Flophouse

Related poetry:

1. The Worst And The Best in the hospitals and jails It’s the worst In madhouses It’s the worst In penthouses It’s the worst In skid row flophouses It’s the worst At poetry readings At rock concerts At benefits for the disabled It’s the worst At funerals At weddings It’s the worst At parades At skating rinks At sexual orgies It’s […]...
2. La Vita Nuova Last summer, in the blue heat, Over the beach, in the burning air, A legless beggar lurched on calloused fists To where I waited with the sun-dazed birds. He said, “The summer boils away. My life Joins to another life; this parched skin Dries and dies and flakes away, Becomes your costume when the torn […]...
3. The City You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, Find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong And my heart lies buried like something dead. How long can I let my mind moulder in this place? Wherever I turn, wherever I look, I […]...
4. Psalm 42 Part 1 v.1-5 C. M. Desertion and hope; or, Complaint of absence from public worship. With earnest longings of the mind, My God, to thee I look; So pants the hunted hart to find And taste the cooling brook. When shall I see thy courts of grace, And meet my God again? So long an absence from […]...
5. More Later, Less The Same The common is unusually calm they captured the storm Last night, it’s sleeping in the stockade, relieved Of its duty, pacified, tamed, a pussycat. But not before it tied the flagpole in knots, And not before it alarmed the firemen out of their pants. Now it’s really calm, almost too calm, as though Anything could […]...
6. 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 […]...
7. Coral This coral’s hape ecohes the hand It hollowed. Its Immediate absence is heavy. As pumice, As your breast in my cupped palm. Sea-cold, its nipple rasps like sand, Its pores, like yours, shone with salt sweat. Bodies in absence displace their weight, And your smooth body, like none other, Creates an exact absence like this […]...
8. Alone With Everybody the flesh covers the bone And they put a mind In there and Sometimes a soul, And the women break Vases against the walls And the men drink too Much And nobody finds the One But keep Looking Crawling in and out Of beds. Flesh covers The bone and the Flesh searches For more than […]...
9. How Is Your Heart? during my worst times on the park benches in the jails or living with whores I always had this certain contentment- I wouldn’t call it happiness- it was more of an inner balance that settled for whatever was occuring and it helped in the factories and when relationships went wrong with the girls. it helped […]...
10. Sonnet LXXXIX LYke as the Culuer on the bared bough, Sits mourning for the absence of her mate; And in her songs sends many a wishfull vew, For his returne that seemes to linger late. So I alone now left disconsolate, Mourne to my selfe the absence of my loue: And wandring here and there all desolate, […]...
11. The End Of The World Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot The armless ambidextrian was lighting A match between his great and second toe, And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb – Quite unexpectedly the top blew off: And […]...
12. Indian Boyhood What happened to the boy I was? Why did he run away? And leave me old and thinking, like There’d been no yesterday? What happened then? Was I that boy? Who laughed and swam in the bund* I there no going back? No recompense? Is there nothing? No refund?...
13. Keeping Things Whole In a field I am the absence Of field. This is Always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air And always The air moves in To fill the spaces Where my body’s been. We all have reasons For moving. I move To keep things whole....
14. What Can We Do? at their best, there is gentleness in Humanity. Some understanding and, at times, acts of Courage But all in all it is a mass, a glob that doesn’t Have too much. It is like a large animal deep in sleep and Almost nothing can awaken it. When activated it’s best at brutality, Selfishness, unjust judgments, […]...
15. Remorse For Any Death Free of memory and of hope, Limitless, abstract, almost future, The dead man is not a dead man: he is death. Like the God of the mystics, Of Whom anything that could be said must be denied, The dead one, alien everywhere, Is but the ruin and absence of the world. We rob him of […]...
16. The House They are building a house Half a block down And I sit up here With the shades down Listening to the sounds, The hammers pounding in nails, Thack thack thack thack, And then I hear birds, And thack thack thack, And I go to bed, I pull the covers to my throat; They have been […]...
17. The Black Virgin One in thy thousand statues we salute thee On all thy thousand thrones acclaim and claim Who walk in forest of thy forms and faces Walk in a forest calling on one name And, most of all, how this thing may be so Who know thee not are mystified to know That one cries “Here […]...
18. Sonnet XCII: Be Your Words Made Be your words made, good sir, of Indian ware, That you allow me them by so small rate? Or do you cutted Spartans imitate? Or do you mean my tender ears to spare, That to my questions you so total are? When I demand of Phœnix Stella’s state, You say, forsooth, you left her well […]...
19. On Turning Ten The whole idea of it makes me feel Like I’m coming down with something, Something worse than any stomach ache Or the headaches I get from reading in bad light A kind of measles of the spirit, A mumps of the psyche, A disfiguring chicken pox of the soul. You tell me it is too […]...
20. Winter Remembered Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing. Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks, And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter, I glowed like them, the […]...
21. In the footsteps of the walking air In the footsteps of the walking air Sky’s prophetic chickens weave their cloth of awe And hillsides lift green wings in somber journeying. Night in his soft haste bumps on the shoulders of the abyss And a single drop of dark blood covers the earth. Now is the China of the spirit at walking In […]...
22. Despair I have experienc’d The worst, the World can wreak on me the worst That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb With whisper’d Discontents the dying prayer I have beheld the whole of all, wherein My Heart had any interest in this Life, To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes That nothing now is […]...
23. Sonnet XCVII How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness every where! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widow’d […]...
24. Sonnet 97: How like a winter hath my absence been How like a winter hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December’s bareness everywhere! And yet this time removed was summer’s time, The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, Bearing the wanton burden of the prime, Like widowed wombs […]...
25. Passers-By PASSERS-BY, Out of your many faces Flash memories to me Now at the day end Away from the sidewalks Where your shoe soles traveled And your voices rose and blend To form the city’s afternoon roar Hindering an old silence. Passers-by, I remember lean ones among you, Throats in the clutch of a hope, Lips […]...
26. Cuchulain Comforted A man that had six mortal wounds, a man Violent and famous, strode among the dead; Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone. Then certain Shrouds that muttered head to head Came and were gone. He leant upon a tree As though to meditate on wounds and blood. A Shroud that seemed to […]...
27. Spring Pools These pools that, though in forests, still reflect The total sky almost without defect, And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone, And yet not out by any brook or river, But up by roots to bring dark foliage on. The trees that have it […]...
28. Dream Song 101: A shallow lake, with many waterbirds A shallow lake, with many waterbirds, Especially egrets: I was showing Mother around, An extraordinary vivid dream Of Betty & Douglass, and Don—his mother’s estate Was on the grounds of a lunatic asylum. He showed me around. A policeman trundled a siren up the walk. It was 6:05 p. m., Don was late home. I […]...
29. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 22. The path by which we twain did go The path by which we twain did go, Which led by tracts that pleased us well, Thro’ four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to flower, from snow to snow: And we with singing cheer’d the way, And, crown’d with all the season lent, From April on to April went, And glad at heart […]...
30. My Soul is Dark My soul is dark – Oh! quickly string The harp I yet can brook to hear; And let thy gentle fingers fling Its melting murmurs o’er mine ear. If in this heart a hope be dear, That sound shall charm it forth again: If in these eyes there lurk a tear, ‘Twill flow, and cease […]...
31. A Song of the Road O I will walk with you, my lad, whichever way you fare, You’ll have me, too, the side o’ you, with heart as light as air; No care for where the road you take’s a-leadin’ anywhere, It can but be a joyful ja’nt whilst you journey there. The road you take’s the path o’ love, […]...
32. Voices at the Window Who is it that, this dark night, Underneath my window plaineth? It is one who from thy sight Being, ah, exiled, disdaineth Every other vulgar light. Why, alas, and are you he? Be not yet those fancies changeed? Dear, when you find change in me, Though from me you be estranged, Let my change to […]...
33. Tis Gone, And For Ever ‘Tis gone, and for ever, the light we saw breaking, Like Heaven’s first dawn o’er the sleep of the dead When Man, from the slumber of ages awaking, Look’d upward, and bless’d the pure ray, ere it fled. ‘Tis gone, and the gleams it has left of its burning, But deepen the long night of […]...
34. Acceptance When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud And goes down burning into the gulf below, No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud At what has happened. Birds, at least must know It is the change to darkness in the sky. Murmuring something quiet in her breast, One bird begins to […]...
35. Variation On The Word Sleep I would like to watch you sleeping, Which may not happen. I would like to watch you, Sleeping. I would like to sleep With you, to enter Your sleep as its smooth dark wave Slides over my head And walk with you through that lucent Wavering forest of bluegreen leaves With its watery sun & […]...
36. The Visitor it came today to visit And moved into the house It was smaller than an elephant But larger than a mouse First it slapped my sister Then it kicked my dad Then it pushed my mother Oh! that really made me mad It went and tickled rover And terrified the cat It sliced apart my […]...
37. I Know, You Walk I walk so often, late, along the streets, Lower my gaze, and hurry, full of dread, Suddenly, silently, you still might rise And I would have to gaze on all your grief With my own eyes, While you demand your happiness, that’s dead. I know, you walk beyond me, every night, With a coy footfall, […]...
38. The Arabian Shawl “It is cold outside, you will need a coat What! this old Arabian shawl! Bind it about your head and throat, These steps… it is dark… my hand… you Might fall.” What has happened? What strange, sweet charm Lingers about the Arabian shawl… Do not tremble so! There can be no harm In just remembering […]...
39. Nearly A Valediction You happened to me. I was happened to Like an abandoned building by a bull- Dozer, like the van that missed my skull Happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- Born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through The […]...
40. "Arcturus" is his other name “Arcturus” is his other name I’d rather call him “Star.” It’s very mean of Science To go and interfere! I slew a worm the other day A “Savant” passing by Murmured “Resurgam” “Centipede”! “Oh Lord how frail are we”! I pull a flower from the woods A monster with a glass Computes the stamens in […]...