Myself

Related poetry:

1. A Pig's-Eye View Of Literature The Lives and Times of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron Byron and Shelley and Keats Were a trio of Lyrical treats. The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls, And Keats never was a descendant of earls, And Byron walked out with a number of girls, But it didn’t […]...
2. Antimatter On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, Where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the Earth and recede to the first slime of love. And in the evening the sun is just rising. Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon Childhood robs them of their […]...
3. The General Public “Ah, did you once see Shelley plain?” Browning. “Shelley? Oh, yes, I saw him often then,” The old man said. A dry smile creased his face With many wrinkles. “That’s a great poem, now! That one of Browning’s! Shelley? Shelley plain? The time that I remember best is this A thin mire crept along the […]...
4. Olmecs rule The news is out, down Veracruz they found the evidence, Olmecs had the written word 400 years before Sumerians. A Chinese claim predates all that, but let it rest. Examine what it means to Mesoamericans! Okay, you Spanish thinking converts to the English tongue, Reflect a while, your reaching back predates the sum Of everything […]...
5. Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
6. 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. […]...
7. My Masterpiece It’s slim and trim and bound in blue; Its leaves are crisp and edged with gold; Its words are simple, stalwart too; Its thoughts are tender, wise and bold. Its pages scintillate with wit; Its pathos clutches at my throat: Oh, how I love each line of it! That Little Book I Never Wrote. In […]...
8. Farewell Love and All Thy Laws Forever Farewell love and all thy laws forever; Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more. Senec and Plato call me from thy lore To perfect wealth, my wit for to endeavour. In blind error when I did persever, Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore, Hath taught me to set in trifles no store […]...
9. 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 […]...
10. To My Brother George Many the wonders I this day have seen: The sun, when first he kissed away the tears That filled the eyes of Morn;-the laurelled peers Who from the feathery gold of evening lean;- The ocean with its vastness, its blue green, Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears, Its voice mysterious, which […]...
11. Sorley's Weather When outside the icy rain Comes leaping helter-skelter, Shall I tie my restive brain Snugly under shelter? Shall I make a gentle song Here in my firelit study, When outside the winds blow strong And the lanes are muddy? With old wine and drowsy meats Am I to fill my belly? Shall I glutton here […]...
12. Our Prayer of Thanks For the gladness here where the sun is shining at Evening on the weeds at the river, Our prayer of thanks. For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and Bareheaded in the summer grass, Our prayer of thanks. For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white Arms that hold us, Our […]...
13. Despair I have experienc’d The worst, the World can wreak on me the worst That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb With whisper’d Discontents the dying prayer I have beheld the whole of all, wherein My Heart had any interest in this Life, To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes That nothing now is […]...
14. The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
15. The Lost Leader Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick in his coat – Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us, Lost all the others she lets us devote; They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver, So much was theirs who so little allowed: How […]...
16. Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
17. Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
18. The Voice of Toil I heard men saying, Leave hope and praying, All days shall be as all have been; To-day and to-morrow bring fear and sorrow, The never-ending toil between. When Earth was younger mid toil and hunger, In hope we strove, and our hands were strong; Then great men led us, with words they fed us, And […]...
19. His Books MY days among the Dead are past; Around me I behold, Where’er these casual eyes are cast, The mighty minds of old: My never-failing friends are they, With whom I converse day by day. With them I take delight in weal And seek relief in woe; And while I understand and feel How much to […]...
20. Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
21. 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 […]...
22. Evening Solace THE human heart has hidden treasures, In secret kept, in silence sealed;­ The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures, Whose charms were broken if revealed. And days may pass in gay confusion, And nights in rosy riot fly, While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion, The memory of the Past may die. But, there […]...
23. Governors On Sominex It had been four days of no weather As if nature had conceded its genius to the indoors. They’d closed down the Bureau of Sad Endings And my wife sat on the couch and read the paper out loud. The evening edition carried the magic death of a child Backlit by a construction site sunrise […]...
24. Outside Fargo, North Dakota Along the sprawled body of the derailed Great Northern freight car, I strike a match slowly and lift it slowly. No wind. Beyond town, three heavy white horses Wade all the way to their shoulders In a silo shadow. Suddenly the freight car lurches. The door slams back, a man with a flashlight Calls me […]...
25. Sonnet LXXXVI Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all too precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither […]...
26. Sonnet 86: Was it the proud full sail of his great verse Was it the proud full sail of his great verse, Bound for the prize of all-too-precious you, That did my ripe thoughts in my brain inhearse, Making their tomb the womb wherein they grew? Was it his spirit, by spirits taught to write Above a mortal pitch, that struck me dead? No, neither he, nor […]...
27. Night Ray Most brightly of all burned the hair of my evening loved one: To her I send the coffin of lightest wood. Waves billow round it as round the bed of our dream in Rome; It wears a white wig as I do and speaks hoarsely: It talks as I do when I grant admittance to […]...
28. To a Child of Quality, Five Years Old, 1704. The Author then Forty LORDS, knights, and squires, the numerous band That wear the fair Miss Mary’s fetters, Were summoned by her high command To show their passions by their letters. My pen amongst the rest I took, Lest those bright eyes, that cannot read, Should dart their kindling fire, and look The power they have to be obey’d. […]...
29. Sonnet XXXV: Some, Misbelieving To Miracle Some, misbelieving and profane in love, When I do speak of miracles by thee, May say, that thou art flattered by me, Who only write my skill in verse to prove. See miracles, ye unbelieving, see A dumb-born Muse made t’express the mind, A cripple hand to write, yet lame by kind, One […]...
30. "I Love You Sweatheart&quot A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
31. Remember at seventeen Was i, So old So young. And It was there I first met war. I saw their broken eyes Those that returned From vietnam, A (so called) American war. They were the children I knew, Broken as toys Discarded into The lost echoes Of a history, Now unwritten In our schools. Sweet children […]...
32. There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
33. Memorabilia I Ah, did you once see Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? And did you speak to him again? How strange it seems, and new? II But you were living before that, And you are living after, And the memory I started at – My starting moves your laughter. III I […]...
34. Turns And Movies: Rose And Murray After the movie, when the lights come up, He takes her powdered hand behind the wings; She, all in yellow, like a buttercup, Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings; And with a silent, gliding step they move Over the footlights, in familiar glare, Panther-like in the Tango whirl of love, He […]...
35. The Mole Said he: “I’ll dive deep in the Past, And write a book of direful days When summer skies were overcast With smoke of humble hearths ablaze; When War was rampant in the land, And poor folk cowered in the night, While ruin gaped on every hand – Of ravishing and wrath I’ll write.” Ten years […]...
36. Sonnet LXII: When First I Ended When first I ended, then I first began, The more I travell’d, further from my rest, Where most I lost, there most of all I wan, Pined with hunger rising from a feast. Methinks I fly, yet want I legs to go, Wise in conceit, in act a very sot, Ravish’d with joy amid a […]...
37. Elegy VII Nature’s lay idiot, I taught thee to love, And in that sophistry, Oh, thou dost prove Too subtle: Foole, thou didst not understand The mystic language of the eye nor hand: Nor couldst thou judge the difference of the air Of sighs, and say, This lies, this sounds despair: Nor by th’ eyes water call […]...
38. An Address to the Rev. George Gilfillan All hail to the Rev. George Gilfillan of Dundee, He is the greatest preacher I did ever hear or see. He is a man of genius bright, And in him his congregation does delight, Because they find him to be honest and plain, Affable in temper, and seldom known to complain. He preaches in a […]...
39. The White Lilies As a man and woman make A garden between them like A bed of stars, here They linger in the summer evening And the evening turns Cold with their terror: it Could all end, it is capable Of devastation. All, all Can be lost, through scented air The narrow columns Uselessly rising, and beyond, A […]...
40. Days of 1986 He was believed by his peers to be an important poet, But his erotic obsession, condemned and strictly forbidden, Compromised his standing, and led to his ruin. Over sixty, and a father many times over, The objects of his attention grew younger and younger: He tried to corrupt the sons of his dearest friends; He […]...