Senex

Related poetry:

1. 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 […]...
2. January 3 The shrink says, “Everything depends On how many stuffed animals you had As a boy,” and my mother tells me my Father was left-handed and so is my son And they’re both named Joe whose favorite Stuffed animal was a bear called Sweetheart While I, the sole constant in this dream, Am carrying a little […]...
3. As Soon as Fred Gets Out of Bed As soon as Fred gets out of bed, His underwear goes on his head. His mother laughs, “Don’t put it there, A head’s no place for underwear!” But near his ears, above his brains, Is where Fred’s underwear remains. At night when Fred goes back to bed, He deftly plucks it off his head. His […]...
4. Myfanwy Kind o’er the kinderbank leans my Myfanwy, White o’er the playpen the sheen of her dress, Fresh from the bathroom and soft in the nursery Soap scented fingers I long to caress. Were you a prefect and head of your dormit’ry? Were you a hockey girl, tennis or gym? Who was your favourite? Who had […]...
5. Ode To Pornography If you could write down the words Moving through a man’s mind as He masturbates you’d have a quick Bonus bonk read, I used to think. But words were never adequate Or the point in the bar where the girl Is a boy the boy is a girl the two girls Exchange underpants the one […]...
6. Like the Touch of Rain Like the touch of rain she was On a man’s flesh and hair and eyes When the joy of walking thus Has taken him by surprise: With the love of the storm he burns, He sings, he laughs, well I know how, But forgets when he returns As I shall not forget her ‘Go now’. […]...
7. The Death King I hired a carpenter To build my coffin And last night I lay in it, Braced by a pillow, Sniffing the wood, Letting the old king Breathe on me, Thinking of my poor murdered body, Murdered by time, Waiting to turn stiff as a field marshal, Letting the silence dishonor me, Remembering that I’ll never […]...
8. Washerwoman THE WASHERWOMAN is a member of the Salvation Army. And over the tub of suds rubbing underwear clean She sings that Jesus will wash her sins away And the red wrongs she has done God and man Shall be white as driven snow. Rubbing underwear she sings of the Last Great Washday....
9. 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, […]...
10. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
11. When We Were Here Together when we were here together in a place we did not know, nor one Another. A bit of grass held between the teeth for a moment, bright hair on the Wind. What we were we did not know, nor even the grass or the flame of Hair turning to ash on the wind. But they […]...
12. A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight They mouth love’s language. Gnash The thirteen teeth Your lean jaws grin with. Lash Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh. Love’s breath in you is stale, worded or sung, As sour as cat’s breath, Harsh of tongue. This grey that stares Lies not, stark skin and bone. Leave greasy lips their kissing. […]...
13. Teeth English Teeth, English Teeth! Shining in the sun A part of British heritage Aye, each and every one. English Teeth, Happy Teeth! Always having fun Clamping down on bits of fish And sausages half done. English Teeth! HEROES’ Teeth! Hear them click! and clack! Let’s sing a song of praise to them – Three Cheers […]...
14. Strange Fruit Here is the girl’s head like an exhumed gourd. Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth. They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair And made an exhibition of its coil, Let the air at her leathery beauty. Pash of tallow, perishable treasure: Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod, Her eyeholes blank as pools […]...
15. Myxomatosis Caught in the center of a soundless field While hot inexplicable hours go by What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed? You seem to ask. I make a sharp reply, Then clean my stick. I’m glad I can’t explain Just in what jaws you were to suppurate: You may have thought things would […]...
16. Mental Cases Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight? Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows, Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish, Baring teeth that leer like skulls’ tongues wicked? Stroke on stroke of pain, but what slow panic, Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets? Ever from their hair and through their hand palms […]...
17. Dream Song 176: All that hair flashing over All that hair flashing over the Atlantic, Henry’s girl’s gone. She’ll find Paris a sweet place As many times he did. She’s there now, having left yesterday. I held Her cousin’s hand, all innocence, on the climb to the tower. Her cousin is if possible more beautiful than she is. All over the world grades […]...
18. Snow White, to the Prince after Susan Thomas Truth is, my life was no fairytale, That afternoon, I lay, a smiling corpse Under a glass sky, a rotten apple Lodged in my throat like a black lump Of cancer, your sloppy kiss dying on my lips. Did you really believe a kiss could cure The poison galloping through my veins, […]...
19. In Mind There’s in my mind a woman Of innocence, unadorned but Fair-featured and smelling of Apples or grass. She wears A utopian smock or shift, her hair Is light brown and smooth, and she Is kind and very clean without Ostentation- But she has No imagination And there’s a Turbulent moon-ridden girl Or old woman, or […]...
20. First Death In Nova Scotia In the cold, cold parlor My mother laid out Arthur Beneath the chromographs: Edward, Prince of Wales, With Princess Alexandra, And King George with Queen Mary. Below them on the table Stood a stuffed loon Shot and stuffed by Uncle Arthur, Arthur’s father. Since Uncle Arthur fired A bullet into him, He hadn’t said a […]...
21. Horse Fiddle FIRST I would like to write for you a poem to be shouted in the teeth of a strong wind. Next I would like to write one for you to sit on a hill and read down the river valley on a late summer afternoon, reading it in less than a whisper to Jack on […]...
22. If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love If I were tickled by the rub of love, A rooking girl who stole me for her side, Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string, If the red tickle as the cattle calve Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung, I would not fear the apple nor the flood Nor the bad […]...
23. Juan's Song When beauty breaks and falls asunder I feel no grief for it, but wonder. When love, like a frail shell, lies broken, I keep no chip of it for token. I never had a man for friend Who did not know that love must end. I never had a girl for lover Who could discern […]...
24. She sights a Bird she chuckles She sights a Bird she chuckles She flattens then she crawls She runs without the look of feet Her eyes increase to Balls Her Jaws stir twitching hungry Her Teeth can hardly stand She leaps, but Robin leaped the first Ah, Pussy, of the Sand, The Hopes so juicy ripening You almost bathed your Tongue […]...
25. LOVE DISLIKES NOTHING Whatsoever thing I see, Rich or poor although it be, ‘Tis a mistress unto me. Be my girl or fair or brown, Does she smile, or does she frown; Still I write a sweet-heart down. Be she rough, or smooth of skin; When I touch, I then begin For to let affection in. Be she […]...
26. Sunt Leones The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena By indulging native appetites played was now been seen a Not entirely negligible part In consolidating at the very start The position of the Early Christian Church. Initiatory rights are always bloody In the lions, it appears From contemporary art, made a study […]...
27. The Human Tree Many have Earth’s lovers been, Tried in seas and wars, I ween; Yet the mightiest have I seen: Yea, the best saw I. One that in a field alone Stood up stiller than a stone Lest a moth should fly. Birds had nested in his hair, On his shoon were mosses rare, Insect empires flourished […]...
28. 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… […]...
29. Red-headed Restaurant Cashier SHAKE back your hair, O red-headed girl. Let go your laughter and keep your two proud freckles on your chin. Somewhere is a man looking for a red-headed girl and some day maybe he will look into your eyes for a restaurant cashier and find a lover, maybe. Around and around go ten thousand men […]...
30. First Child… Second Child FIRST Be it a girl, or one of the boys, It is scarlet all over its avoirdupois, It is red, it is boiled; could the obstetrician Have possibly been a lobstertrician? His degrees and credentials were hunky-dory, But how’s for an infantile inventory? Here’s the prodigy, here’s the miracle! Whether its head is oval or […]...
31. The House Of Dust: Part 02: 09: Interlude The days, the nights, flow one by one above us, The hours go silently over our lifted faces, We are like dreamers who walk beneath a sea. Beneath high walls we flow in the sun together. We sleep, we wake, we laugh, we pursue, we flee. We sit at tables and sip our morning coffee, […]...
32. The Penitent I had a little Sorrow, Born of a little Sin, I found a room all damp with gloom And shut us all within; And, “Little Sorrow, weep,” said I, “And, Little Sin, pray God to die, And I upon the floor will lie And think how bad I’ve been!” Alas for pious planning – – […]...
33. The September Gale I’M not a chicken; I have seen Full many a chill September, And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember; The day before, my kite-string snapped, And I, my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing! It came as quarrels sometimes do, When […]...
34. Beggarly Heart When the heart is hard and parched up, Come upon me with a shower of mercy. When grace is lost from life, Come with a burst of song. When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides shutting me out from Beyond, come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest. When […]...
35. Autumn Whoever has no house now will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone Will sit, read, write long letters through the evening And wander on the boulevards, up and down… – from Autumn Day, Rainer Maria Rilke Its stain is everywhere. The sharpening air Of late afternoon Is now the colour of tea. […]...
36. Arms And The Boy Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; Blue with all malice, like a madman’s flash; And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh. Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads. Or give him cartridges of fine […]...
37. Psalm 03 Aug. 9. When He Fled From Absalom. Lord how many are my foes How many those That in arms against me rise Many are they That of my life distrustfully thus say, No help for him in God there lies. But thou Lord art my shield my glory, Thee through my story Th’ exalter of […]...
38. Bones Sling me under the sea. Pack me down in the salt and wet. No farmer’s plow shall touch my bones. No Hamlet hold my jaws and speak How jokes are gone and empty is my mouth. Long, green-eyed scavengers shall pick my eyes, Purple fish play hide-and-seek, And I shall be song of thunder, crash […]...
39. Torn Shades How, in the first place, did They get torn-pulled down hard Too many times: to hide a blow, Or sex, or a man In stained pajamas? The tear blade-shaped, Serrated, in tatters. And once, In a house flatside to a gas station, As snow fell at a speed and angle you could lean on, Two […]...
40. To Hannah Spirit girl to whom ’twas given To revisit scenes of pain, From the hell I thought was Heaven You have lifted me again; Through the world that I inherit, Where I loved her ere she died, I am walking with the spirit Of a dead girl by my side. Through my old possessions only For […]...