Life poems

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Of a virgin sheds the long windsocks of her stockings absurd
Brassiere then feels the girdle required by regulations squirming
Off her: no longer monobuttocked she feels the girdle flutter shake
In her hand and float upward her clothes rising off her ascending
Into cloud and fights away from her head the last sharp dangerous shoe
Like a dumb bird and now will drop in soon now will drop

Omen Of Emptiness

© Spike Milligan

The clock has turned enough
to reach a planet
Life is endless night
I hear wings beating in
the dark of my room
A giant Raven is waiting

Those Words Were Uttered As In Pensive Mood

© William Wordsworth

THOSE words were uttered as in pensive mood
We turned, departing from that solemn sight:
A contrast and reproach to gross delight,
And life's unspiritual pleasures daily wooed!

The Night-Scene : A Dramatic Fragment.

© Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sandoval. You loved the daughter of Don Manrique?
Earl Henry. Loved?
Sandoval. Did you not say you wooed her?
Earl Henry. Once I loved

Astrophel And Stella-Seventh Song

© Sir Philip Sidney

Whose senses in so evil consort, their stepdame Nature lays,
That ravishing delight in them most sweet tunes do not raise;
Or, if they do delight therein, yet are so cloy'd with wit,
As with sententious lips to set a title vain on it:
Oh let them hear these sacred tunes, and learn in wonder's schools
To be in things past bounds of wit, fools, if they be not fools.

Official Piety

© John Greenleaf Whittier

A PIOUS magistrate! sound his praise throughout
The wondering churches. Who shall henceforth doubt
That the long-wished millennium draweth nigh?
Sin in high places has become devout,

Music

© Boris Pasternak

The block of flats loomed towerlike.
Two sweating athletes, human telpher,
Were carrying up narrow stairs,
As though a bell onto a belfry,

Clepsydra

© Charles Cotton

WHY, let is run! who bids it stay?

Let us the while be merry;

A Christmas Child

© Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

SHE came to me at Christmas time and made me mother, and it seemed

There was a Christ indeed and He had given me the joy I'd dreamed.

Of Some Renown by Jean L. Connor: American Life in Poetry #22 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-20

© Ted Kooser

In this short poem by Vermont writer Jean L. Connor, an older speaker challenges the perception that people her age have lost their vitality and purpose. Connor compares the life of such a person to an egret fishing. Though the bird stands completely still, it has learned how to live in the world, how to sustain itself, and is capable of quick action when the moment is right.

Reynard The Fox - Part 2

© John Masefield

Down in the village men awoke,
The chimneys breathed with a faint blue smoke;
The fox slept on, though tweaks and twitches,
Due to his dreams, ran down his flitches.

Philiper Flash

© James Whitcomb Riley

Young Philiper Flash was a promising lad,

His intentions were good--but oh, how sad

The Man in the Glass

© Anonymous

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
and the world makes you king for a day
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
and see what that man has to say

Crusaders

FURL we the sails, and pass with tardy oars

Through these bright regions, casting many a glance

"Violet Beauregarde..."

© Roald Dahl

"Dear friends, we surely all agree
There's almost nothing worse to see
Than some repulsive little bum
Who's always chewing chewing gum.

A Song Of The Sea.

Here within the half-light 'tween the night and day
Upon the sands I lie, with thoughts that idly stirr'd
Seem, as in a dream, with life and death to play,
As o'er the sea there flits a pale white bird.

Inscrutable Twist by Anne Pierson Wiese: American Life in Poetry #199 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureat

© Ted Kooser

I'd guess that most of us carry in our memories landscapes that, far behind us, hold significant meanings for us. For me, it's a Mississippi River scenic overlook south of Guttenberg, Iowa. And for you? Here's just such a memoryscape, in this brief poem by New Yorker Anne Pierson Wiese.