Best America Poems

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
...

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the
streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit
...

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble;
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever yet shone upon;
I will make divine magnetic lands,
...

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
...

I am waiting for my case to come up
and I am waiting
for a rebirth of wonder
and I am waiting
...

I Hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics- each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
...

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
...

America, from a grain
of maize you grew
to crown
with spacious lands
...

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi's and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.
...

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
...

Once upon a time there was an Italian,
And some people thought he was a rapscallion,
But he wasn't offended,
Because other people thought he was splendid,
...

Under silver wing
San Francisco's towers sprouting
thru thin gas clouds,
Tamalpais black-breasted above Pacific azure
...

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening
to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the
mass hardens,
...

'Tis fine to see the Old World and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumblyh castles and the statues and kings
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
...

(Dedicated to you, my Brothers and Sisters)

Powerful words,
Truthful words,
...

AS I sat alone, by blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these mighty days, and of peace return'd, and the dead
that return no more,
...

Castro Alves from Brazil, for whom did you sing?
Did you sing for the flower? For the water
whose beauty whispered words to the stones?
Did you sing to the eyes, to the torn profile
...

Old Eddie's face, wrinkled with river lights,
Looked like a Mississippi man's. The eyes,
Derisive and avuncular at once,
Swivelling, fixed me. They'd seen
...

You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
...

Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -
...

Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
...

BEHAVIOR--fresh, native, copious, each one for himself or herself,
Nature and the Soul expressed--America and freedom expressed--In it
the finest art,
In it pride, cleanliness, sympathy, to have their chance,
...

And the Wright brothers said they thought they had invented
something that could make peace on earth
(if the wrong brothers didn’t get hold of it)
...

The thought of what America would be like
If the Classics had a wide circulation
       Troubles my sleep,
The thought of what America,
...

We were supposed to do a job in Italy
and, full of our feeling for
ourselves (our sense of being
Poets from America) we went
...

AN old man's thought of School;
An old man, gathering youthful memories and blooms, that youth itself
cannot.

...

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
...

And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
...

The fox pushes softly, blindly through me at night,
between the liver and the stomach. Comes to the heart
and hesitates. Considers and then goes around it.
Trying to escape the mildness of our violent world.
...

SO far, and so far, and on toward the end,
Singing what is sung in this book, from the irresistible impulses of
me;
But whether I continue beyond this book, to maturity,
...

America, you ode for reality!
Give back the people you took.

Let the sun shine again
...

How much do i appreciate you - My Special Lady?
Let me count the ways the whys and the wherefores.
...

Jackson is no more,
Singer at heart and at centre core,
Hundreds or thousands might have wept,
Glorious tradition maintained and lively kept,
...

When the trumpet sounded, it was
all prepared on the earth,
the Jehovah parcelled out the earth
...

We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were
slipped in. We have levelled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and
dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming.
...

My father and mother, two tiny figures,
side by side, facing the clouds that move
in from the Atlantic. August, '33.
The whole weight of the rain to come, the weight
...

The pure products of America
go crazy--
mountain folk from Kentucky
...

AMERICA always!
Always our own feuillage!
Always Florida's green peninsula! Always the priceless delta of
...

I came home and found a lion in my room...
[First draft of "The Lion for Real" CP 174-175]
...

Twenty-eight naked young women bathed by the shore
Or near the bank of a woodland lake
Twenty-eight girls and all of them comely
Worthy of Mack Sennett's camera and Florenz Ziegfield's
...

LAWS for Creations,
For strong artists and leaders--for fresh broods of teachers, and
perfect literats for America,
...

Great Oracle, why are you staring at me,
do I baffle you, do I make you despair?
I, Americus, the American,
wrought from the dark in my mother long ago,
...

HAIL, happy saint, on thine immortal throne,
Possest of glory, life, and bliss unknown;
We hear no more the music of thy tongue,
Thy wonted auditories cease to throng.
...

I’m delighted by the velocity of money as it whistles through the windows
of Lower East Side
Delighted by skyscrapers rising the old grungy apartments falling on
84th Street
...

So I go
…..smile all of friend and foe.
.….the time has come to depart
…..be off a must that do us part.
...

Oh! Teacher, Oh! Teacher,
If you, one day, become my student,
and I become your Teacher.
Before I teach you
...

After dark
Near the South Dakota border,
The moon is out hunting, everywhere,
Delivering fire,
...

OR, from that Sea of Time,
Spray, blown by the wind--a double winrow-drift of weeds and shells;
(O little shells, so curious-convolute! so limpid-cold and voiceless!
...

.
I watched a movie last night about World War 2,
and the nearly 350,000 allied soldiers
stranded and under fire at Dunkirk
...

The innocent were slaughtered
So many years ago
In the town of Bethlehem
Slew by an evil foe
...

I am a poet of the Hudson River and the heights above it,
the lights, the stars, and the bridges
I am also by self-appointment the laureate of the Atlantic
-of the peoples' hearts, crossing it
...

Kissass is the Part of Peace
America will have to Kissass Mother Earth
...

ONE song, America, before I go,
I'd sing, o'er all the rest, with trumpet sound,
For thee--the Future.
...

Land of the Free home of the brave
Land of disease home of the slave
Freedom of religion Freedom of speech
Freedom of press and freedom to breach
...

AS a strong bird on pinions free,
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving,
Such be the thought I'd think to-day of thee, America,
...

In measured verse I'll now rehearse
The charms of lovely Anna:
And, first, her mind is unconfined
Like any vast savannah.
...

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
...

I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every songbird, not only in
America but wherever they sing.
...

1

Many animals that our fathers killed in America
Had quick eyes.
...

Is it really so depraving
I like to eat a lot?
The thought of food I’m craving
Just ties me in a knot
...

AS consequent from store of summer rains,
Or wayward rivulets in autumn flowing,
Or many a herb-lined brook's reticulations,
Or subterranean sea-rills making for the sea,
...

WITH all thy gifts, America,
(Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking the world,)
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee--With these, and like of
these, vouchsafed to thee,
...

TO conclude--I announce what comes after me;
I announce mightier offspring, orators, days, and then, for the
present, depart.
...

'Tis fine to see the Old World, and travel up and down
Among the famous palaces and cities of renown,
To admire the crumbly castles and the statues of the kings, --
But now I think I've had enough of antiquated things.
...

YEARS of the modern! years of the unperform'd!
Your horizon rises--I see it parting away for more august dramas;
I see not America only--I see not only Liberty's nation, but other
...

YOU just maturing youth! You male or female!
Remember the organic compact of These States,
Remember the pledge of the Old Thirteen thenceforward to the rights,
life, liberty, equality of man,
...

In flat America, in Chicago,
Graceland cemetery on the German North Side.
Forty feet of Corinthian candle
celebrate Pullman embedded
...

The perfect voter has a smile but no eyes,
maybe not even a nose or hair on his or her toes,
maybe not even a single sperm cell, ovum, little paramecium.
Politics is a slug copulating in a Poughkeepsie garden.
...

O muse of mine please work with me,
Teach me to write simplisticly
And I shall seek no grander plan;
Just poetry for the common man.
...

Mr President,


You are all
...

(dedicated to people who love sports)

citius
altius
...

HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
...

I drank musty ale at the Illinois Athletic Club with
the millionaire manufacturer of Green River butter
one night
And his face had the shining light of an old-time Quaker,
...

Men and boys, O fathers, brothers,
Burst these fetters round you bound.
Women, sisters, wives and mothers,
Lift your faces from the ground!
...

WITH antecedents;
With my fathers and mothers, and the accumulations of past ages;
With all which, had it not been, I would not now be here, as I am:
With Egypt, India, Phenicia, Greece and Rome;
...

(Robert Frost, 1875-1963)


Whose wood this is I think I know:
...

NO labor-saving machine,
Nor discovery have I made;
Nor will I be able to leave behind me any wealthy bequest to found a
...

where was heaven?
when my father died,
with tears in my eyes i cried,
...

Burning! Burning! Whole world is burning
Erased ghettos, razing down skyscrapers
Mowed out farms, fields and meadows
Smoldering woods, thickets and vines
...

The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base
(a huge red slug with a hole
where its heart should be) or chose this print
of a butterscotch sunset,
...

Once in English they said America. Was it English to them.
Once they said Belgian.
We like a fog.
Do you for weather.
...

Make America Great again
By cleaning the lakes and rivers
And stop poisoning the land
Let's stop this division between of everything
...

This is the greatest thing in North America:
Europe is the greatest thing in North America!
High in the sky, dark in the heart, and always there
Among the natural powers of sunlight and of air,
...

The man who had never heard of Frank Sinatra: he lived
A perfectly ordinary life in America. Born in 1915,
He followed all the fads, read the newspapers, listened
...

STATES!
Were you looking to be held together by the lawyers?
By an agreement on a paper? Or by arms?

...

...

...

'Twas in the United States of America some years ago
An aged father sat at his fireside with his heart full of woe,
And talking to his neighbour, Mr Allan, about his boy Bennie
That was to be shot because found asleep doing sentinel duty.
...

Can you recall where you were, September nine/eleven?
When all hell did break loose; from Kamikaze heaven,

In disbelief, you watched aghast… another plane, another blast.
...

Someone lives in a cave
eating his toes,
I know that much.
Someone little lives under a bush
...

We are accused of terrorism:
if we defended rose and woman
and the mighty verse ...
and the blueness of sky ...
A dominion .. nothing left therein...
No water, no air ..
No tent, no camel,
and not even dark Arabica coffee!!
...

On the loan exhibit of his paintings at the Tate Gallery.

You also, our first great,
...

O this political air so heavy with the bells
and motors of a slow night, and no place to rest
...

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA (A brief introduction)

Swami Vivekananda (Narendranath Datta) was born on 12-01-1863 at Kolkata and died on 04-07-1902 at 39 years of age. He was a disciple of Guru Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who worshiped Mother Kali. Swamiji was the first religious ambassador to America, in which land he was recognized for his talents and deep knowledge in the Hindu ancient scriptures and religion. He was advocating for Universal Religion. Every world citizen should read his speeches in 9 Volumes released by the Ramakrishna Mission Association.. His life story starts with the Birth of Hinduism.
...

Beatiest of beats let me address you
as you America. Let me bless you
charleychaplin poet that you are
like Ferlinghetti spreadeagled in air
...

Enamoured(both)
with her new tights

their silky shiny sheer denier
...

According to Culture Shock:
A Guide to Customs and Etiquette
of Filipinos, when my husband says yes,
he could also mean one of the following:
...

555

Trust in the Unexpected—
By this—was William Kidd
...

What is the theme of freedom?
Life,
Love,
Happiness,
...

(Europe Conquers America.)

Strong for the strong and in his own conceit;
Half-boy, half-madman, playing with the fire;
...