All Poems
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The Interrogation
© Tadeusz Borowski
for Witek Piatkowski
They beat him all day, and the next. Nothing doing.
April 21
© David Lehman
I'm a very average person,
and I think most people are.
I vote with the common man.
I have two kids, a boy and a girl.
Our Friendship (January 14)
© David Lehman
We have a name for it
in the South:
asshole buddies.
It means we've known
January 1
© David Lehman
Some people confuse inspiration with lightning
not me I know it comes from the lungs and air
you breathe it in you breathe it out it circulates
it's the breath of my being the wind across the face
Sunset On The Cunimbla Valley, Blue Mountains
© Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen
I SAT upon a windy mountain height,
On a huge rock outstanding from the rest;
Sexism
© David Lehman
The happiest moment in a woman's life
Is when she hears the turn of her lover's key
In the lock, and pretends to be asleep
When he enters the room, trying to be
A Birthday
© Alfred Austin
I love to think, when first I woke
Into this wondrous world,
The leaves were fresh on elm and oak,
And hawthorns laced and pearled.
October 16
© David Lehman
What can you say about the Mets
down three games to none
one run down with six outs to go
Cedeno singles steals second Mora walks
The Cities Of The Plain
© John Greenleaf Whittier
"Get ye up from the wrath of God's terrible day!
Ungirded, unsandalled, arise and away!
'T is the vintage of blood, 't is the fulness of time,
And vengeance shall gather the harvest of crime!"
Hermann And Dorothea - IV. Euterpe
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Mother," he said in confusion:--"You greatly surprise me!" and quickly
Wiped he away his tears, the noble and sensitive youngster.
"What! You are weeping, my son?" the startled mother continued
"That is indeed unlike you! I never before saw you crying!
Say, what has sadden'd your heart? What drives you to sit here all lonely
Under the shade of the pear-tree? What is it that makes you unhappy?"
April 19
© David Lehman
We have too much exhibitionism
and not enough voyeurism
in poetry we have plenty of bass
and not enough treble, more amber
The Gift
© David Lehman
"He gave her class. She gave him sex."
-- Katharine Hepburn on Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers He gave her money. She gave him head.
He gave her tips on "aggressive growth" mutual funds. She gave him a red rose
and a little statue of eros.
Knowledge Of God
© Robert Graves
So far from praising he blasphemes
Who says that God has been or is,
Who swears he met with God in dreams
Or face to face in woods and streams,
Meshed in their boundaries.
Venus' Runaway
© Benjamin Jonson
Beauties, have ye seen this toy,
Called Love, a little boy,
Almost naked, wanton, blind;
Cruel now, and then as kind?
If he be amongst ye, say?
He is Venus' runaway.
The Difference Between Pepsi And Coke
© David Lehman
Can't swim; uses credit cards and pills to combat
intolerable feelings of inadequacy;
Won't admit his dread of boredom, chief impulse behind
numerous marital infidelities;
Big Hair
© David Lehman
Ithaca, October 1993: Jorie went on a lingerie
tear, wanting to look like a moll
in a Chandler novel. Dinner, consisting of three parts gin
and one part lime juice cordial, was a prelude to her hair.
There are, she said, poems that can be written
only when the poet is clad in black underwear.
