Here I Am

Related poetry:

1. Cups of Coffee THE HAGGARD woman with a hacking cough and a deathless love whispers of white Flowers… in your poem you pour like a cup of coffee, Gabriel. The slim girl whose voice was lost in the waves of flesh piled on her bones… and The woman who sold to many men and saw her breasts shrivel… […]...
2. 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....
3. Not yet 40, my beard is already white Not yet 40, my beard is already white. Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red, Like a child who has cried too much. What is more disagreeable Than last night’s wine? I’ll shave. I’ll stick my head in the cold spring and Look around at the pebbles. Maybe I can eat a can […]...
4. 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 […]...
5. Thought OF what I write from myself-As if that were not the resumé; Of Histories-As if such, however complete, were not less complete than the preceding poems; As if those shreds, the records of nations, could possibly be as lasting as the preceding poems; As if here were not the amount of all nations, and of […]...
6. The New Poetry Handbook 1 If a man understands a poem, he shall have troubles. 2 If a man lives with a poem, he shall die lonely. 3 If a man lives with two poems, he shall be unfaithful to one. 4 If a man conceives of a poem, he shall have one less child. 5 If a man […]...
7. Yad Mordechai Yad Mordechai. Those who fell here Still look out the windows like sick children Who are not allowed outside to play. And on the hillside, the battle is reenacted For the benefit of hikers and tourists. Soldiers of thin sheet iron Rise and fall and rise again. Sheet iron dead and a sheet iron life […]...
8. I would to heaven that I were so much clay I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling – Because at least the past were passed away – And for the future – (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say – […]...
9. Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
10. The bow-leg boy Who should come up the road one day But the doctor-man in his two-wheel shay! And he whoaed his horse and he cried “Ahoy! I have brought you folks a bow-leg boy! Such a cute little boy! Such a funny little boy! Such a dear little bow-leg boy!” He took out his box and he […]...
11. Promises Like Pie-Crust Promise me no promises, So will I not promise you: Keep we both our liberties, Never false and never true: Let us hold the die uncast, Free to come as free to go: For I cannot know your past, And of mine what can you know? You, so warm, may once have been Warmer towards […]...
12. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
13. Psalm 78 part 3 The punishment of luxury and intemperance. When Isr’el sins, the Lord reproves And fills their hearts with dread; Yet he forgives the men he loves, And sends them heav’nly bread. He fed them with a lib’ral hand, And made his treasures known; He gave the midnight clouds command To pour provision down. The manna, like […]...
14. An Almost Made Up Poem I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny Blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny They are small, and the fountain is in France Where you wrote me that last letter and I answered and never heard from you again. You used to write insane poems about ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper […]...
15. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
16. Question And Answer he sat naked and drunk in a room of summer night, running the blade of the knife under his fingernails, smiling, thinking of all the letters he had received telling him that the way he lived and wrote about that it had kept them going when all seemed truly hopeless. putting the blade on the […]...
17. AN EPITAPH UPON A CHILD Virgins promised when I died, That they would each primrose-tide Duly, morn and evening, come, And with flowers dress my tomb. Having promised, pay your debts Maids, and here strew violets....
18. A curious Cloud surprised the Sky A curious Cloud surprised the Sky, ‘Twas like a sheet with Horns; The sheet was Blue The Antlers Gray It almost touched the lawns. So low it leaned then statelier drew And trailed like robes away, A Queen adown a satin aisle Had not the majesty....
19. H. Baptism II Since, Lord, to thee A narrow way and little gate Is all the passage, on my infancy Thou didst lay hold, and antedate My faith in me. O let me still Write thee great God, and me a child: Let me be soft and supple to thy will, Small to my self, to others mild, […]...
20. A Following the phone rang at 1:30 a. m. and it was a man from Denver: “Chinaski, you got a following in Denver…” “yeah?” “yeah, I got a magazine and I want some poems from you…” “FUCK YOU, CHINASKI!” I heard a voice in the background… “I see you have a friend,” I said. “yeah,” he answered, […]...
21. A Poetry Reading At West Point I read to the entire plebe class, In two batches. Twice the hall filled With bodies dressed alike, each toting A copy of my book. What would my Shrink say, if I had one, about Such a dream, if it were a dream? Question and answer time. “Sir,” a cadet yelled from the balcony, And […]...
22. Sylvia's Death for Sylvia Plath O Sylvia, Sylvia, With a dead box of stones and spoons, With two children, two meteors Wandering loose in a tiny playroom, With your mouth into the sheet, Into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer, (Sylvia, Sylvia Where did you go After you wrote me From Devonshire About rasing potatoes And keeping […]...
23. To The Whore Who Took My Poems some say we should keep personal remorse from the Poem, Stay abstract, and there is some reason in this, But jezus; Twelve poems gone and I don’t keep carbons and you have My Paintings too, my best ones; its stifling: Are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them? Why didn’t you […]...
24. Pardon Poem by Anne-Marie Derése. Pardon si j’ai ri Dans vos chapelles, Pardon si j’ai claquè La porte de l’hЩpital, Pardon pour le bruit, Pour la vie, Pour l’amour auquel Je n’avais pas droit. Pardon de ne pas vous ressembler....
25. Heritage Now the dead past seems vividly alive, And in this shining moment I can trace, Down through the vista of the vanished years, Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face. And suddenly some secret spring’s released, And unawares a riddle is revealed, And I can read like large, black-lettered print, What seemed before a thing […]...
26. All That I Owe The Fellows Of The Grave All that I owe the fellows of the grave And all the dead bequeathed from pale estates Lies in the fortuned bone, the flask of blood, Like senna stirs along the ravaged roots. O all I owe is all the flesh inherits, My fathers’ loves that pull upon my nerves, My sisters tears that sing […]...
27. Wayward Wind My patient, Paul, wrote in a poem That he belongs to the wayward wind, A restless breed, A strange and hardy class. I’ve been with him for two years And now he is dying. “Are you in pain, Paul?” I ask. “I AM pain,” he said. But he is refusing medication Although his cancer has […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Revolt In The Ranks I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half Handicapping tomorrow’s Card. When am I going to get at the poems? Well, they’ll just have to wait They’ll have to warm their feet in the Anteroom Where they’ll sit gossiping about Me. “this Chinaski, doesn’t he realize that Without us he would have long ago Gone mad, been dead?” […]...
30. Poet's Path My garden hath a slender path With ivy overgrown, A secret place where once would pace A pot all alone; I see him now with fretted brow, Plunged deep in thought; And sometimes he would write maybe, And sometimes he would not. A verse a day he used to say Keeps worry from the door; […]...
31. The Spring (After Rilke) Spring has returned! Everything has returned! The earth, just like a schoolgirl, memorizes Poems, so many poems. … Look, she has learned So many famous poems, she has earned so many prizes! Teacher was strict. We delighted in the white Of the old man’s beard, bright like the snow’s: Now we may ask […]...
32. To Lucy, Countess of Bedford, with John Donne's Satires Lucy, you brightness of our sphere, who are Life of the Muses’ day, their morning star! If works, not th’ author’s, their own grace should look, Whose poems would not wish to be your book? But these, desir’d by you, the maker’s ends Crown with their own. Rare poems ask rare friends. Yet satires, since […]...
33. A Revocation WHAT should I say? Since Faith is dead, And Truth away From you is fled? Should I be led With doubleness? Nay! nay! mistress. I promised you, And you promised me, To be as true As I would be. But since I see Your double heart, Farewell my part! Thought for to take ‘Tis not […]...
34. 276. Song-Whistle o'er the lave o't FIRST when Maggie was my care, Heav’n, I thought, was in her air, Now we’re married-speir nae mair, But whistle o’er the lave o’t! Meg was meek, and Meg was mild, Sweet and harmless as a child- Wiser men than me’s beguil’d; Whistle o’er the lave o’t! How we live, my Meg and me, How […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. Autobiographical The lover in these poems Is me; The doctor, Love. He appears As husband, lover Analyst & muse, As father, son & maybe even God & surely death. All this is true. The man you turn to In the dark Is many men. This is an open secret Women share & yet agree to hide […]...
37. Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat On the silent sea we have heard the sound That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet. Under the mile off moon we trembled listening To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound […]...
38. Judson Stoddard On a mountain top above the clouds That streamed like a sea below me I said that peak is the thought of Budda, And that one is the prayer of Jesus, And this one is the dream of Plato, And that one there the song of Dante, And this is Kant and this is Newton, […]...
39. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
40. Obligation Hold your apron wide That I may pour my gifts into it, So that scarcely shall your two arms hinder them From falling to the ground. I would pour them upon you And cover you, For greatly do I feel this need Of giving you something, Even these poor things. Dearest of my Heart!...