Smile poems
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Phenomenal Woman
© Jon Anderson
Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
Soon, O Ianthe! Life is O'er
© Heather Fuller
Soon, O Ianthe! life is oer,
And sooner beautys heavenly smile:
Grant only (and I ask no more),
Let love remain that little while.
Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
© Thomas Gray
Twas on a lofty vases side,
Where Chinas gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow;
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.
“I Broke the Spell That Held Me Long”
© William Cullen Bryant
I broke the spell that held me long,
The dear, dear witchery of song.
I said, the poet’s idle lore
Shall waste my prime of years no more,
For Poetry, though heavenly born,
Consorts with poverty and scorn.
Of the Poet’s Youth
© Erin Belieu
When the man behind the counter said, “You pay
by the orifice,” what could we do but purchase them all?
(Sing the song of the moment...)
© Anselm Hollo
Sing the song of the moment in careless carols, in the transient light of the day;
Sing of the fleeting smiles that vanish and never look back;
Sing of the flowers that bloom and fade without regret.
Weave not in memorys thread the days that would glide into nights.
To the guests that must go bid God-speed, and wipe away all traces of their steps.
Let the moments end in moments with their cargo of fugitive songs.
from The Seasons: Winter
© James Thomson
Father of light and life! thou Good Supreme!
O teach me what is good! teach me Thyself!
Save me from folly, vanity, and vice,
From every low pursuit; and feed my soul
With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure,
Sacred, substantial, never-fading bliss!
Wyatt Resteth Here
© Henry Howard
Wyatt resteth here, that quick could never rest;
Whose heavenly gifts increased by disdain,
And virtue sank the deeper in his breast;
Such profit he of envy could obtain.
In Beauty Bright
© Gerald Stern
In beauty-bright and such it was like Blake’s
lily and though an angel he looked absurd
The Operation
© Anne Sexton
Clean of the body’s hair,
I lie smooth from breast to leg.
All that was special, all that was rare
is common here. Fact: death too is in the egg.
Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat.
And tomorrow the O.R. Only the summer was sweet.
from Upon Appleton House, to my Lord Fairfax
© Andrew Marvell
Within this sober frame expect
Work of no foreign architect;
They Clapped
© Nikki Giovanni
they clapped when they took off
for home despite the dead
dream they saw a free future
Buick
© Ishmael Reed
As a sloop with a sweep of immaculate wing on her delicate spine
And a keel as steel as a root that holds in the sea as she leans,
Leaning and laughing, my warm-hearted beauty, you ride, you ride,
You tack on the curves with parabola speed and a kiss of goodbye,
Like a thoroughbred sloop, my new high-spirited spirit, my kiss.
Thoughts about the Person from Porlock
© Stevie Smith
Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse,
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He could have hid in the house.
The Redshifting Web
© Wole Soyinka
5 Moored off Qingdao, before sunrise,
the pilot of a tanker is selling dismantled bicycles.
Once, a watchmaker coated numbers on the dial
Ceremony
© Lola Ridge
A striped blouse in a clearing by Bazille
Is, you may say, a patroness of boughs
Too queenly kind toward nature to be kin.
But ceremony never did conceal,
Save to the silly eye, which all allows,
How much we are the woods we wander in.
In Love with You
© Kenneth Koch
We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, “There’s a spider
Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.” I love you.
I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love
I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism.
