If I were in charge of the world
I'd cancel oatmeal,
Monday mornings,
Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg.
...
The young maricones and the horny muchachas,
The big fat widows delirious from insomnia,
The young wives thirty hours' pregnant,
And the hoarse tomcats that cross my garden at night,
...
They're buildin' the gallows outside my cell.
I got 25 minutes to go.
And in 25 minutes I'll be in Hell.
I got 24 minutes to go.
...
Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
No difference.
...
They let the children out of school too early.
I left the Christmas shopping till too late.
Each day we had a holiday excursion,
Which gave us the entire week to wait in line for
...
Something strange is creeping across me.
La Celestina has only to warble the first few bars
Of "I Thought about You" or something mellow from
Amadigi di Gaula for everything--a mint-condition can
...
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
...
It was a fine sunny day when I first met him,
Tall, dark and handsome, dimples on his cheeks;
I truly admired this man,
The wholeness in him brought thrill to my heart.
...
Should I get married? Should I be Good?
Astound the girl next door with my velvet suit and faustaus hood?
...
When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa's Seven Samurai
in the gray rain,
in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,
he fell straight as a pine, he fell
...
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
...
All night long the hockey pictures
gaze down at you
sleeping in your tracksuit.
Belligerent goalies are your ideal.
...
Bird perched, Branch fell
Bird thought, “I did”.
Hen cackled, Sun Rose
Hen thought, “I did”.
...
Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won't
know what you're up to
...
I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the Warta.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
...
I was walking this lonely wilderness
And then I met you
I had no intention of falling
‘Cause my heart's pieces, were but a few.
...
Channel 1's no fun.
Channel 2's just news.
Channel 3's hard to see.
Channel 4 is just a bore.
...
Tomb of a millionaire,
A multi-millionaire, ladies and gentlemen,
Place of the dead where they spend every year
The usury of twenty-five thousand dollars
...
I tell you that I see her still
At the dark entrance of the hall.
One gas lamp burning near her shoulder
Shone also from her other side
...
". . . our language, forged in the dark bycenturies of violent
pressure, underground,out of the stuff of dead life."
Thirsty and languorous after their long black sleep
...
Because the road to our house
is a back road, meadowlands punctuated
by gravel quarry and lumberyard,
there are unexpected travelers
...
Let me not play tuneless in today's time,
Some purists sure get praised as Gandhian,
Yet, crass nevertheless is no more crime,
Old values are hailed may be in heaven.
...
Oh they won't let us show it at the beach no they won't let us show it at the beach
They think we're gonna grab it if it gets within our reach
...
Memory of Thanksgiving: Gravy with... mashed potatoes.
Sandwich of my Youth: Bacon and lettuce.... with tomatoes.
Jobs I've had: Nurses' aide, clerk, .... and truck driver.
Athletes I'll never be: Quarterback, boxer, and high diver.
...
The twentieth century has often fooled us.
We've been squeezed in by falsehood as by taxes.
The breath of life has denuded our ideas
as quickly as it strips a dandelion.
...
It‘s crazy to think one could describe them—
Calling on reason, fantasy, memory, eves and ears—
As though they were all alike any more
...
I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
...
To the Williamson Brothers
High noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue
...
Up on the mountain where people keep horses
A thoroughbred took me on a morning walk.
And whenever her head reared in laughter
I wanted to gallop with her through space.
...
What does a hangman think about
When he goes home at night from work?
When he sits down with his wife and
Children for a cup of coffee and a
...
I've always wanted to play the part
of that puckish pubescent Filipino boy
in those John Wayne Pacific-War movies.
...
Husband and wife
Ordained by God
Recognized by law
An intimate and permanent partner
...
I’ve got this thing called autism
that can lock you up inside
but I am me, I’m Matty,
and I’m learning not to hide.
...
A tumbleweed is
A living thing.......but,
When it dies,
Breaking free of its earth ties,
...
the medical examiner knew
she wasn't up-to-dating
but this was the woman who
he'd spent his life a-waiting
...
Poor old Marion Morrison,
He had a woman's name,
And yet Marion Morrison
Did rise up to great fame.
...
Arms around your waist,
And hairflying in the air,
That first joyride on mobike
On Delhi roads sealed our fate.
...
They were never handsome and often came
with a hormone imbalance manifested by corpulence,
a yodel of a voice or ears big as kidneys.
...
Two young lovers in the back seats of the movie house
Beautiness cuddliness loveliness holding hands,
Youths pleasure, everyone quiet as a mouse
The flickering light shows a Caliph riding across the burning sands,
...
1
I am a great American
I am almost nationalistic about it!
I love America like a madness!
...
Dear Jenny Joseph,
How are you getting along these days?
Now that you've hit our 'top poems' list?
...
Behind the movies scenes, behind the protagonist's smiles,
Beneath the orchestra's strings, back of the ticket booths,
There is a message found in all of this;
That this is the now, and you are here alive,
...
Pond snipe, bleached pine, rue weed, wart --
I walk by sedge and brown river rot
to where the old lake boats went daily out.
All the ships are gone, the gray wharf fallen
...
I watch it
Morning, day and night
The plasma screens are quite a sight
Soap Operas, Reality Shows, Movies
...
Saturday evening, the week's hired film, click-click, click-click
while we chewed fruit gums and shouted FOCUS!
from time to time when the reel changed;
and after The White Hell of Pitz Palu
...
Small child dressed shabbily,
His eyes dusty, hair shaggy.
'When I will grow big,
I would have sweets many,
...
Did you ever wonder about dreaming?
How the pictures get in your head?
Why they’re only there when you’re sleeping?
Why they’re only there in your bed?
...
In the airport bar, I tell my mother not to worry.
No one ever tripped and fell into the San Andreas
Fault. But as she dabs at her dry eyes, I remember
those old movies where the earth does open.
...
"Hill of Jews," says one,
named for a cemetery
long gone."Hill of Jove,"
says another, and maybe
...
This is
a death threat for no one,
a suicidal promise to someone,
a reaper's ransom note.
...
After the movie, when the lights come up,
He takes her powdered hand behind the wings;
She, all in yellow, like a buttercup,
Lifts her white face, yearns up to him, and clings;
...
A TRIBUTE TO ALAN DALE
Prince Of Baritones
(1925 – 2002)
...
You’re richer than wealth...
beauty than diamonds...
but with hollow heart..
melted like an ice-cream
...
He thinks her little feet should pass
Where dandelions star thickly grass;
Her hands should lift in sunlit air
Sea-wind should tangle up her hair.
...
Me, you and her
Stand for each other
We are gals with common hubbies
And always stick together as buddies.
...
All you have to do is listen to the way a man
sometimes talks to his wife at a table of people
and notice how intent he is on making his point
even though her lower lip is beginning to quiver,
...
CENTURIES COME...CENTURIES GO!
Seen it all before
from... Pharaohs...World Wars...to now...
...
Who am I to say to you
what I say to you?
I was not a stone polished by water
and became a face
nor was I a cane punctured by the wind
and became a flute...
I am a dice player,
...
Someone told me that when we go to heaven,
it will be full of Hollywood gangster movies and
we’ll have to select which one we want to live
in forever. I assume you’ll choose The
...
I came to the cemetery in the hazy heat of autumn,
where the crosses creak as they split,
to my grandmother-Maria Iosefovna-
and bought flowers at the gate.
...
Behold me, in my chiffon, gauze, and tinsel,
Flitting out of the shadow into the spotlight,
And into the shadow again, without a whisper!--
Firefly's my name, I am evanescent.
...
On the day of the feast
death had its celebration
the teevees and the movies
told us the same story
...
Oh poetry my friend inside, dormant thoughts lie,
Anger writes the feelings in the speed of thought,
I swing the axe to split the block of inspiration
Mind Pictures in my words sleeping under dreams.
...
Readers:
This is NOT a single poem written by me. It is a collection of poems, mostly by other poets. I have been putting together usually-monthly-showcases for years. This years' problems on P-H (which continue to a lesser degree) have caused me to miss several months and now I MAY have two smaller (than usual) showcases in the same month, as I did last month in June.
...
There's no flag for my sexual orientation
As I am the only one
I looked at movies and TV
And I am squemish with
...
Ph on PH
I would like to take the Ph on PH
To scientifically verify the acidity
...
When she came out, that white little Russian dancer,
With her bright hair, and her eyes, so young, so young,
He suddenly lost his leader, and all the players,
And only heard an immortal music sung,--
...
The long envelope was addressed to Mr. Robert K. Hess.
One corner was torn away.....and it lacked a return address.
I’d just received it that day, with a batch of others;
it was a light mail-day; some days the volume smothers.
...
1. The Wrongful Death
I'm at the Hobart Law Firm
In downtown St. Louis.
...
In the 'Add New Poem' instructions PH says 'Take a deep breathe',
but it should say 'breath' [rhymes with death], so I now DO grieve!
It's a grammatical error, one even (I think) 'Bri' has made in the past,
AND I'll bet my high school English teachers would....now be aghast!
...
Come here, oh my darling, please come walk this way,
I heard your poor mother sat crying today -
These walls, being ever so thin, that I fear,
They make it too easy for someone to hear.
...
I almost became a country singer.
My cousin Don invited me
to join him on tour once,
but I was having too much success
...
My mother was much sensitive to cleanliness,
She was fond of perfumes and fragrant flowers,
She was famous for her kindness,
And hard works, in the suns and showers
...
GOD MADE STEAK
GOD MADE SNAKES
GOD YOU MADE ALOT OF MISTAKES
...
Not all Poems
Are always true,
Some are pure
Fantasy,
...
I am an atheist who says his prayers.
I am an anarchist, and a full professor at that. I take the loyalty oath.
...
A woman's life is not easy to live!
her whole life devoted to others
learning her fates, sacrafice to give.
...
Mail-day, and over the world in a thousand drag-nets
The bundles of letters are dumped on the docks and beaches,
...
Here on the pale beach, in the darkness;
With the full moon just to rise;
They sit alone, and look over the sea,
Or into each other's eyes. . .
...
She was a medley of synonyms
A jumble of sheer contradiction
Confusing her legions of readers
So busy, trying to paint her world of fiction;
...
I loved candles. Now I know why.
The only sound I could hear was my own heart beat. The morning seemed no longer bright. For a fact, Room No.903, commonly known as the ICCU at AIIMS, had no windows. Morning and nights equally smelled of antiseptic. I had started to forget the smell of my skin. The needle that pierced the epidermal tissues offered no sensation after all. The insanity of the entire room as though reflected on me, as I had started to become a vegetable.
...
I see what I want in the farm ... right now I see
braids of wheat combed by the wind, and I close my eyes
...
It was a chilled dawn.
The maiden light just trying,
bless the earth.
Rain starts to pour on streets.
...
Are these connections coincidences or fate,
When the time for love and hope is late;
Could it be possible buried hearts to live
Unaware of love they guard concealed?
...
When no one is looking
I count the steps
in front of my house
no reason apparent.
...
My city used to have video rental shops
dotted around the suburbs of escapism,
though for some time there has been just one,
which closed its doors last week.
...
Now that my afro's as big as Shaft's
I feel a little better about myself.
How it warms my bullet-head in Winter,
...
One summer I taught with a guy fixated on flicks
I mean those 16mm films teachers used
to get away from textbooks
...
I listened to the ‘final lecture’ by Randy Pausch,
Like so many others,
I personally met Eric Griffiths in the Waverly Hotel, Bonnyrigg, Scotland,
...
The day you left, as I recall
You stood so high, you stood so tall
No wonder you couldn't hear me say
So high you were, so low I lay
...
What do I have to look forward to the rest of my fine life?
It depends, to some degree at least, on my dear wife.
If she stays alive and somehow keeps on putting up with me,
I may live twenty more years (ten more than I 'should') . We'll see.
...
I plan to start a 'showcase' on my PoemHunter site,
which will NOT be a contest; no need for a fight,
but instead a place where once a month I shall post..
a poem of your choosing, which you would like read most.
...
Last night, Lisa, Peter, Leeza and I were in her father's 50th floor study watching New York City. It's a corner room with glass walls from floor to ceiling. He likes to watch the city himself and has a small,5 seat sectional couch facing the view.
The left wall window looks across Hell's Kitchen to exactly where Sully Sullenberger crash landed flight 1549 in the Hudson river (it was 3: 31 pm and no one was home) . The right window overlooks Central Park and Upper Manhattan. Lincoln Center, almost dead center of the corner, looks like part of a toy train-set.
...
Coach worked the counter
at a video store in Hollywood...
musicians, actors, drag queens...
to say the clientele was eclectic
...
My brother and I
Are like Tom and Jerry
I am young and silly
He is my big bully!
...
This will look at the history of the human race and the dark story of its preoccupation with blood. Bloody blood.
...
No candy hearts or roses, please.
I don't want teddy bears.
I don't want dinner at the Palm.
No movie tickets,
...
Breakfast At Tiffany's - a movie revered as a true classic
Audrey Hepburn, the icon, with bearing aristocratic
George Peppard, the actor, so suave and debonair
So should I, would I, ever so much as dare
...