keystone Heights When I knew, it was raining. Winter in decline. I was tired. You in your soaked shirt diffused Into the western sky bulging with clouds, Speeding cars a few feet away- Why would they not slow down? Though afternoon, a slip of moon Busied itself with rising, And it had to mean something. If only […]...
23. The Real Work It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come our real work, And that when we no longer know which way to go We have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings....
24. Lovesong He loved her and she loved him His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and Sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains Her eyes wanted nothing […]...
25. It troubled me as once I was It troubled me as once I was For I was once a Child Concluding how an Atom fell And yet the Heavens held The Heavens weighed the most by far Yet Blue and solid stood Without a Bolt that I could prove Would Giants understand? Life set me larger problems Some I shall keep to […]...
26. 456. Epitaph on Captain Lascelles WHEN Lascelles thought fit from this world to depart, Some friends warmly thought of embalming his heart; A bystander whispers-“Pray don’t make so much o’t, The subject is poison, no reptile will touch it.”...
27. Balbus I’ll tell you the story of Balbus, You know, him as builded a wall; I’ll tell you the reason he built it, And the place where it happened an’ all. This ‘ere Balbus, though only a Tackler, Were the most enterprising of men; He’d heard Chicken Farms were lucrative, So he went out and purchased […]...
28. Drying Their Wings What the Carpenter Said THE moon’s a cottage with a door. Some folks can see it plain. Look, you may catch a glint of light, A sparkle through the pane, Showing the place is brighter still Within, though bright without. There, at a cosy open fire Strange babes are grouped about. The children of the […]...
29. The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
30. Psalm 119 part 5 Delight in Scripture; or, The word of God dwelling in us. Ver. 97 O how I love thy holy law! ‘Tis daily my delight; And thence my meditations draw Divine advice by night. Ver. 148 My waking eyes prevent the day To meditate thy word; My soul with longing melts away To hear thy gospel, […]...
31. Nest Eggs Birds all the summer day Flutter and quarrel Here in the arbour-like Tent of the laurel. Here in the fork The brown nest is seated; For little blue eggs The mother keeps heated. While we stand watching her Staring like gabies, Safe in each egg are the Bird’s little babies. Soon the frail eggs they […]...
32. Poetry it Takes A lot of Desperation Dissatisfaction And Disillusion To Write A Few Good Poems. It’s not For Everybody Either to Write It Or even to Read It....
33. Cacoethes Scribendi If all the trees in all the woods were men; And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth’s living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for […]...
34. You Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which Is simply a path leading through an archway called Adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life Lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future […]...
35. Madmen They say you can jinx a poem If you talk about it before it is done. If you let it out too early, they warn, Your poem will fly away, And this time they are absolutely right. Take the night I mentioned to you I wanted to write about the madmen, As the newspapers so […]...
36. This self-congratulatory nonsense as the Famous gather to applaud their seeming Greatness You Wonder where The real ones are What Giant cave Hides them As The deathly talentless Bow to Accolades As The fools are Fooled Again You Wonder where The real ones are If there are Real ones. This self-congratulatory nonsense Has lasted Decades And […]...
37. Are You the New person, drawn toward Me? ARE you the new person drawn toward me? To begin with, take warning-I am surely far different from what you suppose; Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal? Do you think it so easy to have me become your lover? Do you think the friendship of me would be unalloy’d satisfaction? Do […]...
38. The Explosion On the day of the explosion Shadows pointed towards the pithead. In the sun the slagheap slept. Down the lane came men in pitboots Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke, Shouldering off the freshened silence. One chased after rabbits; lost them; Came back with a nest of lark’s eggs; Showed them; lodged them in the grasses. […]...
39. Suppose? It’s mighty nice at shut of day With weariness to hit the hey, To close your eyes, tired through and through, And just forget that “you are you.” It’s mighty sweet to wake again When sunshine floods the window pain; I love in cosy couch to lie, And re-discover “I am I.” It would be […]...
40. Plaster “I KNEW a real man once,” says Agatha in the splendor of a shagbark hickory tree. Did a man touch his lips to Agatha? Did a man hold her in his arms? Did a man only look at her and pass by? Agatha, far past forty in a splendor of remembrance, says, “I knew a […]...