we had goldfish and they circled around and around
in the bowl on the table near the heavy drapes
covering the picture window and
my mother, always smiling, wanting us all
...
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
...
How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
...
it came today to visit
and moved into the house
it was smaller than an elephant
but larger than a mouse
...
How pleasant to know Mr. Lear,
Who has written such volumes of stuff.
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few find him pleasant enough.
...
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
...
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
...
They should not have left him there alone,
Alone that is except for the cat.
He was only nine, not old enough
To be left alone in a basement flat,
...
More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That's how much I love you.
...
Snow fell in the night.
At five-fifteen I woke to a bluish
mounded softness where
the Honda was. Cat fed and coffee made,
...
Once upon a time
I caught a little rhyme
I set it on the floor
...
each man must realize
that it can all disappear very
quickly:
the cat, the woman, the job,
...
I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
...
It was an icy day.
We buried the cat,
then took her box
and set fire to it
...
Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
...
Oh, love, why do we argue like this?
I am tired of all your pious talk.
Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
...
God knew that I need someone
To keep as a treasure in my heart.
Someone who is so true
Fine and caring.
...
Father calls me William, sister calls me Will,
Mother calls me Willie, but the fellers call me Bill!
Mighty glad I ain't a girl - ruther be a boy,
Without them sashes, curls, an' things that's worn by Fauntleroy!
...
The moon has a face like the clock in the hall;
She shines on thieves on the garden wall,
On streets and fields and harbour quays,
And birdies asleep in the forks of the trees.
...
School is like a prison
We can't leave,
School is like an island
...
Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
...
Maxine, back from a weekend with her boyfriend,
smiles like a big cat and says
that she's a conjugated verb.
She's been doing the direct object
...
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where i first
fell in love
with unreality
...
My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
...
Dot a dot dot dot a dot dot
Spotting the windowpane.
Spack a spack speck flick a flack fleck
...
She had a name among the children;
But no one loved though someone owned
Her, locked her out of doors at bedtime
And had her kittens duly drowned.
...
At intermission I find her backstage
still practicing the piece coming up next.
She calls it the "solo in high dreary."
Her bow niggles at the string like a hand
...
We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
...
What lures everyone's eyes
without vision
makes them dream to be me,
is but my image at sale, a star
...
The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat;
'T was half-past twelve, and (what do you think!)
Nor one nor t' other had slept a wink!
...
Careful Observers may fortel the Hour
(By sure Prognosticks) when to dread a Show'r:
While Rain depends, the pensive Cat gives o'er
Her Frolicks, and pursues her Tail no more.
...
A city plum is not a plum;
A dumb-bell is no bell, though dumb;
A party rat is not a rat;
...
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
...
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.
...
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
...
The river is famous to the fish.
The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.
...
it is hard to remain human on a day
when birds perch weeping
in the trees and the squirrel eyes
do not look away but the dog ones do
...
It is not with the sadness,
Nor madness,
Of Van Gogh
That I exclude myself
...
They mouth love's language. Gnash
The thirteen teeth
Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.
...
Having slept, the cat gets up,
yawns, goes out
to make love.
...
As the sun showed it's first ray of light
I told everyone it's time to take flight
They asked me whether the adventure would be long
I said it would'nt be if we hum a nice little song
...
THE cat went here and there
And the moon spun round like a top,
And the nearest kin of the moon,
The creeping cat, looked up.
...
i love the river between the banks
beshrew a drinker who doesn't give thanks
i love the breeze hitting my face
...
The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
...
Hen laid an eggs, between legs two,
No small, no big but not in zoo,
Ran after those who made slight dig,
Dog, cat and crow planned very big,
...
Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole.
...
One day there passed by a company of cats a wise dog.
And as he came near and saw that they were very intent and heeded
...
When thin-strewn memory I look through,
I see most clearly poor Miss Loo,
Her tabby cat, her cage of birds,
Her nose, her hair -- her muffled words,
...
Tenuous and Precarious
Were my guardians,
Precarious and Tenuous,
Two Romans.
...
Mother, among the dustbins and the manure
I feel the measure of my humanity, an allure
As of the presence of God, I am sure
...
I am the cat of cats. I am
The everlasting cat!
Cunning, and old, and sleek as jam,
The everlasting cat!
...
AD LESBIAM, CAT. EP. 73.
Dicebas quondam, solum to nosse Catullum,
Lesbia, nec prae me velle tenere Jovem;
...
Cat! who hast pass’d thy grand climacteric,
How many mice and rats hast in thy days
Destroy’d? How many tit bits stolen? Gaze
With those bright languid segments green, and prick
...
The winter apples have been picked, the garden turned.
Rain and wind have picked the maple leaves and gone.
The last of them now bank the house or have been burned.
None are left upon the trees or on the lawn.
...
In the Grandville greyhound station in the lightly drizzlin' rain
Sittin' on my suitcase goin' quietly insane all about you babe all about you
...
It’s the Africa in me
that loves the forest in which I wake,
that sees and hears its fauna and flora and revels in their names.
...
Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?
'T is a marvel of great renown!
It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea
In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;
...
Sometimes the poem
doesn't want to come;
it hides from the poet
like a playful cat
...
When the tea is brought at five o'clock,
And all the neat curtains are drawn with care,
The little black cat with bright green eyes
...
Lady, the dog that looks like a rat
Chases a beautiful Persian cat
She puts in high gear
Running like a deer
...
It is a matter of a black cat
On a bare cliff top in March
Whose eyes anticipate
The gorse petals;
...
CANINE FELINE FRIENDSHIP – PART I
Once our tom-cat brought to our house,
As honoured guest, his feline spouse.
...
Two cats rest on their cat tower,
One is on lower level while the other on top.
Light rain continuously and steadily falls.
They watch nature through the veils of afternoon rain.
...
In his malodorous brain what slugs and mire,
Lanthorned in his oblique eyes, guttering burned!
His body lodged a rat where men nursed souls.
The world flashed grape-green eyes of a foiled cat
...
The difficulty to think at the end of day,
When the shapeless shadow covers the sun
...
Brother, I've seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
...
I am packing to go to the airport
but somehow I am never packed.
I keep remembering more things
I keep forgetting.
...
Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast
...
Setting a trotline after sundown
if we went far enough away in the night
sometimes up out of deep water
...
Did they send me away from my cat and my wife
To a doctor who poked me and counted my teeth,
To a line on a plain, to a stove in a tent?
Did I nod in the flies of the schools?
...
A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
...
He is a beautiful kitty cat
Frank is his name
And around the barnyard
He has risen to fame
...
Reiterative poetry it seems proper to say
Has seen little sunlight in present day.
Yet it represents in all regard,
The beginning as English language broached forward.
...
No I do not want a kitten,
No cute, cuddly kitty-poo,
No more long hair in my cornflakes,
No more midnight meowing mews,
...
AD QUINTIUM. CAT. EP. 83.
Quinti, si tibi vis oculos debere Catullum,
Aut aliud si quid carius est oculis,
...
That afternoon the dream of the toads
rang through the elms by Little River
and affected the thoughts of men,
though they were not conscious that
...
The animals were imperfect,
long-tailed,
unfortunate in their heads.
Little by little they
...
There was a cat named Crazy Christian
Who never lived long enough to screw
He was gay hearted, young and handsome
...
The shadow was so black,
I thought it was a cat,
But once in to it
I knew it
...
I can't ridge it back again from char.
Not one board left. Only ash a cat explores
and shattered glass smoked black and strung
about from the explosion I believe
...
I am watching Cleo listening, our cat
listening to Mozart's Magic Flute. What
can she be hearing? What
can the air carry into her ears like that,
...
In an attempt to lighten up my poem site I offer
this doggeral style ditty about my neighbor's dog-
I used to range those farming fields,
...
Here Holy Willie's sair worn clay
Taks up its last abode;
His saul has ta'en some other way,
I fear, the left-hand road.
...
A little Dog that wags his tail
And knows no other joy
Of such a little Dog am I
...
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry.
For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him.
For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way.
For this is done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness.
...
What can a yellow glove mean in a world of motorcars and governments?
I was small, like everyone. Life was a string of precautions: Don’t kiss the squirrel before you bury him, don’t suck candy, pop balloons, drop watermelons, watch TV.
...
Our lucky cat
Tom is she that
Gets a great chance
At the night
...
AD JUVENCIUM. CAT. EP. 49.
Mellitos oculos tuos, Juvenci,
Si quis me sinat usque basiare,
...
But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
...
Two cats look at each other
They see each other through a glass door
The gray cat is inside looking out
The white cat is outside looking in.
...
The game was tied in the bottom of nine
A runner on third and two out
In the dead still air a mosquito's whine
Was all you could hear, then a shout
...
Old man in the crystal morning after snow,
Your throat swathed in a muffler, your bent
Figure building the snow man which is meant
For the grandchild's target,
...
Her cat
cradled in her lap
her frock
...
I was out early to-day, spying about
From the top of a haystack -- such a lovely morning --
And when I mounted again to canter back
I saw across a field in the broad sunlight
...