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1. A Toast to the Men Here’s to the men! Since Adam’s time They’ve always been the same; Whenever anything goes wrong, The woman is to blame. From early morn to late at night, The men fault-finders are; They blame us if they oversleep, Or if they miss a car. They blame us if, beneath the bed, Their collar buttons roll; […]...
2. Cotton Song Come, brother, come. Lets lift it; Come now, hewit! roll away! Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day But lets not wait for it. God’s body’s got a soul, Bodies like to roll the soul, Cant blame God if we dont roll, Come, brother, roll, roll! Cotton bales are the fleecy way, Weary sinner’s bare feet […]...
3. H. Baptism As he that sees a dark and shady grove, Stays not, but looks beyond it on the sky; So when I view my sins, mine eyes remove More backward still, and to that water fly, Which is above the heav’ns, whose spring and rest Is in my dear Redeemer’s pierced side. O blessed streams! either […]...
4. The Death Of A Fly There was once a man who disguised himself as a Housefly and went about the neighborhood depositing Flyspecks. Well, he has to do something hasn’t he? said someone to Someone else. Of course, said someone else back to someone. Then what’s all the fuss? said someone to someone else. Who’s fussing? I’m just saying that […]...
5. Whats The Use Of A Title? They dont make it The beautiful die in flame – Sucide pills, rat poison, rope what – Ever… They rip their arms off, Throw themselves out of windows, They pull their eyes out of the sockets, Reject love Reject hate Reject, reject. They do’nt make it The beautiful can’t endure, They are butterflies They are […]...
6. Alone In The Woods Alone in the woods I felt The bitter hostility of the sky and the trees Nature has taught her creatures to hate Man that fusses and fumes Unquiet man As the sap rises in the trees As the sap paints the trees a violent green So rises the wrath of Nature’s creatures At man So […]...
7. Rosie Roberts I was sick, but more than that, I was mad At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life. So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria: “I am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River, Gradually wasting away. But come and take me, I killed the son Of the merchant […]...
8. What Fifty Said When I was young my teachers were the old. I gave up fire for form till I was cold. I suffered like a metal being cast. I went to school to age to learn the past. Now when I am old my teachers are the young. What can’t be molded must be cracked and sprung. […]...
9. Le Gout du Néant Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L’Espoir, dont l’éperon attisait ton ardeur, Ne veut plus t’enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur, Vieux cheval dont le pied à chaque obstacle bute. Résigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute. Esprit vaincu, fourbu! Pour toi, vieux maraudeur, L’amour n’a plus de gout, non plus que la dispute; Adieu […]...
10. Sonnet 118: Like as to make our appetite more keen Like as to make our appetite more keen With eager compounds we our palate urge, As to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge. Even so being full of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding; And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To […]...
11. Sonnet CXVIII Like as, to make our appetites more keen, With eager compounds we our palate urge, As, to prevent our maladies unseen, We sicken to shun sickness when we purge, Even so, being tuff of your ne’er-cloying sweetness, To bitter sauces did I frame my feeding And, sick of welfare, found a kind of meetness To […]...
12. The Earth Falls Down If I could blame it all on the weather, The snow like the cadaver’s table, The trees turned into knitting needles, The ground as hard as a frozen haddock, The pond wearing its mustache of frost. If I could blame conditions on that, If I could blame the hearts of strangers Striding muffled down the […]...
13. Consolation O but there is wisdom In what the sages said; But stretch that body for a while And lay down that head Till I have told the sages Where man is comforted. How could passion run so deep Had I never thought That the crime of being born Blackens all our lot? But where the […]...
14. MARIE LAVEAU TALKS ABOUT MAGIC FROM A CONFESSIONAL IN ST. LOUIS CATHEDRAL Marie Laveau, a colored woman who eventually became Known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, often used Her knowledge of Voodoo to manipulate and acquire power. Enigma In one quick lick I waved my mojo hand, Made the Mississippi’s muddy spine Run crooked as a crow’s foot, Scared politicians into my pocket With lizard […]...
15. Mrs. Charles Bliss Reverend Wiley advised me not to divorce him For the sake of the children, And Judge Somers advised him the same. So we stuck to the end of the path. But two of the children thought he was right, And two of the children thought I was right. And the two who sided with him […]...
16. Letter To Kizer From Seattle Dear Condor: Much thanks for that telephonic support From North Carolina when I suddenly went ape In the Iowa tulips. Lord, but I’m ashamed. I was afraid, it seemed, according to the doctor Of impending success, winning some poetry prizes Or getting a wet kiss. The more popular I got, The softer the soft cry […]...
17. The Demon Drink Oh, thou demon Drink, thou fell destroyer; Thou curse of society, and its greatest annoyer. What hast thou done to society, let me think? I answer thou hast caused the most of ills, thou demon Drink. Thou causeth the mother to neglect her child, Also the father to act as he were wild, So that […]...
18. Partisanship and politics Were I not a patriot, which of course I am, I would explain Just how the term remains a sticking point within my craw, How it contains a core of prudish mockery, dissembles jingoistic Claims. But I am and not ashamed. I love the land, the people And the open places, I can’t condone the […]...
19. Dream Song 95: The surly cop looked out at me in sleep The surly cop looked out at me in sleep Insect-like. Guess, who was the insect. I’d asked him in my robe & hospital gown in the elevator politely Why someone saw so many police around, And without speaking he looked. A meathead, and of course he was armed, to creep Across my nervous system some […]...
20. PC for Aaron Fogel Politically-correct Personal computers Point and click. President Clinton (codename Peacock) Can’t protect Crack pushing Communist Party Cops pursuing A care package Of peasant consciousness In a car park. Poverty’s a crime, And capital punishment Par for the course, In this penal code. A plausible cliffhanger Can’t cure the paralyzed, Prevent cancer, Or […]...
21. God's Battleground God dwells in you; in pride and shame, In all you do to blight or bless; In all you are of praise and blame, In beauty or in ugliness. “Divine Creation” – What a fraud! God did not make you. . . You make God. God lives in me, in all I feel Of love […]...
22. Share of obligation If the debate rages in the pages of the news today Then I’m confused, I’ve searched and found no evidence. Perhaps the anger of some residents about a Catholic school That’s due to close because its roll has fallen lower Than the threshold for support is not the sort of news that sells. That only […]...
23. Later life Something this foggy day, a something which Is neither of this fog nor of today, Has set me dreaming of the winds that play Past certain cliffs, along one certain beach, And turn the topmost edge of waves to spray: Ah pleasant pebbly strand so far away, So out of reach while quite within my […]...
24. The Cold Night It is cold. The white moon Is up among her scattered stars— Like the bare thighs of The Police Sergeant’s wife—among Her five children. . . No answer. Pale shadows lie upon The frosted grass. One answer: It is midnight, it is still And it is cold. . . ! White thighs of the sky! […]...
25. The Damned My days are haunted by the thought Of men in coils of Justice caught With stone and steel, in chain and cell, Of men condemned to living hell, Yet blame them not. In my sun-joy their dark I see: For what they are and had to be Blame Nature, red in tooth and claw, Blame […]...
26. The Inauguration of the University College Good people of Dundee, your voices raise, And to Miss Baxter give great praise; Rejoice and sing and dance with glee, Because she has founded a College in Bonnie Dundee. Therefore loudly in her praise sing, And make Dundee with your voices ring, And give honour to whom honour is due, Because ladies like her […]...
27. Sonnet LVIII That god forbid that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand the account of hours to crave, Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure! O, let me suffer, being at your beck, The imprison’d absence of your liberty; And patience, tame to sufferance, […]...
28. Sonnet 58: That god forbid, that made me first your slave That god forbid, that made me first your slave, I should in thought control your times of pleasure, Or at your hand th’ account of hours to crave, Being your vassal bound to stay your leisure! O, let me suffer, being at your beck, Th’ imprisoned absence of your liberty, And patience tame to sufferance, […]...
29. Come not when I am dead Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by. Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, […]...
30. Sentimental Hangman ‘Tis hard to hang a husky lad When larks are in the sky; It hurts when daffydills are glad To wring a neck awry, When joy o’ Spring is in the sap And cheery in the sun, ‘Tis sad to string aloft a chap, No matter what he done. And sittin’ in the pub o’ […]...
31. A Chaucerian Paraphrase of Horace Syn that you, Chloe, to your moder sticken, Maketh all ye yonge bacheloures full sicken; Like as a lyttel deere you ben y-hiding Whenas come lovers with theyre pityse chiding; Sothly it ben faire to give up your moder For to beare swete company with some oder; Your moder ben well enow so farre shee […]...
32. Vomit The house grows sick in its dining room and begins to vomit. Father cries, the dining room is vomiting. No wonder, the way you eat, it’s enough to make anybody sick, Says his wife. What shall we do? What shall we do? he cries. Call the Vomit Doctor of course. Yes, but all he does […]...
33. Benjamin Franklin Franklin fathered bastards fourteen, (So I read in the New Yorker); If it’s true, in terms of courtin’ Benny must have been a corker. To be prudent I’ve aspired, And my passions I have mastered; So that I have never sired A single bastard. One of course can never know; But I think that if […]...
34. My Reward for Being, was This My Reward for Being, was This. My premium My Bliss An Admiralty, less A Sceptre penniless And Realms just Dross When Thrones accost my Hands With “Me, Miss, Me” I’ll unroll Thee Dominions dowerless beside this Grace Election Vote The Ballots of Eternity, will show just that....
35. The Seven Ages of Wise Parliament’s a stage, And all the Politicians merely players! They have their exits and entrances, And Wise doth in his time play many parts, His acts being seven changes. First the Runner, With spiked shoe he spurns the cinder track, And just for once runs straight. The next the Student, Burning the midnight oil with […]...
36. WYTHER PARK SCHOOL LEEDS FIVE I stood there in front of forty-five faces The first day of term, not especially fancying “Exercises in Mechanical Arithmetic” and so instead I read a poem from Kirkup in Japan, about Nijinsky, Hand-written on a fan of rice-paper. Thirty years later, taking a Sri Lankan girl In search of her first job around London […]...
37. The New Mistress “Oh, sick I am to see you, will you never let me be? You may be good for something, but you are not good for me. Oh, go where you are wanted, for you are not wanted here. And that was all the farewell when I parted from my dear. “I will go where I […]...
38. The Bird With The Dark Plumes The bird with the dark plumes in my blood, That never for one moment however I patched my truces Consented to make peace with the people, It is pitiful now to watch her pleasure In a breath of tempest Breaking the sad promise of spring. Are these that morose hawk’s wings, vaulting, a mere mad […]...
39. AN ODE TO MY JAILED FRIEND Unmasked – The spirits’ face is a black hole Swallowing the celestial beauty Of the stars. Caged – The sentinel is crouched Subsumed in seething pain Not pain but anger of being guiltless Yet ‘guilty’ for being in jail. The cell – No crime equals its greasy grey walls Thickly dark with no grills for […]...
40. Ye Carpette Knyghte I have a horse – a ryghte good horse – Ne doe Y envye those Who scoure ye playne yn headye course Tyll soddayne on theyre nose They lyghte wyth unexpected force Yt ys – a horse of clothes. I have a saddel – “Say’st thou soe? Wyth styrruppes, Knyghte, to boote?” I sayde not […]...