Why We Tell Stories

Related poetry:

1. Dream Song 25: Henry, edged, decidedly, made up stories Henry, edged, decidedly, made up stories Lighting the past of Henry, of his glorious Present, and his hoaries, All the bight heals he tamped— —Euphoria, Mr Bones, euphoria. Fate clobber all. €”Hand me back my crawl, Condign Heaven. Tighten into a ball Elongate & valved Henry. Tuck him peace. Render him sightless, Or ruin at […]...
2. The Mad Yak I am watching them churn the last milk they’ll ever get From me. They are waiting for me to die; They want to make buttons out of my bones. Where are my sisters and brothers? That tall monk there, loading my uncle, he has a new cap. And that idiot student of his I never […]...
3. Exhortation: Summer 1919 Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder, And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break, Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder: Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake! In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking, And its golden glory fills […]...
4. The Red Poppy The great thing Is not having A mind. Feelings: Oh, I have those; they Govern me. I have A lord in heaven Called the sun, and open For him, showing him The fire of my own heart, fire Like his presence. What could such glory be If not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, […]...
5. Hoodlums I AM a hoodlum, you are a hoodlum, we and all of us are a world of hoodlums-maybe so. I hate and kill better men than I am, so do you, so do all of us-maybe-maybe so. In the ends of my fingers the itch for another man’s neck, I want to see him hanging, […]...
6. Little World Children – are staring of eyes so frightful, Mischievous legs on a wooden floor, Children – is sun in the gloomy motives, Hypotheses’ of happy sciences world. Eternal disorder in the ring’s gold, Tender word’s whispers in semi-sleep, On the wall in a cozy child’s room, the dreaming Peaceful pictures of birds and sheep. Children […]...
7. Steve's tears My beloved called to me to come and see Steve’s Tears, he was crying on TV; Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Man, And they weren’t crocodile tears. Harriet had died, Steve could not contain his tears and freely cried, Which shouldn’t surprise, he wears his heart openly, But Harriet’s demise was as cruel a testimony to […]...
8. Nancy Knapp Well, don’t you see this was the way of it: We bought the farm with what he inherited, And his brothers and sisters accused him of poisoning His fathers mind against the rest of them. And we never had any peace with our treasure. The murrain took the cattle, and the crops failed. And lightning […]...
9. Cripples And Other Stories My doctor, the comedian I called you every time And made you laugh yourself When I wrote this silly rhyme… Each time I give lectures or gather in the grants you send me off to boarding school in training pants. God damn it, father-doctor, I’m really thirty-six. I see dead rats in the toilet. I’m […]...
10. HOW SPRINGS CAME FIRST These springs were maidens once that loved, But lost to that they most approved: My story tells, by Love they were Turn’d to these springs which we see here: The pretty whimpering that they make, When of the banks their leave they take, Tells ye but this, they are the same, In nothing changed but […]...
11. Always Unsuitable She wore little teeth of pearls around her neck. They were grinning politely and evenly at me. Unsuitable they smirked. It is true I look a stuffed turkey in a suit. Breasts Too big for the silhouette. She knew At once that we had sex, lots of it As if I had strolled into her […]...
12. Dippold the Optician What do you see now? Globes of red, yellow, purple. Just a moment! And now? My father and mother and sisters. Yes! And now? Knights at arms, beautiful women, kind faces. Try this. A field of grain-a city. Very good! And now? A young woman with angels bending over her. A heavier lens! And now? […]...
13. FAIRY TALE I can scare children As the Victorians aimed to do Even on an August beach Tell a fairy tale One woven more cruel Than castles turned to sand and Washed into oblivion By the evening tide I can think a tale In sea forests Black haemorrhoid weed Where pebbles become life form Or unfortunates petrified […]...
14. Castile Orange blossoms blowing over Castile Children begging for coins I met my love under an orange tree Or was it an acacia tree Or was he not my love? I read this, then I dreamed this: Can waking take back what happened to me? Bells of San Miguel Ringing in the distance His hair in […]...
15. No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest Sons of the mountains of Scotland, Welshmen of coomb and defile, Breed of the moors of England, Children of Erin’s green isle, We stand four square to the tempest, Whatever the battering hail- No foe shall gather our harvest, Or sit on our stockyard rail. Our women shall walk in honour, Our children shall know […]...
16. 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 […]...
17. In a Breath To the Williamson Brothers HIGH noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue Asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors. Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching Play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes. Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea. From the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks, […]...
18. A Holiday The Wife The house is like a garden, The children are the flowers, The gardener should come methinks And walk among his bowers, Oh! lock the door on worry And shut your cares away, Not time of year, but love and cheer, Will make a holiday. The Husband Impossible! You women do not know The […]...
19. A Happy Man When these graven lines you see, Traveller, do not pity me; Though I be among the dead, Let no mournful word be said. Children that I leave behind, And their children, all were kind; Near to them and to my wife, I was happy all my life. My three sons I married right, And their […]...
20. Good and Bad Children Children, you are very little, And your bones are very brittle; If you would grow great and stately, You must try to walk sedately. You must still be bright and quiet, And content with simple diet; And remain, through all bewild’ring, Innocent and honest children. Happy hearts and happy faces, Happy play in grassy places […]...
21. Nearly A Valediction You happened to me. I was happened to Like an abandoned building by a bull- Dozer, like the van that missed my skull Happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- Born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through The […]...
22. Aaron Hatfield Better than granite, Spoon River, Is the memory-picture you keep of me Standing before the pioneer men and women There at Concord Church on Communion day. Speaking in broken voice of the peasant youth Of Galilee who went to the city And was killed by bankers and lawyers; My voice mingling with the June wind […]...
23. Dedication To A Book Of Stories Selected From The Irish Novelists There was a green branch hung with many a bell When her own people ruled this tragic Eire; And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery, A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell. It charmed away the merchant from his guile, And turned the farmer’s memory from his cattle, And hushed in sleep the roaring […]...
24. Disarmament “Put up the sword!” The voice of Christ once more Speaks, in the pauses of the cannon’s roar, O’er fields of corn by fiery sickles reaped And left dry ashes; over trenches heaped With nameless dead; o’er cities starving slow Under a rain of fire; through wards of woe Down which a groaning diapason runs […]...
25. Born Brothers Equality is absolute or no. Nothing between can stand. We are the sons Of the same sire, or madness breaks and runs Through the rude world. Ridiculous our woe If single pity does not love it. So Our separate fathers love us. No man shuns His poorest child’s embrace. We are the sons Of such, […]...
26. Spelling My daughter plays on the floor With plastic letters, Red, blue & hard yellow, Learning how to spell, Spelling, How to make spells. * I wonder how many women Denied themselves daughters, Closed themselves in rooms, Drew the curtains So they could mainline words. * A child is not a poem, A poem is not […]...
27. Remembered Women FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is […]...
28. Mentana : First Anniversary At the time when the stars are grey, And the gold of the molten moon Fades, and the twilight is thinned, And the sun leaps up, and the wind, A light rose, not of the day, A stronger light than of noon. As the light of a face much loved Was the face of the […]...
29. Of a Woman, Dead Young If she had been beautiful, even, Or wiser than women about her, Or had moved with a certain defiance; If she had had sons at her sides, And she with her hands on their shoulders, Sons, to make troubled the Gods- But where was there wonder in her? What had she, better or eviler, Whose […]...
30. Far Away and Long Ago Far away and long ago, a young lady who had lost her way found herself wandering in a wood and met a young carpenter working on a cupboard by a simple cabin that he’d built himself, to whom after some hesitation she stroke a conversation: “Excuse me, Sir, but I have lost my way around. […]...
31. 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’ […]...
32. Variations of Greek Themes I A HAPPY MAN (Carphyllides) When these graven lines you see, Traveler, do not pity me; Though I be among the dead, Let no mournful word be said. Children that I leave behind, And their children, all were kind; Near to them and to my wife, I was happy all my life. My three sons […]...
33. Lydia Humphrey Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, With my Bible under my arm Till I was gray and old; Unwedded, alone in the world, Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, And children in the church. I know they laughed and thought me queer. I knew of the eagle souls that […]...
34. Theory Of Recruiting Sons of bitches Were born With hearts of stone, Cherishing this stone All their life. Children of Sons of bitches Were born With hearts of grenade, In order to Blow to pieces Everything, And to leave as a message for their descendants – Entrails (still smoking entrails) Of sons of bitches....
35. Cinderella You always read about it: The plumber with the twelve children Who wins the Irish Sweepstakes. From toilets to riches. That story. Or the nursemaid, Some luscious sweet from Denmark Who captures the oldest son’s heart. From diapers to Dior. That story. Or a milkman who serves the wealthy, Eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk, The […]...
36. At The Smithville Methodist Church It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week, But when she came home With the “Jesus Saves” button, we knew what art Was up, what ancient craft. She liked her little friends. She liked the songs They sang when they weren’t Twisting and folding paper into dolls. What could be so bad? […]...
37. Dream Song 172: Your face broods Your face broods from my table, Suicide. Your force came on like a torrent toward the end Of agony and wrath. You were christened in the beginning Sylvia Plath And changed that name for Mrs Hughes and bred And went on round the bend Till the oven seemed the proper place for you. I brood […]...
38. The Fury Of Beautiful Bones Sing me a thrush, bone. Sing me a nest of cup and pestle. Sing me a sweetbread fr an old grandfather. Sing me a foot and a doorknob, for you are my love. Oh sing, bone bag man, sing. Your head is what I remember that Augusty You were in love with another woman but […]...
39. The Iron Gate WHERE is this patriarch you are kindly greeting? Not unfamiliar to my ear his name, Nor yet unknown to many a joyous meeting In days long vanished, is he still the same, Or changed by years, forgotten and forgetting, Dull-eared, dim-sighted, slow of speech and thought, Still o’er the sad, degenerate present fretting, Where all […]...
40. Glee The great storm is over Glee The great storm is over Four have recovered the Land Forty gone down together Into the boiling Sand Ring for the Scant Salvation Toll for the bonnie Souls Neighbor and friend and Bridegroom Spinning upon the Shoals How they will tell the Story When Winter shake the Door Till the Children urge But the […]...