The Slums

Related poetry:

1. Dream Song 98: I met a junior not so junior and I met a junior—not so junior—and A-many others, who knew ‘him’ or ‘them’ Long ago, slightly, Whom I know. It was the usual Cocktail party, only (my schedule being strict) Beforehand. I worked. Well. Then they kept the kids away With their own questions, over briefest coffee. Then kids drove me to my city. I […]...
2. On Being Challenged to Write an Epigram in the Manner of Herrick To Griggs, that learned man, in many a bygone session, His kids were his delight, and physics his profession; Now Griggs, grown old and glum, and less intent on knowledge, Physics himself at home, and sends his kids to college....
3. Mag I WISH to God I never saw you, Mag. I wish you never quit your job and came along with me. I wish we never bought a license and a white dress For you to get married in the day we ran off to a minister And told him we would love each other and […]...
4. A Gift See! I give myself to you, Beloved! My words are little jars For you to take and put upon a shelf. Their shapes are quaint and beautiful, And they have many pleasant colours and lustres To recommend them. Also the scent from them fills the room With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses. When I […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. New Mexico I was fairly drunk when it Began and I took out my bottle and used it Along the way. I was reading a week or two after Kandel and I did not look quite as Pretty but I brought it off and we Ended up at the Webbs, 6, 8, 10 of Us, and I […]...
7. Escape is such a thankful Word Escape is such a thankful Word I often in the Night Consider it unto myself No spectacle in sight Escape it is the Basket In which the Heart is caught When down some awful Battlement The rest of Life is dropt ‘Tis not to sight the savior It is to be the saved And that […]...
8. The Burning of the People's Variety Theatre, Aberdeen ‘Twas in the year of 1896, and on the 30th of September, Which many people in Aberdeen will long remember; The burning of the People’s Variety Theatre, in Bridge Place Because the fire spread like lightning at a rapid pace. The fire broke out on the stage, about eight o’clock, Which gave to the audience […]...
9. My Hero Of all the boys with whom I fought In Africa and Sicily, Bill was the bravest of the lot In our dare-devil Company. That lad would rather die than yield; His gore he glorified to spill, And so in every battlefield A hero in my eyes was Bill. Then when the bloody war was done, […]...
10. The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
11. Those Annual Bills These annual bills! these annual bills! How many a song their discord trills Of “truck” consumed, enjoyed, forgot, Since I was skinned by last year’s lot! Those joyous beans are passed away; Those onions blithe, O where are they? Once loved, lost, mourned now vexing ILLS Your shades troop back in annual bills! And so […]...
12. 1914 IV: The Dead These hearts were woven of human joys and cares, Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth. The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs, And sunset, and the colours of the earth. These had seen movement, and heard music; known Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended; Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat […]...
13. Freethinker Although the Preacher be a bore, The Atheist is even more. I ain’t religious worth a damn; My views are reckoned to be broad; And yet I shut up like a clam When folks get figgerin’ on God; I’d hate my kids to think like me, And though they leave me in the lurch, I’m […]...
14. At leisure is the Soul At leisure is the Soul That gets a Staggering Blow The Width of Life before it spreads Without a thing to do It begs you give it Work But just the placing Pins Or humblest Patchwork Children do To Help its Vacant Hands...
15. The Orange Bears The Orange bears with soft friendly eyes Who played with me when I was ten, Christ, before I’d left home they’d had Their paws smashed in the rolls, their backs Seared by hot slag, their soft trusting Bellies kicked in, their tongues ripped Out, and I went down through the woods To the smelly crick […]...
16. How many schemes may die How many schemes may die In one short Afternoon Entirely unknown To those they most concern The man that was not lost Because by accident He varied by a Ribbon’s width From his accustomed route The Love that would not try Because beside the Door It must be competitions Some unsuspecting Horse was tied Surveying […]...
17. Invocation Come down from heaven to meet me when my breath Chokes, and through drumming shafts of stifling death I stumble toward escape, to find the door Opening on morn where I may breathe once more Clear cock-crow airs across some valley dim With whispering trees. While dawn along the rim Of night’s horizon flows in […]...
18. Birth-Day Ode 01 O my faithful Friend! O early chosen, ever found the same, And trusted and beloved! once more the verse Long destin’d, always obvious to thine ear, Attend indulgent....
19. The Widow's Lament In Springtime Sorrow is my own yard Where the new grass Flames as it has flamed Often before but not With the cold fire That closes round me this year. Thirtyfive years I lived with my husband. The plumtree is white today With masses of flowers. Masses of flowers Load the cherry branches And color some bushes […]...
20. Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
21. Colors Passing Through Us Purple as tulips in May, mauve Into lush velvet, purple As the stain blackberries leave On the lips, on the hands, The purple of ripe grapes Sunlit and warm as flesh. Every day I will give you a color, Like a new flower in a bud vase On your desk. Every day I will paint […]...
22. Gannets I am watching the white gannets Blaze down into the water With the power of blunt spears And a stunning accuracy Even though the sea is riled and boiling And gray with fog And the fish Are nowhere to be seen, They fall, they explode into the water Like white gloves, Then they vanish, Then […]...
23. No Man can compass a Despair No Man can compass a Despair As round a Goalless Road No faster than a Mile at once The Traveller proceed Unconscious of the Width Unconscious that the Sun Be setting on His progress So accurate the One At estimating Pain Whose own has just begun His ignorance the Angel That pilot Him along...
24. You Out of nothing there comes a time called childhood, which Is simply a path leading through an archway called Adolescence. A small town there, past the arch called youth. Soon, down the road, where one almost misses the life Lived beyond the flower, is a small shack labeled, you. And it is here the future […]...
25. May 24, 1980 I have braved, for want of wild beasts, steel cages, Carved my term and nickname on bunks and rafters, Lived by the sea, flashed aces in an oasis, Dined with the-devil-knows-whom, in tails, on truffles. From the height of a glacier I beheld half a world, the earthly width. Twice have drowned, thrice let knives […]...
26. Maternity There once was a Square, such a square little Square, And he loved a trim Triangle; But she was a flirt and around her skirt Vainly she made him dangle. Oh he wanted to wed and he had no dread Of domestic woes and wrangles; For he thought that his fate was to procreate Cute […]...
27. ENGLAND’S OPENERS A blackbird lands A good beer-barrel A man sits in a cave knitting A theatre in Copenhagen Abask the sea-wall Alice was demure and O All the way to Bury Amid the heather Among the lupins And after little suzie And it was his grief that kept him travelling And the baby miscarried And the […]...
28. A Fire-Truck Right down the shocked street with a siren-blast That sends all else skittering to the curb, Redness, brass, ladders and hats hurl past, Blurring to sheer verb, Shift at the corner into uproarious gear And make it around the turn in a squall of traction, The headlong bell maintaining sure and clear, Thought is degraded […]...
29. I Sit and Think I sit beside the fire and think Of all that I have seen, Of meadow-flowers and butterflies In summers that have been; Of yellow leaves and gossamer In autumns that there were, With morning mist and silver sun And wind upon my hair. I sit beside the fire and think Of how the world will […]...
30. The Symbol Seduces THERE in her old-world garden smiles A symbol of the world’s desire, Striving with quaint and lovely wiles To bind to earth the soul of fire. And while I sit and listen there, The robe of Beauty falls away From universal things to where Its image dazzles for a day. Away! the great life calls; […]...
31. You Thought I Was That Type You thought I was that type: That you could forget me, And that I’d plead and weep And throw myself under the hooves of a bay mare, Or that I’d ask the sorcerers For some magic potion made from roots and send you a terrible gift: My precious perfumed handkerchief. Damn you! I will not […]...
32. 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 […]...
33. He, who was born He, who was born in stagnant year Does not remember own way. We, kids of Russia’s years of fear, Remember every night and day. Years that burned everything to ashes! Do you bring madness or grace? The war’s and freedom’s fire flashes Left bloody light on every face. We are struck dumb: the toxsin’s pressure […]...
34. Autumn Fires In the other gardens And all up the vale, From the autumn bonfires See the smoke trail! Pleasant summer over And all the summer flowers, The red fire blazes, The grey smoke towers. Sing a song of seasons! Something bright in all! Flowers in the summer, Fires in the fall!...
35. By All Love's Soft, Yet Mighty Powers By all love’s soft, yet mighty powers, It is a thing unfit, That men should fuck in time of flowers, Or when the smock’s beshit. Fair nasty nymph, be clean and kind, And all my joys restore; By using paper still behind, And sponges for before. My spotless flames can ne’er decay, If after every […]...
36. To William Holden (July 15) We know who The guards are In those POW Movies with brutal But easy to Fool fat Germans Or sadistic Japanese Who never smiled They’re the grown-ups We’re the kids That’s the secret...
37. The Difference Between Pepsi And Coke Can’t swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat intolerable feelings of inadequacy; Won’t admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind numerous marital infidelities; Looks fat in jeans, mouths clichés with confidence, breaks mother’s plates in fights; Buys when the market is too high, and panics during the inevitable descent; Still, Pop can always […]...
38. Death Of The Kapowsin Tavern I can’t ridge it back again from char. Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores And shattered glass smoked black and strung About from the explosion I believe In the reports. The white school up for sale For years, most homes abandoned to the rocks Of passing boys the fire, helped by wind […]...
39. To One Shortly to Die 1 FROM all the rest I single out you, having a message for you: You are to die-Let others tell you what they please, I cannot prevaricate, I am exact and merciless, but I love you-There is no escape for you. Softly I lay my right hand upon you-you just feel it, I do not […]...
40. The God Of Common-Sense My Daddy used to wallop me for every small offense: “Its takes a hair-brush back,” said he, “to teach kids common-sense.” And still to-day I scarce can look a hair-brush in the face. Without I want in sympathy to pat a tender place. For Dad declared with unction: “Spare the brush and spoil the brat.” […]...