Gamblers All

Related poetry:

1. As The Poems Go as the poems go into the thousands you Realize that you’ve created very Little. It comes down to the rain, the sunlight, The traffic, the nights and the days of the Years, the faces. Leaving this will be easier than living It, typing one more line now as A man plays a piano through the […]...
2. A Radio With Guts it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street I used to get drunk And throw the radio through the window While it was playing, and, of course, It would break the glass in the window And the radio would sit there on the roof Still playing And I’d tell my woman, “Ah, what a […]...
3. Gignol Addict of Punch and Judy shows I was when I was small; My kiddy laughter, I suppose, Rang louder than them all. The Judge with banter I would bait, The Copper was a wretch; But oh how I would hiss my hate For grim Jack Ketch. Although a grandsire grey I still Love Punch and […]...
4. Girl In A Miniskirt Reading The Bible Outside My Window Sunday, I am eating a Grapefruit, church is over at the Russian Orthadox to the West. She is dark Of Eastern descent, Large brown eyes look up from the Bible Then down. a small red and black Bible, and as she reads Her legs keep moving, moving, She is doing a slow rythmic dance Reading […]...
5. The Gamblers Life’s a jail where men have common lot. Gaunt the one who has, and who has not. All our treasures neither less nor more, Bread alone comes thro’ the guarded door. Cards are foolish in this jail, I think, Yet they play for shoes, for drabs and drink. She, my lawless, sharp-tongued gypsy maid Will […]...
6. Cat Scat I am watching Cleo listening, our cat Listening to Mozart’s Magic Flute. What Can she be hearing? What Can the air carry into her ears like that, Her ears swivelling like radio dishes that Are tuned to all the noise of the world, flat And sharp, high and low, a scramble of this and that […]...
7. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
8. Friends Within The Darkness I can remember starving in a Small room in a strange city Shades pulled down, listening to Classical music I was young I was so young it hurt like a knife Inside Because there was no alternative except to hide as long As possible Not in self-pity but with dismay at my limited chance: Trying […]...
9. Here I Am drunk again at 3 a. m. at the end of my 2nd bottle Of wine, I have typed from a dozen to 15 pages of Poesy An old man Maddened for the flesh of young girls in this Dwindling twilight Liver gone Kidneys going Pancrea pooped Top-floor blood pressure While all the fear of the […]...
10. Music Swims Back To Me Wait Mister. Which way is home? They turned the light out And the dark is moving in the corner. There are no sign posts in this room, Four ladies, over eighty, In diapers every one of them. La la la, Oh music swims back to me And I can feel the tune they played The […]...
11. Moving On In this war we’re always moving, Moving on; When we make a friend another friend has gone; Should a woman’s kindly face Make us welcome for a space, Then it’s boot and saddle, boys, we’re Moving on. In the hospitals they’re moving, Moving on; They’re here today, tomorrow they are gone; When the bravest and […]...
12. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
13. Lobster For Lunch His face was like a lobster red, His legs were white as mayonnaise: “I’ve had a jolly lunch,” he said, That Englishman of pleasant ways. “Thy do us well at our hotel: In England food is dull these days.” “We had a big langouste for lunch. I almost ate the whole of it. And now […]...
14. Kemang Afternoon Blues 1/ Had it not been for the traffic jam You’d have thought being elsewhere Most the niceties seemed so foreign Speaking a tongue so unfamiliar 2/ The bookstore you were in Saw a sea of printed words Of books beyond reach So beautiful they were doomed 3/ Even a minute you were denied A meeting […]...
15. On the Anthropic Principle Here at the spoke-ends of our galaxy It is easy to forget the central axle Moving insensibly slow, still The silvery-white dispersion of stars Soothes randomly until we impose a pattern, Like the Magi, like the Greeks. And despite the most accurate of calendars, Dawn remains a wager until the great lion of the sun […]...
16. True Story they found him walking along the freeway All red in Front He had taken a rusty tin can And cut off his sexual Machinery As if to say See what you’ve done to Me? you might as well have the Rest. And he put part of him In one pocket and Part of him in […]...
17. His Wife, The Painter There are sketches on the walls of men and women and ducks, And outside a large green bus swerves through traffic like Insanity sprung from a waving line; Turgenev, Turgenev, Says the radio, and Jane Austin, Jane Austin, too. “I am going to do her portrait on the 28th, while you are At work.” He […]...
18. Mama here I am in the ground my mouth open and I can’t even say mama, and The dogs run by and stop and piss On my stone; I get it all Except the sun And my suit is looking bad And yesterday the last of my left arm gone Very little left, all harp-like Without […]...
19. For The Twentieth Century Bound, hungry to pluck again from the thousand Technologies of ecstasy Boundlessness, the world that at a drop of water Rises without boundaries, I push the PLAY button:- …Callas, Laurel & Hardy, Szigeti You are alive again,- The slow movement of K.218 Once again no longer Bland, merely pretty, nearly Banal, as it is In […]...
20. A London Thoroughfare. 2 A. M They have watered the street, It shines in the glare of lamps, Cold, white lamps, And lies Like a slow-moving river, Barred with silver and black. Cabs go down it, One, And then another. Between them I hear the shuffling of feet. Tramps doze on the window-ledges, Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks. The city is […]...
21. Noises I woke up this morning With the city’s noises Fusing into my dream A pride of lions Roaring in anger The traffic, it must have been A hunter shouting something But I probably heard a street vendor For a moment, total silence Then a shot rings out in the wild Perhaps a car’s broken exhaust […]...
22. Why the Young Men Are So Ugly They have little tractors in their blood And all day the tractors climb up and down Inside their arms and legs, their Collarbones and heads. That is why they yell and scream and slam the barbells Down into their clanking slots, Making the metal ring like sledgehammers on iron, Like dungeon prisoners rattling their chains. […]...
23. 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....
24. 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 […]...
25. To a Friend Go, then, and join the murmuring city’s throng! Me thou dost leave to solitude and tears; To busy phantasies, and boding fears, Lest ill betide thee; but ‘t will not be long Ere the hard season shall be past; till then Live happy; sometimes the forsaken shade Remembering, and these trees now left to fade; […]...
26. People Who Must I PAINTED on the roof of a skyscraper. I painted a long while and called it a day’s work. The people on a corner swarmed and the traffic cop’s whistle never let up all afternoon. They were the same as bugs, many bugs on their way- Those people on the go or at a standstill; […]...
27. Autumn Perspective Now, moving in, cartons on the floor, The radio playing to bare walls, Picture hooks left stranded In the unsoiled squares where paintings were, And something reminding us This is like all other moving days; Finding the dirty ends of someone else’s life, Hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit, And burned-out matches in […]...
28. A Minor Poet I am a shell. From me you shall not hear The splendid tramplings of insistent drums, The orbed gold of the viol’s voice that comes, Heavy with radiance, languorous and clear. Yet, if you hold me close against the ear, A dim, far whisper rises clamorously, The thunderous beat and passion of the sea, The […]...
29. Leisure Leisure, thou goddess of a bygone age, When hours were long and days sufficed to hold Wide-eyed delights and pleasures uncontrolled By shortening moments, when no gaunt presage Of undone duties, modern heritage, Haunted our happy minds; must thou withhold Thy presence from this over-busy world, And bearing silence with thee disengage Our twined fortunes? […]...
30. The Sloth In moving-slow he has no Peer. You ask him something in his Ear, He thinks about it for a Year; And, then, before he says a Word There, upside down (unlike a Bird), He will assume that you have Heard A most Ex-as-per-at-ing Lug. But should you call his manner Smug, He’ll sigh and give […]...
31. This Then it’s the same as before Or the other time Or the time before that. Here’s a cock And here’s a cunt And here’s trouble. Only each time You think Well now I’ve learned: I’ll let her do that And I’ll do this, I no longer want it all, Just some comfort And some sex And […]...
32. Variations on an Elizabethan Theme Long days, short nights, this Southern summer Fixes the mind within its timeless place. Athwart pale limbs the brazen hummer Hangs and is gone, warm sound its quickened space. Butterfly weed and cardinal flower, Orange and red, with indigo the band, Perfect themselves unto the hour. And blood suffused within the sunlit hand, Within the […]...
33. Mirabeau Bridge Under Mirabeau Bridge runs the Seine And our loves Must I remember them Joy came always after pain Let arriving night explain Days fade I remain Arm in arm let us stay face to face While below The bridge at our hands passes With eternal regards the wave so slow Let arriving night explain Days […]...
34. Writing A man who keeps a diary, pays Due toll to many tedious days; But life becomes eventful then His busy hand forgets the pen. Most books, indeed, are records less Of fulness than of emptiness....
35. By the Bivouac's Fitful Flame BY the bivouac’s fitful flame, A procession winding around me, solemn and sweet and slow;-but first I note, The tents of the sleeping army, the fields’ and woods’ dim outline, The darkness, lit by spots of kindled fire-the silence; Like a phantom far or near an occasional figure moving; The shrubs and trees, (as I […]...
36. California Plush The only thing I miss about Los Angeles Is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and Radio blaring Bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower On the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard Blazing pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars descending through the city fast as the law would […]...
37. TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
38. Her final Summer was it Her final Summer was it And yet We guessed it not If tenderer industriousness Pervaded Her, We thought A further force of life Developed from within When Death lit all the shortness up It made the hurry plain We wondered at our blindness When nothing was to see But Her Carrara Guide post At Our […]...
39. Going to Him! Happy letter! Going to Him! Happy letter! Tell Him Tell Him the page I didn’t write Tell Him I only said the Syntax And left the Verb and the pronoun out Tell Him just how the fingers hurried Then how they waded slow slow And then you wished you had eyes in your pages So you could […]...
40. 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 […]...