Mom poems
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in a middle of a room
© Edward Estlin Cummings
in a middle of a room
stands a suicide
sniffing a Paper rose
smiling to a self
Sometimes I Am Alive Because With
© Edward Estlin Cummings
when, her mouth suddenly rising, wholly
begins with mine fiercely to fool
(and from my thighs which shrug and pant
a murdering rain leapingly reaches the upward singular deepest flower which she
carries in a gesture of her hips)
The Clasp
© Sharon Olds
She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,
we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,
I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his
face, again, and when I had her wrist
A Week Later
© Sharon Olds
A week later, I said to a friend: I don't
think I could ever write about it.
Maybe in a year I could write something.
There is something in me maybe someday
One Year
© Sharon Olds
When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
You Remain
© Arthur Symons
As a perfume doth remain
In the folds where it hath lain,
So the thought of you, remaining
Deeply folded in my brain,
Will not leave me; all things leave me -
You remain.
The Broken Tryst
© Arthur Symons
That day a fire was in my blood;
I could have sung: joy wrapt me round;
The men I met seemed all so good,
I scarcely knew I trod the ground.
Shoveling Snow With Buddha
© Billy Collins
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
The World And I
© Laura Riding Jackson
This is not exactly what I mean
Any more than the sun is the sun.
But how to mean more closely
If the sun shines but approximately?
The Knight's Tale
© Geoffrey Chaucer
Upon that other side, Palamon,
When that he wist Arcita was agone,
Much sorrow maketh, that the greate tower
Resounded of his yelling and clamour
The pure* fetters on his shinnes great *very
Were of his bitter salte teares wet.
The Dark and the Fair
© Stanley Kunitz
A roaring company that festive night;
The beast of dialectic dragged his chains,
Prowling from chair to chair is the smoking light,
While the snow hissed against the windowpanes.
Master And Mistress
© Stanley Kunitz
As if I were composed of dust and air,
The shape confronting me upon the stair
(Athlete of shadow, lighted by a stain
On its disjunctive breast--I saw it plain--)
The Thought-Fox
© Ted Hughes
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Depressed By A Book Of Bad Poetry, I Walk Toward An Unused Pasture And Invite The Insects To Join Me
© James Wright
Relieved, I let the book fall behind a stone.
I climb a slight rise of grass.
I do not want to disturb the ants
Who are walking single file up the fence post,
Rip
© James Wright
It can't be the passing of time that casts
That white shadow across the waters
Just offshore.
I shiver a little, with the evening.
Momma Welfare Roll
© Maya Angelou
Her arms semaphore fat triangles,
Pudgy HANDS bunched on layered hips
Where bones idle under years of fatback
And lima beans.
This Life
© Grace Paley
the people who usually look up
and call jump jump did not see him
the life savers who creep around the back staircases
and reach the roof's edge just in time
never got their chance he meant it he wanted
only one person to know
From Far Dakotas Cañons.
© Walt Whitman
FROM far Dakotas cañons,
Lands of the wild ravine, the dusky Sioux, the lonesome stretch, the silence,
Haply to-day a mournful wail, haply a trumpet-note for heroes.
Year of Meteors, 1859 60.
© Walt Whitman
YEAR of meteors! brooding year!
I would bind in words retrospective, some of your deeds and signs;
I would sing your contest for the 19th Presidentiad;
I would sing how an old man, tall, with white hair, mounted the scaffold in Virginia;
In the New Garden in all the Parts.
© Walt Whitman
IN the new garden, in all the parts,
In cities now, modern, I wander,
Though the second or third result, or still further, primitive yet,
Days, places, indifferentthough various, the same,
