All Poems

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The house where I was born (01)

© Yves Bonnefoy

I woke up, it was the house where I was born,
Sea foam splashed against the rock,
Not a single bird, only the wind to open and close the wave,
Everywhere on the horizon the smell of ashes,

At The Door

© David Wagoner

All actors look for them-the defining moments
When what a character does is what he is.
The script may say, He goes to the door
And exits or She goes out the door stage left.

For A Row Of Laurel Shrubs

© David Wagoner

They don't want to be your hedge,
Your barrier, your living wall, the no-go
Go-between between your property
And the prying of dogs and strangers. They don't

Wallace Stevens On His Way To Work

© David Wagoner

He would leave early and walk slowly
As if balancing books
On the way to school, already expecting
To be tardy once again and heavy

To Jennie

© Mark Twain

Good-bye! a kind good-bye,
I bid you now, my friend,
And though 'tis sad to speak the word,
To destiny I bend

Those Annual Bills

© Mark Twain

These annual bills! these annual bills!
How many a song their discord trills
Of "truck" consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
Since I was skinned by last year's lot!

The Aged Pilot Man

© Mark Twain

On the Erie Canal, it was,
All on a summer's day,
I sailed forth with my parents
Far away to Albany.

Ode to Stephen Bowling Dots, Dec'd

© Mark Twain

And did young Stephen sicken,
And did young Stephen die?
And did the sad hearts thicken,
And did the mourners cry?

Genius

© Mark Twain

Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild,
incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility,
and get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter.

A Sweltering Day In Australia

© Mark Twain

The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree,
Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires
Far from the breezes of Coolgardie
Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires;

The Widening Spell Of Leaves

© Larry Levis

--The Carpathian Frontier, October, 1968
--for my brotherOnce, in a foreign country, I was suddenly ill.
I was driving south toward a large city famous
For so little it had a replica, in concrete,

Those Graves In Rome

© Larry Levis

There are places where the eye can starve,
But not here. Here, for example, is
The Piazza Navona, & here is his narrow room
Overlooking the Steps & the crowds of sunbathing

Larry Levis

© Larry Levis

My poem would eat nothing.
I tried giving it water
but it said no,

Haiku

© Jack Kerouac

Birds singing
in the dark
Rainy dawn.

Burning the Doll

Father, this was our deepest confession of love.
I didn't watch the plastic body melt
to soft flesh in the flames "
I watched you move from the house to the fire.
I would have given you anything.

The Pick

I watched him swinging the pick in the sun,
breaking the concrete steps into chunks of rock,
and the rocks into dust,
and the dust into earth again.

from Tsigan: The Gypsy Poem

In Warsaw, blackbird girls
swoop down in flocks
the old town square
a swirl of dark-eyed dark-haired girls

East India Grill Villanelle

Across the table, Bridget sneaks a smile;
she's caught me staring past her at the man
who brings us curried dishes, hot and mild.

On Faith

How do people stay true to each other?
When I think of my parents all those years
in the unmade bed of their marriage, not ever
longing for anything else or: no, they must