Batterson Dobyns

Related poetry:

1. Jacob Godbey How did you feel, you libertarians, Who spent your talents rallying noble reasons Around the saloon, as if Liberty Was not to be found anywhere except at the bar Or at a table, guzzling? How did you feel, Ben Pantier, and the rest of you, Who almost stoned me for a tyrant, Garbed as a […]...
2. William H. Herndon There by the window in the old house Perched on the bluff, overlooking miles of valley, My days of labor closed, sitting out life’s decline, Day by day did I look in my memory, As one who gazes in an enchantress’ crystal globe, And I saw the figures of the past, As if in a […]...
3. The Widow's Party “Where have you been this while away, Johnnie, Johnnie?” ‘Long with the rest on a picnic lay, Johnnie, my Johnnie, aha! They called us out of the barrack-yard To Gawd knows where from Gosport Hard, And you can’t refuse when you get the card, And the Widow gives the party. (Bugle: Ta rara ra-ra-rara!) “What […]...
4. Buying The Whore You are the roast beef I have purchased And I stuff you with my very own onion. You are a boat I have rented by the hour And I steer you with my rage until you run aground. You are a glass that I have paid to shatter And I swallow the pieces down with […]...
5. Death In The Lounge Bar The bar he went inside was not A place he often visited; He welcomed anonymity; No one to switch inquisitive Receivers on, no one could see, Or wanted to, exactly what He was, or had been, or would be; A quiet brown place, a place to drink And let thought simmer like good stock, No […]...
6. THE TABLE IN A RESTAURANT Bhaskar Roy Barman The moment I close my eyes In meditation on the unfathomable I visualize golden fleeces of cloud Perambulating the skies And old faces peering down through the fleeces, Their faces writhed into a semblance of smile. With them I used to sit at a table in a restaurant By the window overlooking […]...
7. Song For Heroes Captain O’Hare was a mariner brave; He refused to abandon his ship; A hero, he sleeps in a watery grave- And his widow is now Mrs. Bipp, Haw! Haw! His widow is now Mrs. Bipp! Henri Dupont was a fearless young ace; Five thousand feet up he was hit; Each year on his grave pretty […]...
8. Sonnet 9: Is it for fear to wet a widow's eye Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye, That thou consum’st thy self in single life? Ah, if thou issueless shalt hap to die, The world will wail thee like a makeless wife. The world will be thy widow and still weep, That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private […]...
9. Sonnet IX Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye That thou consumest thyself in single life? Ah! if thou issueless shalt hap to die. The world will wail thee, like a makeless wife; The world will be thy widow and still weep That thou no form of thee hast left behind, When every private widow […]...
10. Holy Thursday They’re kindly here, to let us linger so late, Long after the shutters are up. A waiter glides from the kitchen with a plate Of stew, or some thick soup, And settles himself at the next table but one. We know, you and I, that it’s over, That something or other has come between Us, […]...
11. East India Grill Villanelle Across the table, Bridget sneaks a smile; She’s caught me staring past her at the man Who brings us curried dishes, hot and mild. His eyes are blue, intensely blue, hot sky; His hair, dark gold; his skin like cinnamon. He speaks in quick-soft accents; Bridget smiles. We’ve come here in our summer skirts, heels […]...
12. A Dog's Mistake He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide, He was just a wand’ring mongrel from the weary world outside; He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair, With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear. He was very poor and humble and content with what […]...
13. The Witch's Life When I was a child There was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story Window From behind the wrinkled curtains And sometimes she would open the window And yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp And a voice like […]...
14. The Poor Boy's Christmas Observe, my child, this pretty scene, And note the air of pleasure keen With which the widow’s orphan boy Toots his tin horn, his only toy. What need of costly gifts has he? The widow has nowhere to flee. And ample noise his horn emits To drive the widow into fits. MORAL: The philosophic mind […]...
15. Ben Trovato The Deacon thought. “I know them,” he began, “And they are all you ever heard of them – Allurable to no sure theorem, The scorn or the humility of man. You say ‘Can I believe it?’-and I can; And I’m unwilling even to condemn The benefaction of a stratagem Like hers-and I’m a Presbyterian. “Though […]...
16. Chiang Chin Chiu See the waters of the Yellow River leap down from Heaven, Roll away to the deep sea and never turn again! See at the mirror In the High Hall Aged men bewailing white locks – In the morning, threads of silk, In the evening flakes of snow. Snatch the joys Of life as they come […]...
17. The Well of St. Keyne A Well there is in the west country, And a clearer one never was seen; There is not a wife in the west country But has heard of the Well of St. Keyne. An oak and an elm-tree stand beside, And behind doth an ash-tree grow, And a willow from the bank above Droops to […]...
18. Richard It’s mid-winter and the sunrise knows it, and wakes me With a shudder; I’m just a man. For 5 cold mornings in a row, the beautiful pheasant Has come to our patio to steal some of the dry catfood, Sometimes right in front of my cat. The house is still, and I enjoy the Sunday […]...
19. The Pig In England once there lived a big And wonderfully clever pig. To everybody it was plain That Piggy had a massive brain. He worked out sums inside his head, There was no book he hadn’t read. He knew what made an airplane fly, He knew how engines worked and why. He knew all this, but […]...
20. Neither Snow When all of a sudden the city air filled with snow, The distinguishable flakes Blowing sideways, Looked like krill Fleeing the maw of an advancing whale. At least they looked that way to me From the taxi window, And since I happened to be sitting That fading Sunday afternoon In the very center of the […]...
21. Roy Butler If the learned Supreme Court of Illinois Got at the secret of every case As well as it does a case of rape It would be the greatest court in the world. A jury, of neighbors mostly, with “Butch” Weldy As foreman, found me guilty in ten minutes And two ballots on a case like […]...
22. Holy Day Los Angeles hums A little tune Trucks down The coast road For Monday Market Packed with small faces Blinking in the dark. My mother dreams By the open window. On the drainboard The gray roast humps Untouched, the oven Bangs its iron jaws, But it’s over. Before her on the table Set for so many […]...
23. The Window In the sweet, Atlantic Breathing of spring My curtain’s like a butterfly, Huge, fluttering Like a Hindu widow To a pyre’s golden blaze, Like a drowsy Naiad To past-window seas....
24. Welsh experience called out by the sun This easter saturday morning I’m sitting on a bank In pistyllgwyn (house of the sacred spring) Against a tall oak (close to a daffodil-clump) Overlooking the road Between brechfa and abergorlech On the west side of the valley Of the afon cothi Reading a poem by taliesin From the sixth […]...
25. The Widow at Windsor ‘Ave you ‘eard o’ the Widow at Windsor With a hairy gold crown on ‘er ‘ead? She ‘as ships on the foam she ‘as millions at ‘ome, An’ she pays us poor beggars in red. (Ow, poor beggars in red!) There’s ‘er nick on the cavalry ‘orses, There’s ‘er mark on the medical stores An’ […]...
26. Poem For Maya Dipping our bread in oil tins We talked of morning peeling Open our rooms to a moment Of almonds, olives and wind When we did not yet know what we were. The days in Mallorca were alike: Footprints down goat-paths From the beds we had left, At night the stars locked to darkness. At that […]...
27. When A Woman Loves A Man When she says Margarita she means Daiquiri. When she says quixotic she means mercurial. And when she says, “I’ll never speak to you again,” She means, “Put your arms around me from behind As I stand disconsolate at the window.” He’s supposed to know that. When a man loves a woman he is in New […]...
28. The Pretty Lady He asked the lady in the train If he might smoke: she smiled consent. So lighting his cigar and fain To talk he puffed away content, Reflecting: how delightful are Fair dame and fine cigar. Then from his bulging wallet he A photograph with pride displayed, His charming wife and children three, When suddenly he […]...
29. Sky Harbor The flock of pigeons rises over the roof, And just beyond them, the shimmering asphalt fields Gather their dull colored airliners. It is the very early night, A young brunette sits before the long Darkening glass of the airport’s west wall. She smells coffee burning And something else her old mother’s Bureau filled with mothballs. […]...
30. Conquistador I sing of the decline of Henry Clay Who loved a white girl of uncommon size. Although a small man in a little way, He had in him some seed of enterprise. Each day he caught the seven-thirty train To work, watered his garden after tea, Took an umbrella if it looked like rain A […]...
31. Picture Of A 23-Year-Old Youth Painted By His Friend Of The Same Age, An Amature He finished the painting yesterday noon. Now He studies it in detail. He has painted him in a Gray unbuttoned coat, a deep gray; without Any vest or any tie. With a rose-colored shirt; Open at the collar, so something might be seen Also of the beauty of his chest, of his neck. The right […]...
32. The Progress of Poetry The Farmer’s Goose, who in the Stubble, Has fed without Restraint, or Trouble; Grown fat with Corn and Sitting still, Can scarce get o’er the Barn-Door Sill: And hardly waddles forth, to cool Her Belly in the neighb’ring Pool: Nor loudly cackles at the Door; For Cackling shews the Goose is poor. But when she […]...
33. Transformations Portion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot: This branch may be his wife, A ruddy human life Now turned to a green shoot. These grasses must be made Of her who often prayed, Last century, for repose; And the fair girl long ago Whom I often tried […]...
34. The King's Breakfast The King’s Breakfast The King asked The Queen, and The Queen asked The Dairymaid: “Could we have some butter for The Royal slice of bread?” The Queen asked the Dairymaid, The Dairymaid Said, “Certainly, I’ll go and tell the cow Now Before she goes to bed.” The Dairymaid She curtsied, And went and told The […]...
35. Rita And The Rifle Between Rita and my eyes There is a rifle And whoever knows Rita Kneels and plays To the divinity in those honey-colored eyes And I kissed Rita When she was young And I remember how she approached And how my arm covered the loveliest of braids And I remember Rita The way a sparrow remembers […]...
36. Theme For English B The instructor said, Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you Then, it will be true. I wonder if it’s that simple? I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem. I went to school there, then Durham, then here To this college on the hill above Harlem. I am […]...
37. Abraham The rivulet-loving wanderer Abraham Through waterless wastes tracing his fields of pasture Led his Chaldean herds and fattening flocks With the meandering art of wavering water That seeks and finds, yet does not know its way. He came, rested and prospered, and went on, Scattering behind him little pastoral kingdoms, And over each one its […]...
38. Josiah Tompkins I was well known and much beloved And rich, as fortunes are reckoned In Spoon River, where I had lived and worked. That was the home for me, Though all my children had flown afar- Which is the way of Nature-all but one. The boy, who was the baby, stayed at home, To be my […]...
39. Young In New Orleans starving there, sitting around the bars, And at night walking the streets for hours, The moonlight always seemed fake To me, mabye it was, And in the French Quarter I watched The horses and buggies going by, Everybody sitting high in the open Carriages, the black driver, and in Back the man and the woman, […]...
40. The Chances I mind as ‘ow the night afore that show Us five got talking, we was in the know, “Over the top to-morrer; boys, we’re for it, First wave we are, first ruddy wave; that’s tore it.” “Ah well,” says Jimmy, an’ ‘e’s seen some scrappin’ “There ain’t more nor five things as can ‘appen; Ye […]...