The Reason Why The Closet-Man Is Never Sad

Related poetry:

1. That sacred Closet when you sweep That sacred Closet when you sweep Entitled “Memory” Select a reverential Broom And do it silently. ‘Twill be a Labor of surprise Besides Identity Of other Interlocutors A probability August the Dust of that Domain Unchallenged let it lie You cannot supersede itself But it can silence you...
2. Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark That he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house And put on a Beethoven symphony full […]...
3. The Closet Here I am with my mother, hanging under the molt Of years, in a garden of umbrellas and rubber boots, Together always in the vague perfume of her coat. See how the fedoras along the shelf are the several Skulls of my father, in this catacomb of my family....
4. The Reason Why I'm Fat I thought my father was far too fat – eagerly I told him so, If he was offended it didn’t show and I don’t recall Where that strange conversation went. Now I know He was offended – as I am too, it is not a jibe to Pass off lightly, no matter who accuses you […]...
5. Reason and Passion XV And the priestess spoke again and said: “Speak to us of Reason and Passion.” And he answered saying: Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon which your reason and your judgment wage war against passion and your appetite. Would that I could be the peacemaker in your soul, that I might turn the discord and […]...
6. Hamlet Off-Stage: The Magnolia Closet “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations Of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight.” Whoever “Thy” is, that’s the prayer to breathe, Words that chimed in my head while I stood under The first magnolia blossom of the year, Gift of God? Elvis? Allah? or Liberace? Who provides the rococo razzledazzle? What’s […]...
7. Monotony One monotonous day is followed By another monotonous, identical day. The same Things will happen, they will happen again The same moments find us and leave us. A month passes and ushers in another month. One easily guesses the coming events; They are the boring ones of yesterday. And the morrow ends up not resembling […]...
8. Dinner at the Who's Who amidst swirling wine And flickers of silver guests quote Dante, Brecht, Kant and each other. I wait in the hall after not Powdering my nose, trying to re- Compose that woman who’ll graciously take her place At the table and won’t tell her hosts: I looked into your bedroom and closets, smelled your “Obsession” and […]...
9. So You Say It is all in the mind, you say, and has Nothing to do with happiness. The coming of cold, The coming of heat, the mind has all the time in the world. You take my arm and say something will happen, Something unusual for which we were always prepared, Like the sun arriving after a […]...
10. Distressed Haiku In a week or ten days The snow and ice Will melt from Cemetery Road. I’m coming! Don’t move! Once again it is April. Today is the day We would have been married Twenty-six years. I finished with April Halfway through March. You think that their Dying is the worst Thing that could happen. Then […]...
11. Judge Somers How does it happen, tell me, That I who was the most erudite of lawyers, Who knew Blackstone and Coke Almost by heart, who made the greatest speech The court-house ever heard, and wrote A brief that won the praise of Justice Breese How does it happen, tell me, That I lie here unmarked, forgotten, […]...
12. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
13. Reason … Finally, what is Reason? You have often asked me ; and this is my Answer : Whene’er the mist, that stands ‘twixt God and thee, [Sublimates] to a pure transparency, That intercepts no light and adds no stain There Reason is, and then begins her reign! But alas! ‘tu stesso, ti fai grosso Col […]...
14. The Reason My life is vile I hate it so I’ll wait awhile And then I’ll go. Why wait at all? Hope springs alive, Good may befall I yet may thrive. It is because I can’t make up my mind If God is good, impotent or unkind....
15. A Woman’s Reason I’m Sure every Word that you say is Absurd; I Say it’s All Gummidge and Twaddle; You may Argue away till the 19th of May, But I don’t like the Sound of the Moddle!...
16. Love's Reason For that thy face is fair I love thee not; Nor yet because the light of thy brown eyes Hath gleams of wonder and of glad surprise, Like woodland streams that cross a sunlit spot: Nor for thy beauty, born without a blot, Most perfect when it shines through no disguise Pure as the star […]...
17. Sonnet VII: Come, Reason Come, Reason, come! each nerve rebellious bind, Lull the fierce tempest of my fev’rish soul; Come, with the magic of thy meek controul, And check the wayward wand’rings of my mind: Estrang’d from thee, no solace can I find, O’er my rapt brain, where pensive visions stole, Now passion reigns and stormy tumults roll So […]...
18. Sonnet XI: O! Reason! O! Reason! vaunted Sovreign of the mind! Thou pompous vision with a sounding name! Can’st thou, the soul’s rebellious passions tame! Can’st thou in spells the vagrant fancy bind? Ah, no! capricious as the wav’ring wind, Are sighs of Love that dim thy boasted flame, While Folly’s torch consumes the wreath of fame, And Pleasure’s […]...
19. Felix Schmidt It was only a little house of two rooms Almost like a child’s play-house With scarce five acres of ground around it; And I had so many children to feed And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick From bearing children. One day lawyer Whitney came along And proved to me that Christian […]...
20. Sonnet X: Reason Reason, in faith thou art well serv’d, that still Wouldst brabbling be with sense and love in me: I rather wish’d thee climb the Muses’ hill, Or reach the fruit of Nature’s choicest tree, Or seek heav’n’s course, or heav’n’s inside to see: Why shouldst thou toil our thorny soil to till? Leave sense, and […]...
21. Love In A Life I Room after room, I hunt the house through We inhabit together. Heart, fear nothing, for, heart, thou shalt find her, Next time, herself!-not the trouble behind her Left in the curtain, the couch’s perfume! As she brushed it, the cornice-wreath blossomed anew,- Yon looking-glass gleamed at the wave of her feather. II Yet the […]...
22. Cheerfulness Taught By Reason I THINK we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint To muse upon eternity’s constraint Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope Must widen early, is it well to […]...
23. I reason, Earth is short I reason, Earth is short And Anguish absolute And many hurt, But, what of that? I reason, we could die The best Vitality Cannot excel Decay, But, what of that? I reason, that in Heaven Somehow, it will be even Some new Equation, given But, what of that?...
24. Dream Song 76: Henry's Confession Nothin very bad happen to me lately. How you explain that? —I explain that, Mr Bones, Terms o’ your bafflin odd sobriety. Sober as man can get, no girls, no telephones, What could happen bad to Mr Bones? €”If life is a handkerchief sandwich, In a modesty of death I join my father Who dared […]...
25. On The University Carrier Who Sickn'd In The Time Of His Vacancy, Being Forbid To Go To London, By Reason Of The Plague Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt, And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt, Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one, He’s here stuck in a slough, and overthrown. ‘Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known, Death was half glad when he had got him down; For […]...
26. Lines Written In The Fannie Farmer Cookbook You won’t become a gourmet* cook By studying our Fannie’s book Her thoughts on Food & Keeping House Are scarcely those of Lévi-Strauss. Nevertheless, you’ll find, Frank dear, The basic elements** are here. And if a problem should arise: The Soufflé fall before your eyes, Or strange things happen to the Rice You know I […]...
27. Ode To Pornography If you could write down the words Moving through a man’s mind as He masturbates you’d have a quick Bonus bonk read, I used to think. But words were never adequate Or the point in the bar where the girl Is a boy the boy is a girl the two girls Exchange underpants the one […]...
28. 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 […]...
29. Sonnet 96 It will seem strange, no more this range on range Of opening hopes and happenings. Strange to be One’s name no longer. Not caught up, not free. Strange, not to wish one’s wishes onward. Strange, The looseness, slopping, time and space estrange. Strangest, and sad as a blind child, not to see Ever you, never […]...
30. Story A woman’s taking her late-afternoon walk On Chestnut where no sidewalk exists And houses with gravel driveways Sit back among the pines. Only the house With the vicious dog is close to the road. An electric fence keeps him in check. When she comes to that house, the woman Always crosses to the other side. […]...
31. The Position They let me in. I went right up to the nursery And climbed into the crib, and assumed the famous Fetal position. They didn’t know what to make of it. They stood By the crib looking down at me. They were young. This was their house. Instead Of an infant, a grown man is in […]...
32. Sonnet 76: Why is my verse so barren of new pride? Why is my verse so barren of new pride? So far from variation or quick change? Why with the time do I not glance aside To new-found methods, and to compounds strange? Why write I still all one, ever the same, And keep invention in a noted weed, That every word doth almost tell my […]...
33. Letter To N. Y For Louise Crane In your next letter I wish you’d say Where you are going and what you are doing; How are the plays and after the plays What other pleasures you’re pursuing: Taking cabs in the middle of the night, Driving as if to save your soul Where the road gose round and round […]...
34. The Houses ‘Twixt my house and thy house the pathway is broad, In thy house or my house is half the world’s hoard; By my house and thy house hangs all the world’s fate, On thy house and my house lies half the world’s hate. For my house and thy house no help shall we find Save […]...
35. 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 […]...
36. Dream Song 26: The glories of the world struck me The glories of the world struck me, made me aria, once. Гўв‚”What happen then, Mr Bones? If be you cares to say. Гўв‚”Henry. Henry became interested in women’s bodies, His loins were & were the scene of stupendous achievement. Stupor. Knees, dear. Pray. All the knobs & softnesses of, my God, The ducking & trouble […]...
37. Every Man Should have a Rifle So I sit and write and ponder, while the house is deaf and dumb, Seeing visions “over yonder” of the war I know must come. In the corner – not a vision – but a sign for coming days Stand a box of ammunition and a rifle in green baize. And in this, the living […]...
38. After the Engagement Well, Mabel, ’tis over and ended – The ball I wrote was to be; And oh! it was perfectly splendid – If you could have been here to see. I’ve a thousand things to write you That I know you are wanting to hear, And one, that is sure to delight you – I am […]...
39. To Say Before Going To Sleep I would like to sing someone to sleep, Have someone to sit by and be with. I would like to cradle you and softly sing, Be your companion while you sleep or wake. I would like to be the only person In the house who knew: the night outside was cold. And would like to […]...
40. My Kingdom Down by a shining water well I found a very little dell, No higher than my head. The heather and the gorse about In summer bloom were coming out, Some yellow and some red. I called the little pool a sea; The little hills were big to me; For I am very small. I made […]...