The Praying Mantis

Related poetry:

1. Praying Drunk Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk. Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks. I ought to start with praise, but praise Comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you About the woman, whom I taught, in bed, This prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form Keeps things in […]...
2. Ring Out Your Bells Ring out your bells, let mourning shows be spread; For Love is dead All love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain; Worth, as nought worth, rejected, And Faith fair scorn doth gain. From so ungrateful fancy, From such a female franzy, From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us! Weep, neighbours, […]...
3. The Prayer of Miriam Cohen From the wheel and the drift of Things Deliver us, Good Lord, And we will face the wrath of Kings, The faggot and the sword! Lay not thy Works before our eyes Nor vex us with thy Wars, Lest we should feel the straining skies O’ertrod by trampling stars. Hold us secure behind the gates […]...
4. Hymn 16 Part 2 The enjoyment of Christ; or, Delight in ordinances. Lord, what a heav’n of saving grace Shines through the beauties of thy face, And lights our passions to a flame! Lord, how we love thy charming name! When I can say, “My God is mine,” When I can feel thy glories shine, I tread the world […]...
5. 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 […]...
6. Aware When I found the door I found the vine leaves Speaking among themselves in abundant Whispers. My presence made them Hush their green breath, Embarrassed, the way Humans stand up, buttoning their jackets, Acting as if they were leaving anyway, as if The conversation had ended Just before you arrived. I liked The glimpse I […]...
7. By an Evolutionist By an Evolutionist The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man, And the man said, ‘Am I your debtor?’ And the Lord-‘Not yet; but make it as clean as you can, And then I will let you a better.’ I. If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain […]...
8. The Soul's Expression WITH stammering lips and insufficient sound I strive and struggle to deliver right That music of my nature, day and night With dream and thought and feeling interwound And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height Which step out grandly to the infinite From the dark edges of […]...
9. The Final Poem A forge burns in my heart. I am redder than dawn, Deeper than seaweed, More distant than gulls, More hollow than wells. But I only give birth To seeds and to shells. My tongue becomes tangled in words: I no longer speak white, Nor utter black, Nor whisper gray of a wind-worn cliff, Barely do […]...
10. Destiny They deliver the edicts of God Without delay And are exempt from apprehension From detention And with their God-given Petasus, Caduceus, and Talaria Ferry like bolts of lightning Unhindered between the tribunals Of Space & Time The Messenger-Spirit In human flesh Is assigned a dependable, Self-reliant, versatile, Thoroughly poet existence Upon its sojourn in life […]...
11. 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 […]...
12. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
13. Song At her Junior High School graduation, She sings alone In front of the lot of us Her voice soprano, surprising, Almost a woman’s. It is The Our Father in French, The new language Making her strange, out there, Fully fledged and Ready for anything. Sitting Together her separated Mother and father we can Hear the […]...
14. 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...
15. 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...
16. The Gardener LXXXI: Why Do You Whisper So Faintly Why do you whisper so faintly in My ears, O Death, my Death? When the flowers droop in the Evening and cattle come back to their Stalls, you stealthily come to my side And speak words that I do not Understand. Is this how you must woo and win Me with the opiate of drowsy […]...
17. Jehovah-Rophi. I Am the Lord That Healeth Thee (Exodus, xv.26) Heal us, Emmanuel! here we are, Waiting to feel Thy touch: Deep-wounded souls to Thee repair And, Saviour, we are such. Our faith is feeble, we confess, We faintly trust Thy word; But wilt Thou pity us the less? Be that far from Thee, Lord! Remember him who once applied, With trembling, for […]...
18. Argus When wise Ulysses, from his native coast Long kept by wars, and long by tempests toss’d, Arrived at last, poor, old, disguised, alone, To all his friends, and ev’n his Queen unknown, Changed as he was, with age, and toils, and cares, Furrow’d his rev’rend face, and white his hairs, In his own palace forc’d […]...
19. 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 […]...
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. Veni Creator I LORD of the grass and hill, Lord of the rain, White Overlord of will, Master of pain, I who am dust and air Blown through the halls of death, Like a pale ghost of prayer,- I am thy breath. Lord of the blade and leaf, Lord of the bloom, Sheer Overlord of grief, Master […]...
22. Lovest Thou Me? (John, xxi.16) Hark my soul! it is the Lord; ‘Tis Thy Saviour, hear His word; Jesus speaks and speaks to thee, “Say poor sinner, lovst thou me? “I deliver’d thee when bound, And when bleeding, heal’d thy wound; Sought thee wandering, set thee right, Turn’d thy darkness into light. “Can a woman’s tender care Cease […]...
23. In The Cool Of The Evening I thought I heard Him calling. Did you hear A sound, a little sound? My curious ear Is dinned with flying noises, and the tree Goes whisper, whisper, whisper silently Till all its whispers spread into the sound Of a dull roar. Lie closer to the ground, The shade is deep and He may pass […]...
24. 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...
25. Spain 1873-'74 OUT of the murk of heaviest clouds, Out of the feudal wrecks, and heap’d-up skeletons of kings, Out of that old entire European debris-the shatter’d mummeries, Ruin’d cathedrals, crumble of palaces, tombs of priests, Lo! Freedom’s features, fresh, undimm’d, look forth-the same immortal face looks forth; (A glimpse as of thy mother’s face, Columbia, A […]...
26. A Hymn O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride. From all that terror teaches, From lies of tongue and pen, From […]...
27. Sin Lord, with what care hast Thou begirt us round! Parents first season us; then schoolmasters Deliver us to laws;-they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers, Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises, Blessings […]...
28. Three Counsellors IT was the fairy of the place, Moving within a little light, Who touched with dim and shadowy grace The conflict at its fever height. It seemed to whisper “Quietness,” Then quietly itself was gone: Yet echoes of its mute caress Were with me as the years went on. It was the warrior within Who […]...
29. 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 […]...
30. Symbolically concerned dodona oak (the tree of life) sheds leaves Nutritious-which feeds blood and mind today There’s not a jot (from which the present cleaves) Can be dispensed with – all life’s array From first to last has leaf-mould in its clay Eve is that apple she took her bite from The best and worst can’t thwart […]...
31. The Sun Underfoot Among The Sundews An ingenuity too astonishing To be quite fortuitous is This bog full of sundews, sphagnum- Lined and shaped like a teacup. A step Down and you’re into it; a Wilderness swallows you up: Ankle-, then knee-, then midriff- To-shoulder-deep in wetfooted Understory, an overhead Spruce-tamarack horizon hinting You’ll never get out of here. But the […]...
32. Woman with a Past THERE was a woman tore off a red velvet gown And slashed the white skin of her right shoulder And a crimson zigzag wrote a finger nail hurry. There was a woman spoke six short words And quit a life that was old to her For a life that was new. There was a woman […]...
33. Written After Swimming From Sestos To Abydos If, in the month of dark December, Leander, who was nightly wont (What maid will not the tale remember?) To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont! If, when the wintry tempest roared, He sped to Hero, nothing loath, And thus of old thy current poured, Fair Venus! how I pity both! For me, degenerate modern wretch, […]...
34. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 55. The wish, that of the living whol The wish, that of the living whole No life may fail beyond the grave, Derives it not from what we have The likest God within the soul? Are God and Nature then at strife, That Nature lends such evil dreams? So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life; That I, […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. The Levelled Churchyard “O passenger, pray list and catch Our sighs and piteous groans, Half stifled in this jumbled patch Of wrenched memorial stones! “We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, ‘I know not which I am!’ “The wicked people have annexed The verses on the good; A roaring […]...
37. Who In The Hell Is Tom Jones? I was shacked with a 24 year old girl from New York City for Two weeks – about The time of the garbage Strike out there, and One night my 34 year Old woman arrived and She said, “I want to see My rival.” she did And then she said, “o, You’re a cute little […]...
38. A chilly Peace infests the Grass A chilly Peace infests the Grass The Sun respectful lies Not any Trance of industry These shadows scrutinize Whose Allies go no more astray For service or for Glee But all mankind deliver here From whatsoever sea...
39. A Door just opened on a street A Door just opened on a street I lost was passing by An instant’s Width of Warmth disclosed And Wealth and Company. The Door as instant shut And I I lost was passing by Lost doubly but by contrast most Informing misery...
40. First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...