The Poet Fears Failure

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1. The Poet Words flow onto paper like rain, forming giant rivers Of unseen lands. The very force guides us along a journey That holds of great adventure. We are the explorers of the literary world. We must find the courage to write what Others are unable to, with the greatest Of passion. A poet dreams. and then […]...
2. Paper Men To Air Hopes And Fears The first speaker said Fear fire. Fear furnaces Incinerators, the city dump The faint scratch of a match. The second speaker said Fear water. Fear drenching rain Drizzle, oceans, puddles, a damp Day and the flush toilet. The third speaker said Fear wind. And it needn’t be A hurricane. Drafts, open Windows, electric fans. The […]...
3. Death Of A Poet Laid now on his smooth bed For the last time, watching dully Through heavy eyelids the day’s colour Widow the sky, what can he say Worthy of record, the books all open, Pens ready, the faces, sad, Waiting gravely for the tired lips To move once what can he say? His tongue wrestles to force […]...
4. 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; […]...
5. The Poet And The Bird Said a people to a poet -” Go out from among us straightway! While we are thinking earthly things, thou singest of divine. There’s a little fair brown nightingale, who, sitting in the gateways Makes fitter music to our ears than any song of thine!” The poet went out weeping – the nightingale ceased chanting; […]...
6. Sex With A Famous Poet I had sex with a famous poet last night And when I rolled over and found myself beside him I shuddered Because I was married to someone else, Because I wasn’t supposed to have been drinking, Because I was in fancy hotel room I didn’t recognize. I would have told you Right off this was […]...
7. The Seraph and the Poet THE seraph sings before the manifest God-One, and in the burning of the Seven, And with the full life of consummate Heaving beneath him like a mother’s Warm with her first-born’s slumber in that The poet sings upon the earth grave-riven, Before the naughty world, soon self-forgiven For wronging him, and in the darkness prest […]...
8. Shall I take thee, the Poet said Shall I take thee, the Poet said To the propounded word? Be stationed with the Candidates Till I have finer tried The Poet searched Philology And when about to ring For the suspended Candidate There came unsummoned in That portion of the Vision The Word applied to fill Not unto nomination The Cherubim reveal...
9. This was a Poet It is That This was a Poet It is That Distills amazing sense From ordinary Meanings And Attar so immense From the familiar species That perished by the Door We wonder it was not Ourselves Arrested it before Of Pictures, the Discloser The Poet it is He Entitles Us by Contrast To ceaseless Poverty Of portion so unconscious […]...
10. 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 […]...
11. The Poet VIII He is a link between this and the coming world. He is A pure spring from which all thirsty souls may drink. He is a tree watered by the River of Beauty, bearing Fruit which the hungry heart craves; He is a nightingale, soothing the depressed Spirit with his beautiful melodies; He is a white […]...
12. The Poet in the Nursery The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling In a dim library, just behind the chair From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling A song about some Lovers at a Fair, Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling That rhymes were beastly things and never there. And as I groped, the whole time I […]...
13. Poet's Household 1 The stout poet tiptoes On the lawn. Surprisingly limber In his thick sweater Like a middle-age burglar. Is the young robin injured? 2 She bends to feed the geese Revealing the neck’s white curve Below her curled hair. Her husband seems not to watch, But she shimmers in his poem. 3 A hush is […]...
14. THE DEATH OF ART “Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.” -critic Harold Bloom, who first called slam poetry “the death of art.” I am not a poet. I want to be rich and buy things for my family. Besides, I am sort of popular and can honestly say I’ve had a great […]...
15. Poet And Peer They asked the Bard of Ayr to dine; The banquet hall was fit and fine, With gracing it a Lord; The poet came; his face was grim To find the place reserved for him Was at the butler’s board. So when the gentry called him in, He entered with a knavish grin And sipped a […]...
16. The Proud Poet (For Shaemas O Sheel) One winter night a Devil came and sat upon my bed, His eyes were full of laughter for his heart was full of crime. “Why don’t you take up fancy work, or embroidery?” he said, “For a needle is as manly a tool as a pen that makes a rhyme!” “You […]...
17. On – On – Poet I to the open road, You to the hunchbacked street – Which of us two Shall the earlier rue That day we chanced to meet? I with a heart that’s sound, You with sick fancies of pain – Which of us two Would the earlier rue If we chanced to meet again? I jingle homely […]...
18. Psalm III: My God, How Many Are My Fears My God, how many are my fears! How fast my foes increase! Conspiring my eternal death, They break my present peace. The lying tempter would persuade There’s no relief from heaven; And all my swelling sins appear Too big to be forgiven. But thou, my glory and my strength, Shall on the tempter tread, Shall […]...
19. Fears In Solitude A green and silent spot, amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O’er stiller place No singing sky-lark ever poised himself. The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope, Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, All golden with the never-bloomless furze, Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell, Bathed by […]...
20. A Tale of the Miser and the Poet A WIT, transported with Inditing, Unpay’d, unprais’d, yet ever Writing; Who, for all Fights and Fav’rite Friends, Had Poems at his Fingers Ends; For new Events was still providing; Yet now desirous to be riding, He pack’d-up ev’ry Ode and Ditty And in Vacation left the City; So rapt with Figures, and Allusions, With secret […]...
21. Petit, The Poet Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof. Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus, Ballades by the score with the same old thought: The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; And what […]...
22. A Poet's Death is His Life IV The dark wings of night enfolded the city upon which Nature had spread a pure white garment of snow; and men deserted the streets for their houses in search of warmth, while the north wind probed in contemplation of laying waste the gardens. There in the suburb stood an old hut heavily laden with snow […]...
23. These are the Signs to Nature's Inns These are the Signs to Nature’s Inns Her invitation broad To Whosoever famishing To taste her mystic Bread These are the rites of Nature’s House The Hospitality That opens with an equal width To Beggar and to Bee For Sureties of her staunch Estate Her undecaying Cheer The Purple in the East is set And […]...
24. A Rondeau of College Rhymes Our college rhymes, how light they seem, Like little ghosts of love’s young dream That led our boyish hearts away From lectures and from books, to stray By flowery mead and flowing stream! There’s nothing here, in form or theme, Of thought sublime or art supreme: We would not have the critic weigh Our college […]...
25. The Poet The riches of the poet are equal to his poetry His power is his left hand It is idle weak and precious His poverty is his wealth, a wealth which may destroy him like Midas Because it is that laziness which is a form of impatience And this he may be destroyed by the gold […]...
26. Where's the Poet? Where’s the Poet? show him! show him, Muses nine! that I may know him. ‘Tis the man who with a man Is an equal, be he King, Or poorest of the beggar-clan Or any other wonderous thing A man may be ‘twixt ape and Plato; ‘Tis the man who with a bird, Wren or Eagle, […]...
27. 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 […]...
28. To the dead poet of obscurity (In honor of the dead unpublished poet) Well done! You have won! You should not feel sorry. Your unpublished poems -always remember- Have not been buried, Haven’t bent Under the strength of time. Like gold Inside the soil They remain, They never melt. They may be late But they will be given To their people […]...
29. To Failure You do not come dramatically, with dragons That rear up with my life between their paws And dash me butchered down beside the wagons, The horses panicking; nor as a clause Clearly set out to warn what can be lost, What out-of-pocket charges must be borne Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost That’s seen, […]...
30. Failure Because God put His adamantine fate Between my sullen heart and its desire, I swore that I would burst the Iron Gate, Rise up, and curse Him on His throne of fire. Earth shuddered at my crown of blasphemy, But Love was as a flame about my feet; Proud up the Golden Stair I strode; […]...
31. Failure He wrote a play; by day and night He strove with passion and delight; Yet knew, long ere the curtain drop, His drama was a sorry flop. In Parliament he sought a seat; Election Day brought dire defeat; Yet he had wooed with word and pen Prodigiously his fellow men. And then he wrote a […]...
32. My Dog's My Boss Each day when it’s anighing three Old Dick looks at the clock, Then proudly brings my stick to me To mind me of our walk. And in his doggy rapture he Does everything but talk. But since I lack his zip and zest My old bones often tire; And so I ventured to suggest Today […]...
33. Hope in Failure THOUGH now thou hast failed and art fallen, despair not because of defeat, Though lost for a while be thy heaven and weary of earth be thy feet, For all will be beauty about thee hereafter through sorrowful years, And lovely the dews for thy chilling and ruby thy heart-drip of tears. The eyes that […]...
34. Successful Failure I wonder if successful men Are always happy? And do they sing with gusto when Springtime is sappy? Although I am of snow-white hair And nighly mortal, Each time I sniff the April air I chortle. I wonder if a millionaire Jigs with enjoyment, Having such heaps of time to spare For daft employment. For […]...
35. To J. W Set not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well delay. Set not thy foot on graves; Nor seek to unwind the shroud Which charitable time And nature have allowed To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. Set not […]...
36. Profane Poet Oh how it would enable me To titillate my vanity If you should choose to label me A Poet of Profanity! For I’ve been known with vulgar slang To stoke the Sacred Fire, And even used a word like ‘hang’, Suggesting ire. Yea, I’ve been slyly told, although It savours of inanity, In print the […]...
37. From Citron-Bower From citron-bower be her bed, Cut from branch of tree a-flower, Fashioned for her maidenhead. From Lydian apples, sweet of hue, Cut the width of board and lathe, Carve the feet from myrtle-wood. Let the palings of her bed Be quince and box-wood overlaid With the scented bark of yew. That all the wood in […]...
38. When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace […]...
39. A Letter to a Live Poet Sir, since the last Elizabethan died, Or, rather, that more Paradisal muse, Blind with much light, passed to the light more glorious Or deeper blindness, no man’s hand, as thine, Has, on the world’s most noblest chord of song, Struck certain magic strains. Ears satiate With the clamorous, timorous whisperings of to-day, Thrilled to perceive […]...
40. Said The Poet To The Analyst My business is words. Words are like labels, Or coins, or better, like swarming bees. I confess I am only broken by the sources of things; As if words were counted like dead bees in the attic, Unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings. I must always forget who one words is able […]...